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Here’s an amusing excerpt from the book Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed And What It’s Doing To Us by Will Storr about how California legislator John Vasconcelos launched the great Self-Esteem fad of the late 20th Century:
‘It was quasi-religious’: the great self-esteem con
In the 1980s, Californian politician John Vasconcellos set up a task force to promote high self-esteem as the answer to all social ills. But was his science based on a lie?
Will Storr
Saturday 3 June 2017 06.00 EDT… Vasco was livid. The media, he complained, were “terrible, cynical, sceptical and cheap”. Their problem? “Low self-esteem.”
Meanwhile, something remarkable seemed to be happening. The response from the people of California had been great. Between its announcement and the task force’s first public meeting in March 1987, the office received more than 2,000 calls and letters, and almost 400 applications to volunteer. More than 300 people came forward to speak in support of self-esteem at public hearings across the state.
And here’s a more technical article from New York:
How the Self-Esteem Craze Took Over America
And why the hype was irresistible.By Jesse Singal
May 30, 2017 8:00 am
A good excuse to drop the song.
Maybe there is something to the concept from a manosphere perspective. Others… not so much.
Narcissism is eternal.
Self-esteem is narcissism.
Anything that includes the word “selfie” in an etymological indictment.
The most serious of the Seven Deadly Sins; or if you prefer, the Capital Vices:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride
The world is awash in it today...
Nice article, but not that well received by the commenters at NYMag. Perhaps they don’t like the idea that something they know to be true (‘because science’) is really BS.
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
Self-esteem is like Samuel Smiles’ self-help for lazy people.
We used to blame our short-comings or attribute our fortunes to the whims or blessings of the gods … now we have only our selves to blame or praise, and who wants to beat themselves up? Plus, if you stop believing in God and by extension Heaven, self-esteem is your only salvation from an otherwise un-recognised existence.
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra
I’ve always wondered to what degree the self-esteem craze was due to Ayn Rand: one of her mantras was “reason, purpose, self-esteem.”
Rand’s one-time chief follower and enforcer, Nathaniel Branden, published a book (I think it was his first independent of Rand) titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem. I remember reading the book with great hopes: alas, I eventually concluded that whatever problems I had in life were not primarily due to lack of self-esteem.
So… was Vasco a closet Randian?
Dave Miller in Sacramento
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
If you’re reacting to this from the POV of a
white person try again as a small child who is abused in various ways by a white supremacist society and is called racial names by white kids, and hasn’t had white privilege
Some self-esteem encouragement might be kinda nice to that small child.
Doesn’t seem quite so silly if it’s used in a therapeutic way.
concentrating on grit and self-esteem allows us, as a society, to not do anything substantial to address the latent and pervasive sexism and racism in our society.
Maybe self esteem is inversely proportional to success.
https://youtu.be/bueuGw47IG0
Maybe there is something to the concept from a manosphere perspective. Others... not so much.Replies: @guest, @anon, @Rosamund Vincy
The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care. Right? Yeah.
My classmates and I had it drilled into our heads that we could be or do whatever we wanted if only we set our minds to it. This stuff goes back to the 70s, what with “Free to Be” and the like.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I’ve heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That’s what’s really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it’s wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I’m pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it’s probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it’s better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I’ve recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it’s false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.
I think authentic self-esteem is a good thing; certainly self-respect is. But what has been sold over the last few decades is a childish.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5BLHeOdvYI
Fifty years from now, the song will be banned for being transphobic.Replies: @Stebbing Heuer
Goaded by a recent piece by Mark Steyn, I just picked up "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution," by James Piereson, which lays out how the Left's response to Pres. Kennedy's murder triggered a wave of irrational and anti-rational movements in American life that has yet to recede. I'm curious now to see whether he mentions the "Free to be" and self-esteem ideologies among them--but surely they're strands in the fabric of "conspiratorial" theorizing that has enveloped so much of our culture in the past 50 years.
I couldn't stand that Marlo Thomas "Free to Be" crap.
Maybe also an offshoot of the blank slate nonsense.
I remember experiencing both the self-esteem and satanic-panic crazes in elementary school in about 86 or 87. It was a weird time.
Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
Very well put. Yes, what so many people came to believe in was really magical thinking, in the guise of positive thinking or self-affirmations.
I think authentic self-esteem is a good thing; certainly self-respect is. But what has been sold over the last few decades is a childish.
“No one needs self-esteem, but some people could use some self-respect” — Dalrymple
Rand's one-time chief follower and enforcer, Nathaniel Branden, published a book (I think it was his first independent of Rand) titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem. I remember reading the book with great hopes: alas, I eventually concluded that whatever problems I had in life were not primarily due to lack of self-esteem.
So... was Vasco a closet Randian?
Dave Miller in SacramentoReplies: @Anonymous, @Njguy73, @advancedatheist, @Stan Adams
I believe Rand’s version of self-esteem is quite a bit different from what was pushed in the schools, however, Nathaniel Branden did seem to go in for something closer to the modern fad.
Anyone with true self-esteem (which should really be labeled pride in one’s self) knows it comes from a sense of accomplishment. That comes from real achievements and accomplishments, which are fueled by a lack of self esteem and the realization that one needs to work hard and be persistent to achieve things in life.
So all the efforts over the last 20+ years to raise children’s self esteem without real achievement works against this and has created the neurotic, insecure 20 and 30 somethings that inhabit the world these days.
I see it all the time in my professional life:
My employee A: “I don’t feel you are giving me enough opportunities to move up in my work.”
Me (as manager): “OK. Good point. How about I assign you X?” (X = some challenging task). “Great chance to prove yourself.”
My employee A: “Hmm. I need to think about it. ” (Slinks off)…
Two weeks later: repeat the above
I always told my kid, "No self-esteem for you until you do something to be proud of" from the first mention of it in the schools when she was a kid. And so she got busy. All grown up, with accomplishment and success each step of the way, she has pride, not self-esteem. Sometimes, she comes along and says I was right about some stuff. That one was the best.
Followup question (don't read a hostile tone into this, i'm just asking) what exactly are your "accomplishments" that justify you being a manger and directing the work of younger employees?
It seems to us (and maybe this is not right, but this is how it seems) that boomer age workers had a sort of upward career inertia and just kind of kept showing up and gradually they were recognized and promoted, but we are expected to beg our bosses to do more work for the same pay ... and THEN we can maybe talk about getting rewarded for it*
*at the 1x a year designated compensation evaluation and promotion review committee cycleReplies: @Rosey, @bomag
“something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual”: or watching sport?
Relevant?
(Hat tip: Nourishing Obscurity)
…as opposed to self-respect, which you must earn. You don’t just “believe” you can learn the multiplication table/score a goal in field hockey; you practice to get it right.
Anybody remember that?
Self-esteem, also known as pride.
I think the reason that self-esteem was used and not something constructive like confidence or self-respect or even basic human dignity is because they wanted kids to feel good about themselves regardless of any effort. Why? Well, some kids are just going to fail a lot and that's not fair.
For me, I could put all the effort in the world into art and never come up with anything looking like anything. A few other kids I knew could just draw beautiful pictures from the 1st grade. Not fair! We all wanted to be artists back then but clearly only some kids had the ability.
There were two categories on my report card, in addition to the academic subjects, called Effort and Deportment. Some kids got C's and D's in Spelling and Math, etc., but got A's in Effort. Some kids got A's in everything, the little weasels. I often got C's in Effort and Deportment, punk that I was.
So where does self-esteem fit into this paradigm? A's in Effort but C's in everything else vs. A's in academics but C's in the effort and behavior categories. Answer: nowhere. It's why self-esteem had to be pulled from the air and dropped into people's laps independent of everything else in their lives.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
What Bill P said.
The book “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” came out in 1969; and the sixties were big on magical thinking via drugs and Eastern mysticism, for example.
OP–The problem was not a self-esteem craze but crazies hijacking self-esteem.
Objectivist Nathaniel Branden published a book titled ‘The Psychology of Self-Esteem’ which put the concept on the map. He argued that self-esteem was the result of reality-based thinking and action, and that most philosophy and psychology has this cause-effect relationship reversed…He specifically warned that confusing self-esteem with feel-goodism or social stroking so beloved by the Left would create the opposite effect.
The Left being what it is, it hijacked the term, equated it with irrational or causeless feel-goodism or social stroking best managed by far-left bureaucrats with your tax dollars. They want us to be going to hell in a handbasket while enjoying the ride, getting our ‘self-esteem’ from PC conformity.
I remember being confused as a early 90s child when I first won a participation trophy. Even then I considered them worthless and often left them where I received them.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
At the same time,as a sports fan I have always been intrigued by the role confidence plays. Not just the been there, done that, quiet professional confidence, but the other kind. The complete lack of self awareness kind.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It’s actually a positive trait. It’s a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you’ll see it’s value in a great pitcher or cornerback.
Absolutely. This is the kind of confidence that begat Kevin Federline two children to Britney Spears against all odds.
https://www.tapology.com/rankings/all-time-greatest-upsets-in-mma-and-ufc-history
There are a few of the fighting kind in the above. The Serra GSP upset comes to mind. When someone doesn't know they should rightly be fearful, they have a chance to win, even if on paper they shouldn't. Hard to do if they don't have knockout power though. Belfort vs Silva maybe fits that category. It's a young guy thing especially. Silva accomplished more in his career than Belfort, but Belfort had that self-belief that enabled him to topple some impressive opponents in his career.
https://youtu.be/xFRDFHZ8AaMReplies: @MarkinLA
I think the issue isn't the confidence people possess, but the meaningful and thoughtful self-critique that they don't seem to have a trace of.
http://www.southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm
I remember as a little kid hearing, maybe even overhearing, a teacher say that a kid in my class was acting up because he had “low self esteem.” I barely knew what the words meant, but I knew it was completely wrong. The problem was that kid thought too highly of himself, not too lowly.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
I remember a distinct shift in school from Just Say No to if you have high self esteem you won’t want to do drugs or alcohol around 1989 or 90. Over the next few years, I noticed there didn’t seem to be much of a correlation between kids that drank and low self esteem based on observation, but what did I know. The you can be anything you want to be rhetoric seemed to depend on the teacher.
From the NY article:
Self-esteem also became centered in the long-running national conversation about societal inequality. “There was this sense of the inner city falling behind — specifically black kids in the inner city are not performing as well as other kids,” said Salerno. “And there was this assumption that it was because they lacked self-esteem.” If you can boost your self-esteem, you can close the achievement gap.
The problem is that blacks naturally and “out of the box” have higher self-esteem than whites, even if you don’t count any external intervention.
The NY article spends its last part discussing the concept of grit, as if it’s a John Wayne movie, and insinuates that “grit” is the self-esteem fad’s last gasp. Just like the self-esteem concept crossed wires with The Gap, just about every time I read about grit, it’s basically used to peddle the notion that 80 IQ N’Deshawntavious can become a nuclear physicist if only he had enough of it.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
When I was in third grade, I suppose I came home one too many times repeating self-esteem narcissistic B.S. about being “unique and special,” each time of course being rebuffed and set straight by my father. Near the end of the school year my parents sat me down and announced I was going to be home schooled starting next year (there weren’t any decent Catholic schools nearby and my father at least knew most of those had been watered down to uselessness in cultural and psychological preservation of children since the days when my mother and her siblings were under the tutelage of the drill sergeants they called “Sisters of Mercy”). I think that was the single best decision my parents ever made for me.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
I like the 1980s musical presentation of the self-actualization movement, “Adventures in Success” by Will Powers. Many listeners missed the fact that it was a parody.
Dr Johnson in one of his Rambler essays, says over-confidence is better than under-confidence since the first is inevitably checked by experience while the second is never tried. The case where that’s not true is when the over-confidence is so great that the first check breaks the spirit.
When Jesus says we are supposed to regard ourselves as candles lighting the room, that is an appeal for self-esteem. So I think self-esteem is like everything else, good in moderation.
Rand's one-time chief follower and enforcer, Nathaniel Branden, published a book (I think it was his first independent of Rand) titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem. I remember reading the book with great hopes: alas, I eventually concluded that whatever problems I had in life were not primarily due to lack of self-esteem.
So... was Vasco a closet Randian?
Dave Miller in SacramentoReplies: @Anonymous, @Njguy73, @advancedatheist, @Stan Adams
Branden followed that up with, among other titles, Breaking Free (1970), The Disowned Self (1971), The Psychology of Romantic Love (1980), The Romantic Love Question & Answer Book (with Devers Branden) (1982), Honoring the Self (1983), If You Could Hear What I Cannot Say (1985), How To Raise Your Self-Esteem (1987), The Power of Self-Esteem (1992), The Art of Self Discovery (1993), The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (1994), Taking Responsibility (1996), The Art of Living Consciously (1997), A Woman’s Self-Esteem (1998), Nathaniel Branden’s Self-Esteem Every Day (1998), and Self-Esteem at Work (1998.)
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
Also known as the “Jiminy Cricket Syndrome” by James Howard Kunstler. If you just wish hard enough anything can happen. It’s the basis for a lot of childish, magical thinking.
“Build Self-Esteam and they Will Come” is a prerogative for any decent Bubble.
Millennials are doing tremendous contribution in that area.
https://youtu.be/bueuGw47IG0
Maybe there is something to the concept from a manosphere perspective. Others... not so much.Replies: @guest, @anon, @Rosamund Vincy
The guy in the white shirt in the thumbnail looks like a woke Steve Sailer.
It presumably led to Al Franken’s one good deed. Stuart Smalley.
Isn’t it funny how these fads catch on with a certain class of people? I remember a couple years ago that Asian wrote the “grit” book and it became gospel almost immediately. Nothing implicitly wrong with her thesis as far as I can tell, but the idea that focus and hard work lead to positive outcomes in life is not exactly groundbreaking. But I guess advocating something called “the Protestant work ethic” is antiquated, underinclusive, and dare I say racist. If we call it “grit,” now it’s something new. We are truly on the right side of history.
Self-esteem is narcissism.
Anything that includes the word "selfie" in an etymological indictment.Replies: @Captain Tripps
Pride.
The most serious of the Seven Deadly Sins; or if you prefer, the Capital Vices:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride
The world is awash in it today…
Criminals have more self-esteem than the law abiding. There is a correlation between criminality and high self-esteem. … people with high self-esteem are the ones most prone to violence.
SELF-ESTEEM GOES UP, MATH SKILLS GO DOWN:
One result of all this has been a generation that thinks highly of itself for no good reason. Perhaps the most famous example is the survey of American high-school students and those of seven other countries. Americans came in last in mathematical ability but first in self-esteem about their mathematical ability.
Ask the finest people you know how much self-esteem they had as a child. Then ask all the narcissists you know how much their parent(s) praised them.
Rand's one-time chief follower and enforcer, Nathaniel Branden, published a book (I think it was his first independent of Rand) titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem. I remember reading the book with great hopes: alas, I eventually concluded that whatever problems I had in life were not primarily due to lack of self-esteem.
So... was Vasco a closet Randian?
Dave Miller in SacramentoReplies: @Anonymous, @Njguy73, @advancedatheist, @Stan Adams
Psychologist Abraham Maslow listed “self-esteem” in his Hierarchy of Needs starting back in the 1940’s. I haven’t run across anything to indicate that Rand or Branden cribbed from Maslow’s writings, though it wouldn’t surprise me.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
“Free To Be You And Me” includes a song about how parents are people, and how when mommies were little they used to be girls. Some mommies are plumbers or welders, or drive taxis or sing on TV. There are a lot of things mommies can be, but they can’t be daddies.
Fifty years from now, the song will be banned for being transphobic.
50 minutes, on current trends.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
You sound like a wise man, Bill. That’s a terrific comment throughout, and I especially like your insight into magical thinking and transsexualism, and your final paragraph on constructively channeling such thinking.
Goaded by a recent piece by Mark Steyn, I just picked up “Camelot and the Cultural Revolution,” by James Piereson, which lays out how the Left’s response to Pres. Kennedy’s murder triggered a wave of irrational and anti-rational movements in American life that has yet to recede. I’m curious now to see whether he mentions the “Free to be” and self-esteem ideologies among them–but surely they’re strands in the fabric of “conspiratorial” theorizing that has enveloped so much of our culture in the past 50 years.
I think it is possible to build self-esteem, but only by facing and overcoming obstacles, even small ones. For instance, fixing your car yourself or putting up a fence by laying the posts, etc.
Most efforts to build self-esteem by are doomed to failure because they are aimed at navel-gazing. Many movements seem to target girls and get them talking about self-esteem, basically forming low-grade, social clubs. The girls often say that their self-esteem is improved, but I do not believe it one bit. Females like talking and consensus and prefer to avoid confrontation.
This positive-thinking woo in general denies the tragic nature of the human condition: You can change your thinking all you want, but you can’t change many of the objective conditions of your life, including the genes you inherited which determine your general intelligence factor and other abilities.
And you especially can’t change how other people think when it involves you, as we see can see especially in the pickup and dating-coaching scams. If women in general just don’t find you attractive in your given state, no amount of your own self-esteem or self-confidence boosting will make you any less sexually yucky to them.
The whole “self-esteem” thing was entirely driven by the racial Gap. People with real achievements don’t need to have their self-esteem boosted.
In Asian societies (esp. Japanese), they do the exact opposite – people of great skill and accomplishment are extremely modest and profess that they are still learning and trying to perfect their craft. Nor is it humblebrag – they really do think that way and as a result are always trying to do better.
So I think you're right about the link between self-esteem (or self-confidence) and achievements.
For the religiously-inclined iSteve reader, this article is quite interesting. It makes the self-esteem movement out to be a kind of Secular (Demonic?) Reformation. In Traditionalist terms, perhaps another example of counter-initiation?
You can see that Vasco went through something rather like what Martin Luther went through, but instead of discovering Jesus Christ as the answer to his condemnation under the Law, Vasco just discovered himself and rejected the Law. No doubt, Screwtape was pleased.
—
As an aside, the article mentions psychologist Jean Twenge. Her books are worth a quick read and somewhat iSteve-friendly. Not as thrilling as The Nurture Assumption, but clear-headed in the overall line-up of psychology books.
Used to envy parochial kids who just got whacked by angry nuns.
More accurately vanity.
Pride in a job well done is a good thing. The problem is the lack of said job.
Faith is a necessary but insufficient condition for accomplishment.
At my Grammar School I was told on numerous occasions that I was a nauseating little shit, as a result I have a realistic sense of my own worth.
iSteve readers,
What’s going to happen with Bill Maher? Will this episode grow, or will Maher slither away to flick his forked tongue another day? And would the country be better off with or without him? I honestly can’t decide.
Maybe Franken is getting ready for his 2020 run (think n vote). Or maybe he was trying to avoid having Maher make him laugh over something else Pol Incorr.
So all the efforts over the last 20+ years to raise children's self esteem without real achievement works against this and has created the neurotic, insecure 20 and 30 somethings that inhabit the world these days.
I see it all the time in my professional life:
My employee A: "I don't feel you are giving me enough opportunities to move up in my work."
Me (as manager): "OK. Good point. How about I assign you X?" (X = some challenging task). "Great chance to prove yourself."
My employee A: "Hmm. I need to think about it. " (Slinks off)...
Two weeks later: repeat the aboveReplies: @Jim Christian, @27 year old
That. Good take. Pop told us it was pride. The “Self Esteem” lexicon came along later. THAT was when they started weakening kids. They began by giving out the same trophy to winners and losers alike. They declared no one was a loser. Some leagues, they don’t even keep score. I won’t even bother with the “Self Awareness” craze. That engendered true narcissism in society and led to the transsexual craze.
I always told my kid, “No self-esteem for you until you do something to be proud of” from the first mention of it in the schools when she was a kid. And so she got busy. All grown up, with accomplishment and success each step of the way, she has pride, not self-esteem. Sometimes, she comes along and says I was right about some stuff. That one was the best.
This is very true. They seemed to try to Frankenstein fit self-esteem on the corpse of Marxism and its eternal struggle against ability and the resultant hierarchy.
I remember being confused as a early 90s child when I first won a participation trophy. Even then I considered them worthless and often left them where I received them.
SELF-ESTEEM GOES UP, MATH SKILLS GO DOWN:
One result of all this has been a generation that thinks highly of itself for no good reason. Perhaps the most famous example is the survey of American high-school students and those of seven other countries. Americans came in last in mathematical ability but first in self-esteem about their mathematical ability.
Ask the finest people you know how much self-esteem they had as a child. Then ask all the narcissists you know how much their parent(s) praised them.Replies: @Jim Christian, @Sammler
Nice take, Travis. Lots of still-accredited uni’s and colleges have eliminated math from humanities’ degree programs. Big mistake such to save their self esteem. I have to admit, self esteem went down when I got pissed at myself for being slow at Algebra, especially trig. Idiot. But digging in and rewiring my brain (also called studying) to do it with some ease made me feel better about things. Smarter than you thought, but it takes work. Everywhere, at every turn, work. Everywhere the opportunity to deflate your “self esteem” with missteps and laziness or sloth.
It’s a decision and quite consciously, we pick one.
Most efforts to build self-esteem by are doomed to failure because they are aimed at navel-gazing. Many movements seem to target girls and get them talking about self-esteem, basically forming low-grade, social clubs. The girls often say that their self-esteem is improved, but I do not believe it one bit. Females like talking and consensus and prefer to avoid confrontation.Replies: @L Woods
As heartiste as expounded upon at length: the problem with women as pertains to self-esteem is that they have entirely too much of it.
In Asian societies (esp. Japanese), they do the exact opposite - people of great skill and accomplishment are extremely modest and profess that they are still learning and trying to perfect their craft. Nor is it humblebrag - they really do think that way and as a result are always trying to do better.Replies: @L Woods, @Stebbing Heuer, @Daniel Chieh
I wouldn’t agree with the first bit. Dunning-Kruger is a Thing that life experience has done nothing but affirm. People with “high self-esteem” are usually parasites and blowhards.
‘Grit’ is particularly annoying. The NYC private schools noticed that their curated minority students seemed to have some ‘magical’ quality. So they want to figure out how to bottle it.
That part I get.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
My experience with it in team games is that it can be really toxic at times, causing a player to miss his mistakes and blame teammates for failures.
The “you can be anything you want” movement is, I guess, related to the self-esteem thing and again is driven by race. I suppose it was driven by past perceptions that blacks were best suited to be cleaning ladies and such and that some black kids were internalizing this and not reaching their full potential. The problem is that for every Ben Carson there are 10,000 ghetto kids who really are NOT brain surgeon material. A lot of 85 IQ ghetto kids take the relentless messages to heart while in fact lacking “the necessities” – I see them interviewed and they, to a man (and woman), all proclaim (in Ebonics) that they are going to become surgeons and rocket scientists like the ones they see on TV. It’s really sad and comical but you are not allowed to laugh. I think a lot of them KNOW that they ain’t gonna be nuclear physicists but that this is what people expect them to say.
Someone mentioned recently the “Academy of Medicine and Public Service” at Berkeley HS where all the kids test below competent in math. Not one of them is ever going to become a doctor. It would be better to be honest with these kids and aim them in a more realistic direction but that would be racis’ so we have to go thru this whole Emperor’s New Clothes charade and pretend that the place is just full of future brain surgeons instead of kids who count on their fingers and move their lips when they read.
If our society was not nuts, we would test these kids in 8th grade and the ones who are not cut out for academic careers would be put on a vocational track. I understand that this is what they do in Germany, for example. Not everyone is college material. There are a lot of people (including blacks) who are never going to do calculus or write coherent essays but who can be trained in some useful trade or skill instead of wasting their time on academics that they are never going to master. The amount of money that is being wasted on giving college degrees in useless (even counterproductive) subjects to people who are not really college material is astounding.
He was mad at the woman for her obviously racist lack of attention to the young lad. I happened to find out the name of the student in conversation with another person later and did some research. He had been disbarred and jailed for embezzlement.Replies: @EriK
You think those fields are populated by morons and losers think again.
A lot of guys who go into the trades not because they're dumb, they go into because they can't stand the idea of being a cube drone and like working with their hands. And besides they can make more than the cube drone with a sheep skin.
The other thing, their job can't be sent to Asia as can a programmer, engineer or scientist. And in the trades they don't shit can you at 40 like they do in the tech field where age discrimination is rampant. As a ex IT and tech worker I can attest to that.
Furthermore, it's very hard to make the case for a white boy to attend college given the hatred aimed at them by female and ethnic students. Not to mention incurring a vast debt load that negates the earning potential of a degree. Provided you graduate.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous, @Anynomous
Jiminy Cricket, the perfect example of the self-esteem creep. In the original Pinocchio, the cricket who urged the marionette to get an education or to pursue a trade so he can make an honest living is smashed by him with a hammer.
This was my favorite comment, from “Joanie”:
“If you’re reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn’t get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn’t have the upbringing you had.”
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.
***For those still wondering how the place got in such sad shape and hired such a president as they did.
Massive bullshit alert
The AAs are also the only group of students that hits females, calls them pejorative names, and yells at/threatens adults (hall monitors, principals, their own parents).Replies: @donut
OT:
In other words, if ever anyone wanted to make an argument for the importance of immigration, of cross-border fertilization, of the absence of walls and of the renewal and rebirth that comes from an outside perspective, they[sic] could do worse than to turn to--fashion.
I bet his self-esteem went up every time he got a royalty check from writing the same book 20 times, so it worked for him.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
At the same time,as a sports fan I have always been intrigued by the role confidence plays. Not just the been there, done that, quiet professional confidence, but the other kind. The complete lack of self awareness kind.
Absolutely. This is the kind of confidence that begat Kevin Federline two children to Britney Spears against all odds.
https://www.tapology.com/rankings/all-time-greatest-upsets-in-mma-and-ufc-history
There are a few of the fighting kind in the above. The Serra GSP upset comes to mind. When someone doesn’t know they should rightly be fearful, they have a chance to win, even if on paper they shouldn’t. Hard to do if they don’t have knockout power though. Belfort vs Silva maybe fits that category. It’s a young guy thing especially. Silva accomplished more in his career than Belfort, but Belfort had that self-belief that enabled him to topple some impressive opponents in his career.
Consider the source one screwed up pop singer falling for a guy because he could dance well.Replies: @Anonymous
Indeed. The self-esteem movement somehow missed the other ingredients in the special sauce.
Self-esteem ain’t so bad if you got something to be esteemed about. If you are a low IQ violent rodent who attacks people or a high IQ money-grubber rat who chisels other people and you still have high self-esteem, then that is a problem.
White Core Americans have been demoralized and a lot of them have low self-esteem because they are White. Southerners seem to have resisted the anti-White propaganda the best. Rural and regular New Englanders also don’t seem too bothered about being White. They sort of like it.
White Southerners and White New Englanders need to stay away from the hard drugs. The hard drugs are rendering them unfit to take part in the upcoming Civil War II. When these dope are on the drugs, they obliterate any sense of their own self, let alone having low- or high self-esteem.
Us peasants and populists and patriots should call the ruling class the ruling class. When we call them “the elite” it might enhance the self-esteem of the globalizer rats who are causing all the problems.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/68292/sec_id/68292
It’s a pleasant fantasy like karma or Santa Claus and helps many to feel warm and fuzzy. It’s for children and none-too-bright adults. Most of the children will outgrow these beliefs except for those who’ll fall into the dummy adult category. It’s generally harmless. Most adults with more than a modicum of brainpower just snicker to themselves. I only wish that I could have cashed in on those suckers in some way but the field was already loaded with these hucksters.
Every society has an all purpose diagnosis that is equivalent to “possessed by evil spirits” and an exorcism treatment to match, but we call it by different names depending on the time and place. And people always think of their own as being serious and true – they are only comical and obvious BS when you look at those from other times and places.
On the other side of the coin, it seems like most conservative-leaning Boomers think that the solution to all social ills is to stop “giving every kid a trophy.”
They got the best trophy there ever was, they got to live in post WW2 White America.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
I don’t think it actually plays any role. What you are seeing is that God, in his role as the Supreme Joker, sometime sees fit to grant some enormous (athletic, musical, etc.) talent to a complete and oblivious idiot. The talent drive the self-esteem and not vice versa, and if anything it is detrimental because it kills the desire to improve even more. We are so used to seeing self-esteem accompanied by no talent that to see the boasts match the words seems impressive by comparison.
The problem is that for every Ben Carson there are 10,000 ghetto kids who really are NOT brain surgeon material.
Exactly. Ain’t no way you are going to get that 386sx to play Doom with a decent framerate without the maths coprocessor. No matter how much as a cash strapped kid you wanted it to.
Remember seeing a study where people who had done bad towards others frequently had HIGHER self – esteem than usual and believed they had a right to victimize people based on that .
Will say this though – whenever I’ve personally kept positive thoughts going and more importantly making positive actions happen to any and all , good things have come back my way . Happen to believe it’s connected to God through Christ and other spiritual sources in some way .
There was also a great deal of concern over teen suicides. I remember watching a few anti-suicide videos at school, and thinking that they likely had the opposite of the intended effect (gee, all the cool teens are doing it). Naturally, low self-esteem was seen as the primary cause.
And pride comes before a fall. I remember dear Representative Vasconcelos and his self-esteem initiative. He was more riding a wave than pushing something new. Interesting to learn that it stemmed from his own personal issues. Something to remember when I see the latest psycho/social fad.
I think the reason that self-esteem was used and not something constructive like confidence or self-respect or even basic human dignity is because they wanted kids to feel good about themselves regardless of any effort. Why? Well, some kids are just going to fail a lot and that’s not fair.
For me, I could put all the effort in the world into art and never come up with anything looking like anything. A few other kids I knew could just draw beautiful pictures from the 1st grade. Not fair! We all wanted to be artists back then but clearly only some kids had the ability.
There were two categories on my report card, in addition to the academic subjects, called Effort and Deportment. Some kids got C’s and D’s in Spelling and Math, etc., but got A’s in Effort. Some kids got A’s in everything, the little weasels. I often got C’s in Effort and Deportment, punk that I was.
So where does self-esteem fit into this paradigm? A’s in Effort but C’s in everything else vs. A’s in academics but C’s in the effort and behavior categories. Answer: nowhere. It’s why self-esteem had to be pulled from the air and dropped into people’s laps independent of everything else in their lives.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
And if most of the people in the world were boxers, that’d be great.
I think the issue isn’t the confidence people possess, but the meaningful and thoughtful self-critique that they don’t seem to have a trace of.
Which (paraphrasing Proverbs 16:18) “goeth before a fall.”
Bingo!! Home run, Mr. D.
Fifty years from now, the song will be banned for being transphobic.Replies: @Stebbing Heuer
50 years??
50 minutes, on current trends.
In Asian societies (esp. Japanese), they do the exact opposite - people of great skill and accomplishment are extremely modest and profess that they are still learning and trying to perfect their craft. Nor is it humblebrag - they really do think that way and as a result are always trying to do better.Replies: @L Woods, @Stebbing Heuer, @Daniel Chieh
When I realised that I had low self-confidence (possibly esteem related), I quickly after realised that what I needed to get out of my hole was some victories under my belt. That was a spur to action.
So I think you’re right about the link between self-esteem (or self-confidence) and achievements.
Yeah, this self-esteem “craze” escaped my notice. At least to the extent it found it’s way into the corporate world. I did hear about it being pushed in public schools, as Jack D said, as a way to close the racial achievement gap.
The self esteem deal was primarily directed at NAM’s; the libs looked at them and how they lived in sub standard housing, were failing in school, had no future as a productive adult.
The libs knew they would have low self esteem if they had that lifestyle. But since libs don’t live near, work with, have their kids in the same schools, or socialize with ghetto NAMs, they had no idea NAM’s had incredibly high self esteem….undeservedly high, but there it was.
In Asian societies (esp. Japanese), they do the exact opposite - people of great skill and accomplishment are extremely modest and profess that they are still learning and trying to perfect their craft. Nor is it humblebrag - they really do think that way and as a result are always trying to do better.Replies: @L Woods, @Stebbing Heuer, @Daniel Chieh
Certainly true of how I felt about myself.
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
FWIW, you just described well over half the faculty and students at The Evergreen State College.***
What you left out is the fanged imperative in it:
Thar be rich lodes of grant-money gold in them thar melanists.
IOW, “liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for white ladies to pity” have moved gold-digging into a new realm. One masked in marmish concern and condescension.
Men keep agreeing to pay, so I expect it to continue.
http://evergreen.edu/sites/default/files/institutionalresearch/pdf/enrollment/trends/gender71-16.pdf
http://evergreen.edu/sites/default/files/institutionalresearch/pdf/enrollment/trends/studentsofcolor71-16.pdf
***For those still wondering how the place got in such sad shape and hired such a president as they did.
The white privilege on display here is nauseating
The ruling class of the American Empire got its high self-esteem kicked in the gut by the triumph of President Trump over globalizer Hillary Clinton. Perhaps that is why they are going stark raving bonkers. They must know that the average American is amused to no end to see these ruling class clods behaving so miserably. I know I am quite fond of seeing the ruling class behave in such bad form. It is a joy brought by President Trump.
Of particular delight to me is to see the non-European globalizer rodents screeching in such a manner. Their high self-esteem has been lowered quite a bit by a real estate guy from New York City. That is good.
Patriots should make sure that President Trump keeps the pressure on the corporate propaganda apparatus(CPA). President Trump is forcing the CPA to make mistakes by the relentless pressure he is keeping them under. President Trump should stay on the attack. When the CPA launches a coordinated attack on him, he should attack with more speed and force. The ultimate aim is to eviscerate and destroy the treasonous ruling class of the American Empire to make way for a new patriotic ruling class.
Let’s not forget the contributions of folks like Norman Vincent Peale, Zig Ziglar, and Napoleon Hill to the cult of insufferable positivity.
I once had a manager who thought I should be a bit more positive. He told me he was going to fine me a dollar every time I used the word “problem.” A couple of weeks later a client called me, breathing lawyers and lawsuits, demanding to speak to this manager. I went into my manager’s office and said, William, we have an insurmountable opportunity here.”
He never bothered me about the word “problem” again.
These guys didn’t storm the beaches at Normandy just to see their nations invaded by mass Third World immigration. Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah and Omaha: they didn’t storm the beaches so corrupt future governments could destroy their nations in a mass immigration invasion.
CIVIL WAR II IS ON THE WAY — FOR THE EVIL OF 1965 YOU’LL PAY
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872147965451882496
I hold the WW2 generation responsible for our present undoing with uncontrolled immigration...Replies: @Charles Pewitt, @dfordoom
Yeah. I’m not sure rendering the current crop of winners even more smug, conceited and unaccountable is really much of a solution.
https://youtu.be/bueuGw47IG0
Maybe there is something to the concept from a manosphere perspective. Others... not so much.Replies: @guest, @anon, @Rosamund Vincy
It’s OK man cause I like the abuse….
“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
CIVIL WAR II IS ON THE WAY -- FOR THE EVIL OF 1965 YOU'LL PAY
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/872147965451882496Replies: @anarchyst
Problem is, that it is the “greatest generation” who pushed for and got the infamous “Immigration Act of 1965” passed into law.
I hold the WW2 generation responsible for our present undoing with uncontrolled immigration…
It was the generations born before 1924 that got the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act passed into law. LBJ was born in 1908. All the way with LBJ -- right off the mass immigration invasion cliff.
Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" crap is just a smokescreen to cover up all the evil horseshit done by people like Tom Brokaw and his ilk. "Greatest Generation" of nation wreckers is more like it.
As soon as those heroes got back from Normandy they began the task of wrecking society.Replies: @MarkinLA, @Bill Jones
OT, but yet more proof that Mitt Romney is a lying douchebag. At his annual confab up in Park City “The speaker lineup for what is traditionally a gathering of Romney allies is packed with high-profile Republicans, among them House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain.”
John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Paul Ryan, Mike Leavitt: all open-borders fanatics and buttboys for the neofeudalists. Has Mitt Romney done or said anything since winning the GOP primary that suggests he ever actually believed in enforcing our immigration laws?
The irony is that the loss of the neofeudalist Romney in 2012 was used to push the notion that Republicans needed to cozy up even more to that class.
The entirety of the American cultural history of the twentieth century is a house burning down because Sheila Broflofsky was dissatisfied with the brightness of one of its light bulbs.
Also: check out leading self-esteem movement guru Nathanial Branden referring to himself in the third person in the Penn and Teller BS episode on this topic.
I briefly had the honor of helping to clear the apartments of dead hoarders. Among one of the very worst was a guy who had every Branden book, much good it apparently did him.
OT: Steve, more Trump’s Luck? As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on his travel ban, we get not only the Manchester bombing, but also Australia gets hit with a Muslim attack?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/05/police-shoot-gunman-dead-and-free-hostage-in-melbourne
(The trifecta would be if the U.S. got hit with a major Muslim attack on the eve of oral argument. That would be extremely sad and I DON”T WANT IT TO HAPPEN. GOD FORBID.)
Still two international Muslim terrorist attacks right before oral argument will put public pressure on the Supremes, who are known to bow to public pressure.
That makes 3. Nothing will make a difference.
You see it in boxing/fighting sometimes. It's actually a positive trait. It's a little more detrimental in team sports, but sometimes you'll see it's value in a great pitcher or cornerback.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @Anonym, @Jack D, @J1234, @TelfoedJohn
Worth reading Von Kleist on confidence and lack of self-awareness.. in bears at least:
http://www.southerncrossreview.org/9/kleist.htm
What is it about its culture that sees so many nutty movements originate in California?
In the UK, in the government school system, until the 70’s kids took a test at age 11 – called logically enough the “Eleven Plus” that determined if you went to a grammar school or a “Secondary” school, the latter destined for a job in the trades. In the former the assumption was school until 18 then Uni. The latter ended at age 16. Transfers between the two streams did happen but were rare. This system was scrapped, replaced by catch-all “Comprehensive” schools in large part because of the percieved deletarious effect on the self esteem of the Secondary school kids.
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
>•is called racial names by white kids, and
Massive bullshit alert
>Boomers think that the solution to all social ills is to stop “giving every kid a trophy.”
They got the best trophy there ever was, they got to live in post WW2 White America.
They won’t become doctors? You sure??
Some time ago I had dinner at the house of a person who is a school counselor. He told me the story of a black kid who had graduated that school in the 1980s and was told by the “kindly old lady” counselor giving vocational advice that he should “get a job at a gas station”. The kid went to college and then law school and was practicing law now.
He was mad at the woman for her obviously racist lack of attention to the young lad. I happened to find out the name of the student in conversation with another person later and did some research. He had been disbarred and jailed for embezzlement.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
“My classmates and I had it drilled into our heads that we could be or do whatever we wanted if only we set our minds to it. This stuff goes back to the 70s, what with “Free to Be” me the like.
I couldn’t stand that Marlo Thomas “Free to Be” crap.
SELF-ESTEEM GOES UP, MATH SKILLS GO DOWN:
One result of all this has been a generation that thinks highly of itself for no good reason. Perhaps the most famous example is the survey of American high-school students and those of seven other countries. Americans came in last in mathematical ability but first in self-esteem about their mathematical ability.
Ask the finest people you know how much self-esteem they had as a child. Then ask all the narcissists you know how much their parent(s) praised them.Replies: @Jim Christian, @Sammler
A friend of mine is a criminal psychologist in the UK. His job is basically trying to persuade prisoners to think honestly about their own decisions — they have clearly never tried this before and have neither inclination nor ability to start.
What was so great about it?
I find my enjoyment of MST3K is diluted by realizing that the educational shorts they are mocking are at their worst far nobler and more beneficial than anything on offer now.
Does anyone think Reality Winner lacked self-esteem??
She was a full on ego maniac. See her selfies. Probably had no boyfriend given she hates whites and thinks they are terrorists.
Dollars to donuts she was a mudshark.
Must of have been a PITA at work as well.
The kind of woman you put a bounty on.
The trades are not for stupid kids. You think it’s smart to have some 80 IQ type do high voltage work, repair the elevator in your apartment or make sure the gas lines to your HVAC system are working? You certainly don’t.
You think those fields are populated by morons and losers think again.
A lot of guys who go into the trades not because they’re dumb, they go into because they can’t stand the idea of being a cube drone and like working with their hands. And besides they can make more than the cube drone with a sheep skin.
The other thing, their job can’t be sent to Asia as can a programmer, engineer or scientist. And in the trades they don’t shit can you at 40 like they do in the tech field where age discrimination is rampant. As a ex IT and tech worker I can attest to that.
Furthermore, it’s very hard to make the case for a white boy to attend college given the hatred aimed at them by female and ethnic students. Not to mention incurring a vast debt load that negates the earning potential of a degree. Provided you graduate.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
I'm from a long line of Grabowskis and I've seen it over and over again.Replies: @MarkinLA, @David Davenport
They make more when they work at foreman and general foreman wages plus overtime Both my daughters are working on the tallest building west of the Mississippi right now. That's something to be proud of. And one started at 18 and the other at 19 so no wasted time and money in college. They don't do residential work at all, just commercial industrial. One ran a huge drilling machine that dug the subway extension. And they don't have to deal with a lot of black women intriguing and gossiping and causing problems.
I think she might lack some female hormones.
No.
She was a full on ego maniac. See her selfies. Probably had no boyfriend given she hates whites and thinks they are terrorists.
Dollars to donuts she was a mudshark.
Must of have been a PITA at work as well.
The kind of woman you put a bounty on.
People with money moved to California to enjoy the climate and had the time to pursue their interests.
My grandfather retired from x-ray sales at age 55 in 1929 and retired to the Pasadena area to grow a lot of his own health food on his suburban lot. He was a Germanaphone Swissman with a lot of semi-cranky semi-valid theories about health and food that fed into the California hippie movement decades later. I was reading a book by Nietschze (sp?) recently and noticed the German philosopher had a lot of cranky ideas about health and sickness. A lot of Hitler’s racial theories grew out of a similar cultural milieu and concern about being poisoned. Paul Johnson observed that just as lots of people in the 1970s were convinced they were being poisoned by pesticides and pollution, Hitler thought Germans had been poisoned by miscegenation in their past. Nietszhe (sp?) mentioned that same view in On the Genealogy of Morals.
Restrained positive thinking has its uses. But unwarranted, excessive individual self-esteem is like unwarranted widespread belief in American Exceptionalism.
To the extent that America is exceptional, it isn’t helpful to dwell on it. Too many people then extrapolate that America’s intentions and actions are always benevolent and successful and, worst of all, that the country is exempt from the lessons of history.
Of course, in most ways America is NOT exceptional. Spending money we don’t have will eventually lead to ruin. Engaging in unnecessary wars will undermine freedom at home. Embracing mass immigration will shatter cultural cohesion and harm current citizens.
A sign that we are growing up as a country will be that we moderate our national self esteem and realize that America is not that exceptional, and certainly not exempt from the lessons of history.
I wouldn’t go so far as some of the commenters here and say that puffing kids up is totally useless. Kids need encouragement, and should have their (real) potential highlighted to inspire them to do more. I can think of a few times that adults encouraged looked at very minor accomplishments of mine and gave (perhaps disproportionate) encouragement that led me to do bigger and better things. Moreover, we all have value as children of God, although I doubt you’ll find that in the self-esteem manuals.
That said, puffing kids up no matter what they do, and refusing to correct them because it might detract from their self-esteem, is obvious lunacy.
C’mon, TD! That’s lame! You can do better than that!
Either way, he has mined the material out and I suggested he might refresh his brand by switching to using the alias "Massive Cuck"'and posting parodies of neo and cuckservative takes on the topics.
Thanks, Dicky Nut, for letting us know we’re on the right track.
He was mad at the woman for her obviously racist lack of attention to the young lad. I happened to find out the name of the student in conversation with another person later and did some research. He had been disbarred and jailed for embezzlement.Replies: @EriK
I can’t say anything good about the school guidance counselor I had in high school. I remember him asking me what I was good at, I said math. He recommended I go to college for accounting, which, of course, is not math. Being the first person in my family to go to college, I had no idea. Thanks pal.
His kids got good advice though. They both went to Choate and then on to Williams. Only the older son (one year ahead of me) came across as bright.
I love Germans. A lot of Germans are beautiful and handsome. Some Germans are so frigging ugly they make Blacks from sub-Saharan Africa look not bad in comparison. In short, some Germans look like gargoyles; ugly beyond all hope.
Steffi Graff should be on the corner of a cathedral with water pouring out of her mouth.
Germans made the decision to live between the French and the Russians. You can’t engineer your way out of that one.
The Germans are Central Europeans and Western Europeans at the same time. The German diet, along with their no mayonnaise potato salad, can’t be explained. Beyond diet and philosophy, what if the Germans are just nuts because they got stuck between the French and the Russians?
You think those fields are populated by morons and losers think again.
A lot of guys who go into the trades not because they're dumb, they go into because they can't stand the idea of being a cube drone and like working with their hands. And besides they can make more than the cube drone with a sheep skin.
The other thing, their job can't be sent to Asia as can a programmer, engineer or scientist. And in the trades they don't shit can you at 40 like they do in the tech field where age discrimination is rampant. As a ex IT and tech worker I can attest to that.
Furthermore, it's very hard to make the case for a white boy to attend college given the hatred aimed at them by female and ethnic students. Not to mention incurring a vast debt load that negates the earning potential of a degree. Provided you graduate.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous, @Anynomous
There is a spectrum – obviously some highly skilled trades (electronics repair, etc.) need more brain power than others (drywaller). But there are plenty of guys (black and white) who have better manual skills than they have verbal and mathematical skills. I know some black HVAC techs, plumbers, etc.. Maybe they’re not up to engineering the system for a big office building, maybe they are not even the best plumbers in town, but they are capable of putting in a home HVAC system, whereas if they had tried for a professional degree there’s no way they would have made it. The military takes a lot of 90 -100 IQ blacks and trains them to do some specific set of tasks well.
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
Gets called racial names by white kids? What, these white kids like getting their asses kicked? Have these people never been on a playground with blacks before? It can get real savage rea quick.
white person try again as a small child who is abused in various ways by a white supremacist society and is called racial names by white kids, and hasn't had white privilege
Some self-esteem encouragement might be kinda nice to that small child.
Doesn't seem quite so silly if it's used in a therapeutic way.
concentrating on grit and self-esteem allows us, as a society, to not do anything substantial to address the latent and pervasive sexism and racism in our society.Replies: @fish, @MarkinLA
Would Leonard Pitts agree?
I’m sure Leonard Pitts would agree. You should read his column.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/05/police-shoot-gunman-dead-and-free-hostage-in-melbourne
(The trifecta would be if the U.S. got hit with a major Muslim attack on the eve of oral argument. That would be extremely sad and I DON"T WANT IT TO HAPPEN. GOD FORBID.)
Still two international Muslim terrorist attacks right before oral argument will put public pressure on the Supremes, who are known to bow to public pressure.Replies: @Yak-15
Notre Dame
That makes 3. Nothing will make a difference.
I hold the WW2 generation responsible for our present undoing with uncontrolled immigration...Replies: @Charles Pewitt, @dfordoom
The baby boomers are not to blame for the nation-wrecking 1965 Immigration Act, you are right on that. The baby boomers were not the dumb bastards that got the American Empire bogged down in Vietnam either.
It was the generations born before 1924 that got the disastrous 1965 Immigration Act passed into law. LBJ was born in 1908. All the way with LBJ — right off the mass immigration invasion cliff.
Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” crap is just a smokescreen to cover up all the evil horseshit done by people like Tom Brokaw and his ilk. “Greatest Generation” of nation wreckers is more like it.
Donald Trump talks about it in his books and says all the successful people he knows visualize success. Mensa member and Cal-Berkeley MBA Scott Adams believes it. Multi-billionaire hedge fund guys like Ray Dalio believe it and Tony Robbins. Unlike like them I think it’s a bunch of bullshit. Then again I make jackshit in salary and went to a second -rate public university.
That said, puffing kids up no matter what they do, and refusing to correct them because it might detract from their self-esteem, is obvious lunacy.Replies: @Olorin
It’s not lunacy, MC.
It is a particularly honed, proven, and ultimately vicious strategy for undermining them while elevating the bolshies’/SJWs’ own evolutionary interests.
Consider the example of how most Evergreen State College faculty and students–something like 60/40–are cat lady type women. Their most conventionally famous spokespreacher is old Berkeley Trotskyist Stephanie “Marriage Sucks, Is Unnecessary, and Stupid” Coontz.
All the while counterfeiting white Altruism.
“Let me help you…let me protect you…let me save you…by destroying you subtly in ways you can’t begin to comprehend. Mostly by helping you destroy yourselves with self indulgence, with extreme behavior, with acting out the false witness I bore you.
“For I, SJW Lady Bountiful For A Living, can bestow upon you all the things you lack. Including Self Esteem. You didn’t have it without me, I gave it to you! You didn’t even know you lacked it till I told you! Your life won’t change; your path won’t change; but I will make a career out of Dress Up and Let’s Pretend.
“So now go forth and feel good about yourself…and if you ever don’t, a whole bunch of us with SJW jobs will be there to sell you more of what we, and only we, can provide!”
All it takes on the SJW’s part is a willingness to be tested from time to time in situations like that of Evergreen State College’s George Bridges last week: enact a drama of zero self esteem while groveling to the mob.
Though I reflect that the SJW ladies and “men” who put Bridges in that situation stayed comfortably out of the limelight and emerge only to pen lengthy SJW screeds on the all-faculty-and-staff e-mail list, each one more thickly bodice-heaving and virtue-signalling than the last.
That’s part of a college president’s job description: scapegoat as needed.
The via crucis of racial submission that George Bridges enacted is as close to the apotheosis of this as I can imagine: grovel, unman yourself, give lip service, let others build their self esteem by making it appear you have none (self esteem being a zero sum thing)…but at the end of the day retain your executive control of an institution with a $73 million budget, and your $350,000 salary, free house, free car, and benefits.
I wouldn’t mind him retaining that power…if only he’d use it as a man does and stop playing bush league savior of the world. But I guess that’s how SJWs fill their god-shaped holes. With religio-social systems that satisfy their spirit about as much as their dildoes satisfy their biology.
Self Esteem Scale – find that number that will explain your place in the cosmos, or just while away the time for a few minutes.
https://www.norton.com/college/psych/psychsci/media/rosenberg.htm
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
I teach at a high school that is 2/3 African American. The only kids who will use the n word at all are the AAs. This is despite the fact that the AAs tell the others that is ok to say it as long as you don’t do it negatively. The AAs do call the Hispanic kids “wetbacks” though.
The AAs are also the only group of students that hits females, calls them pejorative names, and yells at/threatens adults (hall monitors, principals, their own parents).
Get ready to pre-order my new book, which I have not started yet: It’s Not Your Fault.
Read Bandler and Grinder. Positive consistent visualization and reframing has no overlap with self-esteem stuff. The former is controlling the mental picture while recognizing the boundary with the physical.
A study came out a few years ago that showed something most of us instinctively knew in school (but teachers seemed to not know): Bullies have higher self-esteem than the average person.
I remember also reading something about this in the late 1990s in Time or a place like that. The article said that people with high-self esteem that bully have perverted the titled of that old book to be “I’m OK, You’re NOT OK.”
http://www.today.com/parents/study-bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-status-lower-levels-t36271
The Left has turned The Seven Deadly Sins into the Seven Heavenly Virtues. The newfound Virtues serve as the mantra for the New World Order.
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride
The high-trust, beyond-kin, altruistic social systems that used to characterize Western Civilization and made it the envy of the world were not accidents. They were based on an assumption that the Seven Deadly Sins were indeed sinful. In the New World Order currently replacing Western Civilization, we can see personal and public tragedies in too many lives as people recklessly pursue self-centered, narcissistic views of a good life based on the Heavenly Virtues … ways of life devoid of personal responsibility for the consequences and impacts of their behaviors on themselves and others.
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 John 2:16 KJV)
It will be a hard fall before people rediscover the lessons that used to be at the core of the greatness of Christian Europe with its positive impact on the rest of humanity. Noticing that “God was dead” (that is, that He was no longer a source of meaning or moral compass in the lives of Western man), Nietzsche predicted the outcome (as quoted by syonredux above):
“Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.”
Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra
Fat-Pride
Slut-Pride
Aggressive swaggering rage
Attention-whoring is now the highest value and basis for the measure of man for social-media points collected on You-Tube, Facebook, Instagram and World-Star Hip-Hop.
Modesty, humility and stoicism adieu.
Millennial Woes recently made a video about “self-confidence,” self-esteem’s predecessor in folk psychology. He says that men need some measure of self-confidence to succeed in life, but that women can do just fine without any self-confidence whatsoever.
To be a successful salesman, it helps to have routines to pump up your self-confidence. Salesmen spend a lot on motivational speakers and they probably get their money’s worth, more or less.
You think those fields are populated by morons and losers think again.
A lot of guys who go into the trades not because they're dumb, they go into because they can't stand the idea of being a cube drone and like working with their hands. And besides they can make more than the cube drone with a sheep skin.
The other thing, their job can't be sent to Asia as can a programmer, engineer or scientist. And in the trades they don't shit can you at 40 like they do in the tech field where age discrimination is rampant. As a ex IT and tech worker I can attest to that.
Furthermore, it's very hard to make the case for a white boy to attend college given the hatred aimed at them by female and ethnic students. Not to mention incurring a vast debt load that negates the earning potential of a degree. Provided you graduate.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous, @Anynomous
Downside to most trades: at 50 you are pretty well a physical wreck.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
I’m from a long line of Grabowskis and I’ve seen it over and over again.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
Old saying: "Nothing sadder than a grey-haired man having to carry a load up a ladder."
My high school guidance teacher kept pushing my parents to send me to Grove City instead of Penn because students at Penn were having sex (this was 1974). That part turned out to be true. Somehow I talked them into letting me go there nevertheless. Years later I happened to run into the woman in a hospital where I was visiting a relative and she told me that she was there for cancer treatments. Normally I wouldn’t wish this disease on anyone but I made an exception in her case.
The worst consequence of the self-esteem schtick is that it furnished a hell of a lot of insufferable schmucks who act as if their feces are exempt from odor.
white person try again as a small child who is abused in various ways by a white supremacist society and is called racial names by white kids, and hasn't had white privilege
Some self-esteem encouragement might be kinda nice to that small child.
Doesn't seem quite so silly if it's used in a therapeutic way.
concentrating on grit and self-esteem allows us, as a society, to not do anything substantial to address the latent and pervasive sexism and racism in our society.Replies: @fish, @MarkinLA
Except I thought studies show that blacks have much higher self esteem than any other group and Asians lower than others?
Maybe self esteem is inversely proportional to success.
Most of the smarter kids knew it was BS, but a lot of people took it to heart. I've heard a lot of really unintelligent people forcefully assert that if you believe something enough it will happen. The few times I tried to correct them I was angrily shouted down.
That's what's really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
I often quiz my children about what kind of stuff their teachers are telling them, and when I detect any of this garbage I explain why it's wrong. Telling kids lies to boost self-esteem is more harmful than telling them uncomfortable truths.
I'm pretty sure transsexualism never would have been taken seriously without this anti-intellectual trend that came out of the 60s.
Whatever the case, it's probably futile to fight magical thinking because it seems to be hardwired. That being the case, it's better channeled into something harmless or constructive, like prayer or ritual. I've recognized it in myself, and while I consciously realize it's false, sometimes the easiest course is just to observe the taboo, superstition or whatever it may be. An example would be thinking about something bad happening to one of my kids. I try hard not to, because doing so gives me a dreadful feeling that something bad will happen to them, even though I know that my thoughts will not have any effect, and might even help me prepare for the worst.Replies: @Anonymous, @bomag, @Polynikes, @Barnard, @Nico, @Harry Baldwin, @Under the Cone of Silence, @Njguy73, @ChrisZ, @Anonymous, @MarkinLA
That’s what’s really at the root of this self-esteem panacea: magical thinking. Your positive thoughts are supposed to bring about positive changes in your life.
Maybe also an offshoot of the blank slate nonsense.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
I'm from a long line of Grabowskis and I've seen it over and over again.Replies: @MarkinLA, @David Davenport
You are supposed to be in some type of management by 40 – estimator, inspector, or foreman.
Absolutely. This is the kind of confidence that begat Kevin Federline two children to Britney Spears against all odds.
https://www.tapology.com/rankings/all-time-greatest-upsets-in-mma-and-ufc-history
There are a few of the fighting kind in the above. The Serra GSP upset comes to mind. When someone doesn't know they should rightly be fearful, they have a chance to win, even if on paper they shouldn't. Hard to do if they don't have knockout power though. Belfort vs Silva maybe fits that category. It's a young guy thing especially. Silva accomplished more in his career than Belfort, but Belfort had that self-belief that enabled him to topple some impressive opponents in his career.
https://youtu.be/xFRDFHZ8AaMReplies: @MarkinLA
Absolutely. This is the kind of confidence that begat Kevin Federline two children to Britney Spears against all odds.
Consider the source one screwed up pop singer falling for a guy because he could dance well.
Then again look at Madge, who is at least 120-130 IQ, got herself knocked up by a mestizo fitness trainer....I've seen him interviewed, he can't be terribly smart. But has a dig bick...I mean a big...Replies: @Anonymous
High school guidance counselors are the devil’s handmaiden.
White Core Americans have been demoralized and a lot of them have low self-esteem because they are White. Southerners seem to have resisted the anti-White propaganda the best. Rural and regular New Englanders also don't seem too bothered about being White. They sort of like it.
White Southerners and White New Englanders need to stay away from the hard drugs. The hard drugs are rendering them unfit to take part in the upcoming Civil War II. When these dope are on the drugs, they obliterate any sense of their own self, let alone having low- or high self-esteem.
Us peasants and populists and patriots should call the ruling class the ruling class. When we call them "the elite" it might enhance the self-esteem of the globalizer rats who are causing all the problems.Replies: @Njguy73
In 2010, this author suggested “clowns,” “frauds,” and “idiots.”
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/68292/sec_id/68292
Consider the source one screwed up pop singer falling for a guy because he could dance well.Replies: @Anonymous
Brit has the IQ of a rutabaga, maybe a kumquat.
Then again look at Madge, who is at least 120-130 IQ, got herself knocked up by a mestizo fitness trainer….I’ve seen him interviewed, he can’t be terribly smart. But has a dig bick…I mean a big…
Yet she picked a seedy pachuco looking (he's Cubano: I know) nonentity to procreate with.
Giving her a daughter that would be at a disadvantage for her complexion and looks were she not Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon.
Cher had Gregg Allman's kid. Allman was a rat fink, but he was also a good musician and a success at it. Ditto Chrissie Hynde, who got Ray Davies to impregnate her despite the planned wedding having blown up: Davies is at least a successful performer and songwriter whose Kinks could have been as big as the Beatles or Stones but for timing and a few fistfights with his brother.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Njguy73
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride
The high-trust, beyond-kin, altruistic social systems that used to characterize Western Civilization and made it the envy of the world were not accidents. They were based on an assumption that the Seven Deadly Sins were indeed sinful. In the New World Order currently replacing Western Civilization, we can see personal and public tragedies in too many lives as people recklessly pursue self-centered, narcissistic views of a good life based on the Heavenly Virtues ... ways of life devoid of personal responsibility for the consequences and impacts of their behaviors on themselves and others.
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (1 John 2:16 KJV)
It will be a hard fall before people rediscover the lessons that used to be at the core of the greatness of Christian Europe with its positive impact on the rest of humanity. Noticing that "God was dead" (that is, that He was no longer a source of meaning or moral compass in the lives of Western man), Nietzsche predicted the outcome (as quoted by syonredux above):
"Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man."
Nietzsche, Thus spoke ZarathustraReplies: @Thin-Skinned Masta-Beta, @CJ, @Olorin
You’ve vocalized reasons for many of my subconscious feelings of disgust about our contemporary times.
Fat-Pride
Slut-Pride
Aggressive swaggering rage
Attention-whoring is now the highest value and basis for the measure of man for social-media points collected on You-Tube, Facebook, Instagram and World-Star Hip-Hop.
Modesty, humility and stoicism adieu.
So all the efforts over the last 20+ years to raise children's self esteem without real achievement works against this and has created the neurotic, insecure 20 and 30 somethings that inhabit the world these days.
I see it all the time in my professional life:
My employee A: "I don't feel you are giving me enough opportunities to move up in my work."
Me (as manager): "OK. Good point. How about I assign you X?" (X = some challenging task). "Great chance to prove yourself."
My employee A: "Hmm. I need to think about it. " (Slinks off)...
Two weeks later: repeat the aboveReplies: @Jim Christian, @27 year old
In your opinion, was A wrong in line 1? Or not until line 3? A lot of boomers seem to fault us millennials for making line 1 type of requests.
Followup question (don’t read a hostile tone into this, i’m just asking) what exactly are your “accomplishments” that justify you being a manger and directing the work of younger employees?
It seems to us (and maybe this is not right, but this is how it seems) that boomer age workers had a sort of upward career inertia and just kind of kept showing up and gradually they were recognized and promoted, but we are expected to beg our bosses to do more work for the same pay … and THEN we can maybe talk about getting rewarded for it*
*at the 1x a year designated compensation evaluation and promotion review committee cycle
Her: Your husband is almost 30 and still in that entry level job. Why hasn't he been promoted yet? Isn't he a good worker?
Me: Well, he can't apply for a promotion until one of his bosses decides to retire, and they all seem pretty comfortable.
Her: Hmph. In our day they would MAKE a position for you as long as you were a good worker. Especially if you were a man his age.
And we are supposed to be completely happy with this turn of events.
Of course the only solution is to jump ship
True that there are many poor managers; and we as a society are "managed" by our politicians, judges, and subject matter experts of sometimes sketchy credentials. Let us try and keep enough redundancy and alternate routes in place to dampen their damage.The past has always been the land of low hanging fruit. But human accomplishment is usually a rising curve, and there are more opportunities out there.
"If you're reacting to this from the POV of a
•white
•middle-class
•educated person
try again as a small child who
•doesn't get read to
•is abused in various ways
•is called racial names by white kids, and
•in other ways doesn't have the upbringing you had."
Is it POSSIBLE to me more condescending than this? The REAL racists are liberal white ladies who believe that blacks have no agency and exist only as victims for nice white ladies to pity.Replies: @Olorin, @27 year old, @Yak-15, @Baltimore teacher, @The Last Real Calvinist
Yes, exactly — although not just to pity, but to save.
Superb post; thanks very much.
James Howard Kunstler?
He’s an idiot.
In the finance world the problem was already seen and corrected years earlier when annuities and mortgage amortization tables blew up in the year 2000.
At my company we allocated 300K to fix the problem. The Director in charge asked all the programmers what should be done. They said "do nothing". For "saving" the company 300K this guy was put on the fast track and eventually made the most senior VP in the company all for doing nothing. Talk about perception is reality.Replies: @27 year old
Penn. The school which answers the question Is the Ivy League a consortium of elite universities or just a lousy athletic conference?
I remember also reading something about this in the late 1990s in Time or a place like that. The article said that people with high-self esteem that bully have perverted the titled of that old book to be "I'm OK, You're NOT OK."
http://www.today.com/parents/study-bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-status-lower-levels-t36271Replies: @stillCARealist
You’re OK, I’m 24K
Jack seems to have a healthy regard for himself. He went to Penn you know. For the record I say he’s only a blowhard (o.k. a big blowhard) and not a parasite.
I remember Jerry Rice attributing his commitment to practicing and improving and playing at the highest level to massive insecurity.
“In other words, if ever anyone wanted to make an argument for the importance of immigration, of cross-border fertilization, of the absence of walls and of the renewal and rebirth that comes from an outside perspective, they could do worse than to turn to the 2017 CFDA awards.”
In other words, if ever anyone wanted to make an argument for the importance of immigration, of cross-border fertilization, of the absence of walls and of the renewal and rebirth that comes from an outside perspective, they[sic] could do worse than to turn to–fashion.
Then again look at Madge, who is at least 120-130 IQ, got herself knocked up by a mestizo fitness trainer....I've seen him interviewed, he can't be terribly smart. But has a dig bick...I mean a big...Replies: @Anonymous
Thinking about it more, there is probably a lot to be learned about the psychology of the independently wealthy female from the question of why Madonna chose Carlos Leon as a baby daddy. She got pregnant on purpose, and she could have had any of hundreds of men to do the job. Or she could have been inseminated artificially with the semen of any of thousands of selected candidates.
Yet she picked a seedy pachuco looking (he’s Cubano: I know) nonentity to procreate with.
Giving her a daughter that would be at a disadvantage for her complexion and looks were she not Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon.
Cher had Gregg Allman’s kid. Allman was a rat fink, but he was also a good musician and a success at it. Ditto Chrissie Hynde, who got Ray Davies to impregnate her despite the planned wedding having blown up: Davies is at least a successful performer and songwriter whose Kinks could have been as big as the Beatles or Stones but for timing and a few fistfights with his brother.
(Waits for readers to stop twitching)
Those kids are, as of 2017, 20 and 19 years old. I haven't heard of any musical efforts from them. Guess regression to the mean kicked in.
P.S. The partner, Julie Cypher, was previously married to Lou Diamond Phillips, and is now married to some dude named Matthew Hale. It's like she is to heterosexuality what Bobo Newsom was to the old Washington Senators. Keeps coming and going.
Out of the six designers mentioned in the article, four of them are white and one is East Asian. Somebody should write a letter of complaint to the New York Times about the lack of Bantus in fashion.
By the way, here is a photo of Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim:
https://fashionweekdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Monse-LauraKim_FernandoGarciaMonse_FR_3996_2-800x470-1456264194-2.jpg
Clearly, four European immigrants and a South Korean winning fashion awards is a rebuke to Trump and those deplorables.
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride
The high-trust, beyond-kin, altruistic social systems that used to characterize Western Civilization and made it the envy of the world were not accidents. They were based on an assumption that the Seven Deadly Sins were indeed sinful. In the New World Order currently replacing Western Civilization, we can see personal and public tragedies in too many lives as people recklessly pursue self-centered, narcissistic views of a good life based on the Heavenly Virtues ... ways of life devoid of personal responsibility for the consequences and impacts of their behaviors on themselves and others.
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (1 John 2:16 KJV)
It will be a hard fall before people rediscover the lessons that used to be at the core of the greatness of Christian Europe with its positive impact on the rest of humanity. Noticing that "God was dead" (that is, that He was no longer a source of meaning or moral compass in the lives of Western man), Nietzsche predicted the outcome (as quoted by syonredux above):
"Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man."
Nietzsche, Thus spoke ZarathustraReplies: @Thin-Skinned Masta-Beta, @CJ, @Olorin
In Ferdinand Mount’s 2010 book Full Circle he noted that modern society more and more considers the Seven Deadly Sins to be virtues, writing “covetousness has been rebranded as retail therapy, sloth is downtime, lust is exploring your sexuality, anger is opening up your feelings, vanity is looking good because you’re worth it and gluttony is the religion of foodies”.
I hold the WW2 generation responsible for our present undoing with uncontrolled immigration...Replies: @Charles Pewitt, @dfordoom
Everything that is wrong with society today goes back to that WW2 generation.
As soon as those heroes got back from Normandy they began the task of wrecking society.
The latest fad in education is Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset. Too bad research is already debunking it.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/schools-are-desperate-to-teach-growth-mindset-but-its-based-on-a-lie/
The problem with all these feel-good fads is that the research is always many steps behind. Reminds me of the saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
As the lower classes grow ever more obese – high-fructose corn syrup is the true opiate of the masses – the upper classes grow ever more neurotic about their abdominal muscles. Only an eight-pack will do.
Yet she picked a seedy pachuco looking (he's Cubano: I know) nonentity to procreate with.
Giving her a daughter that would be at a disadvantage for her complexion and looks were she not Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon.
Cher had Gregg Allman's kid. Allman was a rat fink, but he was also a good musician and a success at it. Ditto Chrissie Hynde, who got Ray Davies to impregnate her despite the planned wedding having blown up: Davies is at least a successful performer and songwriter whose Kinks could have been as big as the Beatles or Stones but for timing and a few fistfights with his brother.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Njguy73
It’s almost as if Madonna, queen of the narcissists, wants a homely daughter who will not upstage her mother.
Rand's one-time chief follower and enforcer, Nathaniel Branden, published a book (I think it was his first independent of Rand) titled The Psychology of Self-Esteem. I remember reading the book with great hopes: alas, I eventually concluded that whatever problems I had in life were not primarily due to lack of self-esteem.
So... was Vasco a closet Randian?
Dave Miller in SacramentoReplies: @Anonymous, @Njguy73, @advancedatheist, @Stan Adams
After the Rand/Branden split, Rand forbade her followers from reading any of his books.
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
Did you see Heathers (1989) when it came out?
Followup question (don't read a hostile tone into this, i'm just asking) what exactly are your "accomplishments" that justify you being a manger and directing the work of younger employees?
It seems to us (and maybe this is not right, but this is how it seems) that boomer age workers had a sort of upward career inertia and just kind of kept showing up and gradually they were recognized and promoted, but we are expected to beg our bosses to do more work for the same pay ... and THEN we can maybe talk about getting rewarded for it*
*at the 1x a year designated compensation evaluation and promotion review committee cycleReplies: @Rosey, @bomag
Conversation I had with my mother once a month:
Her: Your husband is almost 30 and still in that entry level job. Why hasn’t he been promoted yet? Isn’t he a good worker?
Me: Well, he can’t apply for a promotion until one of his bosses decides to retire, and they all seem pretty comfortable.
Her: Hmph. In our day they would MAKE a position for you as long as you were a good worker. Especially if you were a man his age.
And we are supposed to be completely happy with this turn of events.
Of course the only solution is to jump ship
Followup question (don't read a hostile tone into this, i'm just asking) what exactly are your "accomplishments" that justify you being a manger and directing the work of younger employees?
It seems to us (and maybe this is not right, but this is how it seems) that boomer age workers had a sort of upward career inertia and just kind of kept showing up and gradually they were recognized and promoted, but we are expected to beg our bosses to do more work for the same pay ... and THEN we can maybe talk about getting rewarded for it*
*at the 1x a year designated compensation evaluation and promotion review committee cycleReplies: @Rosey, @bomag
Line 3 is the problem. Employee could have offered an alternative or a modification.
I have a reputation and history; I establish my credentials on an ongoing basis; there is a consensus of those around me that I belong in my position.
True that there are many poor managers; and we as a society are “managed” by our politicians, judges, and subject matter experts of sometimes sketchy credentials. Let us try and keep enough redundancy and alternate routes in place to dampen their damage.
The past has always been the land of low hanging fruit. But human accomplishment is usually a rising curve, and there are more opportunities out there.
The funny part of the Y2K nonsense was that anybody with a real programming background down in the trenches knew it was BS. Those gurus of object oriented coding Coad and Yourdon also bought into that nonsense. think Coad even went off the grid for awhile. Anybody programming what is now called embedded systems had clocks that repeatedly rolled over and those are the only clocks that mattered in those systems. The calendar clock is only used for time stamping events and not for decision making.
In the finance world the problem was already seen and corrected years earlier when annuities and mortgage amortization tables blew up in the year 2000.
At my company we allocated 300K to fix the problem. The Director in charge asked all the programmers what should be done. They said “do nothing”. For “saving” the company 300K this guy was put on the fast track and eventually made the most senior VP in the company all for doing nothing. Talk about perception is reality.
So many times my elderly patients would confuse their pride with their dignity . Of course they were mortified when they couldn’t get up out of bed and make it to the BR without leaving a trail of liquid stool behind them . I had many failings as a nurse as you can imagine , but on those occasions knowing that my own time would come I always tried to make light of it , as it will to many of us here . My only advice to you is that if you should find yourself in the hospital with that sense of urgency stay in bed and use the call bell . It is much easier to clean you up and change the bed than clean you and the floor . Pride is a flimsy thing your dignity as a human can never be taken only surrendered .
As soon as those heroes got back from Normandy they began the task of wrecking society.Replies: @MarkinLA, @Bill Jones
You can’t blame an entire generation for something done by our government under the cover of darkness. Who was there to counter any of this garbage? Without the internet and cable news all sorts of crap got passed before anybody knew anything about it.
Did most of them fight merely because everyone else was doing so and they didn't want to be considered cowards for not fighting? Did most just fight because they were drafted and had no choice?
Did they think to themselves, "Those Germans hate us for our freedoms?"
I thought “the white privilege on display here is nauseating” was one of his wittier quips lately. TD was more amusing in the old days when he used short parodies of brain-dead leftist ideas, much like a Onion headline, to mock them. Lately he has been laying on the satire a little too heavily with long rambling parodies that just don’t have the humorous punch of the short stuff.
Either way, he has mined the material out and I suggested he might refresh his brand by switching to using the alias “Massive Cuck”‘and posting parodies of neo and cuckservative takes on the topics.
In the finance world the problem was already seen and corrected years earlier when annuities and mortgage amortization tables blew up in the year 2000.
At my company we allocated 300K to fix the problem. The Director in charge asked all the programmers what should be done. They said "do nothing". For "saving" the company 300K this guy was put on the fast track and eventually made the most senior VP in the company all for doing nothing. Talk about perception is reality.Replies: @27 year old
>
Doing nothing was the right choice. I would promote that guy too. A lot of guys would have happily spent that 300k and even gone over budget because it would have been a very high visibility project that they got to take credit for when “their efforts” prevented the company from melting down due to “the y2k issue”
Joe Montana talked about how Jerry Rice would run out every single route in practice, instead of discarding the ball or pulling up short if not handling it that play. Paying attention to the little things helped make him such a success.
--
As an aside, the article mentions psychologist Jean Twenge. Her books are worth a quick read and somewhat iSteve-friendly. Not as thrilling as The Nurture Assumption, but clear-headed in the overall line-up of psychology books.Replies: @Rosamond Vincy
Ah yes, Carl Rogers, the man who got education majors saying things to public school 10-year-olds like “How does that make you feel?” and “Wouldn’t it be nice if you did-such-and-so?” in soothing little voices.
Used to envy parochial kids who just got whacked by angry nuns.
Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride
The high-trust, beyond-kin, altruistic social systems that used to characterize Western Civilization and made it the envy of the world were not accidents. They were based on an assumption that the Seven Deadly Sins were indeed sinful. In the New World Order currently replacing Western Civilization, we can see personal and public tragedies in too many lives as people recklessly pursue self-centered, narcissistic views of a good life based on the Heavenly Virtues ... ways of life devoid of personal responsibility for the consequences and impacts of their behaviors on themselves and others.
"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." (1 John 2:16 KJV)
It will be a hard fall before people rediscover the lessons that used to be at the core of the greatness of Christian Europe with its positive impact on the rest of humanity. Noticing that "God was dead" (that is, that He was no longer a source of meaning or moral compass in the lives of Western man), Nietzsche predicted the outcome (as quoted by syonredux above):
"Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man."
Nietzsche, Thus spoke ZarathustraReplies: @Thin-Skinned Masta-Beta, @CJ, @Olorin
But ask yourselves: How many people are actually doing this…and who is magnifying them?
Who benefits most from this behavior?
Those exercising it are more likely to self-harm than benefit. Useful idiots. The Rachel Corrie principle.
Many of you saw this I’m guessing (widely reported elsewhere):
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/06/06/report-evergreen-protesters-roaming-campus-with-baseball-bats/
The faculty at Evergreen who reward that sort of degeneracy are sitting pretty.
Marxist professor Peter Bohmer, who teaches Foxtrot the police and anti-white racism while playing the My Jewish Dad Was In Austria When Hitler Marched In card,*** was making $80K a year, plus benefits, for nine months’ employment each year, according to the 2015 public employee income figures I saw via The Olympian‘s database.
That was just a few thousand per year less than the chief of police at Evergreen’s Class A law enforcement force and well over the salaries of the skilled workers who actually keep the little city running at the infrastructure level.
Larry Mosqueda, who teaches that blacks should never do time for crimes committed, was in the upper $70s.
Naima Lowe–the f– you lady clutching the little dog–was in the mid-$70s.
Julie Russo, who penned the screed against Weinstein that many faculty and some staff signed onto, is relatively poor at $60K a year.
The campus police officers who were constantly harassed and threatened by these professors’ pet BLM/antifa/anarchist/leftist mobs and told to stand down in a time of riots and vandalism? They make Russo’s level or less and daily face people who literally want them dead.
How many of the creatures in the photo at the link above, dubbed “The Unf—ables” by the wags on Reddit and 4chan, will be employable at even minimum wage, with minimum wage pumped up to a business-killing Seattleite $15/hr?
Pink braid black tranny guy might get some job somewhere on an AA or grievance basis…but I predict he ends up going down a path of self destruction.
The ginger boy–well golly, I hope his wrists hold up when he swings.
The whale-shaped chick on the right is likely to eat the rest of them.
But they are expecting to live subsidized lives, and they are very useful to professional Dolt Wranglers as a result.
That’s not a spiritual matter. That’s Evolution 101: competition for space, mates (if any, and if not, you marry your own resentment), and resources. That’s using whatever you can to beat out competitors.
Their secret: they know that in a fair fight, in under 30 seconds they’d lose.
Make no mistake. That submission is precisely what they crave.
***Just so’s our host knows I can document that:
http://www.olyblog.net/peter-bohmer%E2%80%944206-talk-heritage-park
Having a commie dad who at 22 could afford to get out of Austria in 1938 has been a great schtick for that guy. BTW, he came to WA state after burning through Cal SD:
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt8199s1nz/entire_text/
As soon as those heroes got back from Normandy they began the task of wrecking society.Replies: @MarkinLA, @Bill Jones
Nonsense. It was the WWI generation, Wilson’s enabler’s- those who created the Federal Reserve, direct elections to the Senate, thus destroying the power of the States, gave votes to women, passed prohibition and legalized income tax ., who were the biggest destroyers the Country has ever seen.
Yeah, who can ever forget that time that Donald Trump called for a total and complete shutdown of Belgians entering the United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on. Or that time that Donald Trump said that when Italy sends its people, they’re not sending their best.
By the way, here is a photo of Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim:
Clearly, four European immigrants and a South Korean winning fashion awards is a rebuke to Trump and those deplorables.
They never did learn though. The ones that are left still buy the liberal BS.
Yet she picked a seedy pachuco looking (he's Cubano: I know) nonentity to procreate with.
Giving her a daughter that would be at a disadvantage for her complexion and looks were she not Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon.
Cher had Gregg Allman's kid. Allman was a rat fink, but he was also a good musician and a success at it. Ditto Chrissie Hynde, who got Ray Davies to impregnate her despite the planned wedding having blown up: Davies is at least a successful performer and songwriter whose Kinks could have been as big as the Beatles or Stones but for timing and a few fistfights with his brother.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Njguy73
And Melissa Etheridge’s then-partner bore two kids with David Crosby’s donated sperm.
(Waits for readers to stop twitching)
Those kids are, as of 2017, 20 and 19 years old. I haven’t heard of any musical efforts from them. Guess regression to the mean kicked in.
P.S. The partner, Julie Cypher, was previously married to Lou Diamond Phillips, and is now married to some dude named Matthew Hale. It’s like she is to heterosexuality what Bobo Newsom was to the old Washington Senators. Keeps coming and going.
I live in California and remember this guy John Vasconcellos. All I remember is that he had a great PR consultant or image consultant or whatever they called themselves. I didn’t know he was all that influential.
I think he was just trying to make a nationwide name for himself to try for higher office. I call it auditioning. One problem, he’s a White American with a Spanish name and not an Indian looking militant. So the liberals didn’t want him. As I remember, he didn’t accomplish whatever he wanted.
Someone currently auditioning for nation wide office is MS Sawant the microsoft alimony curry socialist of Seattle city council. Her latest thing is making a law that all landlords must obtain voter register cards for all their tenants. Then taking them around to the tenants and making the tenants fill them out and the landlords mailing them in. MS Sawant is some kind of high caste Indian and doesn’t believe the proles are capable of registering to vote themselves.
She has also vowed to banish Trumpism form Seattle
You think those fields are populated by morons and losers think again.
A lot of guys who go into the trades not because they're dumb, they go into because they can't stand the idea of being a cube drone and like working with their hands. And besides they can make more than the cube drone with a sheep skin.
The other thing, their job can't be sent to Asia as can a programmer, engineer or scientist. And in the trades they don't shit can you at 40 like they do in the tech field where age discrimination is rampant. As a ex IT and tech worker I can attest to that.
Furthermore, it's very hard to make the case for a white boy to attend college given the hatred aimed at them by female and ethnic students. Not to mention incurring a vast debt load that negates the earning potential of a degree. Provided you graduate.Replies: @Jack D, @Anonymous, @Anynomous
IBEW Local 6 55 Fillmore St SF CA they make about $120,000 working about 48 weeks a year.
They make more when they work at foreman and general foreman wages plus overtime Both my daughters are working on the tallest building west of the Mississippi right now. That’s something to be proud of. And one started at 18 and the other at 19 so no wasted time and money in college. They don’t do residential work at all, just commercial industrial. One ran a huge drilling machine that dug the subway extension. And they don’t have to deal with a lot of black women intriguing and gossiping and causing problems.
Maybe Franken is getting ready for his 2020 run (think n vote). Or maybe he was trying to avoid having Maher make him laugh over something else Pol Incorr.Replies: @snorlax
The ideal scenario would be that Maher’s show gets cancelled but he remains a celebrity and with his eyes opened to SJWism.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
I'm from a long line of Grabowskis and I've seen it over and over again.Replies: @MarkinLA, @David Davenport
Downside to most trades: at 50 you are pretty well a physical wreck.
Your knees are gone, your back hurts, you look old because you have been in the sun a lot.
The last ten years of your career you hurt every day.
And when you retire you sit on your ass all the time, get fat and croak early.
Old saying: “Nothing sadder than a grey-haired man having to carry a load up a ladder.”
The AAs are also the only group of students that hits females, calls them pejorative names, and yells at/threatens adults (hall monitors, principals, their own parents).Replies: @donut
If you are in deed a teacher here in B-More then you are a fraud and a hypocrite because while the Negro doesn’t even pretend to learn you pretend to teach .
This raises an interesting question. What exactly did those guys who stormed ashore on D-Day think they were fighting for? The Americans certainly weren’t fighting to defend their homes and families. Did they think they were fighting for freedom and democracy? Will people fight for such abstractions? How many realised they fighting for the interests of the Soviet Union? How many knew that and approved of it?
Did most of them fight merely because everyone else was doing so and they didn’t want to be considered cowards for not fighting? Did most just fight because they were drafted and had no choice?
Did they think to themselves, “Those Germans hate us for our freedoms?”
In fact of course it isn’t any particular generation. The poison that has destroyed our civilisation has been present for well over a century. Once ideas like liberalism and democracy gain a foothold any civilisation is doomed.
I think he was just trying to make a nationwide name for himself to try for higher office. I call it auditioning. One problem, he's a White American with a Spanish name and not an Indian looking militant. So the liberals didn't want him. As I remember, he didn't accomplish whatever he wanted.
Someone currently auditioning for nation wide office is MS Sawant the microsoft alimony curry socialist of Seattle city council. Her latest thing is making a law that all landlords must obtain voter register cards for all their tenants. Then taking them around to the tenants and making the tenants fill them out and the landlords mailing them in. MS Sawant is some kind of high caste Indian and doesn't believe the proles are capable of registering to vote themselves.
She has also vowed to banish Trumpism form SeattleReplies: @BB753
Vasconcellos is a Portuguese surname.
at donut
Well put. Pride and dignity are different things.