When is a disorder not a disorder?

I heard this week that in the DSM V which will replace the DSM IV that they are removing or revising Narcissistic Personality Disorder from their list of Psychological disorders. NPD is described as having five or more of the following symptoms:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
(3) believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
(4) requires excessive admiration
(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

The person who told me this went on to explain the reason it is being revised is such behavior is now considered to be the norm in our society. In other words it is normal to exhibit narcissistic behavior.

I have for a while now have been seeing and saying this is a problem. When we care only about how something affects up. Or if we look at my issues as being more important than everyone else's then there is a problem or I want what is mine and i do not care about you.

The place where this is most evident is in the government. I heard a congressman make the statement he was talking at a rally where in one sentence a person said we want to make sure you are not going to raise my taxes and then the very next words out of his mouth were: "now I am going to get my Social Security increase this year aren't I?"

How can one have an increase in what they recieve without a raise in taxes the only was it to take it away from someone else. Who is saying the same thing.

There has been a long debate over what to do about the tax cuts which were put into place by a previous administration. No one wants them eliminated (that would be a surefire death for re-election) Some want them for everyone while others want to exclude the wealthiest people saying they are the ones that reinvest the money for more jobs etc.

No one it seems wants to do the difficult work and make the unpopular decision by saying we can not spend money we do not have and in order to get rid of the deficit we need to let them expire for everyone and start living within our means.

I have noticed a couple of things, the division between rich and poor in our country is getting wider with the middle class shrinking. This tells me the tax cuts for wealthiest people over the last 30 years when the tax code changed has not worked. Trickle down system of the wealthy having more money trickling down to the less wealthy in our society has not worked except for the very rich.

The other thing I have noticed is the huge amount of national debt which is held by other countries. One thing I learned in my world economic systems class was a national debt becomes a problem only when it is outside the borders of that country. As long as it is maintained within the country it is fine. Somewhere we lost sight of that basic truth and practice.

Getting back to my original point. When we accept narcissisim as the norm we lose sight of how important the other people in our lives are. If I allow you to fail then we all fail. I feel the call of Christ in my life is simply put we are all in this together and we need to help each other and not just care about ourselves.