Kenia Rosales

Professor Schlate

English 101 

April 22, 2011

                          The Trouble with High Self-Esteem

High Self- Esteem the root of all evil. It’s not likely that you would hear 

something like this about High self-esteem because most think money is. Many think that high self-esteem is the key to success yet they never think of it as something dangerous.  Lauren Slater states in her essay “The troubles with Self-Esteem” that “People with High Self-Esteem pose a greater threat to those around them than people with low Self-esteem” (859). Ergo it’s better to have low- self-esteem than to be a threat to society. I will continue to explain the many dangers of having High Self Esteem.

First of all, an individual that has high Self-Esteem is full of confidence. 

they think that they are god all mighty that they know everything. This is a bit problematic because we know nobody’s perfect, by thinking so highly of themselves they’re only making their personalities unbearable. These people are very confident and tend to be very open about what they feel is right. This can be a very good thing because they would always get their feelings across. But sometimes by doing this people end up getting hurt by their words. Unlike a person that has low self-esteem.  Who would think before speaking and whether or not their opinions are hurting others. Not only would they think before they speak, but also make sure that what they’re saying is correct. Confident people mostly think they are right so they don’t bother to think about whether or not they’re a right. This creates conflict among people. Not only do those with high self-esteem create problems among people but also in society.

Pursuing this further the people who have high self-esteem seem to set

up expectations the rest of us have to live up to. In order to succeed we all have think we are great. Thinking highly of our selves is the key to success they would say. That isn’t exactly true according to Emler “People with low self-esteem do just as well in life as people with high self-esteem. In fact, they might do better because they often try harder” (qtd. in The Trouble with Self-Esteem). Having high self-esteem isn’t proven to bring us success. Then why is it that society thinks that we have to have high self-esteem.

For the simple reason, that in today’s society if a person has low self-

esteem then they have a problem. That has to be fixed with one of the thousands of programs and books that help boost up your Self-esteem. It’s horrible because having high self-esteem is all it’s made out to be. Not everyone wants to be part of that self-centered world. The people who expect everyone to have high self-esteem never thought that maybe it does people more bad than good.

This brings me to my next point; people with high self-esteem are more

violent then people with low self-esteem. People with High self-esteem don’t feel bad about their persona and usually have a lot pride. These qualities mixed together can’t be good. It usually leads to violent behavior. According to Emler “People who believe themselves to be among the top 10 percent of any dimension may be insulted and threatened whenever anyone asserts that they are in the 80th or 50th or 25th percentile”(qtd. in The Trouble with Self-Esteem). This mixed in with pride can only lead to fights and violent acts. While people always tend to worry for those who have low self-esteem they should really be looking out for those with high self-esteem. If a person feels so great about themselves, then doesn’t that mean that they don’t care about the bad aspects to their persona? Meaning that if they think everything they do is right then if they commit a crime its ok.

 Self-Esteem is a very tricky subject. There are a lot of grey areas that

 people don’t explore. Like the fact that it’s not always a good thing to have high self-esteem. It can turn you into a violent self-centered person. These type of people cause many problems to society. So it’s better to have low self-esteem than high.

                                        Works Cited

Slater, Lauren. "The Trouble with Self-Esteem." Writer's Presence: a Pool of Readings. Sixth ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. 857-64. Print.