There has been a bit of a backlash against what might be called the “self-esteem” movement in psychology and education in the United States and elsewhere. Here is an item. It is certainly true that a lot of intellectually vapid rubbish has been written about this. For a lot of the time, it seems, “self-esteem” is nothing more than a desire to be freed from judgement, hard work and effort.
I think there is a danger that in the backlash, that the baby gets chucked out with the bathwather, however. If you think about it, self-esteem is about the idea that as human beings, we are both competent to live and worthy of achieving happiness on this earth. This has nothing to do with a vague, dope-induced “feel-good” sort of sentiment, but is something quite different. Achieving happiness and believing that one is deserving of that is often quite hard. In a culture soaked in guilt about material wealth, where people are constantly told to feel bad about prosperity and “selfish individualism”, it is actually quite gutsy for someone to stand against all this. If one thinks about it, self-esteem, properly understood, is a key component of the idea of human rights. If people are entitled to pursue happiness and the good life, then they need rights to protect and advance that.To believe in the idea of the sovereign individual, one has to believe that individuals are competent to decide their lives and also worthy of such. And a self-confident, happy and proud person is surely what a healthy, liberal civil society needs. I fear that a lot of the people now bashing the self-esteem movement are not just sensible skeptics about the latest fads to come out of academia, but also collectivists and authortarians who fear what might happen if people really do want to pursue happiness and self-fulfilment.
This classic on self-esteem is always worth a read, by Dr. Nathaniel Branden. And let’s not forget the important Victorian tradition of “self improvement”, starting with the great Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, which is much more than just getting seriously rich. There is a lot of chaff out there, but a lot of wheat as well.
An interesting subject. I highly recommend the following article in The Objective Standard by the Objectivist psychologist Edwin A. Locke.
The Educational, Psychological, and Philosophical Assault on Self-Esteem
The full article is available only to subscribers to the journal – but subscription is reasonably priced, and in my opinion is well worth it for anyone interested in philosophy.
I saw this book at work a while back; it seems appropriate:
Why You’re Dumb, Sick and Broke
A libertarian self-help book. 😉 It’s an entertaining read.
When someone mentioned the idea of low self esteem to the Dalai Lama, he found it incomprehensible.
Of course self-esteem is a critical issue. The problem is that a lot of people don’t understand that rules and discipline contribute to self-esteem in important ways.
I see this in our schools today, particularly with young men. Encouragement to achieve real things has been replaced with a doctrine of no competition and extremely passive learning methods, where the only goal is passing a predictable exam. Even the ones that do well don’t feel as proud as they could do.
I recall one of John Stossell’s, “Gimme a Break” segments on 20/20 concerning self-esteem. If you want to find a group of people with much higher than average self-esteem, you go to a prison. Inmates (i.e. criminals), it seems, think quite highly about themselves, and it explains, somewhat, why they’re in prison, as no one else, compared to themselves that is, has any value. On the other hand, if you want to find a group a people with low self-esteem, you go to a college or university. Apparently many college students are there to improve themselves, and having no other option, have to work to achieve something.
*How did this happen?* (Yes, that’s sarcasm.)
Go figure . . . ;^b
This revelation is not something new. Several years ago I recall reading of a “startling” study which completely contradicted a widely held belief among
“education professionals” that bullies were the victims of low self-esteem, and therefore needed to be built up to get them to stop feeling the need to bully other children.
This idea was accepted enthusiastically by many, many educators and psychologists for years. I ran into it when one of my sons was being bullied by another kid in 2nd or 3rd grade, and we were informed that disciplinary measures were “inappropriate”, as the young boy terrorizing and assaulting my kid was in need of support and encouragement due to family problems, not punishment.
We later found out that the “family problems” consisted of his dad going to jail for beating up his mother, and this kid ended up in a mental health facility a few years later himself after several acts of violence and property damage in the neighborhood.
Anyway, some university doctoral candidates finally decided to do a little research on this subject, and conducted hundreds or thousands of tests/interviews with grade school and high school kids, and then matched the results up with those kids who were repeatedly identified by faculty as being aggressive, bullying types or passive, victim types.
Lo and behold, the ones with the highest self-esteem were the bullies, and the ones who really needed some help with their self image were the poor kids who were getting pushed around and beat up on a regular basis.
The “educational professionals” had it completely bass ackwards.
To put it bluntly, my wife and I weren’t the least bit surprized. We had run into the impenetrable arrogance of the “you are only a measly parent” attitude several times, even in allegedly caring and responsive private schools, and quickly realized it was a very widespread belief among these utterly deluded school teachers and administrators that they alone understood children, and they alone knew what was best for their education and development.
Needless to say, there have been a few boisterous parent/teacher conferences over the years, and we have pulled more than one of the kids out of a school because the people there just didn’t seem to understand who was the parent and who was only the hired help.
(For the record, I greatly admire teachers, always wanted to be one but it didn’t work out, and my recent college grad is planning to be a secondary school history/social studies teacher and coach, and I couldn’t be prouder of him if he was an astronaut or brain surgeon. In some ways, I guess, he’s a little bit of both)
Self esteem is the earned result of hard work and effort. It is not necessary to be a big success in terms of money, or always win everything, as in sports. It is necessary to know you have given it the best you can, and that, regardless of the end result, you have learned something to improve yourself for the next time. For there is always a next time.
This is the message I have tried to give to my own kids, and the many boys and girls I have coached over the years in various sports.
I am not a “feel-good” dad or coach. I am harshly critical, and believe in firm discipline when necessary. Many times I have had to say to one of my children, “You may not like what I’m saying, but it is as honest an evaluation as I can give you, and you need to pay attention.”
Children are the product of millions of years of evolution. Their BS detectors are very finely tuned, and you don’t have to be an Einstein to tell the difference between a load of horse manure and a basket full of flowers.
The problem, of course, is as Jon touches upon, that while a young person growing up and trying to earn a living and better themselves soon understands that it requires a certain independence of mind and creative effort, they are often the victims of the “Reardon syndrome” as Rand describes.
Even though he knew he was right and his standards were correct, Reardon had been told his entire life that he was arrogant and selfish. He was, therefore, always a bit uneasy about his success, and accepted the censure of others without truly understanding why he had done anything wrong. He couldn’t understand why the very achievements he was so proud of caused some others to criticize and demean him, and deride his efforts.
Many people do not understand that there are bullies of the spirit just as there are bullies of the body. Of the two, the former are much the more damaging and demoralizing, and much the more vicious.
The Bible makes a very clear statement as to the moral worth of one who would lead a child astray. In my humble opinion, Jesus was a little too mild in this instance. A millstone is nothing compared to what I would do to them.
Veryretired: “Lo and behold, the ones with the highest self-esteem were the bullies”
Pecking order anyone?
Low self-esteem is sometimes a result of a person making an accurate and honest assessment of their life to date.
In fact realising you have acted like a scum bag (i.e. having an honest and therefore low opinion of yourself) is pretty much a prerequisite for deciding to not act like a scum bag. If someone has convinced you that regardless of acting badly you should hold yourself in high esteem, that person is doing no one any favours.
You make no distinction between self- esteem and self-respect. Self-esteem is probably a quasi-pathological condition. Some degree of self-respect is difficult enough to achieve for most people. But, in general, in our culture today we probably think entirely too much about this notion of “self.” What is a “self” anyway?
Bird dog—rent a movie called “A Man For All Seasons”.
“Isn’t there anything that is just Norfolk?”
bird dog asks what is a “self”. Er, pretty much what people might have once called the “person”, etc. Perhaps in older times people would have used the word “soul”, even without religious overtones.