Carefully Defined

 

I am no psychologist, but my unshakable intuition is that high self-esteem is the right phrase to indicate this hard-to-define-precisely concept, high self-esteem. As a rational egoist, I want each person to love herself, so that, once she is happy and has a positive attitude about herself, her life and her prospects, this self-esteeming person, of good will and good intentions, can then love and care for her children, her spouse, her nation, her career, her self-actualization project, her good deity whom she serves.

 

If she suffers from low self-esteem, then she will hate herself and remain selfless as she is naturally prone to be, and then she and the whole world will suffer due to her inner discomfort and state of rage.

 

Yes, the concept of self-esteem is tricky to explain because each person’s soul or consciousness is a spark of the divine, so how does one define with precision and determinativeness what is immortal, which perhaps is unfathomable rationally, or at least beyond human concepts and terms to linguistically capture the infinite.

 

Still, we have made sufficient progress to offer an approximate definition of self-esteem. It is loving the self, by disciplining the self, by taking care of the self, but also working hard and maverizing as an originator, an intellectual, a creator.

 

It would require that one is proud of what one has accomplished by hard work and by moral and spiritual self-improvement working towards having a good will, being a person of admirable character and integrity, loving, seeking, and speaking truth.

 

It would also require a strong dose of self-reality checking, a form of humility, to take oneself seriously but not too seriously.

 

It requires knowing, accepting, and fighting against one’s sinful nature, that one hates oneself, one indulges the self, and then one acts evil, an admission that one loves evil and want to do evil.

 

It requires that one be careful of manipulators, fawning adulators, sycophants, and tempters. One must never be like a monarch, a Hollywood celebrity, or a spoiled trust fund baby, that does nothing for oneself, that has servants and assistants to worship one.

 

Self-esteem has nothing to do with pathological, narcissistic self-love, which is really a collectivist position of immoral power-hoarding, the mean and miserable, leader of the pack and ruler of the hierarchy, self-loathing altruist tied to others, and corrupted by a debilitating codependency on each other.

 

One wants to maverize and self-actualize as high and far as one can go, but one does not ever  want fame, praise, riches, so that one is worshiped by spellbound followers, idolizing a human deity. Should power, clout, fame, praise, and riches, come one’s way, as a byproduct of achievement by merit, that is fine, as long as one is very careful and always self-monitoring, lest one go astray become elitist in social rank and standing, for that transition inevitably corrupts one’s ego, and rots oneself out from the inside out, ruining one’s life.

 

One still needs to buy one’s own groceries, wash one’s own car, mow one’s own grass, and drop the kids off at soccer practice, and attend their games.

 

Self-esteem is gained and kept by being a person of exceptional consciousness and accomplishment. The maverizer, the developed egoist, does not become the egotist, all swelled up, ruined by his success.  Each maverizer, by living as an average person, among thousands of neighboring equally gifted, accomplished maverizers, that all know they are exceptional, but seek no higher status than anyone else, by not allowing his maverized success to go to his head, he remains calm and happy, but not arrogant and contemptuous towards others.

 

I promote humility and common sense in this regard. Also, where 92% of the population are maverizers, then it is hard to get swelled up and corrupted by self-denying slaves, because all are proud, very skilled, very artistic, and live the power of powerfulness, which is the egoist golden rule, that one dominates none and is dominated by none, so this tradeoff at work and socially keeps things relatively equal with all just being common people.

 

Each appreciates and congratulates the maverized and maverizing neighbor or family member but none gets put on a pedestal. That keeps all humble in the right way, to prevent any from falling prey to the warped, excessive, addictive craving to receive from others the sick, endless, ever-increasing degree of acclamation demanded by a Hollywood startlet.