adaddysgirl
Posts: 1093
Joined: 3/2/2004
From: Syracuse, NY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MaryT
Self-esteem and self-approval mean virtually the same thing. There is a difference between that and simply valuing self as important. Buddhists of a certain lineage have a practice called mitree that translates into unconditional friendliness (with self first and others as one progresses), which is a very different thing than unconditional approval. Peck's whole deal was that the necessity to feel good about oneself is ultimately destructive because it excludes feeling bad, and therefore precludes a course correction. Bush has demonstrated that characteristic in aces.
I don't believe Mother Theresa gave a twit about self-approval. Nelson Mandela most certainly did not feel good about his life for a good part of it, nor did he have any idea that anyone appreciated him or even knew he was alive on Robben Island. In both cases, they were reaching for something beyond self - a greater good. That is what made them great. Socrates knew full well that if he didn't shut the hell up, the crowd would kill him. He wasn't aiming for self-approval and certainly not the approval of others - he was trying to get them to clue in. In death, he succeeded, but as the man was in reality atheist (from everything I and my two philosophy instructors could tell), whose approval was he shooting for? Donald Trump is considered great by many, and he definitely is addicted to his own approval and driven in that regard. I think he's a jerk myself.
You might be misunderstanding what i am saying here. You used the term 'great ego'. Now i can be great at something and not have a 'great ego'. There are probably a lot of people who can be great at something but don't overall feel good about themselves either. But looking at the OP, it is saying if you are great at something....and i did not take that as a reflection of one's entire life....only that particular talent (or whatever you want to call it).
i still have to believe that Mother Theresa felt fulfilled by what she was doing. Does that mean she walked around saying 'yeh i'm good'? No. To me it just means she was doing something great...she felt fulfilled by it...and others benefited from it (and that is why i said i liked the word 'fulfilled' in my first post). And for me, if i felt fulfilled by something i was great at, i suppose you could call it self-approval (but again, i can't say with any fact that this would mean i had good self-esteem overall because i excel in that one area and feel good about it).
You are saying that these people were reaching for some greater good, but how can you say with certainty that they did not get some fulfillment out of it? Again, you are talking about people feeling good about their lives....not about just being great at something. You are also talking about Socrates shutting the hell up. Well yeh, that would be for survival and really has no bearing on whether he felt fulfilled by what he was doing.
Whose approval was he shooting for? Again this is the point. It would seem he approved of himself and continued on whether others approved of him or not.
People can feel good about something great they are doing, which could evoke self approval, and it may evoke other's approval as well.
Some can do something great and perhaps hate it (thereby lacking their own approval in doing it), and may continue to do so simply because it evokes' other's approval.
We can sit here and cite great people and how they felt about what they were doing and how others felt about what they were doing. But i don't really think that is the point of the OP. i think he is asking us what it means to ourselves. And personally, i have no desire to get into a big debate about why Mother Theresa, Mandela, Socrates, Bush, Trump, Beethoven, Van Gogh, etc did great (or not so great) things. Seems futile (to me) to the discussion at hand.
I think most of the western world is fairly enslaved doing what they don't want to do because society expects it. It's the human condition, near as I can tell.
It does seem that's what many are saying here....which i guess i shouldn't be surprised by. However, that just is not my type of personality and quite honestly, i don't think it ever has been.
Me too and probably most of us here since we're swimming upstream in following our bliss. 
In third grade, my teacher called me uni-cue (that is how she pronounced it). Then she told me to look it up in the dictionary. It was 'unique'. i really wasn't a 'crowd follower' then and doubt i ever will be. But that works for me 
The funny part about this discussion is that I consider my submissive bend to be as much an approval kink as anything else. OTOH, I'm not shooting for greatness in kink. It's all about pleasure.
Well i have heard a few on here say they were great at giving BJ's. Now let's see....would that be for self approval or others'?  
DG
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