Self-Esteem

From Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon: “In a study done with a video game, depressed people who played for half an hour knew just how many little monsters they had killed; the undepressed people guessed four to six times more than they had actually hit.”

There is far too much self-esteem around. People need to blow some off, instead of building it. My head would explode if I had any more of the stuff.

“Yeah I know it’s sad that flute’s head exploded, but what about me? How do I feel about it?”

Happiness is bad for your health?

No, it’s good for you. It just may be bad for other people.

One of the most popular bumper stickers one used to see proclaimed “The Power of Pride” over a rippling American flag, which always made me wonder when pride ceased to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Okay, okay, the sin once abjured was more like arrogance than self-esteem, but it’s not that easy to draw a line.

Mercury Rev called a whole album
Yerself is Steam:

it’s not as easy as it may seem, remember that yourself is steam

[Actually from the song “Chasing a bee”]

It was a long time before the penny dropped, although I can’t say that sharing that information makes me feel any better.

Pascal would say yes. I’m not Pascal.

Judith Martin (“Miss Manners”) once remarked that

_The problem with the guilt-free society is that we have all this unallocated blame lying around._

I think this dismissal of self-esteem is just as bad as the hype for it.

Originally, self-esteem enhancement projects were for people with crippling emotional problems – severe physical and sexual abuse victims. After consistant victimization, these people would come to believe that they deserved this kind of treatment, and would engage in behaviour that would bring it about.

I imagine now that we’ll have people relying on poor performance in video games by egomaniacs to dismiss the victimized with “Just get over it.”

‘I imagine now that we’ll have people relying on poor performance in video games by egomaniacs to dismiss the victimized with “Just get over it.”’

Eh, that’s what crossed my mind too after reading the article… It seems too dismissive of issues associated with really, really low self-esteem. A higher degree of self-esteem prevents people from being depressed, having an eating disorder, self-harming, abusing drugs or alchool and wanting to kill themselves, and that’s supposedly not such a big advantage? As someone who’s been spending a significant portion of her income on therapy for the past ten years, I humbly beg to differ. Self-discipline my ass.

Maybe what is meant by “high-self esteem” here is more like arrogance or over-inflated sense of self. That’s what’s the opposite of humility in the good sense. You don’t have to think you’re worthless to not be an arrogant prick. What about a reasonable in-between? There’s not just too high or too low.

Comment #1:

The original vision for self-esteem training and its importance sounded wonderful, necessary, utopian. Every implementation as far as I can tell has been embarrassing and asinine. How to resolve the evident contradition?

Perhaps “self-esteem” is a threshold quality. Above a certain amount, one can be a strong element of the social fabric. Below a certain amount, one is likely to accept/attract/encourage all sorts of negative behavior patterns. But any self-esteem above the threshold is surplus, and in large amounts may lead to other problems, like sucking at video games.

The various self-esteem programs that have been put in place seem then to have made an error by taking the general approach of “hey there person you are fabulous!” which was a bit too vague; they should instead have been zeroing in on something like: “everybody knows they deserve to not have the shit beaten out of them daily by a family member, right? OK, moving on …”

Comment #2:

“Paranoia is having all the facts.” — William S Burroughs

As regards the debate over whether high(er) self-esteem is a good or bad thing..isn’t there room for both? The contrast between claims for benefits from better self-esteem first being made for classes of people who had suffered some form of abuse, and recent studies showing that those at the higher end of the self-esteem scale are delusional, seems to make perfect sense. If there is evidence that those who think particularly well of themselve add to the misery of those around them, while those who think particularly badly of themselve keep their misery at home, is that so hard to make sense of?

Not that my personal experience means diddly (’cause my level of self-esteem may be improperly calibrated), but yes indeedy, I find that big-time optimists and those with very strong self-images are quite willing to shed blame, take advantage…the whole insufferable routine.

Funny — the only self-esteen programs I can think of that seem to do real good are the very nderfunded Outward Bound type, where troubled kids/teens have to meet real challenges, often by working together. That’s so different from the kinds of things we see for mainstream kids, where the challenges are often removed. When my kid stepbrother was in school, about 20 years ago, his report cards had three columns: Below-, at- and above grade level. He was consistently getting the full range of Bs and Cs below grade level. My parents were happy, he was happy, and he dropped out of high school.