CHAPTER 4: The DEMOCRATIC (R)EVOLUTION We are better than we realize we are. For the first time, we can now create institutions of governance that elicit our best. Copyright 2026 by Paul L. LaClair
Value for Saturday of Week 14 in the season of Sowing
Cultivating and Nurturing Self-Esteem
Self-esteem (how do I feel about myself?)
- Women with low self-esteem love bad boys. Women who have work to do love bad boys. Women who love themselves love good men. [attributed to Tracy McMillan]
- The biggest thing you can give a kid is self-esteem, so that they’re not shy to do different things. [Magnus Scheving]
Approximately a dozen ligaments hold together the human knee. If any of them is injured, the function of the knee is impaired, as a whole. So it is with the elements of self-worth, including self-esteem.
Of all the subsidiary concepts within the global concept of self-worth, self-esteem is the most widely studied and reported, probably because self-esteem emanates from the limbic system, the seat of our emotions. No matter what we may think of ourselves rationally, and no matter how competent we may be in our behavior, if we do not feel good about ourselves, then we are, almost by definition, unhappy, and our ability to live fully will be compromised. Impaired self-esteem is like an injury to one of the knee’s collateral ligaments: it will impair overall function more severely than will an impairment to any of the knee’s other ligaments.
Self-esteem has a significant to profound impact on life issues such as education and learning, happiness, belonging, and success, and overall health and well-being. However, self-esteem can be a mixed bag. “. . . people with psychopathic personality disorders are characterised by high self-esteem, unconstructive strategies of planning actions and non-adaptive styles of coping with stress.” High self-esteem can produce “egotistical illusions (that) interfere with self-regulation processes.” On balance, though, self-esteem’s effects are positive for individuals and for society at large.
Real
True Narratives
- Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2019): “Jones is fascinated by power (who has it, how and why we deploy it), but he seems equally interested in tenderness and frailty. We wound and save one another, we try our best, we leave too much unsaid.”
- Laura Chinn, Acne: A Memoir (Hachette, 2022), “uses the author’s skin as a marker of time, a memorable indicator of who and where she was at various stages in her life.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Virgil Zeigler-Hill, ed., Self-Esteem (Psychology Press, 2013).
- Mary H. Guindon, ed., Self-Esteem Across the Lifespan: Issues and Interventions (Routledge, 2010).
- Timothy J. Owens, Sheldon Stryker and Norman Goodman, eds., Extending Self-Esteem Theory and Research: Sociological and Psychological Currents (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
- Michael H. Kernis, ed., Self-Esteem Issues and Answers: A Sourcebook of Current Perspectives (Psychology Press, 2006).
- Christopher J. Mruk, ed., Self-Esteem Research, Theory and Practice (Third Edition, Springer, 2006).
- Christopher J. Mruk, Self-Esteem and Positive Psychology: Research, Theory and Practice (Springer, 4th Edition, 2013).
- C. Jesse Carlock, ed., Enhancing Self Esteem (Taylor & Francis, 3rd edition, 2018).
- Diane Frey & C. Jesse Carlock, Practical Techniques for Enhancing Self-Esteem (Routledge, 3rd edition, 2017).
- David Miller and Teresa Moran, Self-esteem: A Guide for Teachers (SAGE Publications, 2012).
- Peggy J. Miller & Grace E. Cho, Self-Esteem in Time and Place: How American Families Imagine, Enact, and Personalize a Cultural Ideal (Oxford University Press, 2018).
- Timothy J. Owens, Sheldon Stryker & Norman Goodman, eds., Extending Self-Esteem Theory and Research: Sociological and Psychological Currents (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
- Roy F. Baumeister, ed., Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard (Plenum Press, 1993).
- Matthew McKay & Patrick Fanning, Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem (New Harbinger Publications, 4th edition,, 2016).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Kim Fu, For Today I Am a Boy: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), about a boy who sees himself as a girl, growing up in a rigid, tradition-bound Chinese-American family and struggling with self-acceptance.
From the dark side, shame:
In this scene, the priest Claude Frollo confronts his actions, and his lust without expression of Love for Esmeralda.
. . . frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he could see clearly into his soul, and he shuddered. He thought of that unhappy girl who had destroyed him, and whom he had destroyed. He cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had caused their two destinies to pursue up to their point of intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without mercy. He meditated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity of chastity, of science, of religion, of virtue, on the uselessness of God. He plunged to his heart’s content in evil thoughts, and in proportion as he sank deeper, he felt a Satanic laugh burst forth within him. And as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived how large a space nature had prepared there for the passions, he sneered still more bitterly. He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his malevolence; and, with the cold glance of a physician who examines a patient, he recognized the fact that this malevolence was nothing but vitiated love; that love, that source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted like himself, in making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, when he considered the most sinister side of his fatal passion, of that corrosive, venomous malignant, implacable love, which had ended only in the gibbet for one of them and in hell for the other; condemnation for her, damnation for him. Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, and there came to him a jealousy of an unprecedented sort. He reflected that the people also, the entire populace, had had before their eyes the woman whom he loved exposed almost naked. He writhed his arms with agony as he thought that the woman whose form, caught by him alone in the darkness would have been supreme happiness, had been delivered up in broad daylight at full noonday, to a whole people, clad as for a night of voluptuousness. He wept with rage over all these mysteries of love, profaned, soiled, laid bare, withered forever. He wept with rage as he pictured to himself how many impure looks had been gratified at the sight of that badly fastened shift, and that this beautiful girl, this virgin lily, this cup of modesty and delight, to which he would have dared to place his lips only trembling, had just been transformed into a sort of public bowl, whereat the vilest populace of Paris, thieves, beggars, lackeys, had come to quaff in common an audacious, impure, and depraved pleasure. And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness which he might have found upon earth, if she had not been a gypsy, and if he had not been a priest, if Phœbus had not existed and if she had loved him; when he pictured to himself that a life of serenity and love would have been possible to him also, even to him; that there were at that very moment, here and there upon the earth, happy couples spending the hours in sweet converse beneath orange trees, on the banks of brooks, in the presence of a setting sun, of a starry night; and that if God had so willed, he might have formed with her one of those blessed couples,—his heart melted in tenderness and despair. Oh! she! still she! It was this fixed idea which returned incessantly, which tortured him, which ate into his brain, and rent his vitals. He did not regret, he did not repent; all that he had done he was ready to do again; he preferred to behold her in the hands of the executioner rather than in the arms of the captain. But he suffered; he suffered so that at intervals he tore out handfuls of his hair to see whether it were not turning white. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume II, Book Ninth, Chapter I, “Delirium”.]
Novels from the dark side:
- Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults: A Novel (Europa Editions, 2020): “A woman sits at her desk recalling a moment of painful disillusionment in her youth. . . . the idyll of her childhood was shattered at age 12, when she overheard her father calling her ugly. His remark unleashed a wave of shame and self-loathing in the girl, almost too big for her body to hold.”
- Alisa Alering, Smothermoss: A Novel (Tin House Books, 2024): “. . . Sheila would like to disappear. She’s eating less and less, vanishing into herself. The weight of the world and her own self-loathing manifest as a thickly corded rope around her neck that hangs like a noose, invisible to everyone but her. But it catches on things and it drags her down. Worse, it adds a bright new strand with every new teenage humiliation — and maybe too with the unspeakable secrets she swallows, like her forbidden crush on her classmate Juanita and the way the women she sees in magazines make her feel.”
Poetry
- Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal Woman”
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Known for his “sweet, lyrical sound”, Art Pepper played jazz saxophone in a straight-ahead style that avoided excessive showiness or drama, yet highlighted Pepper’s mastery of his instrument and the art form. “From the beginning Art’s playing combined a tender delicacy of tone with a purity of narrative line—a gift for storytelling that was made irresistible by an inherent, dancing, shouting, moaning inability to ever stop swinging. He was one of the few alto players to resist the style and tone of Charlie Parker.” His personal life, though, was a mess. “Art Pepper is one of only a handful of jazz artists whose life story is perhaps as well known as his recordings.” Heroin addiction and repeated incarcerations marred his personal life and disrupted his career. Yet he played as if to say “I feel good about myself.” As Pepper explained: “If you have individuality in music, it's something to hold on to.” In addition to his complete Galaxy recordings and “Promise Kept: The Complete Artists House Recordings” (299’), his releases are substantial. This documentary film chronicled the life of this “jazz survivor”.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Flute Concerti:
- No. 1 in G Major, K. 313 (1778) (approx. 26-29’) (list of recorded performances)
- No. 2 in D Major, K. 314 / 285d (1777) (approx. 20-21’) (list of recorded performances): the flute concerto “is a reworking of the oboe concerto he had written a year earlier”: Oboe Concerto in D Major, K. 314 / 271d (1777) (approx. 20’) (list of recorded performances). On either instrument, the work evokes self-affirmation.
Other compositions:
- Mauro Giuliani, Guitar Concertos: No. 1 in A Major, Op. 30 (1812) (approx. 23-30’) (list of recorded performances); No. 2 in A Major, Op. 36 (1812) (approx. 30’) (list of recorded performances); No. 3 in F Major, Op. 70 (1822) (approx. 26-29’) (list of recorded performances)
- George Enescu, Symphonie concertante in B minor (Simfonia concertantă pentru violoncel şi orchestra), for cello and orchestra, Op. 8 (1901) (approx. 23-27’) (list of recorded performances)
- August Eberhard Müller, Flute Concerti No. 1 in G Major, Op. 6 (approx. 22’); No. 3 in D Major, Op. 10 (approx. 24’); No. 5 in E minor, Op. 19 (1792) (approx. 21’); No. 7 in D minor, Op. 22 (approx. 28’); No. 8 in F Major, Op. 24 (1795) (approx. 26’); No. 10 in G Major, Op. 30 (approx. 28’)
Albums:
- Jeri Brown, “’Unfolding’ The Peacocks” (1992) (62’)
- Steven Halpern, “Self-Esteem” (1990) (59’)
From the dark side:
- Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Cyrano de Bergerac, Op. 55 (1903) (approx. 32-40’) tells Edmond Rostand’s story, in music, of a man whose nose was so large that he dared not pursue his romantic interest face-to-face. “Conceived as an autonomous work not intended as incidental music, its ‘five symphonic images’ each relates to a specific place in the drama.” It is “bittersweet, generously lyrical and with moments of almost Straussian passion.”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Steve Lacy and the Riccardo Fassi Trio, “Esteem”
Visual Arts
- Marc Chagall, Self-Portrait (1959-68)
- Zinaida Serebriakova, Self-Portrait Wearing a Scarf (1911)
- Zinaida Serebriakova, Self-Portrait (1907)
- Ilya Repin, Self-Portrait (1894)
Film and Stage
- The Snake Pitis similarly themed as “Cuckoo’s Nest”.
- Gregory’s Girlis a coming-of-age film telling the usual tale of a girl-smitten teenage boy with remarkable panache
- The Last Laugh(Der Letzte Mann), a silent film about an elderly man suddenly demoted from doorman to washroom attendant
