The Oscar Wilde of Pittsburgh, Dan Hull, reminds us that
When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.
–Sir W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911). Dramatist, Librettist, Illustrator.
Hull can be such a downer sometimes. After all, isn’t self-esteem what the internet is all about, allowing us to authentically engage with people of great accomplishment and talent despite our having nothing whatsoever to commend us? We’re all worthy. Get a twit from your hero and you’re just as important and heroic as anyone else, like a social media rock star.
Right? Come on, admit it. You love being validated, affirmed, acknowledged. Because in the back of your head, you fear that you’re just an unworthy fraud who will be revealed as having done nothing more than feigned being meaningful online. You can blow smoke up the butts of 100,000 followers and manufacture an online reality that your real existence will never match, and you fear that someone will call you out as a fake.
We could chalk this up to your confusion of lack of self-respect with undeserved self-esteem, but that much thinking would make your brain hurt. Nobody wants that.
It’s an article of faith that enhancing the self-esteem of others will increase the goodness of our society, make it a better place, a happier place, a place of greater justice and kindness. Let’s applaud everyone, look for the good and make excuses for the bad. No one is every wrong, but merely less right. This is what you’re seeking, isn’t it? This is what will alleviate that gnawing fear, the opiate of the Slackoisie.
But maybe feeding your need for unwarranted high self-esteem won’t produce Utopia. Maybe it will ultimately take you elsewhere.
This belief — that increasing self-esteem will increase goodness in society — spread through the rest of America like proverbial wildfire.
It turns out, however, that the premise was entirely misguided. There is no correlation between goodness and high self-esteem. But there is a correlation between criminality and high self-esteem.
Florida State University professor Roy Baumeister (Ph.D. psychology, Princeton University) has revealed that in a lifetime of study of violent criminals, the one characteristic nearly all these criminals share is high self-esteem.
Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good at all. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? From the Atlantic Wire :
SUBJECT: The “self-esteem movement”
LENGTH: 937 words
OPENING SENTENCE: “By now, most people (with the exception of many psychotherapists) recognize that the self-esteem movement officially launched by California in 1986 has been at best silly, and at worst injurious to society, despite whatever small benefit it may have had to some individuals.”
MAN TO BLAME FOR SELF-ESTEEM MOVEMENT: California assemblyman John Vasconcellos, a “radical humanist”
WHAT THE ADVOCATES THINK: “rais[ing] young people’s self-esteem … will increase goodness in society”
WHY PRAISING YOUR CHILD COULD MAKE HIM AN AXE MURDERER: “There is no correlation between goodness and high self-esteem. But there is a correlation between criminality and high self-esteem. … Yes, people with high self-esteem are the ones most prone to violence.”
Could this be true? Could your search for self-esteem, approval, acceptance, validation, affirmation, a group hug, turn you into an ax murderer?
PRAGER’S PERSONAL NAME FOR THE ’60S AND ’70S: “The Age of Feelings”
SELF-ESTEEM GOES UP, MATH SKILLS GO DOWN:One result of all this has been a generation that thinks highly of itself for no good reason. Perhaps the most famous example is the survey of American high-school students and those of seven other countries. Americans came in last in mathematical ability but first in self-esteem about their mathematical ability.BETTER TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE: “To cite one example, one of the finest human beings I have ever known–an individual of extraordinary courage, integrity, and selflessness–had a father who constantly berated this person as worthless and stupid.”
MANDATORY DISCLAIMER: “Now, this father was, to put it mildly, a sick man.”
BUT STILL: “it had no negative impact on this individual’s sterling character”
CONCLUSION: “society has the strongest interest in not promoting self-esteem among children”
PARTING WORDS OF WISDOM:If you don’t agree with this conclusion, do the following: Ask the finest people you know how much self-esteem they had as a child. Then ask all the narcissists you know how much their parent(s) praised them.
No, this is not an argument in favor of berating your children. That’s just sick. But it is to say that applauding them for burping may be the surest route to creating a person with a bizarrely unrealistic belief in his own entitlement. Prisons are filled with such folks, many of whom can’t fathom why society doesn’t appreciate their importance.
Forget about desperately seeking the approval of others. Do something meaningful, real, difficult, for yourself. You will never twit yourself to love or importance. Gain self-respect by earning it through your deeds and hard effort, and you won’t need to beg for some other fearful fraud to respond with a return twit telling you that you are a worthwhile person too. You will be worthwhile because you’ve accomplished worthwhile things.
Sometimes it will make your head hurt. Sometimes you will fail. But you will have the self-respect of knowing you gave it your all. And you can take true comfort in knowing that. even though you are not the center of the universe, you are not revered by all who follow your twits, you are not entitled to the respect of every person whose path you cross, you have achieved something real by your own hand. Be real.
Or there’s always prison.
H/T Stephanie West Allen
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Nicely done. And I loved that NR article. However, Scott, next time maybe omit the Oscar Wilde conceit. I do love Wilde–especially Dorian Gray–but closeted male blue collars horny enough to shaft a snake a sandstorm called the US Steel Tower yesterday asking when I’ll next be in town for some special Kielbasa.
So most people in prisons had kind and loving parents who praised them too often? That’s news to me. The news outlets tell me most people in prison are black and come from single parent households where the parent doesn’t have time to raise the child.
If what the study says is true than the prison population, of which the majority are black, are in prison because of too much encouragement as children. Very interesting.
I suspect the unwarranted self-esteem was the measured outcome; how they got to that mindset may be via different routes. But the point of believing that high self-esteem is itself a goal, and will produce a better world, may be misguided if it produces a sense of entitlement that no one else is willing to recognize. Think of white surburban kids wearing baggy as a fashion statement, without the benefit of a jail stint to guide their fashion sense.
Psychologists Stanton Samenow has been noticing unwarranted self-esteem among repeat offenders for generations, and John Rosemond among insufferable brats.
Also pretty sure that, while overrepresented, “most” people in prison are not black.
keeping it real,dawg. keepin it real.
Coincidentally, earlier today I had the amusing thought of a nephew of a friend saying that, back when that slang was in vogue among some people – just before getting or giving props, I think.
We’ve fired or seen quit 50+ lawyers, paralegals and other staff between ages 22-35 in past 5 years. Our failure, sure–but this is a new pattern. We had not seen it in past years. All were sweet and smart if thin-skinned and disturbingly unambitious. They tended to freak out when confronted with complex projects. Few could research or write well–and all thought that they researched and wrote really well. They had the grades and past compliment to prove it. Generally (if lawyers), these people were Law Review, Coif and/or top or upper tier schools.
All had great self-esteem. And it was a little creepy sometimes. In the “worst” of the self-esteem cases, a very talented guy at the top of his class–we had worked hard to snag this student from much larger firms–was fired for purposely compromising a client deadline for a project he was spearheading because he felt he “had done my share” this week. One great thing about him: he, for one, wasn’t that thin-skinned. He didn’t require “feedback” to be 100% positive. Hey, it was a start.
Anyway, the really weird thing? When we fired him a few days later, he acted at first as if the firing were somehow part of long-term plan to “reward” him which would simply not require his short-term presence. In other words, he thought that we wanted him back after his “time out”. It took him 2 weeks to realize he’d been terminated. And the whole 2 weeks, he was at home.