Shut-up Stupid Sunday

Once again I am going to do a post on stupid people, or more accurately groups of people with incredibly stupid ideas. I am using the term “Stupid”, for lack of a better term, for the total lack of Intellectual curiosity and the insistence to deny any and all facts that contradict their pre-conceived beliefs that these groups display.

In my past posts I talked about stupid groups on the right-wing of politics, mostly because they were low hanging fruit. It’s easy to poke fun at the nut balls who serious reporters have trouble talking to with a straight face. Here are some of those posts:

Stupidity in General:
Clarifying Stupid
Against Stupidity, The Gods themselves struggle in Vain

Tea-baggers:
Tea-bagging for loose change
Tea-bagging and doing it Austrian Style

Intelligent Design/Creationism
Intelligent Design
Squirrels Have a Liberal Bias

Climate Change Deniers
What we Know Wednesday

Anti-Vaxers (People who believe Vaccines Cause Autism)
Shut up and put your mouth to better use

In the name of fairness I thought I’d do a post on a Stupid Movement from the more liberal side of the political spectrum and talk about “Self-Esteem Classes”.

The basic idea behind Self-Esteem Classes is that studies have shown that people with more self-esteem tend to be more successful. No shit, this is like finding out that people who have won Olympic medals tend to be better athletes than normal people.

Taking that idea they feel that if you take Self-Esteem Classes, you will be more successful. This is like saying if you give everyone an Olympic gold medal, everyone will be more athletic. It just doesn’t work that way.

To be fair grade school teachers should be a little sensitive to their students Self-Esteem and remember to encourage them to always try and improve, but having students take classes in it is ridiculous.

I’m giving “coaches” of adult Self-Esteem Classes the benefit of the doubt and assume they are just in it for a quick buck.

As an Arrogant Asshole, I know a little about Self-Esteem. The way you build your own self-esteem is to find something you like to do, and have some proficiency in, and practice. As you get better set yourself a real goal that is just beyond your current reach and practice until you can reach that goal, Repeat.

Soon you will be doing something that you thought was impossible. With that success under your belt no one can ever take it away from you.

Then when you find another task, you know you can reach a high goal because you’ve done it before.

Of course it helps to have the support of friends and family, the way you gain that is to look at something tough that they are doing and when they reach a goal, congratulate them. Out of common courteously they will do the same for you. (The downside is this builds real bonds with real people and you will start having empathy for others and its harder to be a cruel bastard to someone you acknowledge as a real person and you will lose blind hatred and bigotry, but everything has a price.)

Self-Esteem is not something you can isolate from other tasks, its part of doing things.

My message to these people pushing Self-Esteem Classes is: Shut-up Stupid.