Posted on 05/26/2014 2:00:02 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
I love Theodore Dalrymple. I think he’s an atheist, but he sure has some interesting insights into a lot of contemporary social problems, and he pulls no punches, spares no sacred cows.
I know what you’re saying. I’m going back to read it in its entirety later tonight.
I notice that all of the mass murderers of the past two decades are quite young, teens or early-mid twenties.
I have known about the debunking of the self-esteem movement for some time, and known that violent criminals often have very high self-esteem, as well as other fantasies and delusions.
I have two theories about how this silly idea got started.
The first is the great difficulty some people have coming to terms with evil. They see someone do something very bad, very antisocial and try to explain it because they cannot imagine themselves doing it. So they conclude that it must be caused by lack of self-esteem or “sickness” because that’s the only way they could picture themselves doing things like this.
Second, there are problems that young people have—drug and alcohol use, eating disorders, suicide attempts, sexual acting out—that do stem from low self-esteem. But serious criminal behavior is something else again. But I think that the two are lumped together.
Obviously self-esteem building exercises that are divorced from accomplishments are ridiculous.
I remember reading in the paper once several years ago about some Indian tribe that was having trouble with youth gang activity and things like that. One if the tribal leaders seemed to think that teaching their old language would be a panacea. I wonder how that worked for them. It seemed evident to me that us was a crisis of morality and values and language didnt have much to do with it.
It does not just have a humbling effect. Failure teaches, also. By knowing and analyzing what went wrong, one is better prepared to do what is right, and to know why it is right.
I think it is not self-esteem per se that is the problem. It is baseless self-esteem.
A kid who works hard, gets good grades, goes to college, and ends up in a good, challenging career has earned a sense of self-esteem. He or she is aware of the value of hard work.
OTOH, cultivating a sense of unearned self-esteem is very damaging. I remember a conversation with one of my son’s teachers when he was small, where she said something about “But what about his self-esteem?” I was very curt in my reply, I’m afraid. I said that I did not want to instill a false sense of self-esteem when he had done nothing to earn it.
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