The Revision of History

You are no doubt familiar with the quotation

“History is written by the victors”

to explain that those who triumph then re-write what has happen to accord with their new-found supremacy. We bastardise that quotation. We re-write history in order to ensure that we are the victors. We love to win. We hate to lose. It goes further than that. It is not just about wanting to win, loving the fact that we are winners but we need to win. It is imperative. This need to win manifests in numerous ways, which include:-

Always being in receipt of fuel;

Being the centre of attention;

Having our say first and for longest;

Making sure we are heard above all others;

Getting the latest gadget or piece of technology ahead of our friends, family and neighbours;

Having the most attractive spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, partner amongst our social groups;

Having the best suit and tie;

Being the most senior at a meeting;

Earning the most out of our peers;

Having secured the best career out of those we went to school with;

Being the best at running, football, archery, chess;

Knowing the most about a particular subject;

Offering the best wine at a dinner party;

Securing the best seats at a theatre or a restaurant;

Being acknowledged first in a group;

Bench pressing the heaviest weight in the gym;

Having the best sound system;

Knowing more famous people than our friends;

Securing tickets to a sold-out performance;

Winning the argument with anybody who tries to challenge us;

Ensuring our partner puts our needs ahead of theirs;

Getting served before anybody else;

Being able to drink the most at a party;

Ensuring everybody respects our “quiet time” when we are watching a film;

Having the most exuberant birthday bashes.

There are of course so many more. Not all of these are always applicable as for instance a Cerebral Narcissist will have little interest in ensuring that he can bench press the most weight at the gym and the Somatic Narcissist is not at all bothered about being the local expert on the history of the town in which he lives, but each and everyone one of our kind will want to and need to, secure the win.

This need manifests in the lengths we will go to so that we achieve the win. We will boast, brag, manipulate, blackmail, coerce, cajole, sabotage, nobble and bribe our way to the win. Nothing is off limits. If I can emotionally blackmail a friend into ensuring I sit in the lead funeral car with the family ahead of any other friend of the family, then I will do it. If I need to delete the files from a competitor’s computer at work, so be it. If I need to ensure that I have control over you in our relationship, so I win repeatedly, then I will unleash all manner of manipulations form my Devil’s Toolkit in order to make sure I win, win and win again.

The revision of history is one such tool that our kind deploys on a regular basis to bring about the win. Let’s look at some examples of how that appears.

Imagine I am at the bar with some of my inner circle friends. One of my friends, someone who has served a purpose from school, brings up the occasion of the 100 metre sprint from the school athletics championships.

“Hey HG, you ran a great time that day and you were only just pipped to the gold medal by that dude from LRG weren’t you?”

“I think, Michael, you will find that I pipped him to the title.”

“Really? Are you sure? I thought he beat you.”

“No, I beat him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely, I was actually looking back through my results at the weekend when I was clearing some boxes from the loft and I was remembering how close the race had been but how I had overtaken that dude and beat him, narrowly true, but I beat him all the same.”

“I could have sworn it was the other way around.”

“No, you are wrong. I checked the times. I beat him by 0.2 of a second.”

“Oh I see.”

“Yes, he was gracious in defeat but I suppose you have to be when you don’t win, eh Michael?”

Michael nods and accepts my point since it was said with authority and the backing of a recent review of the result.

I actually did come second but I am not going to allow Michael to point that out in front of these inner circle friends. I rewrote history to ensure that I proved a point to him and ensured that I was held in the proper regard by those listening which in turn provided me with fuel.

2. Now consider a conversation between a primary source and me.

“Where have you been?” asks the primary source.

“What do you mean, where have I been? You know where I have been.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do, I told you last week.”

“No you did not. I have been wondering where you have been, I was getting worried.”

“Well that is your own fault, I told you last week that I was going out this evening.”

“No you did not.”

“I did, I remember specifically. I was searching for my shirt that I wanted to wear, you know the blue one which I bought recently, but you wouldn’t help me look as you were watching some television programme. You asked why I wanted the shirt and I said I wanted to make sure it was clean and ironed because I was going out with Nathan and Paul.”

“I dont remember that.”

“Well I do.”

“I really do not remember you telling me you were going out.”

“You probably didn’t take it in, after all you were pretty engrossed in your programme.”

“Hmmm.”

“Anyway, what’s to eat, I am famished.”

I never said anything about going out but I will re-write history to make it appear that I did so because this frustrates you, avoids your attempt to blame me and allows me to maintain superiority by being right.

3. I am sat with a primary source in a restaurant.

“Isn’t that that woman who was obsessed with you?”

“Where?” I answer.

“There, coming through the doors, what is her name again, beings with an A I am sure.”

“Who? The lady with the short brown bob?”

“No, next to her, the one with long blonde hair.”

“Never seen her before.”

“Are you sure, she looks like that woman you pointed out to me.”

“No, I don’t know her.”

“It is a damn good likeness if it is not her. It is her, she is coming over.”

The blonde woman comes to our table.

“Hello,” she smiles at me ignoring the primary source, “fancy seeing you here.”

“Sorry are you talking to me?”

“Yes, hi HG, how are you?”

“I am sorry do I know you?”

“Yes we worked together.”

“No I am sorry, I don’t remember you.”

Her downcast expression provides me with fuel.

“I was in the team that worked alongside yours. We went to Singapore, do you not remember?”

“You might have worked where I worked but I don’t know you, sorry, but if you wouldn’t mind, we are about to order. Waiter!?”

Puzzled and upset she slowly walks away and I savour her fuel.

“She definitely knew you,” presses the primary source.

“Seems that way, but then I am well known aren’t I?” I answer with a self-congratulatory grin. I am pleased to have rebuffed Samantha who I know full well but it suited my purpose to rebuff her. I know she will try and contact me again to prove she knows me and then I just may re-write history again to confirm that I do. Of course, when I do, I may re-write that I had forgotten who she was.

We engage in this manipulation in order to exert control. It allows us to confuse, bewilder, upset, brag and thus maintain fuel. We will re-write history so that we avoid blame, gain kudos, claim achievements that are not our own, make us sound better at what we have accomplished, to evade liability and ensure you are confused and puzzled. It comes within gas-lighting as you start to find your memory is fallible. We have no hesitation in confirming something happened when it did not, we will change events, add things and take them away so long as it suits our purposes. If you present us with some independent evidence that contradicts us we will not shift our position in terms of maintaining history is how we decree it. Instead, we will unleash an alternative manipulation in order to deflect and deny your attempt to challenge our version.

Even the most obvious of events will be erased, amended and added to. Nothing is safe from our treatment of how things were. If it serves a purpose for us to alter history one way or another then we shall do so.

How do you deal with this?

As ever, state you position the once so you know you have stated it and then move on. The re-writing of history is designed to draw you in to an argument, make you try to convince us that you are right and we are wrong (although you will fail), to make you erupt in frustration or anger or tears, to bewilder you so that you keep accepting we are correct, so little by little you eventually always accept what we say and submit to this particular mind game.

Conversations will be recalled in a different manner. People who did not attend will have attended whilst others vanish. Events play out in a different manner once they have been subjected  to this treatment.

It is all part of securing the win.

We change history. That’s how powerful we consider ourselves to be.