The Crushing of Self-Esteem by Society
Sep. 6th, 2019 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorI really think that being able to cultivate a healthy positive self-image is important not just to our own happiness, but in helping us to improve as people. Unfortunately, I think that so many elements of society are focused on preventing people from developing positive self-image in order to exert greater control over us. Some ways I think society encourages negative self-image are:
*diet culture - cultivates obsession over appearance and health as a moral imperative, and conflates appearance and weight with health.
*performance culture of school and work - cultivates unhealthy obsession with how smart and hard-working we are and encourages us to view peers as competition rather than as collaborators.
*sleep deprivation - kind of hard to feel good about yourself if you can barely think and function. Often caused by performance culture, but other societal norms can also be underlying causes for this issue.
*advertising - always trying to make people feel inadequate if they don't possess X or Y product.
*oppression - all the ways in which unfair treatment, abuse, and active gaslighting are supported or condoned by society.
*rugged individualism - causes people to have unrealistic expectations of what a single individual can accomplish--feelings of inadequacy when realizing one cannot be like the hero of a heroic narrative who singlehandedly solves major societal problems without ever even having to make difficult moral choices. Causes us to view our necessary dependence on others as weakness. Again encourages people to see others as competition rather than as collaborators.
I think recognizing how these elements of our society harm our self-esteem is important to working on repairing that harm. While we cannot singlehandedly fix society, I think that being able to identify what elements of it are harmful to us can help us to devise strategies to reduce that harm. I also think this can help with self-esteem because it helps to realize when something is not our fault rather than blaming ourselves for being the cause of all of our problems.
*diet culture - cultivates obsession over appearance and health as a moral imperative, and conflates appearance and weight with health.
*performance culture of school and work - cultivates unhealthy obsession with how smart and hard-working we are and encourages us to view peers as competition rather than as collaborators.
*sleep deprivation - kind of hard to feel good about yourself if you can barely think and function. Often caused by performance culture, but other societal norms can also be underlying causes for this issue.
*advertising - always trying to make people feel inadequate if they don't possess X or Y product.
*oppression - all the ways in which unfair treatment, abuse, and active gaslighting are supported or condoned by society.
*rugged individualism - causes people to have unrealistic expectations of what a single individual can accomplish--feelings of inadequacy when realizing one cannot be like the hero of a heroic narrative who singlehandedly solves major societal problems without ever even having to make difficult moral choices. Causes us to view our necessary dependence on others as weakness. Again encourages people to see others as competition rather than as collaborators.
I think recognizing how these elements of our society harm our self-esteem is important to working on repairing that harm. While we cannot singlehandedly fix society, I think that being able to identify what elements of it are harmful to us can help us to devise strategies to reduce that harm. I also think this can help with self-esteem because it helps to realize when something is not our fault rather than blaming ourselves for being the cause of all of our problems.