Self-Love

 

I was Fireside Chat, #348, given by Dennis Prager on 7/28/2022; the lecture was titled, Does Self-Love Make You A Better Person? I took notes on the lecture and will comment on it.

 

I would say in general that we should tell ourselves that we love ourselves, and that if we do love ourselves, it will make us better people, and is good for the world too.

 

Prager: “Self-love. I never once thought do I love myself. I do say, do I respect myself?”

 

My response: Dennis Prager is a Jewish altruistic ethicist, not big on self-esteem enhancement or this fuzzy talk of self-love. He thinks people are basically evil and basically selfish—they amount to the same thing—so talk of enhancing self-esteem is fanning the flames of becoming more evil in one’s soul, and that is a bad thing, Dennis concludes. By the way, Dennis, self-respect is healthy self-love, when it is merited based upon ethical living, and only ethical living makes one able to esteem oneself, not filled with guilt and shame, provided one has a strong, active conscience pushing one to behave, really behave.

 

Prager: “I do not sin because that clashes with my self-respect. If one sins, one cannot respect or like the self. Like is contrasted to loving. Every parent loves their child, but not every parent likes their child. Should we say to our children: you deserve as much love and affection as anyone in the universe. No, we do not.”

 

My response: I have mixed feelings about that. Each child deserves as much love and affection as anyone else, but spoiling a child, or making them feel so special in a sick Hollywood celebrity fashion so they just know they are the most important person in the world, never to be criticized, never said no to, never given second-level billing. These are not acts of love but of corruption. If this corrupting the child is giving them more than their fair share of love, then that is corrupt, and Dennis is right.

 

Prager: “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.”

 

My response: Yes, if you do not value yourself, why should anyone else, but bragging and implying you are better than everyone else is hostile and mean, and that is not proper self-love or proper other-love. It just is socially sharing your insecure feelings of inner rottenness that you are compensating for.

 

Prager: “It is not healthy to want everyone to love you. Be for truth and goodness and then it will not matter if loved or hated.”

 

My response: “I like this. Love yourself and be good so that you are satisfied with what you are and have become, and quit worrying about feedback, positive or negative from neighbors. Seek after truth and goodness, not popularity and social rank.

 

Prager: “You do want love from your wife and friends. You should not raise your kids to love you but to be good people. “

 

My response: “We do want to be loved by our spouse and friends, and it is nice to be loved by our kids, but our first responsibility is to raise them to be good people, if they are listening and go along with our training of their own free will.

 

Prager: “Love yourself and all else falls into place. Not so. If you say I love myself and do not need anyone else, not loved by friends or anyone—then only big government will love you.”

 

My response: You should love yourself whether or not all falls into place or not is unknowable, but if you love yourself in a mode of truth and honesty, then what friendships and loving relationships that you do form with others will be healthy, strong, loving, perhaps permanently.

 

Saying you should love yourself first is not to say that you should live alone or do not need family, friends, and loved ones. Anyone living totally alone as a child or adult will end up sick, very sick, perhaps mad, but friendships and loving each other need be based in individual-living, self-realizing more than in group-living and non-individuating—such new social arrangements are much healthier for everyone involved and should improve personal and general happiness.

 

Prager: “Self-respect is earned (Ed Note: earned not natural or automatic) respect. If all pursue self-love it will not make a good world. To be involved in self-love is not to be a moral person, not making better the character of the self.”

 

My response: I think just the opposite of what Dennis said up above is true, but he is an altruist and I am an egoist.