How did you come to be so intellectually curious about the human condition so early in your life? You never cease to amaze me…

In large part it’s just definitional. I am, in many way, trying to define narcissism down so that it’s the same as self-esteem. Like a few dictionaries, I consider the concepts roughly interchangeable.

But then the whole point is the moderately inflated ego necessary to feel that you should communicate with people. Two people can stand next to each other and not say anything and still have healthy self-esteems. There’s some desire to offer something, or hope to gain something, that leads them to break the silence. Maybe it’s just the thought that they’re more interesting than silence. But there’s a something which I decided, perhaps inaccurately, to call narcissism.

I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. The world would be a better place if more strangers started having meaningful conversations. But I think whenever people seek to communicate it is because they think themselves better than the alternative. The vast majority of the time they’re right, but that doesn’t mean the first thought didn’t occur.