psyche

While maybe not always displayed, I think there is present a struggle between the high and low ends of self-esteem. I thought this was something that only affected me, being a narcissist, but interestingly everyone I’ve expressed concern to about this seems to suffer from a similar thing. I looked up “Superiority complex” on Wikipedia, expecting a redirect to “God” or “Messiah” complexes but it seems that it did in fact refer to something created to compensate for an inferiority complex! There appears to be massive confirmation of what I had suspected for a long time: as if parallel to bipolar disorder, these two conflicting complexes continue to mess up any stable worldview I might adopt.

Speaking of worldviews, I think it’s no longer possible for me to rationally assess the huge number of data being fed to me through various inlets (mainly mass media). I can’t really live my life thinking “I am upset about the very real and very horrific suffering of loads and loads of people” because it would eventually destroy me. Similarly, I can’t ignore most of the world. At the moment the situation with this is similar and probably connected to the superiority/inferiority complex thing; I am sometimes feeling very bad about poverty etc. and sometimes don’t care at all. My problem is that I can only embrace extremes of behaviour, motivation and performance (yes, those overlap a lot). I guess I’m going to have to find some middle ground eventually.

A final note on modesty and humility with regards to actual self-image: I don’t really think these words offer much for me to work with as they’re ambiguous enough as to become useless.

These are the distinctions I think ought to be made:

•  Acting in a superior way
• Acting in an inferior

Remember that your outward appearance is not necessarily a straight-up reflection of what you believe; you may act proudly and outgoing-ly when you’re in fact somewhat worried and nervous or act like a shy, modest person while in fact thinking about how you’re better than everyone etc. Of these, the most important distinction to make is the one between perceived humility (because someone acts modestly) and genuine humility (which might not be represented properly in someone’s actions - they might act proudly but actually be very down to earth and just have a slightly altered external personality).

It must take some really quirky but perceptive understanding to evaluate yourself properly as not all-important when you are by nature the centre of your own experiences!

Pax