Self Respect Is Everything

Self Respect Is Everything

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           You know it's like it's not obvious to me that people themselves think that they're valuable all the time often they don't think that at all they don't certainly don't think that often when they're depressed they certainly don't think that when they're suicidal they don't really think that when they're ashamed or guilty or frustrated or disappointed or angry or waking up at 3:00 in the morning and tormenting themselves with their consciences they don't necessarily think that when they're fighting with their family or when they're upset at work or you know when things go wrong in life and so it's not so bloody obvious that people are inherently valuable and then you might also notice that it's kind of easy to think that some people are more valuable than others, it's very easy for human beings to think that about other human beings because no matter where you look in human societies, there are rank orders of value right in any hierarchy that we produce that's associated with some ability we find that some people are so much better at whatever it is that they're doing that it's an absolute miracle and most people are absolutely dreadful at it and so you know if you were thinking about inherent value as an approximation of skill or competence then it wouldn't be obvious from the structure of the world that people were inherently valuable in that manner either because there's such a rank order difference in our ability to do things.

You don't you might say well that kind of averages out across things but I don't think that's a very strong argument either so it's not obvious where this idea that people are inherently valuable came from that's a tough one in fact I think it's one of the least obvious concepts that human beings have ever come up with that each of us is to be attributed some divine spark let's say that makes us equal in some fundamental way before God you know before the reality of the universe itself even in relation to our own laws I mean if you want a miracle for an idea I can't think of one that's more unlikely than that so I've been puzzling over that for a very long because I cannot understand how in the world we ever agreed to act as if it was true it's really something it's a remarkable fundamental idea and what's so interesting about it too is that once you have that idea weird as it is and improbable as it is and you start to organize your social relationships in accordance with it well then they work my rule to is treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping and it's sort of predicated on the idea that regardless of your inadequacies and your malevolence which you know I'm sure you have many inadequacies and no shortage of malevolence just like everyone else regardless of that you have a moral obligation so that would be a responsibility to assume that despite all evidence that there's actually something of intrinsic worth about you and that as a consequence you're duty-bound to treat yourself like that is true and then it turns out that if you do that well then your life gets better and I don't mean happier exactly although I would say it gets happier.

I mean it gets richer and more meaningful and deeper and more worthwhile and you become more educated and you become wiser and you treat yourself with more respect and you're a better model for other people and you're a better father or a better sister or better mother whatever it happens to be and you're less ridden by that guilt that gnaws at you and shame that's there otherwise saying you're not what you could be you're not what you could be and that's a hell of a voice to get rid of and it's certainly not one that's easy to ignore so that's a pretty good an idea that there's something divine let's say that resides within you of ultimate worth even as a philosophical statement or a psychological statement rather than a metaphysical statement it seems to be a precondition for establishing properly harmonious relationships with yourself and that's man that's worth thinking about law because you couldn't think that in some sense you just own your you know because people do kind of make that claim especially when they're trying to justify for example their right to suicide but you know it's your life it's your body you're yours to do what you will with and if that was true well then it would seem to me that life would be a lot more straightforward because you would just tell yourself things that you would instantly obey and believe so first of all you tell yourself all the things that you were gonna do and then you just run off and do them which you don't obviously because it's much more difficult at that and then you'd also say well enough of the guilt and the shame and the negative emotion and the disillusionment and the vengefulness and all those things that make life hard.

The self-recrimination it's like what the hell do we need that for and if we're our masters of our destiny and owners of our fate and why can't we just commend ourselves that that be dispensed with and like that doesn't work I've never seen anybody able to do that I mean you can fool yourself for very brief periods into thinking that that might work but it doesn't work and that strange begin that this is one of the reasons I love the psychoanalyst say because they were the people apart from the religious types who figured out that whatever you are you're not a unitary spirit that's under your dominion you know you're something like a loose unity of a multiplicity of spirits many of which are doing their own thing which you're striving to bring in to some form of unity but even that unity isn't something that's under your control in any real sense it's a unity that has its nature that you have to exist concerning you.