Too Much Self-Esteem

You might think that Bill Maher took it from Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy. He shows what happens to children who have their self-esteem puffed up to the point where they are no longer recognizable. 

For those who have not been paying attention, educators and therapists have been touting the wonders of high self-esteem for decades now. By their theorizing, a child does not need to learn multiplication tables. He needs to feel good about himself. In principle, this is supposed to make him a math whiz. In practice, it makes him a self-important idiot.

Maher wrote this:

America is a country whose children score low in math and science but off the charts in self-esteem. A study of eight developed countries found that U.S. students were dead last in math skills but number one in confidence in math skills, even though they suck at it. Yes, we’re number one in thinking we’re number one.

The idea that kids have too little self-esteem is antiquated. It’s a Zombie Lie, one of those ideas that perhaps was true in the past but now is not, and yet people keep saying it. Kids now have too much self-esteem, and it’s turning them into angry, screaming grievance collectors.

All of that childhood tolerance is resulting in grown-up tyrants. It’s no wonder that by the time they get to college, just having to listen to an opinion they don’t agree with is considered an act of “violence.” This is what happens when no one ever loses and everyone gets a prize. You can run the wrong way on the field and score five goals for the other team, and you’re still a winner. Even though you’re actually a big fucking loser. No wonder today’s NBA players give each other high fives when they miss a foul shot.

We tell our children they don’t have to fix their flaws, because it’s the world’s job to accept everything about them and love it. Like they say on reality shows, the most important thing is just “you doing you.” But what if “you” is a big asshole? 

Maher is correct; young people are not told to improve themselves, to build good character and to work hard on their studies. They are told that the world must accept them as they are.

The example of transmania cries out for attention here. If we must all accept transsexuals for whatever they think they are, we are being tyrannized in order to sustain someone’s delusional belief.

But then, children who suffer from high self-esteem, the kind that their parents and teachers have force-fed them, develop certain bad mental habits. 

And that produces bad mental health. Consider the words of Greg Lukianoff: 

In their 2015 article and 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” Greg and Jonathan Haidt argue that cognitive distortions (practices like catastrophizing, black and white thinking, overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning) and overprotecting children results in an external locus of control, helplessness and despair, and both the mental health crisis and the rampant culture of illiberalism on campus that we’re seeing today.

Lukianoff suggests that the advent of illiberal leftist ideologies produces declining mental health. It is partly about bloated self-esteem. But it is also about learning to hate the country and trying to belong to an oppressed subgroup. 

When your opinion of your own greatness deviates wildly from the way other people judge you, you might very well end up hating the world. And you might well decide that the system is corrupt, in need of being replaced by a dictatorship of the oppressed.

So, radicalism will ruin your life. It will render you dysfunctional and teach you to hate the country. 

At the extremes, 57% of very liberal students in our study reported feelings of poor mental health at least half the time, compared to just 34% of very conservative students. Let that sink in. 34% is really quite bad, but 57% is approaching a figure of 2 out of every 3 very liberal students.

And yet, there is a method to the madness. The worse your life, the more urgent you will need to find someone to blame. 

It is not merely that young radical leftists are miserable, for feeling dissociated from society, their high self-esteem prevents them from discovering that they might do something to improve their condition. They decide that the fault lies, not with themselves, but with society.

Lukianoff explains:

Only 41% of very liberal males report feelings of poor mental health more than half the time, compared to 60% of very liberal females, and a whopping 70% of very liberal non-binary students. There also appears to be a more rapid rise in students experiencing poor mental health as they move left. The percentage of non-binary students with poor self-reported mental health rises 18 points as they move from moderate to very liberal. The percentage point gap for moderate non-binary students to very conservative non-binary students is only 4%, suggesting that there is a more rapid decline in self-reported mental health as students move further to the left — a pattern that is not seen in students as they move further to the right.

Apparently, the radical left is filled with crazies. They cannot discuss or debate ideas. They must always be right and they will shut you up and shut you down if you think otherwise. This produces a sense of anomie, a detachment from society.

If we know students on the left report feeling more anxious, depressed, and stressed, perhaps their acceptance of illiberal protest is a reflection of the manifestations of their cognitive distortions? The intensity of their feelings and fears seem to justify the extremity of their actions, or their acceptance of the extreme actions of others (e.g., “If this speaker comes on campus, my life is in danger — so I must react accordingly”).