The reasons you'd care about those sorts of things don't usually have anything to do with posting on message boards. They usually have to do with whether you can feed and clothe and house yourself, whether you can find companionship including romantic companionship, whether you can reach any material goals you might have (including things like career, hobby, travel etc. goals) and so on.

However, given that people have insatiable wants and desires, I find it doubtful that people will ever attain a lasting and enduring sense of high self-esteem. Meaning that 'self-esteem' is a rabbit one can chase after; but, never really attain it. — Question

I'm usually not inclined to quote spiritual slogans but how about: "A willingness to fail well" ?

If self esteem is related to competence, is there still a willingness to test that competence with the risk of finding the limit and failing? Failure can provide valuable learning opportunity yet it can also wreak havoc on self-esteem. From what I've gathered it's unavoidable to judge one's own status physically (we are constantly updated about the status of our bodies and if there's anything amiss we're bound to respond and try and move toward homoeostasis) and I would not suppose there's no mental equivalent of such a mechanism (including a need to "feed" to keep things working).

Though homoeostasis can be seen as something which has a form of permeance, it requires effort to keep it up. Why would you assume a certain level of self-esteem can be attained after which there's nothing to accomplish? That implicitly suggests a desire for complete mastery, I would not see such a desire as unhealthy yet assuming there can be some sort of 100% accomplishment where a failure to attain it affects self-esteem in a negative way 'might' be unhealthy / unreasonable.

So whereas I would agree with "confidence in competence", I'm inclined to add a desire for increasing competence. It's usually not so much failure which can wreak havoc with our self-esteem (we'd get depressed just learning something new) but rather a self observed lack of upwards potential.

... whether you can reach any material goals you might have (including things like career, hobby, travel etc. goals) and so on. — Terrapin Station

Yes, I probably have lots of goals, one of the least of which is to compose posts. It was an example. But I don't see why I have to be thinking about myself all the time and whether I am high or low on the esteem measure. Surely, I just have to do whatever is required to achieve the goal in question, buy a plane ticket, apply for a job, or whatever. Telling myself I'm a cool dude only helps if there is another voice, BC's or my own, telling me I'm obtuse or incompetent or something that might make me give up my goal without doing the necessary.

But I don't see why I have to be thinking about myself all the time and whether I am high or low on the esteem measure. — unenlightened

Yeah, I wouldn't know that either. We'd probably need to ask someone who claimed something like that.

Re the rest of your comment, what I was getting at was that one would care if one had those qualities (obtuse, etc.) when one can't feed, house, etc. oneself. In that situation, one needs to figure out what the problem is.

Or more generally: one would (or should) care about possible flaws, negative assessments etc., at least in the eyes of other people, when one can not achieve the things that one wants to achieve, and that plenty of other people are able to achieve, including basics like acquiring food, acquiring and maintaining shelter, etc.

To understand one's capabilities and limitations is not a matter of self-esteem.

Perhaps I can't feed myself because I have lost the use of my limbs, or fallen down a well, or run out of money. It would certainly be as well to be aware of such things, but what place has self-esteem in this?

To understand one's capabilities and limitations is not a matter of self-esteem. — unenlightened

Re this tangential conversation (at least it's tangential in my view), I was answering this question:

"why should I care whether I am obtuse or acute, blunt or sharp, coarse or fine?"

That's all I was doing. I didn't say anything whatsoever about self-esteem in my answer. I was only answering that question.

I gave an answer, a set of conditions, why one should care (when it's the case that one is seen as obtuse, blunt, etc.).

There are certainly other reasons that one can have problems with feeding oneself, etc. However, what I said was "one needs to figure out what the problem is," The problem could be any manner of facts. And one set of possibilities would be when other people feel that one is obtuse, etc. And the conditions I described are conditions where one would or should care that other people make those sorts of assessments. I said nothing like, "These conditions imply that there is that sort of problem."

Well of course, I myself see myself as acute, sharp and fine, 8-) but my own condition is entirely beside the point, except just now to illustrate how put-downs tend to provoke put-ups. But I repeat, personally, since you make it so, why should I care whether I am obtuse or acute, blunt or sharp, coarse or fine? How does this good feeling or bad feeling enable or prevent me from posting in whatever manner I post? — unenlightened

Note, I said your response seemed obtuse, blunt, and coarse, (and surprisingly so) not that you are personally obtuse, blunt, or coarse.

As a concept, self-esteem is having its day. According to Google Ngram, the use of the term was flat and sparse between 1800 and 1940https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=self+esteem&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cself%20esteem%3B%2Cc0, *** at which point it began its rapid ascent.

Some people dislike the term--midwestern suburban political and religious conservatives, for instance. There was a very negative reaction when some state education departments added a self-esteem promoting component to the curriculum. I am not suggesting that you are part of that cohort. You have your own reasons for disliking the term/concept. (It is a guess, of course, that you dislike the term. Maybe you love it.)

Contemporary mental health thinking holds that it is a good thing if people think well of themselves, whether they are obtuse or acute, blunt or sharp, coarse or fine. (There are limits, however. The self-confidence, self-esteem, and auto-biographical praiseworthiness of a Donald Trump locates him in the category of puffed-up narcissist.)

Self esteem is part of a larger picture of what healthy personhood can be. Self-confidence, self-assurance, self-respect, dignity, morale, self regard, self-satisfaction, and so on, are related terms. One word list has it that humility, modesty, and meekness are it's opposites, which is certainly debatable. Self-loathing, self-abnegation, and self-destruction are the well that one falls into when self-esteem runs out.


*** Here's an sample of how Google Ngram gets its information:

‎Phrenology: Or The Doctrine of the Mental Phenomena, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim - 1833.

"Organ of Self-esteem. Self-esteem is one of the faculties generally attributed to external circumstances ; but its activity is so very great and universal, that I am astonished it has not been at all times considered as a special feeling."

If you go to the site you can be linked to the books from which texts are taken and read pages...

Contemporary mental health thinking holds... — Bitter Crank

It's time contemporary mental health thinking let go.

The self-confidence, self-esteem, and auto-biographical praiseworthiness of a Donald Trump locates him in the category of puffed-up narcissist. — Bitter Crank

Yes, when one looks at the extreme, one can see clearly that self-esteem is a debilitating distortion of self-awareness - a hallucinatory defence against bullying. Bullying is endemic in society to such an extent that the defence becomes normal and psychologically necessary, at least to the poor fucked up shrinks of the world.

Here is my thesis again. One only needs to big oneself up if one has been belittled. Self esteem has no other function, and I challenge anyone again to provide another credible function than as a defence.

You love your neighbor as you love yourself.

You love your neighbor as you love yourself. — Mongrel

Well that's interesting. I thought that was an injunction rather than a method. So is your claim that one cannot love another without first thinking one is lovely? I cannot see why that must be so, can you explain?

We're all sinners. Nobody's perfect. If you don't accept that about yourself, you won't accept it in others.

You are incredibly preachy btw. Bullied were you?

Fuckin ell. , get a grip. You're the one quoting Jesus and talking about sin. Preachy is yourself, not me.

So now you're saying that accepting that we're all sinners is self-esteem or what the fuck? And yes I was both bullied and a bully, and I still am. So what does that reveal about anything?

Self love requires self acceptance.

The confidence you demonstrate shows decent self estimation. Possibly it's a defense. The oyster is defending itself when it makes the pearl.

Self love requires self acceptance. — Mongrel

Yes, but not particularly self-esteem.

The esteem in which I hold myself is not actually the topic, nor even whether it is justified or unjustified. But your suggestion that self esteem is a defence is exactly my own contention. Sigh.

And on top of that, the question you're asking is really about the value of life.

Not going to bother explaining why...not to your know it all self anyway. :p

What does one say to the all powerful internal critic, who more often than not abuses you and your confidence level to cope with tasks?

Is it a result of having a low sense of self-esteem?

How does one make it shut up and be left alone?

Step 1. Acknowledge that your inner critic is very negative and won't shut up. Expect to hear from it regularly. One of the objectives of meditation practice is to learn to let mental chatter float by without responding to it. I'm not sure you can just make it shut up. Hence, #2...

Step 2. Hire another internal critic to say positive things about you. That's right, imagine it. Imagine your positive minded critic saying good things about you. Hear it say those positive things. You say those positive expressions to yourself out loud.

Not being perfect isn't a disaster. Nobody is perfect.

Is the negative yammering in your head a result of low self-esteem? Oh, maybe. It could be. Unenlightened doesn't think so, but then he doesn't get it. It could also be a habit of mind to think poorly of your self. (so, stop that. Start thinking better of yourself.) It could be an insufficiency of pleasurable neurotransmitters in your brain's synapses. Not enough serotonin, maybe.

If it is a deficiency of serotonin, maybe an antidepressant that boosts serotonin levels would help. The reason for seeing a psychiatrist, and not a GP, about depression is that psychiatrists often have more experience with prescribing, and get better results. But... not always.

Are you involved in positive social activity with other people? Sometimes good company can be an effective anti-depressant, in the short run, at least.

Good company helps, bad company makes things worse. It's the same with food: Good food is better than bad food.

So, what you're essentially saying that much like a Chinese finger trap, the harder you fight with this ever observant and infallible God from the Old Testament you ought to just ignore what it is saying, yes? But, what happens when you ignore it? Job from the Bible comes to my mind, how exactly, I'm not so sure.

While reading into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I learned that some psychologists buy into this "inherently defective" line of thought presented by the patient. Freud said something about the matter that the depressed individual views the world correctly or in the most realistic fashion.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is something that I return to when I associate my emotions with distorted beliefs. What is confusing to me is the entire point of the book, which the author explains to be centered around building a strong self-esteem. Isn't this strange?

Maybe if you can't catch a rabbit, then try catching something slower.

I am happy and I have a happy cat. We live a happy life together. I am on ocassion aware and a little sad that there are unhappy people and unhappy cats in the world and how difficult it would be to make them happy. So I accept a little responsibility not to give to many treats, to keep a tidy house (etc..), to stroke and talk to the cat a few times a day etc.. and carry on with my happy life.

Is the negative yammering in your head a result of low self-esteem? Oh, maybe. It could be. Unenlightened doesn't think so, but then he doesn't get it. It could also be a habit of mind to think poorly of your self. (so, stop that. Start thinking better of yourself. — Bitter Crank

I am well aware that some people have these thoughts, that that they are bitter cranks or unenlightened or whatever. I have exactly been saying that it is these kinds of thoughts that lead one to want to raise one's self-esteem by some method. But my advice is different.

My suggestion is not to be judgemental about how judgemental you are. Negative thoughts are the best kind of thoughts, or at least as good as positive ones. If one can notice that one is being critical of the critic, one might even find it amusing. At any rate the effort to negate one's negativity can be seen to merely support the internal conflict and division. The voice yammers so much because you are trying to argue with it, negate it and not listen to it.

So if your inner voice tells you you are a crap philosopher who has no insight and just likes to preach, accept the complaints, and explain that you will do your best to become a better philosopher as you go along, but that not philosophising at all will not improve matters. If you listen to your voices, they become closer to you and less antagonistic. Eventually they may become part of you. ;)

What does one say to the all powerful internal critic, who more often than not abuses you and your confidence level to cope with tasks? — Question

That's a good question that I can't really answer, because I basically have the opposite problem. I've never had much of an internal critic. I typically really like the stuff I create, for example. And that extends to me not being much of a negative critic of stuff that other people create, too. I'm like the anti-Sturgeon--I think that 90% of everything is pretty good. That also extends to other things. For example, I'm attracted to about 90% of the women in the world, I'd like to live in about 90% of the places I visit, etc. There are some things where I like a smaller percentage of stuff available--for example, I'm a bit pickier with food, but I just see some things as not for me. I don't see it as if there's something more generally wrong with whatever it is.

To consider self-esteem, one could first consider the very concept of "self".

Which brings to mind this quote from Dogen: “To study enlightenment is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and mind of others drop away. No trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly.”

This may seem all well and good for Zen masters or practicing Buddhists or maybe magickal wizards, but what practical use is that in real life? (one could ask). To continue the thoughts i wrote in the first response in this thread, any steps to re-balance the ego (that which is one's sense of self) will more than likely yield positive results. It is not an all-or-nothing affair where one is trying to lose, or worse yet "kill", the ego. Some gentle and gradual reducing may help, though. The ego can become inadvertently enlarged, much like our bodies or the pile of our possessions can. There seems to be something in the human mind that likes to grab and hold onto things to fill the void. This can be natural and healthy, like eating when hungry. But it quickly can go to extremes, that much seems self-evident. At least it relates to my experiences both past and present in attempting to find the balance points. When applied to the body, it can lead to a toxic obesity and ill health. With possessions, it may manifest as extreme hoarding.

"A ping pong ball on the ocean"...

But when it is the self itself trying to hyper-expand to fill the void and deal with a sense of emptiness, it is harder to deal with because it is not visible. Not visible, but existent nonetheless. A feeling of disconnection and isolation from other humans and the rest of the world is perhaps one of the most common feelings. (There have been several recent threads concerning this isolation and feeling of solipsism such as: http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/776/the-isolation-of-mind/p1 ). When one feels as separate, small and powerless as a ping pong ball floating on the ocean, it seems like we are battered about at the mercy of the wind and waves. The first inclination might be to do something like the expression "go big or go home". But if one completely identifies with the Isolation, and believes that they are totally separate from everything else, "going big" might just make the situation worse. Instead of being a "ping pong ball self" floating on the ocean, there is a "beach ball self" floating on the waves.

Well, the "beach ball self" is definitely bigger. Sometimes in certain circumstances bigger is better, but sometimes not. The reflexive habit to expand our identity while keeping the walls of that identity air-tight can lead to a ballooning effect. The more air pumped into a balloon, the larger it becomes. But the air pressure is also increased which may lead to a sense of tightening constriction. The larger an inflated balloon becomes, the thinner its skin is. This makes it more vulnerable to pinpricks and the like. A beach ball on the ocean may have lots of room to bob about. But imagine a room filled with many beach balls, all inflated to the max. They are "feeling" (so to speak) internally pressured from the air, and externally pressured from all the other beach balls pushing against their thin vulnerable surfaces. One can then imagine the sorts of dynamics and conflicts arising from this hypothetical situation. This describes in a very general way many of the interactions around us, imho.

Those who say that this situation is the way things are and is unavoidable, and it boils down to "survival of the fittest" are probably concerned with becoming the largest beach ball on the block, while trying to deflate their competition.

And there are those who know this dynamic exists, but are looking for other ways of existing. Those that look long enough might find something.

Thanks for your consideration of these ideas. Hope they are as helpful to read as they were for me to write. Any feedback is welcome.

The more air pumped into a balloon, the larger it becomes. But the air pressure is also increased which may lead to a sense of tightening constriction. — 0 thru 9

Actually, the air pressure is decreased as the balloon is inflated,because it is maintained by the skin, which becomes thinner. It's counter intuitive; more air ought to mean more pressure, but it doesn't because there even more expansion. I'm sure this must have revelatory significance for your metaphor, but I can't work it out so I have to confess to nit picking.

Not sure, that may indeed be the case. Lol! :D Was referring to something like a tire, how the pressure is measured in PSI. And how a more inflated tire will have a higher pounds per square inch than an underinflated tire, which seems like there's more pressure. Anyhow, you get the general point...

So, off the top of my head...

What good this internal nagging voice do a person any good?

"I'm bad at this."
"I don't understand it, therefore XYZ."
"I'm inherently flawed."

You get the idea?

I wonder, is this condition of yours a result of some sort of hyper-normalization of the (I'm assuming) 1st World around you? Not often being aware of crappy and ugly stuff probably keeps that same stuff out of mind. Maybe being more intimately aware of such things would lead to, if not a denial, then at least a decrease of good feeling about the things in the world?

Not often being aware of crappy and ugly stuff probably keeps that same stuff out of mind. — Zosito

I'm certainly aware of things that other people think are crappy/ugly/etc. I just don't agree that they're crappy/ugly (for a lot of things, at least). I have a different opinion of them. My tastes are different.

I should maybe add, in case it's not obvious, that I don't believe that there are correct or incorrect judgments about whether something is good/bad/beautiful/ugly/etc.

It is obvious, you've said it on multiple previous occasions, that you don't believe in there being truth or falsity in judgements concerning such things.

But, are you willing to admit the possibility of this being at least partly a result of your being sheltered from other, crappier, uglier, conditions of life? Perhaps being a victim of torture, rape or other forms of extreme suffering would kick start new considerations on moral realism?

Mm, maybe those were too extreme examples, but they get the point across. Much less intense instances of suffering are usually enough to change people's minds.

That sounds to me like you're saying that if one were to feel something strongly enough, one would necessarily come to the conclusion that it can't just be a way that one is feeling about whatever it is. (And then you're making the assumption that I don't feel that strongly about anything.)

I'm not sure why we'd think that one would necessarily come to a conclusion that just because one feels really strongly about something, it's not just a way that one feels.