Self, as we understand it today, was practically nonexistent. There was little or no need for interpersonal skills, because there was little meaningful difference between one person and another. Self, let alone self-esteem, was a foreign and possibly fatal concept.
Today, however, most of us come into constant and sometimes significant contact with mere acquaintances and complete strangers. Unlike the tribal mentality that minimized differences, our daily lives bring us into situations in which inevitable and often radical differences prevail. This profusion of differences forces the self to stand out in relief. Consequently, the idea and experience of being not like others is an unavoidable actuality.
This doesn't mean that most people possess a conscious regard for their own particularity. Quite the contrary. Such appreciation requires effort and awareness. Most people pass their lives in a state of unconscious habituation to the ideas and expectations they formed, for the most part, in their childhood. That echoes the tribal mentality. But, even so, they cannot avoid the plurality of beliefs, tastes, customs, and world views of modern daily life. So a sense of self occurs if only by default, if only in the irritation of being exposed to differences.
As a consequence, contemporary well-being depends upon our competence in negotiating person-to-person traffic. To do so we must continually assess ourselves and others, regardless of whether or not we possess the interest, tools, or skills.
This analysis has political consequences. Beginning with the Renaissance, through the Reformation and Enlightenment, a clearer psychological sense of self emerged, and self- ownership became a reality. The self could act upon and become the result of its own private choices. The world witnessed a new form of government and politics based on that emergent sense.
The paradigmatic leap undergirding the founding of the United States was the recognition of the fundamental existence, rights, and sovereignty of the individual as distinct from the dictates of the group. That revolution demanded that the purpose of government was to serve the individual and not the other way around. Reciprocally, the individual had to assume the task of self-governance. But we may ask to what degree most people, then or since, have understood, appreciated, and lived the fact and implications of the psycho- political self.
For many people today, psycho-political life is little different from that of the Middle Ages, when society at large, in Branden's words, "did not value self-assertion; did not understand individuality; could not conceive of self-responsibility; could not imagine innovativeness as a way of life;...did not grasp the relation of mind, intelligence, and creativity to survival."
The current rise of the victimarchy is a vestige of medieval psychology. Despite our avowal of the value and sovereignty of the autonomous individual, for victim groups the self is of little value except as the object of oppression by others. We are besieged by one disadvantaged group after another claiming impotence and innocence and demanding compensation for their purported handicaps and injuries. Individual responsibility becomes an impediment to achieving redress. Self- empowerment and self-directedness fall away, replaced by the demand that others be responsible.
And in these days of rising fundamentalism, there is a growing pressure to comply with group mentality, to surrender the self to dogma. With that, liberty and freedom are in grave danger. But healthy self-esteem can be a powerful and compelling antidote to this inclination toward herd-think.
In this environment, it is particularly important to understand that self-governance is more than a political slogan. It is a way of life. Those who take seriously the implications of self- governance must be responsible for ourselves and to others, learning to create and support our own existence as a natural course of events. We must choose to face the conditions we create and discover, striving to master ourselves rather than be mastered.
Self-esteem is not a feel-good trend. It is critical to the survival of the way we live. It requires "greater self-responsibility and integrity...the willingness to move through fear to confront conflicts and discomforting realities." A healthy self-esteem is the sine qua non of a robust and free life.
As Branden observes, "The American culture is a battleground between the values of self- responsibility and the values of entitlement." The former entails freedom, and freedom has never been free. It obliges effort and vigilance. It stands on conscience and active involvement. If men and women abandon self-responsibility, they become mere spectators in their lives. They resign personal authority and are then compelled to follow.
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, then, is a call to consciousness and participation. Its core idea is: "Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities." This is a book that should not just be read. It should be chewed on, digested, and absorbed into one's identity. It is a guidebook for a well-nourished and powerful life.
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This article is tea-bagger garbage. Robin Hood's true legacy was fighting against the Norman aristocrats to help the Saxon peasants. During the 1950s in Indiana, Robin Hood was banned reading in some school districts because of right-wing bigots who thought Robin Hood was promoting socialism. Not that there is anything wrong with socialism.
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