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China Elevator Stories
Fake Hierarchies versus Natural Order
The need for control, especially in those with narcissistic tendencies, creates artificial hierarchies that disrupt natural harmony.
21/03/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
The need to control is one of the most destructive tendencies a person can have. In nature, things grow, flow, and fit together effortlessly. One season follows another with ease, and rain falls from the sky without force. No control is required—everything exists in harmony when human beings do not interfere.
When it comes to human beings, there are essentially two kinds: those who are malignant narcissists and those who are not. While non-narcissists may sometimes feel the need to control others, they are also capable of feeling at ease and allowing things to unfold naturally.
In nature, there is usually a harmony—a blueprint of what is harmonious and the natural order of things. When everything is in harmony, a person can feel it. If you are highly sensitive, you may be particularly attuned to when things are out of harmony, as I am. When a person is in harmony, they are relaxed and at ease, both with themselves and with others. They won’t need to fight or argue (this does not apply to situations where you are being violently attacked and need to defend yourself). But when they are not in harmony, they may try to create chaos in someone else’s life.
While a normal person strives to maintain harmony in their life, a narcissist will always try to destroy any harmony that exists. This is one of the reasons I can’t stand being around narcissists. When you are quiet, you’ll be attacked for not “communicating healthily.” When you are sitting in the living room, reading a book and bothering no one, you’ll be attacked for being selfish and loud. When you are sitting in your garden, relaxing, a narcissist will attack you for relaxing and try to disrupt your harmony.
In my experience, extreme controllers are often malignant narcissists, where control is combined with a desire to destroy others. The type of control we’re discussing when referring to malignant narcissists is not just normal control. Normal human beings can become controlling when they experience dangerous situations in their lives, instability, survival fears, or when they are obsessively controlled by others, for example.
Malignant narcissists, such as the stalker I have, not only want control over what is within their right to control, but also over what isn’t. If everyone has the right to control their own lives, as things are naturally supposed to be, a narcissist will destroy this harmony by demanding control over yours. An extremely rude narcissist won’t even ask for your permission; he’ll simply take your stuff, your projects, your life, and exert control—without asking, but demanding that you submit to him and allow him to do so. When you hold up a mirror and tell him he’s crazy for doing so, he’ll put you down, tell you that you have no right to control your own life and make decisions that are right for you, and claim that he has the right to control every aspect of your life, including your relationships. He will assert that you have no right to privacy—a right he enjoys but won’t let you have. If he is a man, he may state that it’s because you’re a woman and women have no rights.
Unnecessary hierarchies are created by narcissists who often try to destroy the natural order of things. I don’t know why harmony feels so unbearable to narcissists; for me, the opposite is true: I can sense when things aren’t in harmony and won’t feel at ease until it has been restored. If you are naturally more intelligent, a narcissist will place himself in a “fake position” above you, creating a hierarchy where he is above you, rather than beneath you, as would naturally be the case. In nature, everyone has their own natural position. Some systems have tried to create false hierarchies, such as the notion that men are above women. But when these systems aren’t in line with nature, men who are less talented or intelligent than women will place themselves above women, attempting to make decisions for them, claiming they are more intelligent, or putting themselves in other positions that aren’t aligned with nature. In reality, in such a case, a man might make a decision that is not the best for the woman and could even be the exact opposite—one that has potentially fatal consequences in her life.
When people do this, it creates an unnatural hierarchy. Generally, every person has their own natural position. When others compete with you, they may try to bully you out of the natural position you would occupy if they didn’t try to force you out. Energetically, when something is out of order, it can be felt. There will be a disharmony somewhere, and it can be stressful for an empath to feel this disharmony. They may sense it in a family system if something is out of harmony, or in a relationship. They might even be able to pinpoint exactly where the problem lies (but please don’t confuse this with a narcissist who may project and blame the wrong person for being the problem).
When a person lives in alignment with nature and trusts the flow of life, there is no need to control simple things. When a person doesn’t live in alignment and doesn’t trust that there is a higher purpose to life, they may start to control not only their own lives—until life becomes unlivable and unenjoyable—but also the lives of others (who haven’t allowed them to control their lives, simply “stealing” the other person’s rights and things—such as their right to make decisions for themselves, without being cut short or having others make those decisions for them, then becoming emotionally abusive, blackmailing, coercing, or intimidating the other person if they don’t submit to their will). Does this show that the controller is the bigger person? No, it certainly doesn’t. It shows that they are “a little person”—a bully, a person who doesn’t understand that life is to be lived, enjoyed, and not to be controlled.
The most severe controllers will try to control everything at the cost of living life joyfully. No emotion will be allowed to exist naturally; all emotions will need to be manipulated into other emotions. No task will be allowed to finish naturally; the flow will be interrupted, disruptions will be created, and you’ll be shouted at for doing everything wrong and not submitting to the artificial rules another person has created in their need to control everything. Almost any system built upon control, including certain philosophies, creates unnatural hierarchies. They may sound great to those in power or to men, or they may sound great in theory, but they are often built upon the false premise that a hierarchy created by men is preferable to the natural hierarchy of things—a hierarchy that is created by nature, not man-made. With some people, their control is so extreme that they even believe the flow of air in your flat needs to be controlled (even though they aren’t the ones living there), your facial expressions need to be controlled, and where your attention goes needs to be controlled. It must be on them, the narcissist, not the task at hand. It may even go so far as them needing you to pay attention to them while you cross the street, preventing you from paying attention to your surroundings, leading you to almost run into a car because they won’t allow you to focus on what you would naturally focus on.
A stalker who is controlling at this level is usually extremely desperate. The obsession with needing to control everything could easily be healed by turning inward and addressing the real issue—the “need to control.” However, a narcissist will never turn inward to reflect on their own behavior, which leads to others having to deal with the issues the narcissist refuses to confront. Usually, a narcissist will never think there’s anything wrong with them, and everyone else will be blamed for their behavior.
Everything in nature has its own way of working—its natural flow. Once this order is disrupted, for example, when controlling human beings try to destroy the natural flow, we encounter issues that cause everything to spiral out of control and become disharmonious. Disharmony can also be created by attempting to “outsmart” nature by inventing harmful things that cause destruction to what is natural, such as nuclear bombs.
In music, when something is disharmonious, it can be heard. An instrument may not sound quite right in combination with a particular voice or with another instrument. An album may also be disharmonious. One example is my ex-boyfriend’s latest album. To put it bluntly, I think it’s really poor quality. A typical person may not be able to spot this, but for me, it’s easy to see what’s going on: He became famous and thought he didn’t need to put in more effort. The intention in his songs was to prove something to people, not to create a beautiful work of art free from expectating something from the outside. His superiority complex can be felt from afar, and honestly, I can neither watch nor listen to it. When I gave him honest feedback (because he demanded I give him feedback), I told him outright how bad I thought it was. He threw a tantrum for a month, refused to accept my opinion, and tried to gaslight me into believing it was much better than I thought it was.
Today, we are also facing an unprecedented number of people (in my case, mainly men) who try to control others’ opinions. In a democratic society, a moderate opinion can be expressed and will be allowed to exist. But in a society that has adopted autocratic measures, an opinion may be stated, but it will not be allowed to exist. A stalker may belittle you for many days in a row and even try to destroy you for holding a simple opinion, such as believing that women are not worth less than men and should not have to put any man who crosses their path (claiming to be “somebody” while being “nobody”) ahead of them, allowing any man who thinks too highly of himself to manage her life instead of her. More often than not, such a man is severely delusional, thinking that he can control someone else’s life, that he has the right to do so, and that the other person’s life will improve if it is mismanaged by him. He believes things don’t flow better unless they are controlled by him, who thinks everything must be artificially controlled—even if it doesn’t actually need to be.
In such a case, I would usually wonder: Where does his thinking originate, that he believes he’s so great at managing other people’s lives that he now feels the need to control another person’s life, at the cost of their peace of mind, disrupting the natural flow, and putting himself in positions where he should never be? Then, I would ask: Did somebody tell him he’s really good at managing things? Is that something he simply assumed about himself? And where does his thinking come from, that a woman needs a man (him) to manage her life and control everything? Most grown-ups are able to be the CEO of their own lives and don’t need anybody to manage them.
When a person completely shuts down another’s life and ability to be the CEO of her own life, the problem usually lies with the person who has shut down the other person’s life, not with the person whose life has been shut down. If that person is a stalker who implements strange controlling methods and applies fake hierarchies in the other person’s life, she will be affected—and negatively so.
We all have our own natural tendencies, and there are certain inborn factors: introversion, extroversion, whether we’re a Type 1 or a Type 4, whether we’re a social person or an antisocial one, and so on…
This particular stalker has tried to completely annihilate my sense of self and has attempted to control everything, not in a way that shows trust in the natural order, but in a way that demonstrates he has no understanding of nature at all. He doesn’t know how life can be lived effortlessly, without the need to control even the smallest things, and without reflecting on what he’s doing wrong. In his mind, I am wrong for not allowing him to take over everything, to control everything, to steal everything from me, and then to point it out. I am also wrong for wanting to stay calm and not be affected by his histrionic behavior.
According to him, only out-of-control emotions mean a person “is able to feel and be an empath,” and no gentle, soft, kind, loving emotions (towards yourself or others, including your children) will be allowed. When you feel love towards your children, he’ll put them down to ruin your mood. When you’re happy talking to others, he’ll control it, because you’re only “allowed” to talk to him and laugh when he’s talking. When you laugh because you’re experiencing a happy moment, he’ll pretend you were laughing at one of his jokes (not that any of his jokes are funny—this stalker is someone who doesn’t understand fun—but if you laugh, it has to be because “he did something funny,” not because you were laughing because you used to be a happy, satisfied person, who then had all fun and happiness destroyed by a narcissist). We can easily see how any natural behavior is disrupted, leading to the disruption of the natural flow and hierarchy.
When a person starts putting themselves in the position of being the CEO of your life, it’s like someone stealing your car and driving it away (with your car representing your life). They wreck it on the way because they don’t know how to drive it, but once you realize someone else is driving your car, it’s already too late. The damage has been done, and you can no longer drive your own car (be the CEO of your own life) because someone else has decided they should. If this were our car, it would be natural for us to drive it, not the person who simply stole it. The same is true if someone has taken over your identity and life: they’re driving your car, they’ve stolen it, and they’re causing damage to it. You’ll be left watching or trying to figure out where your car has gone, without being able to drive it yourself because someone else decided to steal it and drive it instead of you.
The natural order of things would mean you’d be the one driving your car, while the unnatural order would mean someone else is now driving it.
Have you ever experienced a controller?