Hooked on self-esteem

Spiked Online ^ | 10/13/03 | Jennie Bristow

[Mears]

There is an article in the Boston Globe today quoting some psychologists on how to help Boston kids deal with the Red Sox losing the 7th game to the Yankees.

Unbelievable!!! It caused quite a bit of laughter in my local neighborhood breakfast place.

[nuconvert]

Where is this guy from?
I lived thru the 70's and 80's.
Not quite how I remember things.

And arent't you lucky?
You already think you're great, so no self-esteem problems for you. That saves bucks on therapy.

[Valin]

WHAT!! Boston lost!! Well this is yet another 6 months in therapy. Well at least the Cubs won, otherwise I'm not sure life would be worth living.

[Mears]

Wouldn't a Cubs-Sox series have been great!!!!!!

[ClaireSolt]

This is the result of letting social problems become the rationale for "jobs programs" through government. Social programs exploit the misery of people by providing salaries for those who rely on finding more and more wrongs to provide for their own livilihood. A class of vultures dine on the carcasses of the unfortunate. That is why the problems only get worse and more numerous and more expensive to treat but never cure.

[WFTR]

tag for later

[mountaineer]

I hope all the Boston-area schools provide counselors for the grieving children. Seriously, when did all this start? School districts trot out counselors whenever a kid gets a hangnail, it seems. I remember when two girls in my 9th grade class were killed in a horrific car crash in 1970. There was no "counseling" except the old-fashioned kind - kids who were upset over their friends' deaths talked to and were comforted by their parents, friends or teachers. That was it, and we all survived.

[Polybius]

Wouldn't a Cubs-Sox series have been great!!!!!!

Nope.

It would have meant that one of two great American traditions would have had to come to an end. The Curse of the Bambino and the Lovable Losing Cubbies are part of the heart and soul of America.

[wizardoz]

Well, this guy's obviously a twit. Check this out:

... today's society celebrates emotion above achievement and reason ... creating an authoritarian and destructive dynamic.

This is the direct result of the leftist victimology method of fomenting ethnic/race/gender warfare to replace the failed class warfare that was supposed to bring about the Marxist revolution of the proletariat.

Therapy culture represents a shift from the view of the robust, independent person, capable of great individual and collective achievements, to the notion of the fragile, powerless victim in need of continual professional support.

Need I translate this?

What gave rise to this downbeat view of human agency, this 'fatalistic epistemology' that recasts people as victims?

Well, let's see.... shall we start with Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? What ideology focused on societal responsibility rather than individual efficacy? Hmm.....

The decisive reason, Furedi says, is ... the collapse of the left, and of any project for social change.

Toro-caca alert! This is the triumph of victimization and collectivism, you buttzit, not its failure.

Having given up on the notion that human beings could change the world, the left focused instead on helping people to survive their circumstances. This shift, Furedi explains, was rapid, complete and - to him at least - unexpected.

Typical leftist. Can't figure out why his ideology failed.

Feminists, for example, used to protest bitterly against the medicalising of pregnancy and other aspects of women's lives. The political culture of the time was suspicious of psychological explanations and solutions, and saw them as a way of imposing conformity.

No no no, buttzit... they saw it as imposing the wrong kind of conformity.

This is all to do with today's obsession with 'the fragility of internal life' - namely, the sense that people can no longer judge themselves on the basis of their achievements in society, or their relationships with others.

And who destroyed the concept of virtue to eradicate religion in order to replace it with Marxism? Who destroyed the value of achievement in order to inflate the value of equality?

...we live in an increasingly atomised world, in which the bonds between communities and families are weaker than before, leaving individuals isolated and lonely.

And who destroyed the family by replacing familial responsibility with government support?

But it is not inevitable that social change breeds atomisation - 'change can bring with it feelings of solidarity'.

Ah, of course! The cure for the ills of leftism is MORE LEFTISM! So global leftism didn't work... let's try local leftism! A wise man once said to me that the liberal's creed is "Okay, so my first 20 ideas didn't work... but you really owe it to yourself to listen to idea number 21."

[cwb]

Right on! The guy indentifies the problems and yet fails to acknowledge exactly who it is, from an ideological standpoint, that is responsible for these problems. It's the same denial that now plagues Democrats over their electoral defeats...and over their social policies that have been mserably failures since the New Deal. The author doesn't even realize he's as much at fault for these problems because of his inability to see the truth....which is another liberal trait: It's always someone else's fault. Oh, the hypocrisy.

[Mears]

You've got that right,we just went along with our lives.

The Grief Industry is very lucrative,need I say more?

[nuconvert]

I hope this wasn't taken the wrong way.
Just quoting your self-assessment.
: )

[Essie]

When my children were in Middle School a few years ago, I remember reading in the Code of Conduct that raising a child's selfesteem was the most important thing the school could do. And when my children were in elementary school, any child who didn't fit into the program was thought to have a medical or psychological problem or both.

[Valin]

Not to mention the fact that it would be a sure sign of the end times. :-)

[Valin]

My self-esteem was dropping...but thanks to Dr. Al of Honest Al's Pretty Good Therapy shop and and dry cleaning, I'm feeling much better.

[nuconvert]

So, what kind of a discount do you get on your dry cleaning when you talk to Al?

[nuconvert]

'Therapy breeds mistrust, treating private life and relationships between people with suspicion, and making a virtue of estrangement.'

THERE's an advertisement for psychotherapy!
(Therapists all over the world prepare for the reaction
to this statement by downing a few ritalin and prozac.)

[Polybius]

Not to mention the fact that it would be a sure sign of the end times. :-)

Yep. Apart from being a tradition as American as Motherhood and Apple Pie, the Red Sox and the Cubs losing is also The Natural Order of Things.

I heard Billy Crystal on the radio commenting that a Red Sox/Cubs World Series would surely result in a Biblical event in the fourth inning of the last game to insure that neither team won.

[Valin]

Seventh inning stretch the ground opens up and swallows both teams.