* * *
Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists. They saw God as a force that had created the universe and then largely withdrew from human affairs. They were keenly aware of the evil that resulted when any particular religion gained access to the machinery of government and thereby acquired power to enforce its views. As men of the Enlightenment, they tended to be suspicious of the clergy. George Washington said explicitly that the United States was not to be identified as “a Christian nation.” Freedom of conscience was integral to the American tradition from the beginning.
To this day, as Harold Bloom observes in The American Religion, the American’s relationship to his or her God is a highly personal one, unmediated by any group or authority.5 It is an encounter that takes place in the context of utter spiritual aloneness. This is quite unlike what one tends to find elsewhere in the world. It reflects the individualism at the heart of the American experience. The majority of Americans, according to Bloom, are convinced that God loves them in a highly personal way. He contrasts this perspective with Spinoza’s observation in his Ethics that whoever loved God truly should not expect to be loved by God in return. Americans tend to see themselves as the chosen people.
At the core of the American tradition was the fact that this country was born as a frontier nation where nothing was given and everything had to be created. Self-discipline and hard work were highly esteemed cultural values. There was a strong theme of community and mutual aid, to be sure, but not as substitutes for self-reliance and self-responsibility. Independent people helped one another when they could, but ultimately everyone was expected to carry his or her own weight.
In nineteenth-century America, people were not educated in “the psychology of entitlement.” They were not encouraged to believe that they were born with a claim on the work, energy, and resources of others. This last was a cultural shift that occurred in the twentieth century.
This generalized account of traditional American culture leaves out a good deal. It does not, for instance, address the institution of slavery, the treatment of black Americans as second-class citizens, or legal discrimination against women, who only acquired the right to vote in this century. Just the same, we can say that to the extent the American vision was actualized, it did a good deal to encourage healthy self-esteem. It encouraged human beings to believe in themselves and in their possibilities.
At the same time, a culture is made of people—and people inevitably carry the past with them. Americans may have repudiated the tribal premise politically, but they or their ancestors came from countries dominated by the tribal mentality, which often continued to influence them culturally and psychologically. They may in some instances have come to these shores to escape religious prejudice and persecution, but many of them carried the mind-set of religious authoritarianism with them. They brought old ways of thinking about race, religion, and gender into the New World. Conflicting cultural values, present from the beginning, continue to this day. In our present culture, pro-self-esteem forces and anti-self-esteem forces collide constantly.
The twentieth century witnessed a shift in cultural values in the United States, and predominately the shift has not supported higher self-esteem but has encouraged the opposite.
I am thinking of the ideas I was taught in college and university, during the 1950s, when epistemological agnosticism (not to say nihilism) joined hands with moral relativism, which joined hands with Marxism. Together with millions of other students, I was informed that:
The mind is powerless to know reality as it really is; ultimately, mind is impotent.
The senses are unreliable and untrustworthy; “everything is an illusion.”
Principles of logic are “mere conventions.”
Principles of ethics are mere “expressions of feelings,” with no basis in reason or reality.
No rational code of moral values is possible.
Since all behavior is determined by factors over which one has no control, no one deserves credit for any achievement.
Since all behavior is determined by factors over which one has no control, no one should be held responsible for any wrongdoing.
When crimes are committed, “society,” never the individual, is the culprit (except for crimes committed by businessmen, in which case only the most severe punishment is appropriate).
Everyone has an equal claim on whatever goods or services exist—notions of the “earned” and “unearned” are reactionary and antisocial.
Political and economic freedom have had their chance and have failed, and the future belongs to state ownership and management of the economy, which will produce paradise on earth.
I thought of these ideas and of the professors who taught them in the spring of 1992 as I sat watching on television the riots in South-Central Los Angeles. When a looter was asked by a journalist, “Didn’t you realize that the stores you looted and destroyed today wouldn’t be there for you tomorrow,” the looter answered, “No, I never thought of that.” Well, who would have ever taught him it was important to learn how to think, when “advantaged children” aren’t taught it either? When I saw a group of men drag a helpless man out of his truck and beat him almost to death, I heard the voice of my professors saying, “If you find this morally objectionable, that’s just your emotional bias. There is no right or wrong behavior.” When I saw men and women laughing gleefully while dragging TV sets and other household goods out of looted stores, I thought of the professors who taught, “No one is responsible for anything he or she does (except the greedy capitalists who own the stores and deserve whatever trouble they get).” I thought how perfectly the ideas of my professors had been translated into cultural reality. Ideas do matter and do have consequences.
If mind is impotent and knowledge is superstition, why should a course on “the great thinkers of the Western world” be rated as more important than a course on modern rock music? Why should a student exert the effort of attending a course in mathematics when he or she can get credit for a course on tennis?
If there are no objective principles of behavior, and if no one is responsible for his or her actions, then why shouldn’t business executives defraud customers and clients? Why shouldn’t bankers embezzle or misappropriate customers’ funds? Why shouldn’t our political leaders lie to us, betray us in secret deals, withhold from us the information we need to make intelligent choices?
If the “earned” and the “unearned” are old-fashioned, reactionary ideas, why shouldn’t people loot whatever they feel like looting? Why is working for a living superior to stealing?
* * *
Ideas do matter and do have consequences.
* * *
What has emerged in the second half of this century is a culture that in many respects reflects the ideas that were taught for decades in the philosophy departments of the leading universities of our nation, passed to other departments, and passed into the world. They became the “received wisdom” of our leading intellectuals. They surfaced in editorial pages, television programs, movies, and comic strips. These ideas are irrational, they cannot be sustained, and there are a growing number of thinkers who oppose them. Still, they are read and heard everywhere, with the exception of the eulogizing of Marxism; empirical evidence has blasted socialism into the junk-heap of history. The ideas are deadly for civilization, deadly for our future, and deadly for self-esteem.
The American culture is a battleground between the values of self-responsibility and the values of entitlement. This is not the only cultural conflict we can see around us, but it is the one most relevant to self-esteem. It is also at the root of many of the others.
We are social beings who realize our humanity fully only in the context of community. The values of our community can inspire the best in us or the worst. A culture that values mind, intellect, knowledge, and understanding promotes self-esteem; a culture that denigrates mind undermines self-esteem. A culture in which human beings are held accountable for their actions su
pports self-esteem; a culture in which no one is held accountable for anything breeds demoralization and self-contempt. A culture that prizes self-responsibility fosters self-esteem; a culture in which people are encouraged to see themselves as victims fosters dependency, passivity, and the mentality of entitlement. The evidence for these observations is all around us.
* * *
The American culture is a battleground between the values of self-responsibility and the values of entitlement.
* * *
There will always be independent men and women who will fight for their autonomy and dignity even in the most corrupt and corrupting culture—just as there are children who come out of nightmare childhoods with their self-esteem undestroyed. But a world that values consciousness, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, and integrity will not preach values inimical to them or pass laws that discourage or penalize their exercise. For example, children will not be taught to regard themselves as sinful, obedience will not be rewarded more than intelligent questioning, students will not be taught reason is a superstition, girls will not be told femininity equals submissiveness, self-sacrifice will not be eulogized while productive achievement is met with indifference, welfare systems will not penalize the choice to work, and regulatory agencies will not treat producers as criminals.
Some awareness of these realities is reflected in the fact that those who are genuinely concerned with the problems of the underclass in America are thinking increasingly about the importance of teaching cognitive skills, the values of the work ethic, self-responsibility, interpersonal competence, the pride of ownership—and objective standards of performance. The philosophy of victimhood has not worked, as is evidenced by the steady worsening of social problems under several decades of that perspective. We do not help people out of poverty by telling them the responsibility is “the world’s” and that they themselves are powerless and that nothing need be expected of them.
Christopher Lasch is not a champion of individualism, and he has been a vocal critic of the self-esteem movement, which makes his observations on this issue interesting:
Is it really necessary to point out, at this late date, that public policies based on a therapeutic model of the state have failed miserably, over and over again? Far from promoting self-respect, they have created a nation of dependents. They have given rise to a cult of the victim in which entitlements are based on the display of accumulated injuries inflicted by an uncaring society. The politics of “compassion” degrades both the victims, by reducing them to objects of pity, and their would-be benefactors, who find it easier to pity their fellow citizens than to hold them up to impersonal standards, the attainment of which would make them respected. Compassion has become the human face of contempt.6
In our discussion of living purposefully, I spoke about paying attention to outcomes. If our actions and programs do not produce the results intended and promised, then it is our basic premises we need to check. It has been rightly noted that “doing more of what doesn’t work, doesn’t work.” A culture of self-esteem is a culture of accountability, which means of self-responsibility. There is no other way for human beings to prosper or to live benevolently with one another.
In Chapter 12, “The Philosophy of Self-Esteem,” I discussed the premises that support self-esteem in that they support and encourage the six pillars. A culture in which these premises are dominant, are woven into the fabric of child-rearing, education, art, and organizational life, will be a high-self-esteem culture. To the extent that the opposite of these premises are dominant we will see a culture inimical to self-esteem. My point is not pragmatism: I am not saying we should subscribe to these ideas because they support self-esteem. I am saying that because these ideas are in alignment with reality, they are in alignment with and supportive of self-esteem.
The focus of this book is psychological, not philosophical, and so I have expressed these ideas in a very personal way, as beliefs exist in an individual consciousness. But if the reader senses that in its implications this book is almost as much a work of philosophy as of psychology, he or she will not be mistaken.
The Individual and Society
We all live in a sea of messages concerning the nature of our value and the standards by which we should judge it. The more independent we are, the more critically we examine these messages. The challenge is often to recognize them for what they are—other people’s ideas and beliefs that may or may not have merit. The challenge, in other words, is not to take the assumptions of one’s culture as a given, as “reality,” but to realize that assumptions can be questioned. As a boy growing up, I am sure I benefited from the fact that my father’s favorite saying (after the Gershwin song, I imagine) was, “It ain’t necessarily so.”
Cultures do not encourage the questioning of their own premises. One of the meanings of living consciously has to do with one’s awareness that other people’s beliefs are just that, their beliefs, and not necessarily ultimate truth. This does not mean that living consciously expresses itself in skepticism. It expresses itself in critical thinking.
* * *
The challenge is not to take the assumptions of one’s culture as a given, as “reality,” but to realize that assumptions can be questioned.
* * *
There are tensions between the agenda of a society and that of any individual that may be inevitable. Societies are primarily concerned with their own survival and perpetuation. They tend to encourage the values that are perceived as serving that end. These values may have nothing to do with the growth needs or personal aspirations of individuals. For example, a militaristic nation or tribe, in adversarial relationships with other nations or tribes, tends to value warrior virtues: aggressiveness, indifference to pain, absolute obedience to authorities, and so on. But this does not mean that from the standpoint of an individual, his interests are served by identifying masculinity or worth with those particular traits, even though he will be encouraged or pressured to do so. He may set a different agenda of his own, which his culture may label “selfish,” such as the life of a scholar. In holding to his own standards, in his eyes he manifests integrity; his society may brand him as disloyal or narrow and petty in his vision. Or again, a society may identify its interests with a large and growing population, in which case women will be encouraged to believe there is no glory comparable to motherhood and no other standard of true femininity. Yet an individual woman may see her life another way; her values may lead her toward a career that precludes or postpones motherhood, and she may or may not have the independence to judge her life by her own standards and to understand womanhood very differently from her mother, her minister, or her contemporaries (who, again, may brand her as “selfish”).
The average person tends to judge him- or herself by the values prevalent in his social environment, as transmitted by family members, political and religious leaders, teachers, newspaper and television editorials, and popular art such as movies. These values may or may not be rational and may or may not answer to the needs of the individual.
I am sometimes asked if a person cannot achieve genuine self-esteem by conforming and living up to cultural norms that he or she may never have thought about, let alone questioned, and that do not necessarily make a good deal of sense. Is not the safety and security of belonging with and to the group a form of self-esteem? Does not group validation and support lead to an experience of true self-worth? The error here is in equating any feeling of safety or comfort with self-esteem. Conformity is not self-efficacy; popularity is not self-respect. Whatever its gratifications, a sense of belonging is not equal to trust in my mind or confidence in my ability to master the challenges of life. The fact that others esteem me is no guarantee I will esteem myself.
* * *
Genuine self-esteem is what we feel about ourselves when everything is not all right.
* * *
If I live a life of unthinking routine, with no challenges or crises, I may be
able to evade for a while the fact that what I possess is not self-esteem but pseudo self-esteem. When everything is all right, everything is all right, but that is not how we determine the presence of self-esteem. Genuine self-esteem is what we feel about ourselves when everything is not all right. This means, when we are challenged by the unexpected, when others disagree with us, when we are flung back on our own resources, when the cocoon of the group can no longer insulate us from the tasks and risks of life, when we must think, choose, decide, and act and no one is guiding us or applauding us. At such moments our deepest premises reveal themselves.
One of the biggest lies we were ever told is that it is “easy” to be selfish and that self-sacrifice takes spiritual strength. People sacrifice themselves in a thousand ways every day. This is their tragedy. To honor the self—to honor mind, judgment, values, and convictions—is the ultimate act of courage. Observe how rare it is. But it is what self-esteem asks of us.
18
Conclusion: The Seventh Pillar of Self-Esteem
Early in this book I said the need for self-esteem is a summons to the hero within us. Although what this means is threaded through our entire discussion, let us make it fully explicit.
It means a willingness—and a will—to live the six practices when to do so may not be easy. We may need to overcome inertia, face down fears, confront pain, or stand alone in loyalty to our own judgment, even against those we love.
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem Page 35