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Added to my reading list, thanks! I'd wager that the "self esteem" movement, or more accurately, whatever caused it to gain traction in the American psyche, kic
by donw 6y ago
Added to my reading list, thanks! I'd wager that the "self esteem" movement, or more accurately, whatever caused it to gain traction in the American psyche, kicked off the downward spiral to where-we-are-now.
In a nutshell, several generations of American children were taught, systematically, to ignore social signals that conflicted with their self-image, and were thus deprived of a very critical part of their childhood: in where they learn to moderate their behavior in order to get along with other people.
Self-esteem education was based on the (correct!) observation that people with high self-esteem are healthier and more successful.
Given my extensive experience with educators, I am not in any way surprised that the conclusion they reached was that high self-esteem must cause health and success, rather than health and success resulting in high self-esteem. Educators seem to have this anti-Newtonian view on the world, in which reactions cause actions. But I digress.
I was subjected to this as a child, and it took something on the order of a decade of living abroad -- mostly in Japan, a country which, lacking any concept of "self", offers no affordance for "self-esteem" -- to fully realize the sheer horror of what I had been steeped in as a child.
As to why this has come to a head since the advent of social media, well, we're at the point where an entire generation which socializes primarily through virtual means has come of age.
When your social interactions are driven by proximity -- e.g., you are limited to people that physically exist near you -- then you are forced to learn some degree of moderation. Because if you can't get along with others, you find yourself rather in deficit of friends.
But now, it doesn't matter how crazy you are. If you worship Mao or Hitler or Stalin or whatever, there is a community for people like you.
No amount of ostracism will remedy this. That worked when your ability to make friendships had real, physical constraints. In the fully-connected schizophrenic hivemind world of 2020, casting people out of your tribe will, at best, only deprive them of a moderating influence.
Still not sure where this goes, but I am fairly certain it's got at least thirty-one flavors of ugly.
- taneq 6y agoThe core problem with the self-esteem movement is that they try to promote high self-esteem disconnected from any true achievement or worth. High self-esteem certainly correlates with healthy, successful people (of course healthy successful people have good self esteem!) but trying to artificially inflate peoples' self esteem to create health and success is driving the causation backwards. Self esteem devoid of any underlying achievement is hollow. In the end you're basically manufacturing narcissists, with a fragile falsely inflated self image covering a chasm of insecurity.
- donw 6y ago> Self esteem devoid of any underlying achievement is hollow. In the end you're basically manufacturing narcissists, with a fragile falsely inflated self image covering a chasm of insecurity. Precisely. At the same time, I think that social connections divorced from physical reality -- as is on the Internet -- compound this to the nth degree. I can pretend to be an amazing dancer or boxer or chef on Facebook, but it's a very different thing when I need to demonstrate those skills as part of a community that actually Does That Thing. To provide an example, I recall a few years back, at a dance social, meeting some kid from the Air Force that was an excellent case-study. He showed up, started dancing with partners, and it was obvious from the first (music) sentence in the first song that he simply did not know how to dance. At all. Like, when experienced dancers come from other styles, you can tell that they know how to dance. Maybe not this specific style, but they've got fundamentals. Ballerinas are particularly graceful, Latin dancers have a really specific flavor, ballroom people have really great structure, etc. This dude was not a dancer. Now, this is okay! The first rule of social dancing is that you want to welcome new dancers. But he was rude to every person that tried to help him out with picking up the basics, insisting that he was already a great dancer and that he didn't need the help. Falsely inflated self-image, meet room full of follows that aren't interested in having their feet crushed. Don't know what happened to him after that, but imagine if his bubble had never faced critique -- and this was from a community that bent over backwards to be nice to newcomers.
- necovek 6y agoDancing for leisure is practiced by anyone, and people can be good dancers because "good" is defined differently for something so universally practiced. Like, is your mom or grandma a good cook? How many Michelin stars would her kitchen get? :) Not saying this person wasn't a prick, just that dancing is hard to get an idea of how good you are at without already accepting that you suck at it while being repeatedly told how you are a good dancer (and if you are simply willing to let go on a dance floor as a male, you were likely to be termed a good dancer in my youth).
- waterhouse 6y ago