HIGH SELF-ESTEEM vs. LOW SELF-ESTEEM

 

I met an experimental psychologist on the train to Princeton. We eventually touched on the question of what humans need to thrive.

Of course, everyone has a different take on the subject. Some propose that we need high self-esteem, while others propose the opposite – a low self-esteem. I know that this sounds strange, so let me try to explain the rationale of the latter group.

The proponents of a low self-esteem do not call it “low self-esteem,” but that’s what it is. It involves the denial of freewill and moral accountability. They believe that we are just a sophisticated biochemical machine. As such, all of our thinking and deciding is pre-determined by the laws of chemistry and biology. Consequently, everything that we think has already been determined by physical forces. Therefore, there exists absolutely no basis for free choice or even thinking.

How can such a view of humanity be desirable? Isn’t it demeaning to think that we are nothing more than a wet machine, a mere result of chemical-electrical reactions? Psychologist James Hillman warns against adopting a deterministic view of ourselves:

·       “We dull our lives by the way we conceive then…By accepting the idea that I am the effect of…hereditary and social forces, I reduce myself to a result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents.” (“The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling,” Random House, 6)

Why then would some psychologists promote such a demeaning self-image? In the short run, it does relieve shame and guilt. How? Well, if the client is convinced that he couldn’t have acted in a way contrary to his biological programming, then there is no real basis for shame and guilt. These feelings are reduced to inappropriate reactions and can be ignored.

An atheist friend had confided that he adopted this self-identity at an early age, and this enabled him to reject these very bothersome feelings. Also, if we believe that we couldn’t have acted otherwise, this view enables us to dismiss feelings of regret and other burdensome feelings. It reduces life to this attitude, “I am just along for the ride. What will be, will be.”

Well, what’s the matter with this comfortable ride? Much! First of all, it contradicts our experience and perceptions that we do have freewill and could have behaved otherwise. To doubt something as basic as our experience of making free choices, is also to doubt all of our perceptions about self. It is also to fail to make sense of this world, where we see that freewill is a relative thing. Some have less freewill than others – the heroin addict and the comatose. However, from the perspective of the above materialistic denial of all freewill, there is no way that we can say that some are more free than others.

For another thing, if we cannot act otherwise, then punishment is no longer justified. Why not? There is no longer any basis for guilt and culpability.

Lastly, if we cannot make changes, why try? Why attempt to learn, improve our job performance, or confront relational problems? Why not take the easy way out – denial and avoidance of anything uncomfortable? In short, this self-concept represents a tragic denial of reality.

High Self-Esteem (HSE): Well, if this form of low self-esteem is a dead end, does this mean that we should aim towards inflating our self-esteem, believing, “I can do it.”

This is the “normal” and more common strategy. HSE gives us a confidence and enables us to get out of bed in the morning and to proactively face life. This strategy had enabled me to face threats. I told myself that nothing could stop me and that I could endure anything that life would throw at me, and it worked, at least until I faced some threats that were bigger than me.

Western society had made HSE into a cult, claiming that it could heal all of our hurts and failures. However, this faith hasn’t been able to withstand scrutiny.  Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

• For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it.

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

• There are now ample data on our population showing that, if anything, Americans tend to overrate and overvalue ourselves. In plain terms, the average American thinks he’s above average. Even the categories of people about whom our society is most concerned do not show any broad deficiency in self esteem. African Americans, for example, routinely score higher on self-esteem measures than do European-Americans.

HSE also represents a flight from reality into what feels good for the time being. However, how can it be a source of problems? In order to manage our lives effectively, we must first understand our lives and their long-term needs. However, HSE represents a rejection of understanding and reality in favor of short-term comfortable feelings.

For one thing, building HSE is always comparative. It is not enough to improve our performance. Instead, HSE requires that we see ourselves as superior. I had taken a test that I feared I had bombed. However, I delighted to find out that I had been given an “A,” until I found that most of the class had received an “A+.” Consequently, this need for HSE brings us into harmful competition with others.

HSE is also a refusal to engage the truth about ourselves. It refuses to look at our painful aspects. As a result, HSE increasingly cannot take criticism and needful self-examination.

HSE spells death to relationships where humility and forgiveness are key. Those afflicted with HSE are increasingly unable to apologize, because they see no need to apologize. Why not? They are assured that it is the other person’s fault.

HSE is seldom grateful for their partner. Why not? They are convinced that they deserve better. As I have learned to confront some ugly truths about myself, the more grateful I became for my wife who would love and tolerate me. However, before I couldn’t and wouldn’t see this. It was just too demeaning.

Both of these options are reality denying. They serve as a comforting addiction, but we find that we need increasingly high doses of this HSE drug. The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller had been asked, “How much more money do you need to be happy?” His answer – “Always a little bit more.”

Is there a third reality-affirming alternative? As Jesus had taught, our normal response is denial:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

We avoid discomfort and run from the painful truths about ourselves. Is there anything that can break this cycle to enable us to live in the truth and yet not be crushed by it?

We need confidence and hope. However, I have found that Christ has provided for my needs. How? He has loved, assured, and forgiven me to the extent that I can now face my failings confidently and healingIy. Consequently, I no longer need to lie to myself and rely on HSE. I now have Him to rely upon.

And this self-image is ennobling. There is no greater privilege than to know that I am serving the source of all life, truth, and love.

My psychologist acquaintance was listening. I pray that this will become a seed that will germinate.

Taking this case a step further – If psychologists and other professionals are really concerned about human thriving, they have a responsibility to consider Christ, the ultimate among change-Agents.

DOES THE BELIEF THAT WE ARE ALL ONE PRODUCE COMPASSION?

 The woman confidently informed us that the answer to our present lack of compassion is that we are ignorant of the fact that we are all One. This is a common notion among monists, those who believe that we are all One (God) without distinction

Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) is a worldwide spiritual organization founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. It had successfully repackaged monism (pantheism) for Western consumption as natural and scientific. Consequently, SRF’s statement of purpose alluringly reads:

• To disseminate among the nations a knowledge of definite scientific techniques for attaining direct personal experience of God.

• To teach that the purpose of life is the evolution, through self-effort of man's limited mortal consciousness into God Consciousness; and to this end to establish Self-Realization Fellowship temples for God-communion throughout the world, and to encourage the establishment of individual temples of God in the homes and in the hearts of men.

• To reveal the complete harmony and basic oneness of original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ and original Yoga as taught by Bhagavan Krishna; and to show that these principles of truth are the common scientific foundation of all true religions. http://www.yogananda-srf.org/

Of course, “science” is not consistent with monistic Hinduism and Buddhism, which denies the reality of the physical world. Rather, the physical world and its dualistic thinking (thinking in terms of me and them) is all part of the illusion. Therefore, to be invested in understanding the physical world is to be invested in a consuming illusion, which produces ignorance.

In “The King of Knowledge,” a very literalistic commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Prabhupada, the late head of the Hare Krishna Vishnavite sect of Hinduism characteristically wrote that sex must be minimized:

• “Sex pleasure binds us to this material world…You can get yourself married and live peaceably with one woman, but the wife should not be used as a machine for sexual gratification. Sex should be restricted to once a month and only for the propagation of children.”

There is little room for compassion and mercy, since these too bind us to the illusion of other distinct people. Therefore, Prabhupada wrote:

• “The hospital making business is being conducted by the government; it is the duty of a disciple to make hospitals whereby people can actually get rid of their material bodies, not patch them up. But for want of knowing what real spiritual activity is, we take up material activities.”

Why this detachment from the physical world? To minimize any attachment to it! What then could be the monistic justification for science? If the physical world is illusory, then any involvement in it would contribute to the influence of the illusion.

Even helping someone to come to “awareness” to “get rid of their material bodies” is dualistic and is based on the “illusion” that there are separate beings who need to come to “awareness.” Some have it and some don’t (dualism). However, this contradicts the notion that all is God and all is One.

It is impossible to live in a consistent manner with the idea that the entire physical world is not real. Not only does it undermine any basis for compassion, but also any activity in the physical world.

Oddly, even Yogananda–-the “champion” of science—believed that the physical world is make-believe. According to him, the pantheistic God created this world of illusion for entertainment:

• Look upon life as a movie, and then you will know why God created it. Our problem is that we forget to see it as God’s entertainment. ....Then this cosmic movie, with its horrors of disease and poverty and atomic bombs, will appear to us only as real as the anomalies we experience in a movie house. When we have finished seeing the motion picture, we know that nobody was killed; nobody was suffering.

If our involvement in this physical world is no more than watching a movie in which “nobody was killed; nobody was suffering,” then any act of compassion to alleviate suffering would be equivalent to trying to rescue the damsel-in-distress in the movies. Instead, she is only there for our entertainment. Likewise, our families and neighbors are no more than entertainment. They are not real. Therefore, any act of compassion towards them is also unreal and even foolhardy.
 

For Yogananda, ignorance is a matter of seeing others as separate from ourselves:

• “Ignorance, which produces the idea of separate existence of self...is the source of Ego, the son of man.”

• “When the developments of ignorance are stopped, man gradually comprehends the true character of this creation of Darkness, Maya, as a mere play of ideas of the Supreme Nature on His own Self, the only Real Substance.”

• “Just as there appear many images of the one sun, when reflected in a number of vessels full of water, so is mankind apparently divided into many souls, occupying these bodily and mental vehicles, and thus outwardly separated from the one universal Spirit. In reality, God and man are one, and the separation is only apparent.”

If the “separation [among people] is only apparent,” then giving a cup of water to the thirsty is an act of ignorance. In contrast, coming to the awareness that there is only One Being or Reality is both salvation and nirvana:

·       “Man is thus saved when he sheds his ignorance of his divine identity and attains Christ consciousness. Salvation equals self-realization.”

·       Self-realization is the knowing on all levels of our being — body, mind, and soul — that we are now in possession of Divinity and therefore need not pray that it come to us; that we are not merely near God at all times but that His omnipresence is our omnipresence; and that He is just as much our essential life now as He ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing.

However, salvation for the SRF and other monists is detachment from the world of illusion. In “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert M. Pirsig’s main character, Phaedrus, studying at Benares Hindu University and spiritually searching, asks a question that changes his life:

• But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bomb that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That ended the exchange… He left the classroom, left India and gave up.

Phaedrus could not deny the great tragedy. In contrast to this understanding of life as illusion, “Jesus wept” in the midst of human suffering:

• When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him [their dead brother Lazarus]?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. (John 11:33-35; ESV)

How had monism affected its place of birth – India? This might tell us a lot about how it might affect our own lives. In “The Book that Made your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization” Indian scholar and Christian convert, Vishal Mangalwadi, wrote about the negative effect of Hinduism on India:

• Our monks did not develop technical aids to improve their eyesight. They took pride in closing even perfectly good eyes in meditation. (108)

If this material world is illusory, then compassion, work and technological advancement are counter-productive. However, it was technology - and theology that inspired it - that had saved the West. Mangalwadi gives several examples:

• The peasants’ humble wheeled plow generated the economic strength that helped save Europe from colonization by Islam. During the Middle Ages, Islamic forces were able to invade Europe almost at will. Muslims conquered southern Spain and Portugal and invaded France in the eighth century. In the ninth century, they conquered Sicily and invaded Italy, sacking Ostia and Rome in 846. By 1237, they had begun to conquer Russia. Constantinople was captured in 1453, and the battles of 1526 in Hungary and 1529 in Vienna suggested that it was merely a matter of time before the mullahs, caliphs, and sheikhs would rule cities like Rome, Vienna, and Florence. Equipped with a coulter, a horizontal share, and a moldboard, Europe’s new plow increased productivity by tilling rich, heavy, and badly drained river-bottom soil…The net result was the gradual elimination of starvation, the improved health of the people, and a strengthening of the economic foundations of the West relative to Islam. (101-102)

Monism also turns its eyes away from evil and corruption as illusory. Mangalwadi provides an illuminating example from his own country. In 1631, the monsoon failed to come. Consequently, there was a great famine. A British traveler relates the devastation he saw:

• From Surat to this place all the highway was stowed with dead people, our noses never free from the stink of them…women were seen to roast their children…a man or a woman no sooner dead but they were cut in pieces to be eaten. (112)

Mangalwadi reasons:

• My people did not starve because they were stupid, lazy, or unproductive. Instead, immorality killed them! They were taxed 80% of their produce. This left them with little and nothing to store for an emergency. The only way for the people to have any money was to join their exploiters.

Monism failed to identify evil and, consequently, was unable to confront it. Those who want to consider monism as the road to compassion must take a hard look at its historical record and not just what is currently trending in the West.

THE QUESTION OF HUMAN THRIVING

If we are really interested in the question of human prospering, we should also be interested in the question of faith in God. Here are some thoughts about things identified for human prospering:

1.     GRATITUDE/THANKFULNESS – Only the promise of an afterlife can make us feel grateful in a life of cancer, rejection, and depression. Besides, how can we be grateful if humans have hurt us so?

2.     MORALITY – While living morally is related to well-being, we will not be able to get excited about a morality that is relative, man-created, and always evolving.

3.     FORGIVENESS – How can we rationally be forgiving to someone who has destroyed our family, if life ends with death?

4.     INTEGRITY – Why should we live with integrity if morality is just relative? Instead, rational pragmatic considerations would argue in favor of compromise.

5.     OTHER-CENTEREDNESS – We cannot be truly and coherently other-centered if our rationale is based on pragmatic returns. Instead, other-centeredness becomes more coherent when it results from faith that God has been other-centered towards us.

Rather than continuing on with this list, let’s take a look at what surveys have revealed about human thriving. Professor of philosophy, Michael Rota, has written:

Harvard’s Robert Putnam…and Chaeyoon Lim note that “the association between religion [it is assumed that the vast majority of subjects surveyed are Christian] and subjective well-being is substantial”:

·       “28:2 percent of people who attend a service weekly are predicted to be ‘extremely satisfied’ with their lives, compared with only 19.6 percent of those who never attend services. This result is roughly comparable to the difference between someone in ‘good’ health and another in ‘very good’ health.” (Christianity Today, May 2016)

These findings are reflective of many similar studies. In “God: The Evidence,” former atheist, Patrick Gynn, investigated many lines of evidence in favor of the notion of Christian prospering. As a result, he reports having become a Christian.

Why don’t people consider God? Many have confessed that they don’t want to consider Him:

• We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. (Lewontin, Richard, Review of The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. In New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997.)

• Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. (Todd, Scott C., "A View from Kansas on the Evolution Debates," Nature (vol. 401. September 30, 1999), p. 423.)

• We cannot identify ancestors or "missing links," and we cannot devise testable theories to explain how particular episodes of evolution came about. Gee is adamant that all the popular stories about how the first amphibians conquered the dry land, how the birds developed wings and feathers for flying, how the dinosaurs went extinct, and how humans evolved from apes are just products of our imagination, driven by prejudices and preconceptions. (Bowler, Peter J., Review of In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee (Free Press, 1999, American Scientist; vol. 88, March/April 2000, p. 169.)

Ethics, Equality, and Human Exceptionalism

It seems that the success of the West has depended on the presupposition of human exceptionalism and human equality. However, this idea is now under serious attack. We are having difficulty defending it against numerous vigorous challenges. For instance:

• What makes humans exceptional? Why shouldn’t we kill and eat humans as we do chickens and pigs? 

Some will argue that we are more valuable than chickens, but to whom? Certainly we are not more valuable to other chickens. Who then can authoritatively assign relative value? Is our value then determined by other humans? Why?

Besides, do we want our value to be culturally or governmentally determined? Instead, we would prefer that our value be based on an objective intrinsic basis – on who we are as human beings rather than chickens.

However, this opens the door to another problem. What intrinsically makes us more valued? Some will argue that we are more intelligent, sensitive, or creative. Well, this is true. However, why should our superiority over the chicken make us more valuable or important? Also, the chicken can do things that we can’t do. She can lay eggs and raise many more young than we can. They are also fearless mothers!

Besides, this kind of reasoning opens the door to many ethical problems. If intelligence makes us more valuable and extends to us more legal protections and rights, then we should be placing greater value on those who are more intelligent, educated, and sensitive, right? Consequently, we would also have to degrade the value of the less intelligent – children, the mentally ill, uneducated, and the elderly. Therefore, to assign value based on human characteristics is to undermine the concept of equality.

Also, if our legal system is to operate in a manner consistent with this criterion of intelligence, then it should extend more rights and protections to the intelligent. Clearly, this kind of thinking will undermine the fabric of our society.

Some postmodernists avoids this problem by asserting that all life is of equal value. However, this assertion is loaded with its own set of problems:

1. What endows life with value? Is this no more than an arbitrary assertion?

2. How can any legal system accommodate the need to criminalize human murder along with cockroach murder? It would seem that the legal system would crash under the weight of its broadened responsibilities.

3. Such a morality would not be humanly livable. It would mean that we couldn’t swat mosquitoes, exterminate termites, and even take anti-biotics. 

Just as problematic as these three problems is the problem of “equal value.” Where does this notion of equality come from? Instead, we observe inequality wherever we look. There is nothing equal between a termite and a cow. They are different in every respect. Upon what then can equality be based?

Even in regards to humanity, we observe little in the way of equality. Some are old, others young. Some are productive, others not. Some contribute to the welfare of society; others do not. 

Nevertheless, we intuitively know that what we value in the West cannot be preserved without the belief articulated in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” – an ascertain that transcends the observable and must find its justification in another realm where true equality exists.

What is the basis for equality? The Declaration claims that equality is found in the mind of an immutable God:

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Perhaps “unalienable” human Rights” are not “self-evident.” However, what is evident is that these rights cannot be founded on human decisions. Such decisions are always in flux. If the government grants a human right, the government can also rescind that right. However, if it depends on God, then these rights are “unalienable” and unchangeable.

Are we truly more valued than the sparrow before God? Yes, according to Jesus:

• “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of MORE VALUE THAN MANY SPARROWS.” (Matthew 10:29-31)  

Why? We alone are created in the likeness of God Himself:

• Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)

Consequently, once we reject God, we reject the only rational and sufficient basis for human equality. God help us!