With Apologies to The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

Is Self Esteem the Drug of the Nation?

We live in a society where self esteem is considered a self evident good, and this belief appears to be a global phenomenon.   However, the evidence of the usefulness of having a high self esteem is mixed.  For example, while has a general rule people with high self esteem tend to preform better in school, there are interesting exceptions. For example girls tend to have slightly lower self esteem than boys despite the fact that girls consistently out preform boys in school, and the difference in performance appears to widen in high school and college.  It will eventually manifest itself in earnings, and marriage.  Why would a successful woman settle for a loser? 

The reply to this tends to be "girls should have more self esteem".  I tend to disagree, perhaps male self esteem is too high, and as a result they tend to be for the lack of a better phrase goof offs.  Ask most university professors who their honor students are and who are their alcoholics.  You know the answer.  How open to instruction and discipline is someone who thinks he is fine the way he is?  Is unrealistic self esteem one of the underlying reason why white male life spans are actually declining?

While there is somewhat less data across societies, an article written by David Schmitt, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in the mid 2000s assessed self esteem in 53 nations representing 28 languages.  The nation whose residents had the highest level of self esteem was Serbia, followed by Chile, and Israel.  The U.S.  ranked sixth but the all of these nations scored very close to one another.  Conversely, Switzerland and Japan were in the bottom ten with Japan scoring lowest of all.  It goes without saying if given the choice most people would choose to live in Switzerland than Serbia. Some of the best run societies in the world are populated with people with comparatively low self esteem.

Perhaps most disturbingly, as Crispin Sartwell noted in his commentary in the July 1 issue of the Wall Street Journal, hatred enhances your self esteem when he asserted that "the compensatory pleasures of hatred - in particular it enhancement of self-esteem - are underrated.  Hatred is self-congratulatory.  It involved expressing superiority to its objects, and patting yourself on the back for not being them."  This is true at both the individual level as well as the international level.  An easy way to enhance a person's self esteem is by deignigrating others, as far as I can tell this is the primary use of Twitter. 

We also live in a society where pride has become a virtue and humility is for suckers.  Perhaps most destructively we preach to young people "you  can be anything you want".  This is patently false, most of us no matter how hard we try will never be pro athletes, rock stars, or cast members of Saturday Night Live.  However, with realistic expectations and an honest assessment of our talents, we can be accountants, dentists, agronomists, plumbers and truck drivers.  These professions while not the first on any one's list (what 8 year old wants to be an agronomist?) have the advantage of being more socially useful than being a pro athlete or a comedian.

To Fight Self Esteem Embrace the Bleakness

The bitter reality for the vast majority of us is to accept the fact that once we die and the people who knew us die we will be forgotten.  The world will go on without us.  As a thought experiment consider Ingrid Bergman, Joe Louis, Millard Fillmore, Joe DiMaggio, and James Polk.  At one time they were all famous and were considered important; but when was the last time you thought of any of them?  Do you even know who they were?


If people saw themselves honestly, the level of neuroticism would likely decline, we would live in a kinder society, and tolerance would mean something besides protecting the self-esteem of special interest groups.