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On Self-Deprecation

18:42 / 14.11.03

Okay. I've been thinking about self-loathing and, you know, hyperbolic negative self-criticism and everything else in the same pool of personality disorders which I've found myself cheerfully splashing around in for most of my life. But it brought me to an interesting question -- what's the origin of self-loathing? How does it arise? Does it actually ever drive us to excellence, or is it entirely a self-defeating mechanism, a parasitical meme-plex, a virus, a demon?

I just now posted this on a small BBS before it occurred to me the question marks would be better spent here:

Why would a person hate himself? What causes it? What's the point? Why does self-loathing exist? Did it evolve into us for some reason, and if so, what evolutionary advantage does it convey? Is it an artifact of our current bioprogramming state which should eventually be evolved -out of-? Or is it a quality inextricably tied to self-awareness, to the possession and maintenance of a soul? Can it happen to anyone, or only some people? Can it really be subverted with a thought, or is it more insidious? Why does it want to exist? What makes us punish ourselves? Why can't we be our own -nicest- critics instead of our own -worst-? What the fuck is -wrong- with me? With everyone? Is it neurological? A symptom of an imbalance of a certain biochemical? Should I seek corrective pharmacology? Or does the answer lie elsewhere?

So that's all the questions, I guess. Basically, why can't I stop punishing myself for my failures? Can you? Why or why not? Why are there so many things I feel literally incapable of pushing myself to do, purely because I perceive myself as being Not Very Good At Them, as if there's some kind of insurmountable wall in my consciousness around the mental faculties involved?

Yeah. I'd be really interested in anything anyone can contribute. This is my mystery to mull for the day. It's driving me nuts.

19:04 / 14.11.03

Oh, fascinating! Well, I could talk about this all day... unfortunately I only have five minutes. I will throw out one possibility: Rome, which I think mainly Deva will know what that means. That is, self-deprecation is a societal means of control of the individual. That has, perhaps, gotten way out of control. I have this joke idea for a self-help book titled The Seven Deadly Sins Of Highly Effective People, you know? Because my theory is that individuals are vested with enormous powers that tend to threaten the state. Thus the state (this be Rome) isolates these powers & identifies them as sins, deadly sins. Problem solved! Which is very much to say, problem not solved. I mean, what do you make of that?

19:37 / 14.11.03

That hits me just right! ^-^ I hadn't considered the possibility that some party had intentionally pioneered the notion of self-hatred, but of course shame is a major part of many oppressive, heirarchical systems of control!

The idea then is that way, way back in the day the concept was originated by someone who wanted to quash subversive thought and action that passionate expression is a taboo, to be ashamed of, and to be avoided. Interesting!

The meme then like all other memes propagated and spread and mutated and grew more and more basic to our society as the centuries ticked by, and now its origin is far gone, leaving it entrenched everywhere we look. But in this case it does have an origin (or several origins) which the whole concept could theoretically be tracked back to. Right?

That's interesting. If that's the case, that would put it in the same class of societal control structures as, for instance, stigmas concerning psychedelics and spirituality, bringing it down from the level of a personal antagonist that simply will not get out of my head to that of yet another perception-box to aspire to break out of and move beyond. Rendering the process of self-loathing as an agent of something else (ie. the machine, the man) makes it something to confront and ignore. It lessens the urgency and sway of its taunts and warnings.

Of course! The theme of people creating something that's bad for people in order to use it on other people with disastrous results In The End repeats and repeats throughout human history. Self-loathing, like the bomb.

That's fascinating. Thanks. ^-^

Anyone else? You? Yes, you in the back!

00:58 / 15.11.03

So the suggestion is that some great-grandfather of social paranoia (Mr Weishaupt, I presume, or Moses) campaigned for self-deprication until everyone was convinced it was a good idea? And we've been down the tubes ever since?

Isn't it more plausible that the state (the meme that Persephone Qabalistically chooses to call Rome) evolved into its present form within the environment of an underlying psychology that evolves more slowly? The state can control us because we loathe ourselves. The state did not invent self-loathing in order to control us. Rather, a political system evolved that took advantage of this tendency as a means to sacrifice the individual for the good of the collective. (Of course, thinking Qabalistically--as Persephone seems to be doing--this is a moot point, since cause-and-effect is a matter of interpretation. However, for the benefit of the masses, I think she speaks misleadingly.)

I have an alternative explanation. We loathe ourselves because we see ourselves as unique (due to solipsism). Since portraying ourselves as the best will often bring us into conflict with others, we sometimes choose to instead portray ourselves as the worst. If we are neither best nor worst, we're just part of the teeming millions in between. So, whenever direct evidence (such as a blatant mistake) shatters our illusion of supremity, we turn it around completely. The bigger we are, the harder we fall.

In other words, we're all drama queens.

As for the state, this particular phenomenon is one of many that can be exploited by those who hunger for power. It is entirely possible that deliberate inflation of the self-depricating tendency was carried out by powerful entities during the last century or so, since the science of psychology provided the tools to do so.

And we shouldn't overlook the possibility that drugs to control self-loathing are a step in a deliberate plan by the State to control us (no matter from which angle you look at it).

Does it actually ever drive us to excellence, or is it entirely a self-defeating mechanism, a parasitical meme-plex, a virus, a demon?

As a defense mechanism, it is invaluable for maintaining our concept of personal identity. But I don't think it drives us to excellence by any means.

03:13 / 15.11.03

I self-loathing is a misapplication of a necessary and good function of the mind. When our minds are working really well, we will still tend to make mistakes, and when we do, turn our attention towards the cause of the mistake, feeling guilty, perhaps, or foolish. This can help us not to make similar mistakes (and I include moral errors) in the future. Problems arise, however, because of another very good characteristic of the mind: its ability to form habits. Forming habits is a good thing, because it allows us to perform the most common tasks of life without great difficulty and to adapt when those tasks change. Unfortunately, we can form habits of just about anything we do, including turning our attention towards our faults and feeling guilty about them. If we do this often enough, the guilt ceases to function as a deterent and, instead, functions to reincforce the habit of thought that leads us to our greatest faults to begin with.

That's on an individual level.

On a cultural level, we work much the same way, reminding people that we disapprove of their actions in order to provoke guilt. The goal of this reminder seems to be the same: deter the person from acting in a similar fashion in the future. But, as I think about it in these terms, there may be another reason for trying to trigger guilt or humiliation or self-hatred in another person. It may be that, when it becomes apparent that you aren't going to be able to deter hir, you decide to beat hir down so that hir faults are a smaller threat to the community. You try to activate the self-destruct mechanism in the person. If this is the case, then there's a question of why we would have a self-destruct mechanism at all. I think it is because we are social animals, and that there is evidence that all social animals have a natural capacity to sacrifice for their community. This would explain why depression can lead to a kind of fatalistic attitude, as thought we were preparing for nothing more than to be the one picked off by the next predator.

All Acting Regiment

12:49 / 15.11.03

Depreciation of the self may help us to appreciate other people. For example, if I was to consider myself worthy for going on the "last spaceshp before the earth blows up", and ended up getting on board, and was useless on the new planet- well shucks. Wheras if I accept that a doctor deserves more than me to get on the spaceship, he might just help the human race to flower again.

Of course, a lot of self depreciation comes from outside sources. I am a crap dancer, for example, and i have big thick glasses. A cause of self depreciation because someone else made it so our culture thinks people with those features should get less respect. If i was with other people like me i wouldnt have said self depreciation.

And then you've got the thing of "tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven"- an element of stupid/happy versus clever/unhappy. You go around happily, until you see a mirror. If you see an ugly person in the mirror and are stupid, you wont realise its you,and still be happy. If youre clever youll see an ugly person and know it is you, and be unhappy.

14:01 / 15.11.03

I'm with substatique on this one. It seems to me that self-depreciation is a protection mechanism of sorts. If we paint ourselves in the worst possible light then we can hit a bedrock where we can't fall any further. There is no room for further conflict if our ego commits suicide.

This might seem a little paradoxical though, that we can save the ship by sinking it. However, consider times when you've had to deal with your own self-depreciation or that of others. I find that there's sometimes a curious case of doublethink going on in which the person with a low opinion of themsleves realises at the same time that they are not quite as bad as they make themselves out to be. Surely it's not self-depreciation if the criticism is completely accurate, it's the realisation that the opinion of the self-depreciator falls short of a tacitly acknowledged reality that introduces the depreciation. This strain of thought makes me think of the Sartrean notion of bad faith - that we engage in self-deception yet we are unable to fully hide the deceptive act itself.

00:39 / 16.11.03

This strain of thought makes me think of the Sartrean notion of bad faith - that we engage in self-deception yet we are unable to fully hide the deceptive act itself.

And that helps to explain why the act of feeling bad makes us (well, me at least) feel worse, often through guilt. We feel guilty for lying to ourselves, since we know that we're really the best, rather than the worst.

Unfortunately, we can form habits of just about anything we do, including turning our attention towards our faults and feeling guilty about them.

I think we only tend to form habits of things when we are reinforced for them. If self-deprication is an involuntary response to a stimulus (such as making a mistake), then it doesn't have the capacity to get "out of control." It will be observed in an amount proportional to the amount of stimulus. It can only become a habit (dare I say, an addiction) if it is a choice, and one option is rewarded when chosen over the others. In both cases, the question is begged: why is the self-deprication behaviour adaptive and/or rewarded?

13:27 / 16.11.03

I suppose self loathing is natural when dealing with a flawed personality. In this case the personality being yourself. One answer would be to love yourself flaws and all. But that conveniently sidesteps the need to stop being flawed.

11:14 / 17.11.03

I think it comes from overambition, setting our sights unreasonably high. We all want to be the Best, but there's only one Beckham (for example). Competence isn't enough, we all expect Excellence of ourselves in all spheres all the time, and it's just impossible.

Take note, though, not everybody loathes themselves (ironically the most loathesome often don't).

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

12:52 / 17.11.03

Buk, could you define flawed?

Self loathing would have to be connected to Rome/empire/civilisation, surely it can only evolve in a society where people have the time, capability and the thumbs up from society to loathe yourself.

Is Woody Allen an agent of the empire?

14:45 / 17.11.03

"...surely it can only evolve in a society where people have the time, capability and the thumbs up from society to loathe yourself."

That's a great point. Can a Kalahari Bushman find the time to loathe himself to such a degree while he's foraging for his day's meal?

Or do you need the social safety nets that "civilization" provides in order to review your life and character and alla that?

Can you think your life's in the toilet if you don't know what a toilet is?

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

14:49 / 17.11.03

Also the concept needs to exist in order for you to loathe yourself, I wonder if the concept was developed around about the same time as alcohol.

I wonder if it would be possible to find the first histoical refrence to some kind of self deprication? Any ideas.

07:47 / 18.11.03

Can a Kalahari Bushman find the time to loathe himself to such a degree while he's foraging for his day's meal?

No way! Only us civilized folks have feelings!

Perhaps what you mean is that the "self-loathing gene" can only survive in a nonthreatening environment. In which case it's not a hard-wired psychological process, but a relatively recent invention--perhaps adaptive, perhaps not.

14:10 / 18.11.03

My thoughts on the self-loathing - This is somewhat of an evolutionary survival tactic. It stems from the need of a species to assemble into groups to maintain survival. The group develops from specific patterns of acceptable behavior for it's members. The cohesion of this group is created in part by the value it's members place in these ideals and behavior patterns. The act of conforming to these ideals represents "good" or "worthy" or "honorable" actions within the standards of the group itself. This automatically earns an individual respect among the other members of the group. This develops into self-loathing when the ideals and standards of a group have developed in such a way that it becomes increasingly difficult for the individual to fulfill the standard. The harder it is to conform to the standard, the more value is placed by the individual members of the group in conforming to that standard. So, an individual's imposed group value system cannot be fulfilled fully and is regarded negatively by the self.

00:30 / 19.11.03

Take note, though, not everybody loathes themselves (ironically the most loathesome often don't).

This is one of my frequent concerns -- that failing to loathe myself would make me loathsome. I wonder sometimes if it's the defining quality of loathesomeness -- wouldn't every horrible person you know be much nicer if they were actively and exaggeratedly aware of their horribleness?

By the way, this thread turned out to be awesome and you guys rock. ^-^

10:03 / 21.11.03

Conversely, loads of nice people I know loathe themselves unnecessarily, wouldn't it be nicer if they (we!) were a bit more lenient on ourselves? Less loathing, more loving!

Morlock - groupie for hire

14:30 / 21.11.03

...failing to loathe myself would make me loathsome.

Likewise, but also that loathing myself too much is unfair on those around me.

Like oicu812 said, for me most of the frustration is born from an inability to measure up against the people around me, and a more generalised image recieved from my environment. Ohmygawd, my life isn't an episode of "Friends"! I'm a mutant!

Mind you, our culture is rather odd, in that it is amazingly easy to be alone in a crowd.