Self-esteem – the secret to manipulating the masses

This article proposes that the majority of people do not love themselves, and that this leads them to develop some form of personality disorder, which in turn leaves them open to manipulation because they develop a deep attachment to personal validation from the external world.

Firstly, let’s look at self-love. There are many theories about what exactly this is, but for this article, I’ll try to keep it simple and state:

I propose that each of us starts our lives in a state of self-love. That is, from birth all we know is self, and for most of us, we know nothing else but acceptance of the whole self that we know.

However, I propose that the vast majority of us, in one form or another, come to reject aspects of self as we grow up. This is due to many factors. In some cases, it is trauma, where we are told off for “misbehaving”; however, I also suggest that this idea of childhood trauma extends in numerous instances to simply being corrected, as part of education etc. As we get up, society, including our parents, friends, acquaintances, educators, strangers etc. moulds us, we change, and all too often, this act of being educated results in each of us rejecting aspects of self. We deny our true-self and adopt the self that society wants.

This concept is discussed fully in our thesis – The wholeness theory of self-esteem, which digs deeply into the causes of many individuals’ lacking in self-esteem and how this can develop into a variety of mental health conditions.

These self-rejections carry on through our childhood, and have a cumulative effect, increasingly, whilst society tells us we are loved, because of our conformance. The reality is that we are losing more and more of our true-self, we send aspects of this true-self into the shadow of our unconscious mind.

Thus, virtually all of us end up in adolescence in a state where we are no longer in direct contact with the totality of self and, as a result, we cannot truly love ourselves. Most of us, however, look to apply logic to the situation, we ask ourselves; “Do my parents love me?”, “Do I have many friends?”, “Am I doing well at school?”. All of these questions seek to prove to ourselves that we are capable of being loved, and we apply the logic that if the world can love us, then we can form the conviction that we can love ourselves too.

Unfortunately, although there is much support for this approach in the outside world, this decision to be “happy” because the world loves us. This does not get away from the basic fact that we have lost touch with aspects of self, and therefore cannot truly love self.

Many adolescents realise there is something wrong. They complain of feeling empty, loveless, joyless, with low self-esteem, and it is these that can tend to go on to develop the most extreme of personality disorders.

However, I propose that often, those of us that have successfully applied that logical “fix” of proving to themselves that the world loves them, and think of themselves as happy, are also going to go on to develop those same personality disorders, only, they will use logic throughout life to mask these issues, even to themselves.

Whilst the above theory, may seem to apply to a small percentage of the population, there is an argument that most of us are suffering from milder forms of personality disorder. Driven by our need for validation from the outside world, and that the personality we develop is false, and therefore a mild form of disorder.

This leads to the concept that we tend to be easily manipulated by society.

Sociometer theory

The sociometer theory is a psychological framework that proposes that self-esteem is an indicator of how well we are perceived and accepted by others. According to this theory, humans have a fundamental need to belong and to maintain positive social relationships, and they use self-esteem as a gauge of their social value. The sociometer theory suggests that when we receive positive feedback from others, our self-esteem increases, and when we receive negative feedback, our self-esteem decreases.

The theory suggests that people are motivated to maintain or enhance their relational value, and that self-esteem serves as a feedback mechanism that signals the need for social adjustment when relational value is threatened or diminished. This implies, that we join social groups to enhance our sense of self-worth as a response to finding this value lacking within ourselves. The inference can therefore be implied that once we are in a situation where a social connection is boosting our self-esteem, we become inherently manipulable by the concept of potential future exclusion from that group. We will therefore change our views and beliefs to maintain that social connection, along with those self-esteem benefits.

The terror management theory suggests that a significant driver for the behaviour of individuals in the concept that low self-esteem increases our fear of mortality, and this causes many people to latch onto and defend as a matter of life and death certain beliefs which alleviate their fear of death. Thus, many people become strongly attached to certain scientific, religious and other beliefs which relieve their internal and often suppressed fear of death. It also suggests that once committed to such a belief, they will attack any threat to this belief, indeed the theory has been used to understand the minds of terrorists, for example. It strongly suggests that we can often follow blindly a belief that alleviates our lack of self-esteem, and once we have committed ourselves to that belief, we will defend against any perceived threat to it, sometimes with our lives. Thus, society only has to create and promote such beliefs, then suggest threats to those beliefs, to manipulate us.