Too much self-esteem spoils your child

Too much self-esteem spoils your child

Andrew Lam, New America Media

Sunday, July 15, 2007

In the age of Myspace and YouTube and Google Earth, the space between East and West seems to shrink. But in the area of self- perception, especially, there remains a cultural gap that can often be as wide as the ocean.

Take Jeong-Hyun Lim, 24-year-old business student in Seoul. Popularly known as Funtwo on YouTube, his rock rendition of Pachelbel's "Canon inD" has turned him into a global phenomenon. Lim's dizzying sweep-picking -- sounding and muting notes at breakneck speed -- has had some viewers calling him a second Jimi Hendrix. His video, uploaded by someone on YouTube has been viewed 24 million times so far.

But Funtwo is self-effacing, a baseball cap covering much of his face. No one knew who he was until Virginia Heffernan wrote about him in the New York Times last August. She called his "anti-showmanship" "distinctly Asian," adding that "sometimes an element of flat-out abjection even enters into this act, as though the chief reason to play guitar is to be excoriated by others."

Some in the West with this kind of media spotlight and Internet following would hire an agent and make a CD. But Lim told Heffernan, "I am always thinking that I'm not that good a player and must improve more than now." In another interview, he rated his playing around 50 or 60 out of 100.

Lim's modesty is reassuringly Asian, echoing the famous Chinese saying: "Who is not satisfied with himself will grow." In a classic 1992 study, psychologists Harold Stevenson and James Stigler compared academic skills of elementary school students in Taiwan, China, Japan and the United States. It showed a yawning gap in self-perception between East and West. Asian students outperformed their American counterparts, but when they were asked to evaluate their performances, American students evaluated themselves significantly higher than those from Asia. "In other words, they combined a lousy performance with a high sense of self-esteem," noted Nina H. Shokraii, author of "School Choice 2000: What's Happening in the States," in an essay called "The Self Esteem Fraud."

Since the '80s, self-esteem has become a movement widely practiced in public schools, based on the belief that academic achievements come with higher self-confidence. Shokraii disputes that self-esteem is necessary for academic success. "For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in order to experience true success in school and as adults," writes Shokraii.

A quarter of a century later, a comprehensive new study released last February from San Diego State University maintains that too much self- regard has resulted in college campuses full of narcissists. In 2006, researchers said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory evaluation, 30 percent more than when the test was first administered in 1982.

Researchers like San Diego State University Professor Jean Twenge worried that narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty and over-controlling and violent behaviors." The author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable Than Ever Before," Twenge blamed the self-esteem movement for the rise of the "Myspace" generation.

Has the emphasis for self-confidence gone too far in America? Twenge seemed to think so. She points to the French tune "Frère Jacques' in preschool, for example. French children may still sing it as "Brother Jack! You're sleeping! Ring the bells!" But in America the once innocuous song has been converted to: "I am special! I am special! Look at me!" No surprise that the little train that could is exhausted: It's been laden with super-sized American egos.

That Asian Americans dominate higher education in the last few decades in America is also worth noting. Less than 5 percent of the country's population, Asian Americans typically make up 10 to 30 percent of the student body in the best colleges. In California, Asians form the majority of the University of California system. And at UC Berkeley, Asian freshmen have reached the 46 percent mark this year. Also worth noting is that of the Asian population in the United States, 2 out of 3 are immigrants, born in a continent where self-esteem is largely earned through achievements, and self-congratulatory behaviors discouraged, and more important, humility is still something of a virtue.

In the East, the self is best defined in its relation to others -- person among persons -- and most valued and best expressed only through familial and communal and moral deference. That is far from the self-love concept of the West -- where one is encouraged to look out for oneself, and truth seems to always originate in a minority of one.

In much of modernizing Asia, of course, individualism is making inroads. The Confucian culture that once emphasized harmony and unity at the expense of individual liberty is now in retreat.

But if there's a place in Asia that still vigilantly keeps the ego in check, if not suppressed, it's the classroom. In Asia, corporal punishment is still largely practiced. Self-esteem is barely a concept, let alone encouraged. Though not known to foster creativity, an Asian education with its emphasis of hard work and cooperation, critics argue, still largely provides the antidote to the culture of permissiveness and disrespect of authority of the West.

In the West, the word kung fu is known largely as martial arts. It has a larger meaning in the East: spiritual discipline and the cultivation of the self. A well-kept bonsai is good kung fu, so is a learned mind expressed, and so, for that matter, is the willingness to perfect one's guitar playing, sudden fame aside. East and West may be commingling and merging in the age of globalization, but beware -- that ubiquitous baseball cap that Funtwo is wearing on YouTube can mislead -- it houses very different mentalities in Asia -- for when it comes to the perception of self, East and West remain far apart.

Andrew Lam is the author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora"(Heyday Books, 2005).

What a Surprise

"Justice? No, no. 'The Justice System' is a misnomer. All there is, in court, is the law. It's all about the application of the law, who can best manipulate it, put on the better song-and-dance. It's all about the law, not justice. You want justice, look elsewhere."

--Barry G. Rekoon, Attorney-at-Law, 2003




Lawmakers block access to gun sales data

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer July 12, 2007

Pro-gun rights Democrats teamed with House Republicans on Thursday to block local governments and law enforcement agencies from gaining routine access to gun-purchasing data.

The House Appropriations Committee defeated two attempts by gun control advocates to strip four-year-old restrictions on the use of information from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tracing gun sales. The votes were a victory for the National Rifle Association and came despite the Democratic takeover of Congress in January.

The committee's emotional debate often focused on broader gun rights issues rather than the matter at hand, involving when the bureau can share such information.

Gun control advocates say the gun sales data is essential to uncovering dealers who sell guns that disproportionately end up in the hands of criminals.

Gun rights advocates, led by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., said mayors such as New York City's Michael Bloomberg want the data to sue out-of-state gun dealers.

Tiahrt, the key sponsor of the restrictions on sharing gun trace data, also said easing the restrictions could lead to the disclosure of police officers' identities and other details to criminals.

"What the Tiahrt amendment does is protect those who protect us," Tiahrt said.

Pro-gun advocates say the data-sharing restrictions protect gun owners' privacy. But Bloomberg and other mayors contend they hamper law enforcement authorities' ability to trace illegal guns and arrest weapons traffickers.

"This handcuffs the cops, not the criminals," said Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, D-Md.

More than a dozen Democrats, most from rural districts, joined with all but two committee Republicans to defeat a bid by Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to ease the data sharing restrictions but ensure that police officers' names would not be compromised.

Earlier, a bid by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., to reject Tiahrt's language altogether lost by a voice vote.

The mayors say gun tracing data helps police departments determine the source of illegal guns, who buys them and how they are distributed.

Almost three-fifths of guns used in crimes are sold by just 1 percent of gun dealers, who forge relationship with gun traffickers making multiple purchases.

Under Bloomberg, who recently left the GOP amid speculation he may run for president as an independent, the city has sued out-of-state gun dealers in an attempt to reduce the flow of illegal guns into New York. The NRA-backed restrictions block cities from getting ATF data for such suits.

The committee chairman, Rep. David Obey — a liberal Democrat representing a rural Wisconsin district — said the issue was only marginally related to gun rights. He opposed the efforts to ease the data restrictions.

But Obey lashed out at both the NRA, which failed to endorse him in his most recent race despite his pro-gun rights record, and Bloomberg. He said the mayor's representatives met with his staff and threatened to run television ads attacking him.

Lindsay Ellenbogen, a Bloomberg aide, denied any threats. Bloomberg is co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Gun Sales, which has run ads in a few congressional districts.

"As happens too often in Washington, common sense didn't carry the day — special interests did," Bloomberg said.

Thursday's result continued a run of back luck on Capitol Hill for gun control advocates. They have lost many times since a Democratic-controlled Congress pushed through an assault weapons ban in 1994. Many Democrats credited the ban for losses in rural seats as the party took a drubbing at the polls that year.

The return of Congress to Democratic hands did not appreciably hurt the NRA's position because many of the newcomers are from rural, pro-gun rights districts.

"To allow this information to be misused by trial lawyers and gun control groups who want to sue gun manufacturers because criminals misused legally made and legally sold guns is not only bad policy but bad politics," said Chris W. Cox, the NRA's top lobbyist.

The votes came as the committee approved a $53.6 billion bill for the departments of Commerce and Justice, as well as NASA and science programs.

A Cynical Hypothesis

Q: What's the single most important commodity in the world? So important, that the manufacture and sale of every other commodity depends on it? Oil? Gold? Food? Conntrol of potable water?

A: Arms.

Munitions -the military-industrial complex- is the biggest industry in the world. Every government knows it.

If one is a politician and takes on the arms industry in any meaningful way, that politician wakes up the next day and finds he's no longer a politician. In some cases the politician may not even wake up the next day. It doesn't matter whether one is pushing a law on gun ownership in, say, Idaho, or trying to stop the sale of F-16s to our "friends," the Saudi Arabians. If someone steps on their toes, they step on someone's head.

What the arms industry needs more than anytthing else is conflict. If there is no conflict, one is manufactured, e.g. the Gulf War; the current debacle in Iraq -and who knows what else? Of course, apparently legitimate political or security concerns are employed as the facade, though Saddam Hussein certainly received what he thought was a "green light" from the first Bush administration (via U.S. ambassador April Glaspie) to go into Kuwait... And what the current Bush administration tried to pass off as a casus belli for its pre-planned war on Iraq was pure nonsense, embarrassing really. But it's done -through many channels- and seems to work every time.

Why?

Your guess is as good as mine, though part of the problem seems to be that in some "democracies," the people don't read books. They're far too distracted with everything from the latest techno-gadgets to just putting food on the table. There are also convenient canards like terror alerts (fear is mighty handy) and immigration complaints (fear again). Being distracted by fear, real or imagined, is fatiguing, causes people to become more insular (often seeking more distractions to get minds off of bugaboos; buy something and feel empowered, get that false sense of security through the acquisition of things) and confused. Pretty soon they have neither the time nor the inclination to look too far beyond their noses: Isn't it enough to worry about whether one has adequate healthcare, a living wage and affordable necessities? Still...

Americans don't appear especially versed in history or philosophy and generally act as if they could not care less. Keep it simple, or make things seem as straight-forward as possible, and when somebody shouts "fire!" hearts and minds follow. It's one of the oldest tricks in the books, and much more complicated than here expressed, but the gist holds up.

So, how long will we allow ourselves to be held up and taken like so many of P.T. Barnum's proverbial suckers?

It looks like it will be a while.

What Would John Raymor Think?

My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (maternal) was born September 2, 1764 in Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts, and died on October 25, 1822 in Ontario, Ontario, New York. In March 1780 he enlisted, at age 15, for three years of service with the Continental Army, was assigned to the Massachusetts Line, and fought at Yorktown (1781). He was honorably discharged at "Hudson's River," New York by Major General Henry Knox and his adjutant Maj. Anselm Tupper, on December 23, 1783, as a ripe old campaigner of 19.


Whatever his political philosophy, my ancestor clearly thought a free and independent United States was a good idea.


Which is why today, of all days, I am more than a little uncomfortable when I consider my "anti-Americanism," and openly wonder whether my country is still so free and whether Americans are still so independent or are more dependent, or simply lobotomized.


Most of my neighbors would think my innermost thoughts on this day were cribbed from an al Qaida recruiting manual: America is shallow, ignorant and materialistic. Americans are today distracted as never before with gadgetry, sensationalism, entertainment and a thousand other kinds of "bread and circuses." This country is in thrall to its corporate masters, bullied by its industrial conglomerates and utterly silent about the unraveling of this great land since the current administration was installed. American foreign policy focuses not on the hard work of peace and negotiation, but on a willingness to make war at will on the basis of half-baked plans cooked up by chickenhawk academics in necon think tanks. American domestic policy, except in matters of internal security, is largely absent, stagnant, and our infrastructure is continuing to decay. Through cruel indifference, many Americans are allowed to go hungry, without adequate healthcare and to founder and forage in a wilderness of ignorance as disparities of privileges become more pronounced. And Americans have remained largely silent while their government has backed away from its obligations to the United Nations, toward relieving hunger, genocide and disease around the world. We have failed to take a single step in leading a renewed effort to help find a peace between the Israeli government and Palestinians. I keep hearing Marley's ghost: "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business."


We have a government that seeks to extend the battle against unaccountable totalitarian governments by becoming an unaccountable totalitarian government itself, failing to practice what it preaches about equal rights and social justice. Like all budding dictatorships, our current government wants to redefine the language, so that "torture" is not really torture, "prisoners of war" are not really prisoners of war; suicides by human beings detained uncharged and without trial are suddenly hostile actions that are an affront to every red-blooded American, i.e. "hostile acts of asymmetric warfare waged against us"; and "The Clean Rivers Act" does not really promote clean rivers.


So saluting the red, white and blue, barbecuing some burgers and dogs and opening a beer or soda before a fireworks display becomes a bit problematic for me. And yet, and yet ... we know all these things are true because we still have a free press, albeit a skewed and timid one, and even the celebrity-saturated media has a little room for more serious data. Our waterways may not be clean, but check out the streams in China and India. Our interrogation techniques may be brutal, but check out the ones used by jihadists. It is possible to dislike both protocols, while still being able to draw a distinction between them, right? There is a difference between us and those who oppose us, isn't there? Doesn't truth still have a place in the American dialectic, even if reason and diplomacy are no longer part of our arsenal? Or am I only rationalizing?


Rationalization or not, The United States of America is not the same thing as the administration of George W. Bush, and, short of impeachment, assassination or some other mishap, George Bush has to leave in January 2009 no matter what. That's a pretty good system, even if currently unchecked and unbalanced.


I often want to give up on the system. Jingoism has hijacked patriotism, and the younger generations seem like they'll never unplug from their iPods, iPhones and other isolating, self-absorbed pastimes. The plugged-in, tech-savvy and virtual reality-proficient throngs make me wonder how many people ever take July Fourth –or any other day—to reflect on things like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (which every kid knew by heart when I was in school), and lines like "It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."


How many people think on that on the Fourth of July? How many stop a moment to think what is meant by dedicating oneself to the unfinished work [not only of those dead at Gettysburg, but of the Founders] and what that requires? Do we have the will and fortitude of those "honored dead" to do what we need to do today, in 2007, to stand up and make sure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth? Or have we already let things go too far and lost it, losing what Benjamin Franklin predicted we might lose if we were careless, i.e. "a Republic...if you can keep it"? Have we let it become so rotten even the Founders would chuck it and start over, or can we tear ourselves away long enough from our handheld devices and televisions and myriad other instant, self-gratifying minutiae to look around at this nation conceived in liberty, to dedicate ourselves to taking back, reclaiming our birthright that Lincoln so revered?


I don't know; I'm not especially hopeful about it as I write this and recall Goethe: "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."


America's got a lot to love, and freedom beats slavery any day, but are we paying attention and acting on our observations, or just watching gardens of fireworks flower in our skies, another year gone by?


I'll have to decide to keep moving forward regardless of what I suspect or fear. John Raymor did and, in some small way, helped make a huge difference. He thought he could help change the world, or affect a change in it. I can do no less.