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What Motivates Progressive Self-loathing?
So much of the liberal progressive mentality seems ultimately to be grounded in self-loathing. There’s the environmental condemnation of Western civilization (or even humanity itself) because it’s destroying the planet; there’s the multicultural impulse that admires all other cultures but despises our own; there’s the Hollywood instinct to make Americans (especially those in the corporate or military worlds) the villain in every story. Self-loathing is a common thread.
What I don’t understand is where this comes from, psychologically speaking. A normal, healthy psyche does not seek out reasons to hate oneself or one’s own culture. Is it guilt over our affluence and success? Is it an adolescent attitude of rebellion? Elitism?
Is it, as I’ve heard suggested, the product of decades of subversive Soviet influence designed to undermine American culture? (Apparently there is some evidence that this was not just Red Scare paranoia but a deliberate strategy.)
I just don’t get it. Ronald Reagan reminded us that confidence and optimism are inherently more attractive than self-flagellation. Why do so many people today willingly, enthusiastically, embrace a philosophy that is fundamentally based on the assumption that their own culture is something to be ashamed of?
And more importantly, how do we fix it? How do we convince these people that it’s OK to feel good about themselves and our country?
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I don’t know where it comes from, two my my relatives have this loathing and another two of them are similar to me. Yet we all grew up in the same era, went to similar schools, same grandparents, etc. One claims to be a feminist and has told me she wishes she had been aborted. Yet some things in her life have been rather easy for her.
What motivates progressive self-loathing?
Self-knowledge. And they are right for once; to know them is to loathe them.
As to how to beat their incessant Debbie-Downerism, the countermessage needs to be upbeat but realistic. We can do this – it’s been done before.
People take a lot of pride on how low they can get.
In most cases, I don’t think the motivation is self-loathing at all. In most cases, what these individuals are doing is self-aggrandizement, asserting their own exalted virtue. The loathing is for their fellow citizens, at least those outside the correct circle.
C S Lewis wrote brilliantly about a similar phenomenon in Britain in 1940…I’ve excerpted his thoughts, which are highly relevant to our own time and situation, here:
No, they are not (for the most part) “self-hating”
The majority of them never had to do any work to attain their privileged position in society.
Next question.
Let’s not forget men who think masculinity is toxic and that they have to apologize for it.
Well… it’s possible to be a conservative and have great self-loathing, too – and for that matter, loathing for the “decadence” of one’s own culture.
Conservative and progressives tend to loathe different things about themselves and their culture.
Well you’ve definitely hit upon a major aspect of Leftism. My guess is that it aids in the rationalization of being an ingrate or unpatriotic.
I’m betting on a combination of guilt and adolescent rebellion being the primary motivator.
Stir in a religious impulse seeking to find an outlet in the face of a stridently secular culture. Think of a hell-fire and brimstone preacher damning society for its sins, only these people get their morality more from Das Kapital than from Leviticus.
self loathing and rah rah self aggrandisement are two sides of the same coin – might they have the same root cause?
What’s not to loathe?
Thomas Sowell explains it as well as anyone.
I agree. They are not ashamed of their own behavior. They are ashamed of the rest of us, and pointing out what a greedy, corrupt, blah, blah, blah society we live in makes them look like the wise people surrounded by barbarians.
True. It’s a popular conservative belief that we live in the most sinful, wicked times since the days of Noah.
I always thought it started young, with a slow-boil of equal parts jealousy and envy; add resentment, then equal parts each of insecurity, disappointment, and emotionalism.
The person ends up in a nice stew of constant needs ( likely to remain unmet). Need to always be seen as the winner/on the winning team, always seen as being “equal to the Jones”; in with the in crowd/trends, the cause célèbre. A constant need to be admired. But he/she isn’t. He never feels like he quite makes the grade (in his own mind). Everybody else is liked better, does better, is better. She feels self as failure; even if it doesn’t look that way on the outside. Life is disappointing.
So what does this look like? A person who cannot get his needs met, who isn’t quite making the grade, finds her life disappointing, and is, in his own mind, a failure. You can get an angry, jealous, spiteful person. Frequently hiding behind claims of righteous indignation, and hypocrisy.
And despite best efforts to hold the outside world to account, she can never fool the person in mirror as to where the true failure lies. Result? Self-loathing. Sadly, the only relief he seems able to find is to push the loathing outward.
However, I think it happens unconsciously. Which is why it might be a good idea to have “hug-a-progressive” monthly holidays. We need to help them honestly like themselves.
They never build anything, they only tear down. They have no useful skills and it irks them.
In a free market, one succeeds on skill and some luck. Success breeds achievement. When people cannot achieve , they destroy. Only in the destruction of others achievements can they feel good about themselves.
They’ve never learned the virtue of self-reliance. As a result, they are weak and fearful, as well as resentful of the powerful who know that virtue.
Working in an academic environment, I get the impression that my Liberal coworkers feel that ‘self-loathing’ and pseudo-self effacing is a sign of education and erudition.
I think you’re onto something there. Ideas like patriotism, absolute good and evil, love of family, biologically determined gender: these ideas seem simple (because they are simple). A person who is trying to appear sophisticated and intelligent may tend to reject the simple in favor of something more complex and “nuanced.” They prefer a complicated fiction to a simple truth.
Hence the leftist caricature of Republicans as dumb. The progressives don’t seem to understand that it is possible to give a matter deep, serious thought, and still arrive at the conclusion that seemed obvious all along (because it happens to be right).
This is possibly the very worse aspect of the left. It drives me nuts. It’s even worse than what you mention. It’s not just American culture. They loath all of western culture.
Hmm, I don’t think that’s accurate. Conservatives bemoan where the culture has led to, but it’s not a loathing of the roots of western culture. That’s not self loathing, especially if you see yourself as outside that decadence. Progressives are loathing the very roots of western culture. They’re quite happy as to where the culture has gone.
Blessed are those, then, who have the (possibly false) self-esteem that allows them to see themselves as truly outside of that decadence.
Other conservatives know they are at least partially complicit, or have failed to live up to some deeply-rooted cultural standard, etc, etc, and therefore believe – and not entirely without justification – that they have good, conservative reasons to loathe themselves.
In my opinion, whether a person truly loathes himself or not (rather than the false “self-loathing” that’s really “I’m secretly awesome because I loathe the backward, redneck habits of my neighbors”) is more a matter of personal psychology than it is political affiliation.
A conservative may have justified confidence in himself, or simply be too arrogant to acknowledge his own faults. He may also wrestle with shame, both deserved and undeserved. In my experience, liberals are not terribly different in how they experience shame (they are human beings, after all), though they measure the shame in different (and we say wrong) ways.
Conservatives are, after all, the party of “shame is good for people, and people should generally be more ashamed of themselves than they are”. It would be exceedingly strange, then, if none of us felt that shame, either for genuine shortcomings or from an excess of scruples.
Or even the entire human race, in the case of extreme environmentalist types. There are some who quite openly opine that the planet would be better off without humans. Although they rarely seem interested in leading the way…
Western civilization needs to fully appreciate how propaganda mind games work. I saw it so vividly when I just happened to read the This Day in History New York Times article on the surrender of France to Hitler. I have rarely been as spooked as I was when I read this story. Because the story was reproduced in the context of the actual newspaper of that day (the wonders of the Internet), it really conveyed the feeling that I was reading something that had just happened the day before. In other words, it wasn’t retold. I was looking at the actual newspaper article in its original context.
Every other sentence in the journalist’s account told how France deserved this because the Treaty of Versailles supposedly was grossly unfair to Germany after World War I. Hitler had sent an envoy from Italy to accept the surrender. And the document for surrender contained the same commonly held beliefs about the wrongness of that treaty. The New York Times obediently allowed Hitler his day to chastise Western Europe.
The oldest motivation for evil that has ever existed: you brought this on yourself. If you had not done this to me, I would not be doing this to you. You deserve this.
This is how Hitler took over Europe in eleven months’ time. It is effective.
While the guilty were staring at their feet in shame, he pulled the trigger.
BXOjr,
There are undoubtedly true clinical cases of self-hatred. However, I think the everyday cultural suicide-homicide we see coming from the left is simply this society rewarding those who parrot these critiques with grant money and job opportunities. Their mentalities are usually knee-jerk and without any introspection whatsoever.
Take away the reward system and 99% of the left will just go away.
Regards,
Jim
I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but the progressives who control the schools and media know exactly what they are doing.
Guilt is a big problem–it takes the resolve away from the oppostion. The propaganda specialists know how to use it.
Because we human beings are a lot alike emotionally.
When I was in undergraduate school and studying German (among other things), I acquired a condescending attitude about Americans’ ignorance about other countries (probably soaked it up by osmosis).
I enjoyed feeling superior. That’s very likely one motive for turning on your own culture.
They don’t hate themselves. They hate us. Intelligence doesn’t count. Education can, depending on where and when you went to school and/or higher education. The brainwash usually starts young. Kids and milleniells, are drawn to what seems hip. That’s where the celebs get their star power. There are lots of causes, but self-hate, no. It’s a combination of ignorance and arrogance dancing around in their contemptible little heads. But don’t be alarmed. Hate them right back like I do. You’ll never change them so don’t bother to try. Aim for the suggestible.
It goes back to not respecting one’s parents. Sometime, probably in the 60’s, people stopped thinking ‘honor thy father and thy mother’ was something to be taken literally. When you don’t respect your parents, you basically aren’t respecting yourself or your culture.