By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Is self-esteem making us sick?

We have reached the point, in much of this world, where everyone needs to be above average. What this means for us and for our future is yet to be determined. But it is possible that this constantly forced diet of having more self-esteem is starting to make us all sick.

First, we need to figure out what above average means. Average used to be a mathematical concept, take scores, add them up and divide by the number of people. We also had mathematic concepts for the most common score and the score in the middle.

I have never heard any individual referred to as being a “modal” or “median” person. But lots of people get referred to as “average” and this is customarily used in a derogatory manner as if being average was somehow to be less than acceptable.

There are some huge consequences of this “everyone needs to be above average” theorem.

First, we need to lower the standards until at least half of us can get above that score. So it has become common practice for some years now that everyone in a class needs to get an A. Anyone who did not get an A is now considered a failure. That requirement for perfection has resulted in a culture of giving out lots of A’s. Everyone gets an A now.

Now when I was in school a perfect GPA was a 4.0. If anyone was getting a grade better than that, they never told us. Yes, some really smart kids when over to the college for a few classes the last year in High school but they might get a B or even a C in that college class and we will all very impressed that they were taking college classes.

Today I hear that kids are taking AP classes in high school. This has been going on for a while now. So the good colleges now will not look at a student with a 4.0 GPA which used to be a perfect score. Now you need a 4.2 or 4.3 to get considered.

The result, more kids get A’s but the “average” kid can’t read or write and they get their education from watching television.

We are in fact distorting things so that reality is no longer real. Everyone is above average and anyone who is not perfect is a failure. Life has become a virtual adventure. Homes include virtual pets and virtual parents.

Thank god for prisons. Because the prisons are our great housing project for people who are not above average. Many prison inmates are in fact illiterate. So we are close to making being below average a qualification for being a permanent member of the incarcerated class.

Now if you are above average always, even if they have had to lower the bar so you can always be above it, you might come to think of yourself as better than average, superior, even entitled. We used to call this narcissistic. We have stopped thinking of people who feel superior as narcissistic and we now evaluate them as either “average” or a political candidate. Those who have refined narcissism to a science get to lose other people’s money on Wall Street.

Now if you are above average, and everyone is above average and to be below average means you are a worthless failure, what do you do when you fail to be above average at something.

Why you get angry, very, very angry. You blame the test, the teacher and the whole school system. And if no one agrees with us that being less than average is not fair then we could sue or get violent.

This whole need to be better than others to be OK is at the root of a lot of this world’s problem. My religion needs to be more correct than yours otherwise I may be wrong and less right than you and that would mean that I am defective somehow. So if you do not believe like I do I need to kill you to make me more religiously correct. See how this whole need to always be better than others and more correct can be a rabbit hole down which society may disappear to never be seen again.

Mr. Ellis liked to remind us, I kind of miss that guy these days, that the problem was not low self-esteem. The problem is this whole notion of rating ourselves as if our whole life were some sort of televised bowl game and we needed to die with the highest score.

Rather than this whole truckload of self-esteem and how we need to be better than everyone else, we need to be talking about how to be more accepting, of ourselves and those who are different from us in so many ways.

Higher levels of compassion are desperately needed and the place that most needs an increase in compassion is right in our own homes. Start by having more compassion for yourself and those around you and then when you have some excesses of compassion spread that around. Unlike self-esteem where you dare not give it away or you will run out, compassion has a much better flow rate. You can spread compassion around and it seems to go on forever.

Want a healthier world? Switch from a high self-esteem diet to a high compassion diet.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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