Forum: We have reached the peak of self-esteem’s self-assurance

By Dan Hazen / Herald Forum

The self-esteem movement arguably reached its peak in the early “aughts” when my kids were still in school, drinking full draughts of the stuff in their classroom everyday, while being drenched in it from television and theater screens, radio, books and nascent social media. But the tide had been rising for 500 years with the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Among the Enlightenment’s many effects was a hitherto unheard-of valuing of the individual. The teachings of Jesus Christ introduced the concept 1,500 years earlier, but the practice did not gain full cultural traction until it was coupled with scientific inquiry, new depths of philosophical curiosity and innovative political theories. Bake it all in new technology for five centuries at 350 degrees and you get Self-Esteem. See “Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World” by historian Tom Holland for more on this.

Now, in the middle of the 2020s, it seems self-esteem is going to seed a bit. It’s ripe. Maybe a little over-ripe.

Trump and his stooges represent the most rank, oozing examples of this over-ripeness, but their political opponents come off only slightly less putrid. The two camps stand opposed to one another in terms of policy and approach, but they are inseparable in terms of self-esteem. Neither side has ever been wrong, could ever be wrong! Both claim moral high ground, both claim martyrdom, both include in their core philosophies concepts so ludicrous as to make supporters blush a little and pretend that they don’t see them, and both purport to have built the only path to salvation for the rest of us in the heaving mass of Less Than Certain.

We’ve been so conditioned to cast ourselves as the heroes in our own stories that the thought of being wrong (for the sole reason that it’s “me” and I’m clearly the hero so I can’t be wrong) is inconceivable.

So if everyone is writing themselves as a hero, why are there so many villains?

When I was 9, I wanted to be a superhero. I made a costume complete with a cape and began patrolling the neighborhood in search of villains to defeat. After two days with no action, in a desperate attempt to justify my heroic autobiography, I set a fire out in the woods near our home so that I could then bravely put it out. The problem was, no one noticed. Turns out the neighborhood didn’t need a 9-year-old, self-appointed hero.

Here, amidst the early decay of self-esteem culture, we are mostly 9-year-olds, lead by 9-year-olds trying to maintain their 9-year-old’s views of themselves.

Friends, it’s time to hang up the cape.

There’s a much bigger story being written. The bad news is, none of us is the main character. Most of our names don’t even show up in the credits. The good news is, we still have parts to play.

Dan Hazen lives in Marysville and works in Everett.