Self-Esteem
Danah Boyd, the social researcher famous for her work on MySpace, has a new post up at apophenia about the book Generation Me, written by Jean Twenge. It’s along the lines of a follow-up to an earlier essay on narcissism and MySpace. Boyd seems to be going through some kind of crisis of conscience about her objects of study, including MySpace; that is, she is eager to separate the healthy, two-way interactions that take place through these sites, from the ravenous egotism (or “narcissism”) they sometimes reflect.
Her writing suggests that the media themselves are neutral. At the same time, she has taken a moral stance against pedagogical and parenting practices that try to improve self-esteem, on the grounds that these practices make adolescents (and young adults) pathologically incapable of dealing with frustration, accepting criticism, and coming to terms with the basic obligations — unfreedoms — of everyday life. Boyd also implies that young people who internalize “self-esteem” become numb to the needs of other people. She writes in her first post:
I am most certainly worried about the level of narcissism that exists today. I am worried by how we feed our children meritocratic myths and dreams of being anyone just so that current powers can maintain their supremacy at a direct cost to those who are supplying the dreams. I am worried that our “solutions” to the burst bubble are physically, psychologically, and culturally devastating, filled with hate and toxic waste. I am worried that Paris Hilton is a more meaningful role model to most American girls than Mother Theresa ever was. But I am not inherently worried about social network technology or video cameras or magazines. I’m worried by how society leverages different media to perpetuate disturbing ideals and pray on people’s desire for freedom and attention. Eliminating MySpace will not stop the narcissistic crisis that we’re facing; it will simply allow us to play ostrich as we continue to damage our children with unrealistic views of the world.
Then, in her second post, she turns to the (perhaps inevitable) subject of the shootings at Virginia Tech. She quotes Twenge:
Several studies have found that narcissists lash out aggressively when they are insulted or rejected. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenage gunmen at Columbine High School, made statements remarkably similar to items on the most popular narcissism questionnaire. On a videotape made before the shootings, Harris picked up a gun, made a shooting noise, and said “Isn’t it fun to get the respect we’re going to deserve?” (Chillingly similar to the narcissism item “I insist upon getting the respect that is due me.”) (Twenge 2006, 70-71)
To be honest, something inside of me goes cold at the thought of analyzing narcissism, particularly the narcissism of children, in this fashion. In order to understand how people, including young people, think of themselves, it is essential to separate self-approbation from power.
Self-approbation is a source of alienation, and eventually of misery. Esteem-based education teaches children to regard themselves from an outside perspective, and to do so with a frozen smile of approval. In fact, on top of this initial moment of self-justifying alienation, we have overlaid another imperative: if you don’t approve of who you are and what you choose, you will never succeed, because you won’t project confidence. So you have an obligation to yourself to approve of yourself, and thus to make others believe.
Power, by which I mean capacity, agency, and influence, is a different story. It is essential. The absence of it is suffocating. If I am teaching a student to write, I do so under the guiding assumptions that they have the capacity to improve their writing, and that their writing will matter at some point in the future. It may not matter in the same way for each student, and I don’t expect that any student will become famous. But I expect that what they have to say will eventually matter to someone.
When we think of the difference between Paris Hilton and Mother Teresa, compared in the first quote above, it is easy to turn them into symbols of selfish and selfless behavior, respectively. For me, the difference between them is a matter of principle, because both are powerful. Mother Teresa believed in something, and devoted herself to it; whatever Paris may believe, she (obviously) has yet to do the same. But it is important to remember that even if a teenager, living in some dreary suburb, wanted to become the next Mother Teresa, he or she might not be able to pull it off. It would certainly require tearing oneself away from family and community on the grounds of an unshakable conviction. Otherwise, one’s hero is Mother Teresa, but one’s job is working at the Tastee Freeze.
The traditional models of selflessness in America, which are derived from the Christian tradition, locate power in God; access to power comes through doing God’s will. In other words, they are anything but models of powerlessness. The inability to accept criticism, and the inability to come to terms with one’s obligations, are actually two different things. The ability to freely assume obligations to people and principles is tremendous. It gives us a reason to value criticism, because it becomes worthwhile to improve.
On the other hand, we may find ourselves wanting to help young people adjust to the obligations imposed upon them. Certainly, it worries me to think of self-advertisement or, what is worse, of violence usurping sustained action as the American model of agency. I’ll take adjustment over pathology every time. But, especially for disenfranchised Americans, self-esteem doesn’t spoil them for reality. It spoils them for an absence of choices, an absence of power. We risk telling them to come to terms with jail.
Then Mary, she got pregnant
And man, that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat…
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie, that don’t come true
Or is it something worse
-Bruce Springsteen, “The River”
In a country where most people, especially our youth want to be recognized, it is obvious that they will try any means to get attention. Why did Johnnie break the lamp? Because his parents were so busy working and coming home tired and grumpy, that they ignored Johnnie, but he knew the broken lamp would get their attention. He no longer cares if it is good or bad attention, as long as he is included. Why did Johnnie join a gang? He wanted to feel like he belonged to a family, to have people who cared about him.
When you tell Johnnie it is okay to miss the questions on his math test, in order to protect his self-esteem, you have caused more damage to Johnnie. Not only is that a false sense of self-esteem that Johnnie will learn later, but he still doesn’t know how to do math. That’s called a lose-lose situation.
Parents need to let their children know that they do not have to be the best in everything to be important. They need to help their children find something they are passionate about and help them to achieve in that area most. That does not mean to forget everything else, but, it means to moderate the others and focus on the one area. Then Johnnie won’t have bad feelings of despair and failure. He knows he is not expected to be perfect. He knows that he is expected to try his best, no matter where on the ladder this lands him.
What has happened to sound reasoning and common sense?
Haven’t you noticed since we have kicked God out of our country and our daily lives, everything has become chaotic. It is a sign that He has left. I think we need to invite Him back with open arms.
Joseph, I’ve been thinking about issues of power within politics, and how this relates to A White Bear’s and your discussion of decadence. There is an important sense in which our society views a turn towards working on politics (i.e., the use of social power) as decadence. The typical model is that someone who reacts to a pressing need is engaging in non-decadent politics, but once one becomes an “activist” and continues past the immediate resolution of the problem or past problems with immediate resolutions, one must be motivated by a mixture of what AWB characterizes as the two types of decadence: taking joy in sadism (the exercise of political power over others for its own sake, not for a particular purpose) or masochism (the activist as martyr).
So, when you wrote about Myspace-phobia as illustration of mistaken concern with self-esteem, another Internet example came into focus, the phenomenon (recently familiar, as I’m sure you know why) of flame-scolding; non-managers of the online space in question making repeated posts within a heated online argument that tell the arguers that it is pointless and they should be quiet. I’ve had to fall back on an explanation that the reason for these repeated and useless requests is a sort of narcissistic desire for the objectors to insert themselves into the argument and gain attention.
But perhaps it’s better seen as a sort of anxiety over power. The flamewar is an apparently clear expression of political decadence, the heated conflict about nothing, or about trivialities, with no means of resolution. Expressing disapproval of it is a way of displacing worry about that the entire state of our politics has become trivial, in the sense that we have no power to really affect it.
I’m probably getting too far off the thread at this point. Then again, anything’s better than having this turn into another thread about disapproval of parenting styles.
Madmouser, your comment really helps me get at the distinction I’m making here. Johnnie, that rascally little imaginary troublemaker, does not join a gang just because he’s never felt loved and accepted. As as undergraduate at Stanford, I knew plenty of students who never felt loved and accepted at home, and not one had ever belonged to a gang.
Blaming social phenomena like gangs on a lack of parental attention, making them equivalent to breaking a lamp (but deadlier!), is a convenient way of pretending that we can solve the symptoms of socioeconomic inequality by encouraging other people to be better parents.
Your descriptions of God as some kind of mistreated uncle are certainly amusing, but they don’t speak in any meaningful way to a religiously diverse nation where pollyanna optimism about parenting and faith accompanies utter indifference to disparities of power.
Rich, I can’t hide my own prior willingness to participate in these sorts of interventions; I tried to moderate a flame war in the feminist blogosphere. A pretty good blog post came out of it, actually, “On Pitilessness.”
We can probably divide such interventions along two lines: complaints about tone, and complaints about content. This line isn’t hard and fast — really committed moderators tend to go after both — but it still might give us some clarity.
I still don’t think most forms of verbal abuse are appropriate online, excepting those completely personal blogs that have no interest in fostering discussions. It’s effective to tell someone to shut the fuck up, but it’s also scary, and not only for them. It’s intimidating to lots of other readers. Other people, including Adam Kotsko of An und für sich and belledame222 of Fetch Me My Axe, disagree with me on this.
On the other hand, I have no problem with the direct expression of anger; it’s possible to separate this from the vocabulary of abuse.
Complaints about content are sometimes complaints about decadence. It doesn’t even have to be a flame war; I had somebody pop in here and accuse me of decadence just because I was writing about anxiety.
My criteria for content are the same on blogs as elsewhere. If a flame war or a post is enjoyable or enlightening to follow, then it’s worth it. Anything, no matter how small, can be an opportunity for funny riffs and pertinent object lessons. A lot of times outside observers, or even admins, panic about a flame war that is actually tickling the hell out of readers.
But, of course, in writing this I can’t avoid describing flame wars mostly in terms of entertainment, which isn’t usually how those involved feel. It shouldn’t be: if decadence isn’t good for some pleasure, it’s worth nothing at all, and in truth most of the worthwhile discussions online don’t resemble flame wars in the least.
One final note: some people start with the assumption that the Internet is decadent. They neither really enjoy decadence (instead, they exaggerate with ‘LOL’), nor grasp what blogs can do well.
JK, I agree that it is simplistic to suggest that there’s a 1:1 ratio between not getting support and attention from your parents and joining a gang, but it isn’t totally wrong. The factors that tend to produce criminals–high poverty rate, lack of education, economic stagnation, urban decay–also tend to produce broken homes and families which do not and cannot effectively raise and support their children. In fact, “Why did Johnnie join a gang? He wanted to feel like he belonged to a family, to have people who cared about him” strikes me as a concise and sympathetic commentary, one that sees joining a gang as stemming, not from inherent thuggishness, but rather from our human need for acceptance and fraternity.
“As as undergraduate at Stanford, I knew plenty of students who never felt loved and accepted at home, and not one had ever belonged to a gang.”
Well, of course not, because most people at Stanford (or any first-tier college) would not find the acceptance they need from joining a gang; it doesn’t fit their social circumstances or skill-set, so it isn’t a viable way to make up for that lack in their lives. Plus, your sample was composed of people who had gotten into Stanford, a population which has a pretty small overlap with former gang members. That in no way is evidence that gangs don’t fill that role for others.
I also don’t think that “Because of economic inequality” is necessarily closer to being the correct answer than “Because his parents were neglectful.” At Stanford or at other times in your life, you probably also knew people who were socioeconomically disadvantaged, but they didn’t join a gang either. We have to see the whole board on this issue. That doesn’t mean blaming the parents; on the contrary, it means, among other things, creating an economic environment in which parents don’t have to work two jobs and kids can attend well-funded schools with good extracurricular programs. But evading the role of the family, or other psychological factors, helps no one.
Tomemos, it’s fair enough to re-inscribe the importance of psychological needs, such as acceptance and family, into this. If I’ve undervalued them, it’s because of the conservative political tactic of substituting one for the other — putting the “focus on the family” instead of on social and economic issues where government (and hence politically motivated groups of citizens) can actually make a difference. While, in some general sense, I am in favor of cohesive and supportive families, I try to avoid drawing blueprints of what anybody else’s family should look like.
I should also make it clear that my reference to Stanford was deliberately intended not to be a representative sample of the American population; the point is, as you say, the “whole board.” The Stanford example just proves that there’s no direct causality between feelings of neglect, and things like gang membership.
Returning to the inspiration for the original post: the lens of MySpace tends to make the distinctions that concern us here vanish. Everyone looks the same, which means that you can talk about “the majority of American girls,” and the boys too, as monsters of egotism rather than as legitimately disappointed persons.
It’s too anaesthetizing. Violence matters; people who commit violent acts are saying something. The image of the ‘thug’ has a resonance in our culture that goes far beyond the realities of violent crime, and not because of any sort of relevant surrogate family structure — because it’s an image of power. The problem that I have with this account of that hypothetical rapscallion Johnnie is that, in its wistful elegy for his unhappy childhood, it risks paying no attention whatsoever to his unhappy adulthood, or the ways he’ll try to compensate for that.
Joseph, I’m not against all interventions — certainly, blog moderators need to delete and ban at will to make the kind of space that they want — but I am against nonserious ones. There is a particular type of intervention which will appear on any flame thread of a particular length, no matter what the content or whether personal abuse is present. I think that it might properly be characterized as narcissistic because its concern is to present the intervenor as a superior being — superior morally, behaviorally, or in terms of judgement — without having any particular opinion about the dispute as such. Moderation by the blog owner is different; the blog moderator need not claim superiority in order to enforce the decision, and therefore is free to reject all disturbances without regard to content or tone if they want to. It’s also possible to seriously intervene by having a strongly held opinion about disputes in general — but I’ve very rarely seen it done, since it involves a good deal of actual work, patiently talking to people and that kind of thing.
But there’s also a certain sense in which civility is a deeply corrupt value in the contemporary U.S. Here’s a quote:
“Lieberman described his own politics as “stand[ing] up for what I believe is right and…work[ing] across party lines to get things done.” As for the rest of politics, “The majority of people are sick of it. They think our political system is sick.” Lieberman blamed “attack ads, the kind of divisiveness of the cable news coverage of politics, talk radio,” and bloggers who “have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity to it.””
It’s become, like patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel. I agree that verbal abuse should be avoided, that escalation should be avoided, and that it’s always preferable to try to be witty rather than not. But appeals to civility *as such* need to be replied to with a curse.
“Pitilessness” is an interesting way of looking at it. Pity, though, is involving. If someone intervenes out of pity, it’s generally easy to see, as they will cite the particular remark that caused the involvement: “How could you say X to so-and-so, that’s over the line”. Pity, in cases in which everyone is susceptible to the same problems, generally leads to solidarity, and that is generally perceived as an intervention on one side of the flamewar rather than an equitable attempt to stop both sides.
You’re absolutely right about the voice from on high. The person who intervenes without having a stake in the issue, and mistakes their indifference for a sublime equanimity, is obnoxious.
You’re also right that the admin is a sovereign.
I began to class Lieberman as “the enemy” when he announced that Gore had lost thanks to an overly anti-corporate platform. I agree that his calls to “heal” the political system have no content besides the slide rightwards.
I’m not talking about a position of pity from the outside; I mean, for the disputants who are engaged, avoiding giving in wholly to the desire to crush and dominate. Such an attitude makes it impossible to gracefully accept concessions or withdrawals from the conversation. It leads inevitably to more reprisals and, finally, a smaller audience for all.
i’ve read this three times. three times. took up my whole morning. it would take a day to comment properly. all i can say at this point, not having read the comments, is that you make an excellent point about power vs. narcissism. i’m such a narcissist.