[ghb]

Self-esteem is one of the most useless abstractions I know of. Its currency is tied together with this nonsensical emphasis on "feeling good about yourself" prevalent today. I really would like to know how popular psychology concretely became so enamored with ceaseless optimism as a guiding principle in life. I'm dead serious about this because it's clearly not scientifically discovered nor is it historically enduring (Aristotle lists such optimism as dangerous and medieval Christianity would've listed it as pride). Moreover it presupposes consciousness has some sort of exhaustive mastery over the psyche, such that it can just pull itself up from the bootstraps were it wished. This leads to a lot of bad decisions, dangerous decisions, being made and I genuinely think it would be a contribution to our well-being when we finally throw it out the window.