• _db
    3.6k
    I am not going to claim that self-esteem is the only source of motivation. Pain seems to be a good motivator as well. Indeed, I do not jerk my hand away from a hot stove because I'm worried about my self-esteem, I do it because it hurts. Pleasure, or at least the desire for pleasure, is also a motivator of action.

    But I think it is quite obvious that most people are not motivated every waking moment by feelings of pain or a desire for pleasure. We aren't mindless beasts, bundles of primal desires and fears that live their lives on the whims of nature. We have the feeling of agency, and regardless of the truth of determinism, we do not feel as though we are being forced against our will to do something by some metaphysical causation. We do most things because we see a reason for doing these things, an overall purpose, goal, or intention.

    The source of these reasons is an innate need for a steady self-esteem. By self-esteem, I mean the feeling that one is somehow significant, valuable, worthy, or important. Self-esteem drives our desire for new stuff - we don't get new fancy cars because the cars somehow bring sensual pleasure to us. We get these new fancy cars because they are a status symbol - an icon of our own accomplishments.

    Great works of art, literature, science, and philosophy stem from not only our creativity and curiosity but from a need to prove oneself as a worthy individual. Schopenhauer, for example, would isolate himself from the majority of society (out of disgust) but nevertheless perused newspapers for any mention of his name and his works. And Camus (and others) recognized that if the universe is unable to provide a sufficient ground for our self-esteem, self-esteem would have to be based on the individual himself in a radical expression of rebellion.

    Unrestricted capitalism is a manifestation gone wild of this need for self-esteem. The worship of those who have managed to succeed in the merciless system are icons for our own desires for greatness to latch on to. Money, power, bitches, cars, yachts, private jets, mansions - these are all manifestations of a person's self-esteem and their denial of death.

    Eudaimonic episodes are in fact instances in which the universe seems to fall into place perfectly around the individual. The individual feels empowered, limitless, invincible.

    The need for self-esteem also explains why humans so often deceive not only other people but themselves. Of course, the religious will disagree with me on this, but religion from a secular perspective would come across as a need to reassure the ego that death is not the final act of life. For death is the ultimate threat to the ego, and a threat to the ego means a chink in the armor of its self-esteem. This also explains why so many people are unwilling to be honest about their existential situation - it threatens the bubble they have created, the safety net in which their own self-esteem can be cultivated like a psychological greenhouse.

    I doubt any amount of extended pain will be enough to force someone to question their own existence - so long as they have an adequate self-esteem. The woman suffering from terminal breast cancer can nevertheless be proactive, social, and exciting so long as she maintains her self-validation. Without this self-validation, she likely would succumb to feelings of hopelessness and despair when she views her own body attacking itself. The minimum-wage worker barely making it through paycheck to paycheck can nevertheless deceive himself that he is living a decent lifestyle by cherishing the small pleasures as the fruits of his labor, or by comparing himself to those who are even worse.

    Because of this, self-esteem is not only the primary source of human action (and therefore the primary reason to continue to live), but also the primary source of quelling anxiety. For the most supreme acts of self-validation and higher-level pleasures are also the most efficient at distracting us from our condition.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    But why do people want to feel worthy or significant?
  • BC
    13.5k
    It seems like this all boils down to a search for pleasure (and the concomitant avoidance of discomfort)). Much of life is spent maintaining homeostasis: balancing our basal condition and experiencing neither pleasure nor discomfort.

    I'm definitely not knocking pleasure as a powerful motivator. Pleasure like all desirable commodities, is perpetually in short supply. We may be acting to gain pleasure, but it is never a sure-fire thing. A good share of the time we do not get pleasure at all and instead get heaps of cold, wet discomfort.

    Self-esteem, executive agency, praise, positive interactions, etc. -- all these things are pleasurable. It feels good to see one's person as accomplished and complement. It feels good to hear people say nice things--praise, congratulations, etc. And, you know, it isn't just us. One doesn't have to reward one's dog with a hunk of meat. Intangible verbal praise, pats, and strokes have the same effect. Dog's like praise. It makes them feel good. They will work for "good dog". (I don't know, they might have some idea what "good dog" means, but mostly it's the tone, the body language. That isn't to say a dog will misinterpret the hunk of meat or (more likely) piece of milk bone or something. They entirely understand reward.)

    Pleasure may be sort of elemental -- it's an all-purpose good feeling. If "pleasure is a unitary feeling" there are many and diverse ways to get to pleasure. Sex, winning at cards, finding $10 on the street, somebody telling you that you look very handsome, a perfect peach, a fine beer, etc. etc. There are lots of ways to get to pleasure, but let's face it, not that many things are trying to make us feel good. Like I said, pleasures are hard to get.
  • _db
    3.6k
    But why do people want to feel worthy or significant?csalisbury

    Because they are people, capable of introspection and who have a distinct sense that they are finite beings in an infinite world. Those capabilities threaten the survival of the person, who is one organism in a long chain of organisms, all who have survived by having advantageous traits, some of them behavioral. Because these capabilities allow the organism to see the world as it actually is, the human comes to understand his own impending death - an unacceptable conclusion - and must harness these same capabilities to create a cozy psychological shelter away from this threat.

    In other words, people desire to feel worthy and significant because it staves off the idea of death. If an organism did not fear death, it would not survive very long. Culture arises in human society, which is a perpetual drunken haze sublimating this global fear into sects that people can identify with and extend their existences to.
  • _db
    3.6k
    Self-esteem, executive agency, praise, positive interactions, etc. -- all these things are pleasurable.Bitter Crank

    I will distinguish between the sensual pleasures and the higher-order pleasures. Sensual pleasures are like sugar, sex, a massage, etc. Higher-order pleasures often contain sensual pleasures but are distinct from them. These higher-order pleasures are dependent upon one's self-esteem.
  • Erik
    605
    darthbarracuda,

    Overall I agree with much of what you've written, but I think there may be other motivating forces than those you mentioned. For example, self-esteem could be the byproduct of a noble and generous disposition, and may not necessarily be founded upon insecurities. Believe it or not, some people find purpose in contributing to the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of others, and are not in the least inspired by the type of material goods and status symbols that you rightly discern as the prime motivating force behind much individual action.

    Not to broaden the topic, but I think looking at possible counter-examples and exceptions to our own perspective may be a good thing. Perhaps the complexity and variety and ambiguity of life - especially when it concerns something as uncanny as human existence - could be even more terrifying than the eventual death of a (encapsulated and stable) self that never really existed as anything but a fiction in the first place.

    Not trying to be antagonistic or combative here, but do you think it's possible that you've succumbed to a sort of narrow, all-encompassing dogmatism whose primary motivation is the boosting of your own self-esteem? Hey, it feels good to think we're more knowledgeable or wise or enlightened than the gullible masses, that we're brave enough to handle the Truth while they persist in cowardly illusions. This may be just one more fiction. Just a thought.
  • Deleteduserrc
    2.8k
    [the human] must harness these same capabilities to create a cozy psychological shelter away from this threat. — Darth
    I more or less agree with this (I don't think it all comes down to death though. I think shame and guilt do yeoman's work as well. I'm also a bit wary of 'cozy' since some people appear to find adequate shelter only in the expansive) But doesn't it seem, then, like self-esteem is simply a means to this end? It seems like shelter(space/home/sphere)-making is the primary source of human activity and self-esteem is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of shelter-making.
  • BC
    13.5k
    Organisms are systems. Higher organisms are more complicated systems.

    Maintaining homeostasis (involving hunger, thirst, oxygen saturation, sleep, excretion, etc.) may involve "pleasure" but mostly it results in relief or deficit reduction. Beyond biological homeostasis (a system) are more systems: personal, cultural, interpersonal, etc. moving on to multi-systemic interactions. Life is very complicated.

    Reducing life's multi-systemic interactions to ONE thing almost always results in distorted concepts. The fact that works against ONE cause is that all the sub-systems in a multi-systemic world are always operating at changing volumes. A multi-degreed friend (BA, MDIV, MSW) took early retirement and has decided to become a bicycle mechanic. It's a new, quite different, aspiration for this high-achieving fellow.

    Self-esteem is, absolutely, a component of the multi-systemic human existence; but so is cognitive harmony, confidence, strong emotions (love, hate, rage, jealousy, etc), striving, and so on. Fear of death? At times, sure. But everybody thinks that teenagers consider themselves immortal, and old people are quite often ready to die. Very sick younger people also get on friendlier terms with death.

    The complexity of multi-systemic existence doesn't rule out readily detectible patterns. Self-esteem is visible as a clear factor. We want to feel good about ourselves (which doesn't mean we are successful, of course.) We want outward manifestations of achievement: nice stuff. That doesn't mean we will get it, or that it will be "nice enough" to impress lots of people. We spend some time striving to get goodies, such as we can obtain, whether it is good for us or not.

    "whether it is good for us or not" brings up another facet of multi-systemic existence: contradictory behavior. Sometimes we deliberately do things that run counter to what would seem to be the obviously appropriate behavior.
  • Hoo
    415
    Hi, darthbarracuda. Your post reminds me of a theme which (as Hoo on PF) I've written on many times. I tend to speak of "status" and "ego-ideal" rather than self-esteem, but this simply my attempt to zero on on the self-esteem structure. Roughly speaking, I think we always already have at least a rough notion of the heroic or noble or worth human. The more we resemble that notion, the greater the narcissistic pleasure involved. What fascinates me is the mutability of the ego-ideal. If we associate any given (usually intellectual) ego-ideal with a normalization of discourse (identification with science or religion for instance), then a shift in the ego-ideal can also shift our truth criterion. A simple example is "I believe because it is absurd." Another is "foolishness to the Greeks."

    Henry Flynt wrote that the only real metalanguage is ordinary language (a hint in the right direction.) I'd call this genuine meta-language "rhetoric." To fix a discourse's rules, we need to work from the outside. And that's how ego-ideals are edited. Rhetoric pries at the metaphorical or irrational core of an finally rhetoric or irrational "rationality."
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