rambling rosemarie

Just in case my two or three readers think that I am out of line when I say that high self-esteem is dangerous, please take the time to watch this interview on Good Morning America. The recent horrific shootings in Alabama on the Huntsville campus prompted a look at the suspect, Amy Bishop. During the interview with an expert on profiling, Dr. Michael Welner, Bill Weir asks about the differences between men and women who commit mass shootings / murders and the expert finds a commonality: high self-esteem. Do I think everyone with self-esteem will commit a mass shooting? No. But the sinful preoccupation with yourself and your accomplishments, abilities, wants and desires does lead to having less regard for everyone else. That is dangerous. Any of us are capable of the most heinous sins imaginable when given the right set of circumstances and provocations. Thinking more highly of yourself than you do others lowers your threshold of tolerance making the likelihood of hurting ...

I read an article in our local paper about a scholarship program that is being offered to the young people "in the foothills of Appalachia." The program is called Tandava. Tandava is the dance of the Hindu god, Shiva. Shiva dances a rigorous dance that results in both the creation and the destruction of the world. My grandmother was right. This world is going to hell in a hand basket. What she didn't tell me was that Shiva was going to dance to make it happen. The program's objective is to build greater confidence and self-esteem in area youth. The founders of the program say this is necessary to help our students compete with other students from bigger schools in the state and across the nation. The article defines tandava as a Sanskrit word meaning 'entering the great dance of life with skill and poise.' Skill and poise are good things and have absolutely nothing to do with self-esteem. Confidence comes with mastery and clear understanding. Pois...

I wrote a paper once for one of my psychology classes. I attended a Christian college and the class was on the theories of personality. The paper was on self-esteem. It was a project done as a group. (Oh how I loathe group projects but that's a post for another time.) We were a group of three people so we divided our work into three distinct areas. One member wrote about about the benefits of having positive self-esteem. The other member wrote about how to recognize the differences between poor to positive self-esteem. I wrote my section of the paper arguing that self-esteem was neither biblical nor beneficial. I was not the favorite student in the class. My research took me on a journey through studies on the penal system where it seems that the most violent offenders often had what seemed to be the highest self-esteem. It's logical if you think about it. If you love yourself more than others, it's much easier to hurt them or steal from them to satisfy your needs. ...