5 stories of Narcissism

Throughout this reading I found that the most interesting part of Whistleblowers was the relation between narcissism and being a whistleblower. While this concept is difficult to understand, it does make sense once Alford explains it. "Narcissism is also a deep and powerful source of morality, leading some narcissists to sacrifice all their worldly goods for a noble idea."With the negative connotation that is sometimes associated with narcissism most people don't expect that any good will come from it but in the business of whistle-blowing it is possible for something good to happen. In the first story is called the "Imagination for consequences" which is when a person imagines the negative things that can happen when someone fails to blow the whistle on something that is unethical, "one might argue although whistleblowers are not connected to those they benefit, the structure of their imagination for consequence is nonetheless the structure of all empathy." The second story was called a sense of historical moment, which is when the whistleblower regrets being there at the wrong time, when the people around him were doing unethical things. This story is more narcissistic because the person if they could remove themselves from the situation. The third story described by Alford is identification with the victim, this action if often hard with whistleblowers because the people who they are blowing the whistle on turn out to be some of their good friends and coworkers, making it hard to identify withy the victim because the whistleblower does not know the victim as well as the perpetrator. The fourth story for whistleblowers is feeling a sense of shame, they feel this because they believe that they are corrupted by the people around them. The final story is called narcissism moralized in that they narcissistic actions of the whistleblowers are moralized because of what good thing that they are doing in the long run. I think that these situations relate to my service because although you may do community service many people and myself included want to make themselves feel better for doing something good. Instead of having an attitude that is selfish towards service we should see what we can do for someone else instead of ourselves.