I've really never talked about this? Oh well, better late than never:
I see it every day, people are caught up in this trap of worrying about "self-esteem". Let me explain the borderline pseudo-psychological bullcrap that is the modern understanding of self-esteem, and when I'm done I'll explain how and why you're doing it wrong, and then I'll tell you what to do about it. I promise. So buckle up, buttercup:
Self-esteem was introduced in 1972 to the public school system in the United States. I neither know nor care the details surrounding which, because that's not important: the point is that it was introduced with the purpose of artificially inflating the achievement of the Lowest Common Denominator ("underachieving students") by artificially inflating their self-worth, independent of actual merit.
I'm not kidding; the concept of self-esteem was introduced by the government as a form of social engineering. Relatively recently. Anyway, by the 1990s the first of the kids indoctrinated to have high self-esteem without actually having a reason to have high self-esteem were blossoming into adults. As it turns out, decoupling achievement and feeling good about yourself was conclusively proven to be a bad idea and wildly counterproductive. The government halted the programs related to promoting self-esteem at-all-costs immediately and entirely.
So, even though that happened, private organizations and individuals decided it was a good idea to keep that ideal rolling. So, as I so vividly remember as a child of the 90's, children continued to be indoctrinated with the term "self-esteem" without any explanation as to how such a concept relates to individual merit, a terrible irony since the concept of self-esteem only exists in individualistic societies - the concept does not exist in collectivist societies such as Japan.
ANYWHO, the irresponsible mass-indoctrination of children with the idea that they should feel good about themselves for no reason spawned an aberration of a concept that is otherwise apparent and self-evident and needs no teaching; they spawned what afflicts the vast majority of now-adults who were educated post 1972: the concept of a "fragile" sense of high self-esteem, as opposed to a "secure" sense of high self-esteem.
In both the fragile and secure types, you have people feeling good about themselves. That's high self-esteem versus low self-esteem; we all know that. However, in the new "fragile" subtype of high self-esteem, a person's high sense of self-esteem - and thus their sense of self - is easily threatened because, to put it bluntly, it has no substance behind it. In contrast, a person with a "secure" sense of high self-esteem is hard to break down because their self-esteem is based on personal merit. They're great, and they know it.
To put it another way, a "fragile" sense of high self-esteem happens when someone's sense of self-worth is inflated and propped up by a nebulous sense of entitlement; it happens because people have been taught to believe that they are entitled to feel good about themselves just because they are people. That sounds right though, doesn't it? That sounds like one of the values our society holds, that all people are worthy simply because of their humanity?
That's because it is. It is a tenet of individualistic society that all people have value. Now, I could go off on a tangent about how it's factually correct that a person's life is worth a particular dollar value congruent with their levels of consumption, but that's where the idea should end. In an economics classroom.
Instead, we've been indoctrinated to hold an economic concept as a moral value. The result of which is a widening achievement gap, which is the polite way to say that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer (and greater in number) and that, arguably, society is circling the toilet bowl. But enough about society, this is about me trying to help you.
[See part 2 for the "how"]
I see it every day, people are caught up in this trap of worrying about "self-esteem". Let me explain the borderline pseudo-psychological bullcrap that is the modern understanding of self-esteem, and when I'm done I'll explain how and why you're doing it wrong, and then I'll tell you what to do about it. I promise. So buckle up, buttercup:
Self-esteem was introduced in 1972 to the public school system in the United States. I neither know nor care the details surrounding which, because that's not important: the point is that it was introduced with the purpose of artificially inflating the achievement of the Lowest Common Denominator ("underachieving students") by artificially inflating their self-worth, independent of actual merit.
I'm not kidding; the concept of self-esteem was introduced by the government as a form of social engineering. Relatively recently. Anyway, by the 1990s the first of the kids indoctrinated to have high self-esteem without actually having a reason to have high self-esteem were blossoming into adults. As it turns out, decoupling achievement and feeling good about yourself was conclusively proven to be a bad idea and wildly counterproductive. The government halted the programs related to promoting self-esteem at-all-costs immediately and entirely.
So, even though that happened, private organizations and individuals decided it was a good idea to keep that ideal rolling. So, as I so vividly remember as a child of the 90's, children continued to be indoctrinated with the term "self-esteem" without any explanation as to how such a concept relates to individual merit, a terrible irony since the concept of self-esteem only exists in individualistic societies - the concept does not exist in collectivist societies such as Japan.
ANYWHO, the irresponsible mass-indoctrination of children with the idea that they should feel good about themselves for no reason spawned an aberration of a concept that is otherwise apparent and self-evident and needs no teaching; they spawned what afflicts the vast majority of now-adults who were educated post 1972: the concept of a "fragile" sense of high self-esteem, as opposed to a "secure" sense of high self-esteem.
In both the fragile and secure types, you have people feeling good about themselves. That's high self-esteem versus low self-esteem; we all know that. However, in the new "fragile" subtype of high self-esteem, a person's high sense of self-esteem - and thus their sense of self - is easily threatened because, to put it bluntly, it has no substance behind it. In contrast, a person with a "secure" sense of high self-esteem is hard to break down because their self-esteem is based on personal merit. They're great, and they know it.
To put it another way, a "fragile" sense of high self-esteem happens when someone's sense of self-worth is inflated and propped up by a nebulous sense of entitlement; it happens because people have been taught to believe that they are entitled to feel good about themselves just because they are people. That sounds right though, doesn't it? That sounds like one of the values our society holds, that all people are worthy simply because of their humanity?
That's because it is. It is a tenet of individualistic society that all people have value. Now, I could go off on a tangent about how it's factually correct that a person's life is worth a particular dollar value congruent with their levels of consumption, but that's where the idea should end. In an economics classroom.
Instead, we've been indoctrinated to hold an economic concept as a moral value. The result of which is a widening achievement gap, which is the polite way to say that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer (and greater in number) and that, arguably, society is circling the toilet bowl. But enough about society, this is about me trying to help you.
[See part 2 for the "how"]
