The Loneliness Industry Podcast

Narcissism & Society Series 3/4.

• Jordan Reyne
• July 30, 2025

Toxic Spirituality: Narcissism, Gurus, and the God Complex.

Picture yourself in the late 1800s. You’ve been outcast by German society. You’ve been laughed at by academics and spurned by potential lovers. You are now miserable, broke, and ill, but still very, very THINKY. You are, in fact, working on another book. And even though you don’t know it yet, in that book, you will write three words that will change the course of history:

Gott ist tot.

If you don’t speak German you can be forgiven for assuming this is an announcement that “God” is now a guy called Tot. But no. You are Friedrich Nietzsche, and you are saying God is dead.

And suddenly? All hell breaks loose.
(Also: you have syphilis.)

Today we’re looking at what happens when massive authority figures are murdered by philosophers with sexually transmitted diseases. We’ll look at what happens when an entire culture loses its primary source of meaning — and is left staring into the void, realising the world might be exactly as merciless, unjust, and pointless as it feels. Because here’s the thing: when there’s a gaping hole in our systems of meaning, something will rush in to fill it. And Western capitalism, with its genius for repackaging anything that might threaten it, didn’t just fill that void — it found a way to sell the void back to us.

In the aftermath of Nietzsche’s great meaninglessness-bomb, capitalism dressed up its own values — individualism, control, and self-obsession — in the garb of a new messiah. One that promised transcendence… but delivered an even deeper kind of disconnection. This post isn’t about whether God exists or not. It’s about what came after. It’s about the commodification of “enlightenment” — the way capitalism now sells us spiritual-seeming coping mechanisms to deal with the pain and emptiness it created, all while quietly locking us tighter into the same cycles.

Today is about capitalism’s body double in guru robes. Because when I say “Western spiritualism,” I don’t mean ancient mysticism or community ritual. I mean the Instagram-ified, retreat-in-Bali, Law of Attraction-flavoured belief system that tells you the universe is your vision board. That you can — and should — control everything with your “vibes.” And what’s really under all that? Narcissism. A solipsistic, grandiose vision of the self — the idea that you are the god of your own reality, and everyone and everything else is either a prop, a test, or a reflection of you.

This post argues something that will sound uncomfortable at first: that Western spiritualism is not a balm for our disconnected world — it’s one of the reasons we’re more disconnected than ever. Because it doesn’t just repackage capitalism’s toxic values. It amplifies them. It sells us grandiosity as “healing.” It tells us that we — and our thoughts — are both the cause and the cure of all suffering. It rewires empathy so completely that we start to see other people’s pain as their fault too.

In earlier posts, we’ve broken down capitalism’s core values: individualism, control, competition, the hero narrative. Then we dug into how the tactics used to teach those values mirror covert narcissism — and how fully internalizing those values turns the culture itself narcissistic. Today, we’re zooming in on capitalism’s most seductive disguise yet: Western spiritualism. We’ll trace its birth in the Nietzschean void, where capitalism saw a market. We’ll see how the longing for meaning and connection became the perfect crucible for toxic values to morph into “gurus.”
We’ll see how spiritualism became the crystal-dangling promise that you — yes you — can control the universe with your thoughts. Along the way, you’ll meet Nietzsche, Hegel, a controversial narcissist, and a Purple Turkey who earns millions from harming her clients on stage. This is the story of how a culture steeped in narcissism found a way to sell narcissism itself — and call it enlightenment.

The Loss of God Creates a Power Vacuum

This all begins where Nietzsche left off. With a Vacuum. No, not the sucky kind — though this story certainly does come to suck by the end. By vacuum, I mean the void: the yawning gap that opens up when you take away the thing that once made sense of the world. To understand the rise of Western spiritualism — and how it’s shaped by the narcissistic system that is Western capitalism — we have to start with that void. The god-shaped hole, left over after Nietzsche’s infamous three words:
Gott ist Tod.

Now, Nietzsche’s “God is dead” theory, first outlined in The Gay Science and later expanded in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, wasn’t about a literal deity actually, genuinely karking it. So NOT along the lines of any giant, bearded dude in the sky suddenly rupturing his spleen. No. Nietzsche was talking about a cultural and philosophical shift.

Nietzsche argued that traditional religious belief — especially belief in the Christian God — had lost its power to shape morality and meaning in modern society. Even as far back as the late 1800s, he saw it coming: as science, reason, and secular values rose, belief in a divine moral order collapsed. This triggered what you might call a crisis — or an “opportunity,” depending on how much you like Newspeak. With no more absolute truths, no higher authority, and no more comforting explanations for loss and death, individuals faced nihilism — the sense that life has no purpose. And the fact is, most people find nihilism… fucking unbearable.

But Nietzsche did not just opt for a cool-guy shrug and say, “Yep, sucks to be you, now, dunnit, everyman.” Instead, he issued a challenge: confront the void. Take responsibility for creating new values and meaning through your own strength and creativity. And as if Nietzsche's afterlife wasn’t full enough of horrible ironies, behold: With this challenge, to create your meaning personally, this broke 19th century German philosopher essentially wrote ad copy for marketers 100 years into the future. Because empowering as it sounds, Nietzsche’s idea already HAD individualism at it’s core. Not to mention ye-not-olde hero narrative vibes. Particularly considering he later ties this project of self-created meaning to “Das Übermensch.” Yeah. We already know who laps up Übermensch talk like free champagne — aside from grandiose narcissists, of course.

But back to holes.. Big gaping holes, where meaning used to lie.. sometimes… and among other things. I should start by pointing out that the SHAPE of the hole God left behind was not the same for everyone.

The Shape of the God-Shaped Hole

From our own temporal standpoint, the death of God might seem like no big deal, or even like a good thing - particularly if you had the old “fire and brimstone” type God in your upbringing or on your mind. But even for those who experienced a pretty ruthless, punitive god, that god still played a role in providing meaning and even, perversely, connection.

Let me illustrate that with an example. Picture the following setting: a world that is pretty unjust… Yeah, this is not really a particularly imagination-intensive exercise. Picture a world that is unjust, where there are wars all over the place, there is the constant risk of losing your job or livelihood. Picture po-faced people wandering about saying shitty things, and/or occasionally murdering each other. Picture diseases, vomit, stinking factories churning out gunge, an no one has found the time to invent electric guitars yet.

Imagine that, within that shitty context, you had a parent you saw as unconditionally loving. A parent who offered comforting words and showed you the meaning in things when stuff got really bad. They always listened, and comforted you when you were sad or alone. Notice how it feels to imagine that. I am guessing that having a listening ear and meaning-maker mitigates the foulness of the setting. It might even be enough to make you feel warm and hopeful about the future – which does genuinely have electric guitars in it.

So it’s no surprise that if THAT kind of parent were suddenly GONE, it’s fucking awful.

That parent is obviously a God analogue, and I feel for anyone who faced the loss of a God like that. I know that IS some peoples experience of god too, and if you had that loving God figure debunked, the void left behind is monumental. But - that’s not the ONLY experience of God that there is. I often hear instead about a God that was narrated to mirroring a dictatorish, over-punishing, terrifying, being. THAT God was painted as constantly watching you, even when you went to the toilet, waiting for you to do something wrong, or even THINK something wrong, cos that god KNEW. Fuckin terrifying. So lets imagine you are still within that same crappy world we described before – unjust, grotty, and with shitty people in it - and THIS God is spying on you constantly, and might punish you at ANY moment. In fact, this God only approves of you if you follow a specific list of behaviours – and some additional ones that Gods middlemen make up. THIS God may even torture you or make your life miserable for NOT REASON AT ALL. Like what happened to Lot.
This kind of God mirrors a grandiose narcissistic parent.
Now, what happens when you lose THAT kind of parent?
Well, I can tell you from personal experience - on the parental level, but this might surprise you. It leaves a hole ANYWAY. It leaves you wishing you HAD had a parent/ God/ meaning-making figure who was unconditionally loving, protecting, and comforting. Cos without that, you feel alone, unprotected, unseen and worse – fucking petrified, all the time. You kind of LONG for what you never had, and what others sometimes seem to.

The point is, even if the God you lost was a terrifying prick, there is STILL a longing – still a yearning that springs from a lack. So no matter what your experience of God, the ABSENCE of some final-say meaning-maker can still leave a void.

Is It A GOD-Shaped Hole Though?

Now, a lot of us weren’t brought up religious at all, and we don’t equate the longing we feel with a lack of god. And really, the longing for meaning, connection, purpose and so on, can be seen as inherently human, or existential. Regardless of whether we call that hole God-shaped or not, the longing remains, and it is very hard to budge.

So if you do have issues with calling that hole god-shaped, do feel free to replace that with the something-is-missing-but-I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-it-is hole. If you have an incredibly good memory and wish to ignore one of Nietzsche most important ideas. Cos back then, when Nietzsche was kicking around with his syphilis and love of Wagner, God WAS the intended quick fix for those very human needs. God may even still work for some of you, and I am not knocking that or judging the experience. In fact, I’d be stoked if it worked for me, so I get it.

The aim here though is to outline the setup – that VOID that most of us now live with. The one Nietzsche suggests comes from the increasing influence of capitalism on morality and value, and the shrinking influence of a once-powerful religion.

The take home is this – in the wreckage where meaning collapsed, capitalism found a goldmine. Because where there’s a desperate longing, there’s also a market. Our ache—our need for meaning, protection, connection, or even just for that which we cant name—is real. But along with being, for many, inarticulable, it is also a deeply vulnerable position. A vulnerable position that aint easy to resolve on ones own. And THAT makes it easy to sell shit to.

Longing for Meaning + Western Capitalism = Western Spiritualism

But wait! You may say. Why manifesting, lesson-extraction and crystals in our orifices? Why not fill the void with something else?

Well, we kinda DID try to fill it with other things. This is capitalism, after all. Whatever your hearts desire, we produce that now! That is really what the system offers, or professes to – that we can purchase our way out of anything. We aren’t prevented from trying to fill the void, it’s just that we’ve been trained to try and fill it with STUFF. Computer games, cars, food, bungee jumping, collecting starwars figures, or guitars, or STDs. Yeah, the faceless lovers necessary for your STD collection cost money too.

But many have noticed, as you doubtless have too, dear listener – none of that quite satisfies the particular ache we discussed. Not for long, anyway. Our system has failed us in terms of creating real meaning, real connection or real safety. THAT is what keeps the system ticking over. Our not attaining those things. In that sense, the god-shaped hole is almost ideal. It eggs us on to desperately try and fill it.

I said, ALMOST ideal. There is now a problem. The failure of STUFF to fill the void has become too flaming obvious. We figured it out. The idea IS that we have all that longing AND have a belief belief that some purchasable item MIGHT satisfy it. Then pointless consumption continues indefinitely. And pointless consumption IS what makes the western world go round.

This is the secret marketeers know:
What drives the market isn’t simple dissatisfaction. It is a special SORT of dissatisfaction. A dissatisfaction that BELIEVES it can be satisfied, even though it won’t be. In other words, the market is sustained if and only if the solutions it sells DO NOT WORK, but look as if they WOULD. But the god-shaped hole has proved too big for that. Most of us long for something MORE.

The Stage Is Set

Here we all are then, kicking around in a state of longing that won’t be cured. A lot of generations white knuckled it through, but by now, we are pretty miffed as to what might work in terms of being happy. Importantly, a certain amount of gaslighting has gone on too – we will get to the importance of THAT more in a minute.

We have been told, time and time again, that we SHOULD be happy, and don’t really have anything to complain about. All this means is that the void persists, and now we feel like FAILUREs for not being happy. Or like we cant ADMIT we are not happy. We’re still longing for something we can’t name, can’t discuss, and feel out of options in terms of where to look.

At this point, only one of two things can really happen in a system that has failed to meet our existential needs.

A mass consumer revolt is option one. By that I mean tearing up the failed system. Scrapping all the life-sucking, community destroying, planet-raping values it consists of. Unfortunately, this requires a total, almost global, overhaul. It’s the kind of move that might entail death. And let’s not forget that death is now a shitload harder to cope with now that no one believes in the afterlife anymore. Also, what values do we use instead, after cleaning up the corpses?
Obviously, this option isn't popular.

Option two is amping our existing values up. It’s a way less bumpy ride, as everyone’s internalised those values to some extent already. It’s far less likely to entail any killing, too. In fact, it’s really just shunting us along to the logical conclusion of the values we already hold dear. Boosting them in volume to drown out all this awful doubt, and the constant howling of the void.
This is called going with what we have.

What we HAVE is everyone striving for control of their lives, out of fear, in fact, but they already frame it as self-improvement. Good start. Hmm. Control in the name of self improvement. Check. Next we have individualism and the hero narrative that supports it. People certainly like that, as the success of blockbuster hero films, and general selfishness, make clear.

The Ultimate Sales Pitch.

Lets make the individual MORE than just a hero. Let’s make their drive for control, for self-perfection, SO all important, that their failure to do it is a reflection of their moral corruption. Their SUCCESS at it becomes the ultimate key to happiness, and the sign of a superior person. Their THOUGHTS their MINDS are that which produce outcomes – yeah, that will put an end to all the feelings and shit, cos rationality is what wins out here.

No. It’s not solipsism. I am not imagining that everything and everyone in this world is a reflection of MY thoughts. Well, I AM, but it’s not solipsism. _I_ am MANIFESTING.

Finally. We can make sense of shitty things happening to us again. Check it out: ALL the bad things that happen are there to TEACH you something. The death of your child, a hideous car accident. A genetic skin disorder. It is all for YOU to learn something. The universe is literally BENT on your betterment – if you can learn to accept, forgive, not cry, and just keep thinking of lollipops and rainbows. In fact, if you DO think of those lollipops and rainbows hard enough, they will manifest into being. You BECOME god.
You can then do a sideline in spiritual books to boot.

This is literally the product we’ve all been waiting for since Nietzsche ruptured God’s spleen. This is the solution we CAN believe might fill us up.

Because it is all ABOUT us.

I mean, it works because, seriously, hands up if this genuinely has NO appeal. This is tickets to YOU as the biggest new show in town. YOU on the heroes journey to your own enlightenment. You must learn, like a god-in-training, that control IS the be all and end all. That control is all centred in YOUR MIND. And until you swallow, I mean, master, that cognitive control ideal, until you merge with the universe that is all you anyway, and all connected, said universe will ensure that each thing that occurs is a lesson, specifically for YOU. The universe, in other words, will be in your service, REMINDING you to behave like the God you are, and under no circumstances think wrong things.

You are familiar, by now, with these ideals. We’ve been trained to find them appealing. It boils down to this. By amping up capitalisms existing, and, according to Christopher Lasch, narcissistic values: We’re being sold the God seat in our own lives. We’re being sold “meaning” in everything that occurs to us personally, as if the whole universe’s aim is teaching ME ME ME specific, perfectly-designed lessons for my own progress.
We’re being sold grandiosity as a solution to our feelings of inadequacy. We are being sold self-importance as an antidote to doubting the system, and ourselves.

In the end, it is not hard to pitch such faux-solutions to we who have already been trained for self-obsession. It’s really a repeat of the only hook an advertiser needs, in this day and age:

It really IS all about YOU.

Why This Works and Keeps On Working.

Now, if you are here, and still reading, you have my respect. You are obviously brave enough to be facing the societal shadow in us ALL. That means either you totally didn’t fall for this, or, you tried it and FELT that something was off. Or, you may still be flailing in the very clever mental trap this whole scene hinges on – the idea that your own doubt and so-called negative thoughts are a sign that you need to keep at it. Yeah, the parallels to doubt in Christianity are clear – and to doubt in the keto diet. Remember that one? Their mantra was also “if it isn't working, you aren't doing it hard enough.” Marketers have learned from priests that using peoples doubt as CONFIRMATION is the ultimate way to keep people trapped. Also likely is your being here because you people who persist with this stuff. The kind of people that call you “negative” for speaking out against it. The kind of people who blame you for the fact that bad things have happened to you (cos you INVITED it).

This hallmark excuse for erasing empathy is a CLUE in terms of who this stuff sucks in. And this is where western spiritualism really does diverge from forms of Christianity – it has NO FUCKING SYMPATHY. No empathy at all. Empathy as been swapped out for platitudes that make the sayer feel fine about not giving a fuck. If bad stuff happens to you, it is a LESSON. The subtext is “shut up about it. Learn.” You’re failure to SEE the lesson in your cancer diagnosis, or the death of your kid or your dog, is you being lesser and unenlightened. This is all designed perfectly to stop both complaint and rebellion. To stop you from feeling that you even have the RIGHT to a caring or listening ear. In saying “there is a lesson in everything,” or “you invited this into your life for a reason,” I get to feel wise and walk away. I get to feel SMUG about being a shit friend. In fact, I can narrate it all as being a GOOD friend, whilst doing none of the work a good friendship requires. This takes us into WHY this whole thing took off and remains flying. The final ingredient in the crucible that pressure-cooked us into crystal-healing. The reason a new guru is born every minute, in a flurry of book releases, workshops and retreats.

It’s all about power.

Just like our former gods, our former systems, and the system we live under now — we circle back to power. We covered in depth in post 8 how western capitalist culture raises us like a covert narcissistic parent would – under covert power. But before we go there, I want to take you to Poland for a moment, because Poland is a good way to see the contrast. In Toruń, I had a friend who used to be Catholic. She was a rebel from her teens onward — the sort who smoked behind the school, read banned books, argued with teachers. But she always went to church.

This confused me. I asked her, “How does being a rebel fit with going to church?” She told me that under martial law, church attendance was regarded as suspect and subversive. The Russians knew that where people gathered, they bonded — and that kind of bonding was dangerous, and snarled upon. It leads to dissent. So she and her friends went to church, not for God, but for rebellion. They weren't filling the God-shaped hole with god, per se, but with connection, defiance, and protecting what they held dear – all in the face of a power that wanted them atomized.

That story blew my mind. I’d always had a pretty bleak view of religion, and I would never have guessed that religion could function as protest — a way to form community when the powers that be known that gathering might be what topples them. Now — under western capitalism, we don’t live under overt military power. No tanks in the streets. No obvious bans on gathering. But we’re atomized anyway. By methods that are quieter.

Instead of soldiers, we get slogans. Instead of martial law, we get “mindset culture.” Instead of an open ban on connection, we get a set of values that teaches us connection is suspect — needy, “co-dependent,” “clingy,” “weak.” The lone wolf is held up as admirably – rather than doomed to die. The connected are to be pitied. The self comes first and foremost — and before that self is “perfect,” we’re told we don’t even have the right to look to connection for answers.

THAT is covert power and it isn’t grandiose. There are no parades of force, no crackdowns, no big announcements. Just quiet psychological tricks that get us to self-monitor, self-doubt, and police our own thoughts so thoroughly that we barely notice the leash. And here’s the important part: living g under this covert power doesn’t just shape what we do. It shapes what we feel like. This is the clincher: even if you never become a covert narcissist yourself, this system puts you in the same psychological position — low self-esteem, high self-surveillance, always wondering if you’re doing it wrong. And that makes us all, whether we like it or not, ripe for what comes next.

The Narcissistic Cycle

Because when you spend your whole life feeling vulnerable, you start to long for a little strength. A little influence. At least over your own life. If, on top of that, you have an inkling that you might be someone of worth — you want someone to see it. To confirm it. That too becomes part of your longing.
That’s normal. That’s part of healing from a system that’s been quietly annihilating your sense of self since birth. But for some people — for actual covert narcissists — that longing carries something sharper underneath. Rage. Rage that no one automatically sees how superior they are. Rage that admiration has to be coaxed or fished for instead of being freely given. I grew up with this dynamic.

Bertha, the woman who gave birth to me, was like this. Her “poor me” performance always had a seething hatred beneath it — hatred for me personally, but also for the fact that no one in that tiny rural town would worship her. My father, on the other hand, was overt — grandiose. He didn’t hint or plead for worship. He ordered it. Bertha found this tacky. She thought openly forcing people to worship you was cheating. She hated him for it.

So she’d take him down in subtle, clever ways.

And when she did, he became just like her: pitiful, poor-me-ish, manipulatively fishing for compliments and fealty. It was strange to see him like that — wheedling for us to rally around him and guess at his needs in order to meet them. But he would eventually spring back into I Am God mode. Sam Vaknin helped me understand this. Vaknin is controversial, to put it mildly, but when it came to my covert and overt narcissistic parents, his ideas made unnerving sense.
Vaknin says two things:
1. All narcissists have a void in them that can’t be filled.
2. All covert narcissists long to be overt.

In his view, a covert narcissist is just a collapsed overt one — bitter, powerless, defeated. Like my father after one of Bertha’s take-downs. The covert narcissist knows they can’t inspire free worship. They hate that, cos for them, life IS a competition. They’re jealous of anyone who gets more than they do. And if at all possible, they’ll try to claw their way back into that overt, grandiose position — to escape what is, for a narcissist, the lowest of the low. And here’s where it clicks back to society.

Our covert narcissistic culture raises us in that same defeated-yet-special posture. Even if we aren’t covert narcissists, some of that rubs off. We end up with that strange combination of feeling worthless and secretly hoping we’re special. We all have some of that longing for meaning, connection, and belonging already— that longing to fill that god-shaped hole. On that count, I’d argue against Vaknin, and say that the inner void is not specific to narcissists. It might be more insatiable for them, but given what we’ve said so far, it’s something that anyone can experience. And that means, we are often in the same psychological position covert narcissists occupy. Meaning, you don’t HAVE to be a covert narcissist to occupy what is essentially the underdog position in a society that pushes narcissistic values. You might just be less prepared to gaslight, manipulate and harm others to escape. So, along with all that self-doubt, hope for specialness, and longing for something more, most of us know, on some level, that we don’t have that much power. The death of god, and our covertly narcissistic society work hand in hand to ensure we feel defeated – yet hope that, somehow, we will one day get to shine… without walking over the corpses of others.

THIS Is How You Do it

Well, hello there, wandering Spiritual Teacher, balancing a stack of books and a story about how you overcame your own disembowelment by a cult. . Really? You’re telling me I AM special? SO special that the entire universe has been orchestrating every stubbed toe, every dead goldfish, every parking ticket — just to teach me personally something profound?
And my thoughts — my thoughts — are so mighty that reality itself rearranges around them? All I need is… your new bestselling book?
Oh, and you’ll throw in a workbook? A course? A weekend retreat in a yurt?
What? You say I have a PURPOSE you can help me “uncover”? That I was born for a REASON — a grand design?
Here, I’ll take five.
Thank god for you! Here I was thinking this existence thing was pointless, unfair, and shallow.
But now? I’m SO RELIEVED. I’m healed! I’m enlightened! I’m already picturing how cool it will be to be more enlightened than Karen in sales. Your fine offer looks EXACTLY like it will stop me feeling disempowered, non-special, and victimised. Hey, I might even be IMPORTANT — you say I am here to do something ONLY I was born to do. That I can bend the world to my will, if I just think the right thoughts in the right order, while holding the right crystal in the right corner of my bathroom?

This is the rescue remedy we’ve been crying out for on every single level. It saves us from our defeated-but-special position; the position of the covert narcissist. It numbs our defeat by a system that’s been failing us all along — a system that made us feel like everyone else is the hero and we are, at best, an unsung one. In terms of what came after Nietzsche, it bails us out from nihilism, and having to admit that the world just might be pointless. Because, as one person once commented under one of my videos — nihilism is untenable. Psychologically speaking, for most people, it is. That is exactly why the god-shaped hole, the void, screams out for more. And western spiritualism – which is really just western capitalism in yoga pants – answers the call. But returning to what Vaknin is about, this is exactly the kind of solution that mirrors the narcissistic cycle. It catapults us back into grandiosity, filling the god-shaped hole – with ME ME ME.

Hegel and the Master-Slave Dialectic.

Now if you’re too suspicious of Vaknin, I get it. Lets put a Hegelian lens on this instead, and you’ll see that we land someplace similar. Two hundred years ago, Hegel laid out what has come to be called the master-slave dialectic. It remains celebrated today as a way to understand power dynamics.
We still need to recall post 8 here, where we showed that society actually raises us like a narcissistic parent would. That parallel was all about power – covert, hidden power that means you self-monitor to act in the way the covert narcissist parent desires. Hegel would explain this as one person having become the master – the covert narcissistic parent that is society – via making another their slave. That slave is you, as an individual. The interesting thing that Hegel points out is that the master’s power depends on the slave. The slave is actually the one that keeps things going. That’s because, without the slave, the master has no power. Power is always power OVER someone or something.

Nowhere is this more clear than when narcissistic people (or entities) are in power. Narcissistic people are TOTALLY reliant on the slave to uphold their self-image and their positive ideas about themselves. Without their slave or slaves, they literally collapse – unless they can quickly find new ones, which is what they usually do. Any flavour of narcissist needs constant mirroring from a slave or slaves. This is the concept of supply. Narcissistic people use control and manipulation to establish power, in order to have their needs met. The slaves, therefore, in a very clear sense, keep them running and functioning. If those slaves stop BEING slaves, the power dynamic collapses.

What does this mean for us? Well, given that we are bought up by a covert, narcissistic society, we are pushed into the slave position: isolated, forced into prescribed ways of being, and self-regulation to conform to the values of that system. And, of course, we LONG for something more, cos all of that seems and feels very lacking in meaning. We long for autonomy and control. Those are the things the master taught us to value, so we assume those things are what will put us in the power position, and enable us to make meaning or sense of our lives.

Western spiritualism promises us exactly those things because it is a product of that same system. It IS that same system, packaged for sale in guru garb. It promises control over outcomes using everyday objects that you can find at home – your mind. It promises you are the centre of the world, and that you are special. It promises you You — as your own god. Your own master. The great creator of your destiny, purpose and meaning. But Hegel has a warning too. Becoming a master only keeps the cycle turning…

Hegelian Masters Dressed as New Age Leaders

What better example of this than the so-called “enlightened” person who becomes a Guru? You know the ones. Their calming voice is taken as proof they’ve “eliminated all desire,” their minimalist room as evidence of some deeper purity. They tell you they used to be just like you — burnt out, lonely, underpaid, beaten with a stick by their family. But now? They’ve “mastered their vibration.” They’ve “manifested abundance.” And for just €49.99, they’ll teach you how to do the same. They sell themselves as proof that the slave can become the master — that you, too, can rise out of the void, if you think right, act right, eliminate emotion, and “align” hard enough.

But there’s something even uglier under the pastel filters and mala beads. Enlightenment itself has become a system of oppression. A heirarchy where those who really ARE prepared to harm others will rise. And to show you how that works, meet one of its poster children. Let’s call her Purple Turkey. Not her brand name, but as she is actually a terrifying person, a pseudonym is safer.

Purple Turkey looks like she’s been airbrushed by a cloud and speaks so slowly you wonder if she’s buffering. Behind the lavender lighting — her empire runs on a well established narcissistic tactic: tearing people down, then selling herself as the only person who can build them back up. Purple Turkey doesn’t just offer “peace.” She sells the idea that she is above you. More evolved. Cleaner. Smarter. More enlightened.

The messaging is always the same:
• You are spiritually “asleep.” Heavy. Toxic. Unevolved.
• She is spiritually “awake.” Floating above, detached, unbothered, untouchable.
Thus, enlightenment becomes a ranking — a badge of superiority, another competition, another capitalist game of who’s ahead. You’re either in, levitating on your meditation cushion, or you’re out, dragging your “low vibrations” through the mud.

And here’s where Hegel’s master-slave dialectic becomes relevant. That “above” position can’t stand up on its own. The “masters” only look like masters because we keep affirming them — buying the books, liking the livestreams, hearting the serene photo of them holding a quartz egg in Bali. Without us, they’re not “ascended beings.” They’re just some person in wafty dresses with a tragic backstory they’ve monetised.
This is also where Vaknin’s narcissistic cycle comes in. He says covert narcissists secretly long to become overt — but once they’ve manipulated their way to the top, they’re still not safe in that position. Because being overt means being dependent on an audience to keep affirming their superiority. When that falls apart...
Boom.
You are back to sad-ass, shadowy tactics to make the grocer pity you.

Purple Turkey is a perfect example of all this. She preaches detachment — but she can’t detach from us. She needs followers, attention, cash, and constant proof that she really is as enlightened as she says. If that supply falters, if the book sales dry up or the livestream views tank... The “master” collapses — scrambling for relevance in an empty retreat hall, where only the goats will bleat back at her.

Which is why the performance of “being above it all” has to keep getting louder, shinier, and more obvious. The cracks in their tactics begin to show— because the gurus are, in truth, slaves to the very system they claim to have transcended.

The thing is, most narcissistic people know this. They know their time and rule is potentially limited. This brings us to what’s net. Their fail-safe. The double bind particular to master-slave relations in the world of marketing. When we are done with this next section, you’ll be able to spot it in both self-help and spiritual circles. Central to this fail-safe is a tactic you’ll remember from previous posts.

Gaslighting! A Narcissists Only True Love

This part is where narcissism and marketing seem to form a kind of sickening symbiosis. Remember how I said marketing needs solutions that don’t work, but look like they should? Purple Turkey’s career illustrates the first crucial trick that makes that possible: gaslighting. Here’s how it plays out in the spiritual/self-help world — and THIS is the play-book you need to keep in mind whether you’re watching Purple Turkey, a dating coach, a self‑help “healer,” or a manifestation mentor. Because this isn’t simply Purple Turkey’s scam — it’s the operating logic of multiple markets. Be that spiritual, self‑help, dating, or coaching.

1️. Target the vulnerable.
Those with the maximum, un-numbed longing. Lonely people looking for meaning are perfect.

2. Tell them they’re broken — in ways they can’t even see.
we all already know some of our flaws. But the real hook is: “Oh honey, you don’t even know HOW broken you are! Yes, you thought you;d done some work. How sweet. But let me tell you, you are FUCKED.” That triggers near-total self-doubt.

3. Make yourself the only one who can “see” the brokenness.
This is the master-slave lock-in. They say: “I have the sight. You don’t. You need me to see your flaws, and you need me to fix them.”

4️.Build the double-bind.
This is their safety net in case you call “bullshit.” If you question the method, you’re not doing it right. The method is not flawed, YOU still are. Purple Turkey has a bulletproof version of this. If you call her out for cruelty, she says you’re “too scared to face your shadow.” The translation in all cases is: “Your doubt proves that I’m right.”

It’s diabolically neat.

Purple Turkey manages to get away with the public and brutal humiliation of her clients via her particular form of this: “If I hurt you, I’m healing you. And if you don’t thank me for the pain, you’re too unenlightened to see how enlightened I am.” But here’s the thing: it’s not just her racket. What Purple Turkey does in her videos is just the distilled version of what Western spiritualism does as a whole. That is, not taking responsibility for their actions, damage, or totally useless product.

I'll reiterate the game plan:
When you sell people something that doesn’t work, eventually they notice. Eventually, they will get angry. And then what?
NEVER admit fault, and for god’s sake don’t give them their money back.
Blame THEM.
“Oh no, darling — the method works. You’re just not doing it right.”

This is how the “enlightenment” world industrializes one of narcissism’s oldest tools.
Every failed manifestation? Your thoughts were wrong.
Every “block” in your life? Your energy wasn’t aligned.
Every doubt? A sign you’re not there yet.
It’s not an error in the system. It is the system.
Because if you still believe the method works, and you are the problem, you’ll keep paying. You’ll keep trying. You’ll keep fixing the version of yourself they’ve convinced you is broken — the version that is only ever “almost there.”

THIS is an advertisers panacea. A solution you CAN believe in, even as it fails you, again and again. You will keep paying, cos they will keep damaging you into thinking its your fault. That last part is worth underlining. It is only when one is prepared to behave as a narcissist does, that one is prepared to put this kind of scam into action.

The Death of Empathy

Hands up if you are thinking “These people are a pack of wankers.” Well, the clearly narcissistic traits don’t even END there. Beyond repackaging capitalist values, Western spiritualism magnifies one of the most damaging side effects of those values — the slow death of empathy. Sociologist Eva Illouz, who coined the term emotional capitalism, argues that our emotions aren’t just personal anymore — they’re instrumentalised. We “care” in order to sell, to market, to self-develop. Not to connect.

And nowhere is that clearer than in the way Western spiritualism frames “help.” The language of empathy is everywhere — love and light, healing vibes, soul alignment — but the practice of empathy quietly dies. You can see this in the way people like Ms. Turkey offer soothing words professing to care about assisting your healing. At least, until you bought a subscription and she tears you down in public. The thing s this - when every struggle becomes a “lesson,” when every pain is framed as something you “manifested,” you actually DON’T have to feel for anyone anymore. You are exempt, because a lesson is a lesson, and crying is unwarranted. Instead of offering a listening ear, you hand them a platitude and a book link.

And it’s not just an abstract cultural trend — I’ve seen this up close.

I once worked for a naturopath in a German town. Her name wasn’t Yoyo, but it was close — she had gone on one of those week-long enlightenment workshops, where, at the end, you get given a new name by a “facilitator” claiming to be a Tibetan monk. Yoyo was a bully. She bullied a younger woman I’ll call Anja — chipped away at her daily — until, months after I left, Anja had a nervous breakdown. But instead of facing what she’d done, Yoyo spiritualised it. She told anyone who would listen that the young woman “wasn’t strong enough to learn life’s lessons.” She claimed she — Yoyo — had “come into Anjas' life for a reason,” and the breakdown was simply proof that Anja “wasn't capable of learning what she needed too.” Which, if you DO take that approach, was probably to tie Yoyo to a string and throw her off a cliff to see if her name had any legitimate meaning.

I’d already seen that same logic in smaller ways before I quit. Winters there were brutal — well below zero — and I have Reynaud's syndrome. My hands would turn blue and throb with pain, and sometimes I’d have to stand there for ten minutes, warming them slowly before I could even hold a pen. But Yoyo insisted that when her hands were cold, she would “focus her energy” and “channel blood to them.” She claimed this always worked for her, even without gloves — and therefore it should “work for anyone.” If it didn’t work for me? That wasn’t the cold. That was me. My “failure.” This logic — this re-framing of suffering as personal fault — spreads.

Anja, looking for support, confided in another “spiritually awakened” woman who’d replaced me. But instead of listening, that woman offered the high-rotation platitude of the spiritually smug: “you just need to learn how to forgive.” And that was it. No listening ear. No “tell me what happened.” No real conversation that could have built trust or friendship. Anja ended up in a psychiatric ward.

And the platitude-giver? She walked away smug — feeling she’d “helped.” That’s what this belief system does. If you’ve read 1984, you’ll remember Newspeak — the way language gets twisted until words mean the opposite of what they should. George W. Bush did the same thing when he used the word “freedom” to describe sending troops to invade Afghanistan. Freedom, in that context, came to mean war.

Western spiritualism does the same thing with empathy. It re-labels cruelty as “teaching.” It renames suffering as a personal flaw — a weakness, a failure, a “low vibration.” It gives people like Yoyo a way to hurt others and tell the world they “helped.” It forces victims to believe that care is hurt, and that their longing for real connection is just proof they’re “not strong enough.” And at scale?
This is what’s happening to all of us.
Western spiritualism promises connection but delivers performance. It tells us to “care,” but only in a way that fits a brand, a feed, or a workshop agenda. It tells us to be “authentic” for the sake of likes, views, and sponsors. Empathy becomes a selling point in name only — and, in practice, it’s just a way to write off anyone who “attracts bad things into their life.”
The kind of empathy that builds friendships, deepens bonds, and makes you feel known?
That can’t exist in this setup.
There’s no space for messy, reciprocal listening — the kind that actually heals. Instead, there’s a conveyor belt of platitudes, each one delivered with a smile, each one reinforcing the same message: “If you’re in pain, it’s your fault.”

The Narcissistic Cycle: Why It’s Never Enough

We’re told that we’re failing because we’re not following the formula right. But WHY doesn’t it work? Why, after the affirmations and manifesting journals and energy cleansing kits, do we still feel... off? Because it was never designed to work.

This is the narcissistic cycle — and Sam Vaknin, for all his controversy, nails the pattern. He says covert narcissism isn’t about satisfaction. It’s about sustaining longing. The moment the longing ends, the illusion collapses. The game is over. And society — our covert narcissistic parent — mirrors that same game. It doesn’t want wholeness. It wants us almost whole. Always almost healed, almost happy, almost enough.

Because "almost" sells.

This system transforms your longing into market data and your ache into a business model. It feeds you a steady diet of shame and promise: that if you just align harder, think brighter, detach more thoroughly — you’ll finally arrive. But you never do.

Hegel’s master-slave dialectic helps us see the trap. The master only has power because the slave affirms it. Likewise, spiritual capitalism only works because we keep feeding it — with our hope, our hurt, our money, our longing. And unlike Hegel’s version, which ends in possible mutual recognition — growth — capitalist narcissism wants no synthesis. It thrives on churn. You go from feeling broken, to feeling like the one who can fix themselves, back to broken again. And Nietzsche foresaw this too. When he said God is dead, he warned us: if we don’t create new meaning, false gods will rise. Western spiritualism, in its modern, marketable form, is one of them. It puts the god complex in your hands — tells you you're the divine creator now — and then blames you when it all falls apart.

It’s a loop with no end. A freedom that isolates. A self-mastery that feels more like solitary confinement. And the bonus prize for no extra cost: it leaves us lonelier than ever. Because when empathy is systematically stripped away in the name of “self-improvement,” connection becomes impossible. What replaces it? Scorn. Blame. Dismissal. Those still hoping for more — for care, for real human contact — are left believing they’re broken simply for wanting what’s a basic human need. And those who did the breaking? They float off into a self-inflated world where they are the god, and everyone else is just there to echo back, “you’re amazing.” It’s a narcissistic stupor. One that pretends to transcend the ugliness of Western values — but only ends up amplifying them.

Bringing It All Together

Western spiritualism promises freedom — but it only hands you a shinier version of the same cage. We started with Nietzsche, who told us that “God is dead,” and left us staring into the void. That void — that aching god-shaped hole — became a marketplace. Capitalism saw our longing for meaning, connection, and protection, and turned it into a sales opportunity. Then we traced how that longing collided with the values Western culture already held dear: control, individualism, the hero narrative. Instead of dismantling those values, we doubled down. And what emerged wasn’t mysticism — it was marketing. Spiritualism became capitalism’s body double, promising that we could manifest, align, and ‘think right’ our way into being gods of our own lives. v
But the catch was always there. The narcissistic cycle never lets you ‘arrive.’ Like Sam Vaknin points out, longing is the point. You are meant to stay almost-healed, almost-whole — just aligned enough to keep buying, but never enough to stop.

Hegel’s master–slave dialectic showed us the deeper structure: the gurus, the coaches, the ‘masters’ only have power because we hand it to them. Without our worship, they’re just people with crystals, ring lights, and tragic backstories. And the moment they ascend, they become slaves again — slaves to our attention, our belief, our money. It’s not transcendence. It’s a constant back and forth between thinking we have power and feeling powerless - a churn. And what happens inside that churn? Empathy dies, and takes connection with it.
Because when every struggle is a “lesson,” when every pain is “manifested,” nobody has to care anymore. You can just hand someone a platitude and feel righteous for it. You don’t have to listen. You don’t have to connect.

That’s the quiet horror of this system. It doesn’t just repackage narcissistic values — it amplifies them.
• It turns control into a spiritual mandate.
• It turns individualism into divine law.
• It turns grandiosity into salvation.
• And it turns suffering into personal failure.

And here’s the link back to why this belongs in The Loneliness Industry:
Because every time empathy dies, connection dies too. Western spiritualism doesn’t teach us how to sit with each other in grief or joy, how to listen or to be present. It teaches us to see every other person as a mirror, a lesson, a test — a prop in our own hero’s journey. When you live in that frame, you don’t build friendships. You don’t build community.
You curate an audience.
So when you go to this system for connection, it cannot give it to you. It can only sell you more of what made you lonely in the first place: more control, more self-surveillance, more pressure to be your own god — and more blame when that god fails. This isn’t spiritual healing. It’s narcissism with a rose quart up its ass. A prettier, yet far more insincere, “love and light” version of the same values that left us empty — all dressed up as enlightenment.

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