(November 12, 2021 at 10:26 am)T.J. Wrote: You know I really didn't notice it so much, but considering that at one point in my life I had zero self confidence in myself that might've been the reason why.
You know, I think the ideal situation is to have a very accurate perception of oneself. To know without delusions what your strengths and weaknesses are.
It's just an ideal, and probably impossible to get exactly right. But it's a goal.
So people who think too highly of themselves tend to stand out and become annoying. They advertise their wisdom and importance and after a while it's clear they don't live up to it.
But there are no doubt plenty of people who under-evaluate themselves, also. For whatever reason, they don't appreciate their own qualities and think worse of themselves than they deserve.
The trouble is that no quality which is important to our humanity is quantifiable. How wise you are, or how generous, or how kind, or how talented, or how capable of contributing to the community -- none of these things can be given a number value. And since there's no objective test, how we evaluate ourselves can be influenced in overly subjective ways. An unkind teacher, or an overly strict parent, or a run of bad luck, can leave a person feeling far more worthless than she really is.
And all of these important qualities are constantly in flux. A person might feel completely untalented, for example, as a child, but given a good teacher and a certain amount of dedication she might blossom in middle age.
Like so many things, I suppose we could blame churches for this if we wanted to. There seem to be some sentences from the Bible that tell people not to be proud. But there are also churches which give their members far too much pride -- they think that just because they sit in the pew it makes them some kind of superior human. But since there are also non-religious labels one can give oneself to develop an undeserved sense of superiority, I don't see churches as particularly bad about this. It's just a human flaw.
