Celebrate Mediocrity

Cheap Bulletin: Dept. of Sciency Things:

 

Self-Esteem Doesn't Affect How You Turn Out

"It was a bombshell for those who put so much faith in self-esteem and its powers to improve our society: Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, a pioneering researcher and believer in the value of self-esteem starting in the '70s, was forced to do an about-face on his own research in the '80s. Eventually, he conducted a meta-analysis on the relationship between self-esteem and external markers of success in school, at work, and in relationships. In 2003, Baumeister and his colleagues reported that they found no evidence that high self-esteem made people better students, more successful at work, or healthier.

"After all these years," Baumeister says on his university's website, "my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline. Recent work suggests this would be good for the individual and good for society and might even be able to fill some of those promises that self-esteem once made but could not keep."

from “The Boom and Bust Ego" by Harriet Brown, Psychology Today Jan. 2012, p. 70"

So after 30 years of analysis, some wise ones discovered they were wrong. Self-motivation and self-discipline, imagine that. At least they admitted it. Yay science!

If you are already wonderful, why bother doing anything? The only way this lazy mortal gets out of bed is because I yell at myself and make me. Life is hard work but so what, boohoo, get off yr dead arse!

Science may study 50 more years and decide something else. But my own study says people who get up and do stuff fare better than hut potatoes.

Disillusioned early on their trudge through the “No Child Gets Ahead” public school system, my sons named the fake-self-esteem concept “Celebrate Mediocrity.” D students got the same photocopied robo-signed “Achievement Awards” as A students. Every player on every team got a trophy at the greasy end-of-soccer-season pizza party. We must have been the first to refuse to buy the next-to-last-place plastic prize, other parents reacted like we’d drop-kicked the kid’s balls. 

An entire mediocre generation is now whining their way through life, finding out it isn’t fair and they’re not special. The smart ones, the active, the disciplined, the creative, may adapt. The lazy and/or stupid will struggle and hate their lives. Boo Diddly Hoo.

Better to have been told from the start: No one is special, life is a struggle for sanity and survival, full of obstacles requiring hard work. Anything beyond food and shelter is cake icing.

If you are still waiting for your prize, paralyzed by inertia, depression, or abject boredom: tough crap. When we were Cave Homies, you helped get food or you didn’t eat. Go do something useful and shut up. Volunteer somewhere. Clean house. Help your old fart neighbor (or help your old neighbor fart if that’s what she needs.) If you are lazy, do something anyhow. If a bit stupid, accept it, listen, play nice, and do something. Don’t beat yourself to death, but get up, stand up, maybe for our rights if you got nothing else going on.

Meanwhile, what to do with the curricula already in stupefying effect? Seriously, shouldn’t we be at school board meetings pointing out the research, trying to reverse the damage? This may take decades. Graduating classes full of undereducated underachievers, dumb, proud of it, and told they are wonderful. Another gut shot to the staggering middle class, in the land of the less-and-less free and home of the misled brave.