The empty middle

On the rise of narcissism as a symptom of lost connection

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Some sentences stay with you — not because of what they say, but because of what they leave unsaid. In my Social Psychology (9th edition) textbook, I came across such a sentence:

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“Where does this increase in narcissism come from? No one knows.”

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That offhand remark, hidden between tables and definitions, kept echoing in my mind. What does it say about an era that no longer understands its own reflection? That can measure the symptoms of decay, yet cannot name the soul of its decline? It seemed to me that this ignorance was not a lack of data, but a sign of something deeper: that we no longer know what it means to be human.

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We have become skilled at measuring, explaining and comparing — but we have forgotten how it feels to truly be. And it is precisely that forgetting, that loss of felt connectedness, that I believe forms the real root of what we now call narcissism.

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This writing is not meant as a scientific correction of that gap, but as an attempt to understand. To listen to what the phenomenon of narcissism tells us about our time — about the state of our culture, our relationships and our relation to the larger whole.

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At first, I intended to write a single long read essay. But it soon became clear that the theme was too vast to contain within one text. Moreover, in the context of my studies, it felt important to explore the subject in greater depth and give it the attention it deserves. For that reason, it appears on the website as a separate theme, presented through multiple essays — written in layers: from the wounds of the child to the architecture of society; from the exhaustion of the soul to the metaphysical silence in which meaning fades.
Again and again, the same question returns:

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What happens to the human being when they lose their capacity for connection?

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The essays that follow are not accusations, but attempts at remembrance — remembrance of inwardness, of truth as an act of love and of the Other as mirror of the soul. They do not seek guilt, but a way back: a path of restoration in which empathy, truth and love can once again resonate together as the three fundamental tones of human connectedness.

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The title The Empty Middle refers to that lost field of meaning — the place where encounter, truth and love once seemed self-evident, but where silence now prevails. Yet that silence is not empty; it waits. It waits for our willingness to listen again.

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Every healing begins there: in the awareness that the center is not lost forever, only forgotten. That we, amidst reflections, opinions, and illusions, still carry the capacity to remember who we are — not as separate selves, but as bearers of connection.

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These essays are an invitation to that remembrance:

an attempt to hear, amid the noise of our time, the gentle tone of what truly lives —  the voice of love, whispering: I am still here.