Charisma: Now You’ve Got It, Now You Don’t

The thing is narcissism in and of itself is not necessarily negative. We're all the stars of our own shows/lives.

Some people want attention and do all the right things to get it: pursue the right goals, get people together to do stuff that's good for humanity. You'd better believe that many people whom we view very positively might have been narcissists: Ghandi, Mother Teresa, etc. But the difference is they did GOOD things to get the attention and power they thought they deserved.

I think it has to do with the values you absorb as a very young person. We all have a drive for attention, for power, for comfort, for security. For some the drive, and the talent or "charisma" to achieve those goals is higher.

The decisions made along the way, the considerations of the side effects, and what you DO with that power are what distinguish people like Donald Trump and Hitler from people like Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela. And let's not get it wrong; even the latter two have a few spots on their records. No one is perfect.

As I get older, my theory of charisma is that it's a product, more than it is an innate trait, and that anyone can "become charismatic", although 99.9 percent of people never will, and the worst thing you can do for yourself is try. People seem superhuman-- energetic, brilliant, capable-- when surrounded by people who invest themselves entirely in making them seem so. Steve Jobs had no special social acumen, above-average but not genius-level intelligence, and no more hours in his day than the 24 we all have, but he managed to surround himself with the right people and, for a period of about 20 years, managed to convince the world that he had superhuman powers and a "reality distortion field" when in reality he was just a capitalist who dropped acid once.

Plenty of charismatic people are socially inept, charmless, and unpleasant in close interpersonal relationships, but this doesn't make them any less charismatic on a stage. They often have no genuine friends, but tens or hundreds or thousands of people who will put aside their own concerns to do things for the charismatic individual.

Charisma is a pattern by which other people, for reasons that are hard to parse, and through mechanisms that are invisible, do things for the charismatic person. A charismatic person is threatening because others will kill for him, and he's a desirable benefactor because others will commit resources to his causes, but it seems to be a self-perpetuating phenomenon that snowballs and can carry on for most of a lifetime. It does seem to collapse in old age. This is why charismatic but hideous people like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby meet such ignominious ends. They're invincible, until they're not.

There are skills that enhance a person's charisma. You can learn rhetoric, public speaking, and the norms of social interaction. But that's all they are: skills. Nothing can guarantee charisma. Nothing can guarantee that you'll get that core set of people to follow you that will produce a snowball effect. On that, it seems to be pretty random who wins and who doesn't.

Charisma exists because people want to be the charismatic person. They want to be someone who can wave a hand and bring ruin to their enemies. What they don't realize is that by following the charismatic, they're defeating their own purpose. It is not traits of the charismatic that generate this feedback loop. It is mostly just luck. That said, the way to improve one's odds to find people who are looking for a charismatic to follow, which means finding new territory, rather than hanging around an existing charismatic in a space where such people are already spoken-for.

I think your opinion on Castro or Che depends on perspective. Cuba was relatively successful until the decline of the Soviet Union by most measures — but when the neighboring superpower embargoes you because your political system is seen as an existential threat to the ruling class, it’s hard to close the gap. To classify them as objectively “bad” would mean doing the same to most US presidents. From the outside, all of our modern presidents have done some horrific things.

A big part of why the Cuban revolution is viewed negatively in the US is that the Cubans were sick of their island being totally owned as a playground for the rich in another country — things were objectively better for most Cubans in the years after the revolution. So Americans and wealthy Cubans were largely the early losers in the revolution, and wanted to punish the country for having the nerve to seize back the land. The embargo really killed their ability to build an economy, which led to a lot of poverty and was largely outside the control of the Cuban government.

Thank you for the pointer to Fox-Cabane. I'm going to read that.

I've thought a lot about charisma in the context of actors. People are drawn to certain actors for reasons that are hard to pin down. It's most explicit in film action heroes. They're often not the most attractive men and they're rarely good actors, but people will go see a Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwartzenegger film even after a long string of flops. They are certainly full of the "presence" and "power" part of Fox-Cabane's thesis, even if not the "warmth".

I most want to know more about the "presence" aspect. I'm certain it can be taught, but I don't entirely know how. I do think it ties in with another thing I've observed, that many of the most charismatic film actors have experience on stage, especially the UK stage. I believe it has to do with the way stage forces an actor to draw your eyes, where a film actor has a camera telling an audience where to look. I still don't entirely know what it is they're doing. Fox-Cabane may have ides.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus is the type specimen for how to avoid having a political career end in (martyrdom or) failure.