I don't know what came first, this theme in philosophy that there is no self, or the equally popular contempt for ego and/or self-esteem in general among certain intellectual types not strictly associated with philosophy. What I do know is that they are related and that both are dangerous. In case there is any doubt about this all one has to do is take a look at history, or even just recent history. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and the ultra-militaristic Japan of World War II, are examples of collectivism taken to its logical conclusion. When the reality and sovereignty of an individual consciousness is trivialized, or not recognized at all, any sort of atrocity can be expected. It's much easier to shoot someone in the back of the head if you're convinced that his existence as a person is meaningless. By the same token, it's much easier to turn someone into a butcher if you convince him that he is merely a functioning cog in a machine over which he has no control, and that the good of the machine is more important, more sacred, than any personal feelings or qualms of conscience. If this were not true, than one is obliged to think that the Japanese forces that rolled into Nanking in 1937 consisted of a majority of barbarians and psychopaths. One is forced to conclude the same about officers and soldiers in the German army who set about eradicating the Jewish population in Europe a few years later. This might sound bizarre, but I don't believe that the majority of individuals involved in either situation committed those atrocities because they were evil people by nature; what I believe is that they were brainwashed and desensitized by an ugly and powerful mechanism of extremely bad ideas.
Before I go any further I want to state emphatically that the United States is in no way whatsoever immune to this mechanism of bad ideas, though at its outset it probably stood a better chance of being so than any other nation in recent times; in fact, the U.S. is now on the verge of becoming one of the most dangerous forces in the world. Jefferson's Wall of Separation is being unbuilt at a rapid clip, thanks to the ignorance of most Americans and the tireless work of Christian historical revisionists. We have a population which seems to truly believe that the American system of government was founded on a Judeo-Christian tradition and worldview, when in fact that exact opposite is true. We have a nation full of Christians who will foam at the mouth while defending their bibles and their ten commandments, who have never actually read the bible and couldn't tell you what the ten commandments are. These are people who were brought up in church-going households who believe that attending church is, in and of itself, a moral act worthy of respect and reward. The existence of God isn't a philosophical question for such people, it is metaphysically given: there is a God, the same as there are seven continents and nine planets. What's worse, this God is inextricably tied in with everything that is good in the world. A denial of God is exactly the same as a denial of everything good, and an atheist is not so much someone who lacks a belief in God as someone who lacks belief in goodness. One of the most dangerous aspects of America at this time is the ignorance of what atheism actually means and is.
Unfortunately, organized religion depends first and foremost on trivializing the concept of self, and, more importantly, self-esteem, despite what constant reminders that Jesus Loves You would seem to indicate. That the United States was founded on principles that do not recognize the value of the individual and in fact seek to eradicate the concept of self, that associate the ego with all that is evil, is a lie too monstrous to imagine, and yet the perpetuation of this lie is literally on the to-do list of a frighteningly large portion of the American population. The problem stems from laziness on the part of people who like their religion in easily digestible bits and pieces. These are people who have paintings in their homes of Jesus sitting on a bench surrounded by children, his loving arms outspread, the great protector of all that is good and pure and innocent. What they don't know or simply refuse to acknowledge is that Jesus taught that there is no such thing as innocence, at least where human beings are concerned. There is nothing good or pure in us. In fact, we are all born corrupted, filled to the brim with Original Sin. People focus on Christ's love for them, on his death on the cross, without examining what the whole story really means. Christians are obsessed with the idea of forgiveness. One of my favorite poets, William Blake, was himself obsessed with the notion of Christian forgiveness. The irony here is that the atonement is not about forgiveness. If God simply forgave people for their sins there would be no need for Christ's atonement on the cross. The truth is simple, and clearly elucidated in the bible: God does not forgive you for your sins. All sins must be paid for. Christ's job was to make this payment in full, by being tortured and executed. Christ pays for your sins, and thereby satisfies God's sense of justice. Your job is to believe the story, confess Christ as your Savior, that Christ was nailed to a crucifix because of the sins that you have committed or that fester in your heart, and even more essentially the Sin that is an inherent part of your nature, that he has taken the punishment for you, that he has paid the price in your stead, to allow you to come clean (read: punished by proxy) into the kingdom of heaven. At no point is there any forgiveness.
If a friend of mine hurts me in some fashion, I can either forgive him or not. If I forgive, I do not require that he be punished in some way in order that my forgiveness be actualized or justified. I simply forget the hurtful act and hold him unaccountable for it. God does not do this. If he did, there would be no need for Christ's sacrifice. The notion of God forgiving us our sins is predicated on a gross misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine. The one good thing I can say about Calvinists is that they understand the Christian doctrine and preach it in full, without any of the warm fuzzy stuff that waters down (and renders nonsensical) the teachings of other denominations. They offer up a fire and brimstone Jehovah in all of his Old Testament anger and power, and as far as people are concerned: they are sin-infested vermin who deserve nothing but to suffer in everlasting fire. We are less than shit under God's heel, to paraphrase one Calvinist I encountered on the net. It isn't that what the Calvinists believe is not nonsense, only that it's consistent nonsense.
However, and even more unfortunately, the most vocal opposition to religious revisionism comes from the somewhat radical Left who are to a very discomforting degree attached to the very same mechanism of bad ideas as their theistic counterparts, the same mechanism that fueled the rise of communism and fascism, and to some extent, the kind of ultra-loony militarism of which WWII era Japan was an example. At the very heart of this mechanism, and without which it wouldn't function, is the notion that the self is either non-existent or that it is decidedly subordinate to the collective. Tyranny is not possible unless that first step be taken: the systematic erosion of the concept of the individual and, along with that, the concept of rights. If there are no individuals, there is no need for rights, indeed there is nothing to which a right can be accorded. Rights apply to individuals, not groups. If it seems far-fetched that people would actually believe that there is no self (which would mean that a feeling of self-esteem would have to be symptomatic of some kind of mental disorder, or delusions of grandeur), here's just one thread in a highly-trafficked secular board where I post occasionally (there are many more with similar ideas expressed):
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=264373
As you can see, it isn't stretching the truth at all to say that many people believe that the self is an illusion, or at least a highly debatable concept. At the heart of this belief, however, is an infatuation with materialism and a basic misunderstanding of what most people mean when they refer to a self. On one hand the self is in fact something concrete, in that it refers to the totality of a person as a physical entity, an object; but on the other hand it refers to subjective experience, to consciousness, to abstractions. I don't want to go into the discussion of whether or not the self exists. I take is as manifestly obvious that self-recognition, a sense of identity which is distinct from though not wholly different from others, exists. In fact I would think it pointless to argue otherwise. I'm also inclined to believe that they who do are attempting to justify certain political feelings which are probably not in everyone's best interests.
Ayn Rand, that much-maligned author and philosopher who gained great fame and infamy in the last century, spoke of the Mystics of Spirit and the Mystics of Muscle. She argued that such people essentially occupy opposite sides of the same evil coin. She did an exhaustive job of explaining her views and I agree with them, at least in regard to the subject at hand. She was one of the greatest champions of the concept of the individual and of the concept which exists to defend and maintain it, the concept of rights. I have many disagreements with Ms. Rand on a variety of other topics, and I am not an Objectivist; but I do think that her writings on the dangers of collectivism and the value and sovereignty of the individual are second to none in recent times.
Before I lose track of my initial reasons for writing this, let's go back to the topic of self-esteem. Self-esteem and Self are related of course but are not the same thing. One can not possibly have self-esteem without a sense of self, but one could certainly have a sense of self while possessing virtually no self-esteem. This is a crucial distinction. A sense of self is prior, and self-esteem is contingent upon that. Now, it bugs me to no end that the people who run an online writer's workshop I was once involved in, called The Poetry free-for-all, seem to be waging an all-out war against self-esteem. The problem is, what they frequently call self-esteem isn't really self-esteem, but something else. These folks aren't bad people at all and in the main they have good intentions (or at least so I hope). A writer's workshop, and particularly one that takes place on the Internet, where anonymity gives all sorts of people the courage they wouldn't have in the real world, cannot function unless its participants are willing to accept criticism gracefully. The ability to thank someone for telling you that your poem is a pice of shit is a cardinal virtue in such places, and with this fact I have no problem at all, though it may seem so. Because of the traffic this site gets, it is heavily moderated, and anyone who has had experience with un-moderated bulletin boards or newsgroups knows the value of moderation. Along with this the board is set up with graded forums where people are encouraged to post according to their level of skill. Moderators will move pieces from higher fora to lower as they deem fit. As you can imagine, this results in all sorts of hurt feelings, tirades, and outright defiance. To handle such nastiness there is a place called Outside, where such altercations are dealt with. So far so good.
The problem is, PFFA has managed, over the years, to attribute virtually all bad behavior on its premises to laziness, ignorance, or an over-abundance of self-esteem (nurtured in the classroom where children are rewarded and praised for mediocrity). If someone posts a poem in a forum which is above their level of competence they are frequently accused of being either lazy, ignorant, or bloated with undeserved self-esteem: lazy for not reading the guidelines, ignorant for not knowing what constitutes good poetry, and full of self-esteem for thinking the drivel they typed even constitutes poetry at all. A few moderators are rational and even kind in their demotions, but these acts of rationality have been dwarfed to near non-existence due to one moderator, Howard Miller, who out-moderates the other moderators in truly stellar fashion.
What bothers me about all this is that self-esteem, which is an important and vital part of being a healthy person, is lumped in with all of the other, genuinely unproductive, character traits such as laziness, ignorance, insolence, arrogance, and self-centeredness (yes, one can have self-esteem without being self-centered). The ego, which is nothing but a person's recognition of himself as an individual entity, distinct from but not different in kind than others, is not only equated with all those other nasty traits, it's thought of as their source. I can guarantee that this is not a mistake which any intelligent person ought to intentionally encourage other people to make, and yet that is exactly what the people at PFFA are doing. They have proved this beyond a shadow of doubt with their new announcement, printed in red, at the very top of their home page. Naturally the whole thing is mostly tongue-in-cheek, an exaggerated reaction to the criticism they receive, or at least one would hope; but underlying that pie-in-yer-face, up-yours spirit, which is basically healthy, is the reality of what actually goes on at PFFA. All I have against it is how it serves to equate self-esteem with the antics of every moron who opens his silly trap in those forums. It is a terrifically bad idea.
If anyone thinks my problem with PFFA has anything to do with me thinking that molly-coddling children in school is a good thing, then they haven't understood a word I've said. Egalitarianism in the classroom can not possibly foster self-esteem. The only thing it can do is destroy it in those who deserve it, and create a false and undeserved sense of pride and self-aggrandizement in the rest. Moreover, I don't give a rat's ass about some Eminem-addled teenager having his or her feelings hurt on the Internet. Some feelings deserve to be hurt. Some people truly deserve a good, virtual kick in the ass. Just stop implying, however indirectly, that all workshop stupidity has its source in self-esteem. This is obviously not the case, and the failure to distinguish between rational and irrational behavior, between actual self-esteem and the petulant mimicry of it, can have nothing but negative effects in the long run.
Before I go any further I want to state emphatically that the United States is in no way whatsoever immune to this mechanism of bad ideas, though at its outset it probably stood a better chance of being so than any other nation in recent times; in fact, the U.S. is now on the verge of becoming one of the most dangerous forces in the world. Jefferson's Wall of Separation is being unbuilt at a rapid clip, thanks to the ignorance of most Americans and the tireless work of Christian historical revisionists. We have a population which seems to truly believe that the American system of government was founded on a Judeo-Christian tradition and worldview, when in fact that exact opposite is true. We have a nation full of Christians who will foam at the mouth while defending their bibles and their ten commandments, who have never actually read the bible and couldn't tell you what the ten commandments are. These are people who were brought up in church-going households who believe that attending church is, in and of itself, a moral act worthy of respect and reward. The existence of God isn't a philosophical question for such people, it is metaphysically given: there is a God, the same as there are seven continents and nine planets. What's worse, this God is inextricably tied in with everything that is good in the world. A denial of God is exactly the same as a denial of everything good, and an atheist is not so much someone who lacks a belief in God as someone who lacks belief in goodness. One of the most dangerous aspects of America at this time is the ignorance of what atheism actually means and is.
Unfortunately, organized religion depends first and foremost on trivializing the concept of self, and, more importantly, self-esteem, despite what constant reminders that Jesus Loves You would seem to indicate. That the United States was founded on principles that do not recognize the value of the individual and in fact seek to eradicate the concept of self, that associate the ego with all that is evil, is a lie too monstrous to imagine, and yet the perpetuation of this lie is literally on the to-do list of a frighteningly large portion of the American population. The problem stems from laziness on the part of people who like their religion in easily digestible bits and pieces. These are people who have paintings in their homes of Jesus sitting on a bench surrounded by children, his loving arms outspread, the great protector of all that is good and pure and innocent. What they don't know or simply refuse to acknowledge is that Jesus taught that there is no such thing as innocence, at least where human beings are concerned. There is nothing good or pure in us. In fact, we are all born corrupted, filled to the brim with Original Sin. People focus on Christ's love for them, on his death on the cross, without examining what the whole story really means. Christians are obsessed with the idea of forgiveness. One of my favorite poets, William Blake, was himself obsessed with the notion of Christian forgiveness. The irony here is that the atonement is not about forgiveness. If God simply forgave people for their sins there would be no need for Christ's atonement on the cross. The truth is simple, and clearly elucidated in the bible: God does not forgive you for your sins. All sins must be paid for. Christ's job was to make this payment in full, by being tortured and executed. Christ pays for your sins, and thereby satisfies God's sense of justice. Your job is to believe the story, confess Christ as your Savior, that Christ was nailed to a crucifix because of the sins that you have committed or that fester in your heart, and even more essentially the Sin that is an inherent part of your nature, that he has taken the punishment for you, that he has paid the price in your stead, to allow you to come clean (read: punished by proxy) into the kingdom of heaven. At no point is there any forgiveness.
If a friend of mine hurts me in some fashion, I can either forgive him or not. If I forgive, I do not require that he be punished in some way in order that my forgiveness be actualized or justified. I simply forget the hurtful act and hold him unaccountable for it. God does not do this. If he did, there would be no need for Christ's sacrifice. The notion of God forgiving us our sins is predicated on a gross misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine. The one good thing I can say about Calvinists is that they understand the Christian doctrine and preach it in full, without any of the warm fuzzy stuff that waters down (and renders nonsensical) the teachings of other denominations. They offer up a fire and brimstone Jehovah in all of his Old Testament anger and power, and as far as people are concerned: they are sin-infested vermin who deserve nothing but to suffer in everlasting fire. We are less than shit under God's heel, to paraphrase one Calvinist I encountered on the net. It isn't that what the Calvinists believe is not nonsense, only that it's consistent nonsense.
However, and even more unfortunately, the most vocal opposition to religious revisionism comes from the somewhat radical Left who are to a very discomforting degree attached to the very same mechanism of bad ideas as their theistic counterparts, the same mechanism that fueled the rise of communism and fascism, and to some extent, the kind of ultra-loony militarism of which WWII era Japan was an example. At the very heart of this mechanism, and without which it wouldn't function, is the notion that the self is either non-existent or that it is decidedly subordinate to the collective. Tyranny is not possible unless that first step be taken: the systematic erosion of the concept of the individual and, along with that, the concept of rights. If there are no individuals, there is no need for rights, indeed there is nothing to which a right can be accorded. Rights apply to individuals, not groups. If it seems far-fetched that people would actually believe that there is no self (which would mean that a feeling of self-esteem would have to be symptomatic of some kind of mental disorder, or delusions of grandeur), here's just one thread in a highly-trafficked secular board where I post occasionally (there are many more with similar ideas expressed):
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=264373
As you can see, it isn't stretching the truth at all to say that many people believe that the self is an illusion, or at least a highly debatable concept. At the heart of this belief, however, is an infatuation with materialism and a basic misunderstanding of what most people mean when they refer to a self. On one hand the self is in fact something concrete, in that it refers to the totality of a person as a physical entity, an object; but on the other hand it refers to subjective experience, to consciousness, to abstractions. I don't want to go into the discussion of whether or not the self exists. I take is as manifestly obvious that self-recognition, a sense of identity which is distinct from though not wholly different from others, exists. In fact I would think it pointless to argue otherwise. I'm also inclined to believe that they who do are attempting to justify certain political feelings which are probably not in everyone's best interests.
Ayn Rand, that much-maligned author and philosopher who gained great fame and infamy in the last century, spoke of the Mystics of Spirit and the Mystics of Muscle. She argued that such people essentially occupy opposite sides of the same evil coin. She did an exhaustive job of explaining her views and I agree with them, at least in regard to the subject at hand. She was one of the greatest champions of the concept of the individual and of the concept which exists to defend and maintain it, the concept of rights. I have many disagreements with Ms. Rand on a variety of other topics, and I am not an Objectivist; but I do think that her writings on the dangers of collectivism and the value and sovereignty of the individual are second to none in recent times.
Before I lose track of my initial reasons for writing this, let's go back to the topic of self-esteem. Self-esteem and Self are related of course but are not the same thing. One can not possibly have self-esteem without a sense of self, but one could certainly have a sense of self while possessing virtually no self-esteem. This is a crucial distinction. A sense of self is prior, and self-esteem is contingent upon that. Now, it bugs me to no end that the people who run an online writer's workshop I was once involved in, called The Poetry free-for-all, seem to be waging an all-out war against self-esteem. The problem is, what they frequently call self-esteem isn't really self-esteem, but something else. These folks aren't bad people at all and in the main they have good intentions (or at least so I hope). A writer's workshop, and particularly one that takes place on the Internet, where anonymity gives all sorts of people the courage they wouldn't have in the real world, cannot function unless its participants are willing to accept criticism gracefully. The ability to thank someone for telling you that your poem is a pice of shit is a cardinal virtue in such places, and with this fact I have no problem at all, though it may seem so. Because of the traffic this site gets, it is heavily moderated, and anyone who has had experience with un-moderated bulletin boards or newsgroups knows the value of moderation. Along with this the board is set up with graded forums where people are encouraged to post according to their level of skill. Moderators will move pieces from higher fora to lower as they deem fit. As you can imagine, this results in all sorts of hurt feelings, tirades, and outright defiance. To handle such nastiness there is a place called Outside, where such altercations are dealt with. So far so good.
The problem is, PFFA has managed, over the years, to attribute virtually all bad behavior on its premises to laziness, ignorance, or an over-abundance of self-esteem (nurtured in the classroom where children are rewarded and praised for mediocrity). If someone posts a poem in a forum which is above their level of competence they are frequently accused of being either lazy, ignorant, or bloated with undeserved self-esteem: lazy for not reading the guidelines, ignorant for not knowing what constitutes good poetry, and full of self-esteem for thinking the drivel they typed even constitutes poetry at all. A few moderators are rational and even kind in their demotions, but these acts of rationality have been dwarfed to near non-existence due to one moderator, Howard Miller, who out-moderates the other moderators in truly stellar fashion.
What bothers me about all this is that self-esteem, which is an important and vital part of being a healthy person, is lumped in with all of the other, genuinely unproductive, character traits such as laziness, ignorance, insolence, arrogance, and self-centeredness (yes, one can have self-esteem without being self-centered). The ego, which is nothing but a person's recognition of himself as an individual entity, distinct from but not different in kind than others, is not only equated with all those other nasty traits, it's thought of as their source. I can guarantee that this is not a mistake which any intelligent person ought to intentionally encourage other people to make, and yet that is exactly what the people at PFFA are doing. They have proved this beyond a shadow of doubt with their new announcement, printed in red, at the very top of their home page. Naturally the whole thing is mostly tongue-in-cheek, an exaggerated reaction to the criticism they receive, or at least one would hope; but underlying that pie-in-yer-face, up-yours spirit, which is basically healthy, is the reality of what actually goes on at PFFA. All I have against it is how it serves to equate self-esteem with the antics of every moron who opens his silly trap in those forums. It is a terrifically bad idea.
If anyone thinks my problem with PFFA has anything to do with me thinking that molly-coddling children in school is a good thing, then they haven't understood a word I've said. Egalitarianism in the classroom can not possibly foster self-esteem. The only thing it can do is destroy it in those who deserve it, and create a false and undeserved sense of pride and self-aggrandizement in the rest. Moreover, I don't give a rat's ass about some Eminem-addled teenager having his or her feelings hurt on the Internet. Some feelings deserve to be hurt. Some people truly deserve a good, virtual kick in the ass. Just stop implying, however indirectly, that all workshop stupidity has its source in self-esteem. This is obviously not the case, and the failure to distinguish between rational and irrational behavior, between actual self-esteem and the petulant mimicry of it, can have nothing but negative effects in the long run.
