How about some self-control?

We might like ourselves more if we were less aggressive – and if we went looking for what really makes life worth living

“A lack of confidence is the barrier to SA’s success”, proclaimed the headline over a picture of one of our most trusted gurus, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, recently. She was speaking about the country’s under-performance during a timely self-appraisal process, The Dinokeng Scenario, that exposed the legacy of insignificance bequeathed to us by successive authoritarian cultures, among other insights.
Dr Ramphele knows us better than almost anybody else so what she says about South Africans is invariably true. When she asked on this occasion what kind of society tolerated crimes like xenophobia and baby rape, her answer seemed spot on: “It is a society that has a poor self-image,” she reasoned.
If you think about some of the recent decisions for which South Africa is best known internationally – former president Thabo Mbeki’s brutal dismissal by the ruling party, for example, or the government’s foolhardy denial of an entry visa to world icon the Dalai Lama – they certainly seem to reflect a bullying leadership that may be suffering from weak self-confidence.
The national self-concept is a more complex matter. Who can forget the pride we all felt as South Africans when Nelson Mandela became our first black president? Today, though, our self-image is compromised by esteem-crushers like the aggression that is part of the South African way of life (school bullying and violent crime, for instance) as well as the widespread feelings of deprivation combined with a belief that we South Africans not only deserve more but are being prevented from accessing material possessions or prestige by “others”.
As surely as entitlement is a self-defeating feature of SA’s national psyche, so is the scapegoating (as in xenophobic attacks) that makes people believe their problems can be predicted and controlled, their own responsibility eliminated and their guilt diminished. Apparently, assigning people to outgroups confers a sense of superiority and enhances self-esteem. Or so the psychologists tell us.
Despite these misguided attempts to bolster our supposedly sagging self-confidence, SA’s recent history – like the struggle years - tells a different story. The country did not wallow in self-pity when its liberation dreams wavered after the Mandela years, on the contrary: once the post-apartheid ideal way of life had proved difficult to bring about and the new social system had failed to achieve its popular promise, a leader with a different ideology sprang forth like Superman to offer renewed meaning and direction. It was self-respect as well as self-determination that secured what voters believe to be a genuine peoples’ president - confident characteristics that are likely to assert themselves again if Jacob Zuma fails to deliver. Does that sound like a society whimpering with self-loathing?
Perhaps it depends what you mean by self-esteem, there having been some radical new approaches to the concept over recent years. Although referring to it as the vaccine against anti-social behavior for decades, a number of prominent psychologists have suggested that, far from low self-esteem being at the root of almost every disorder from delinquency and drug abuse to violence and child abuse, those who think highly of themselves are the most prone to violence and taking risks because they believe they are invulnerable. It is the cocky ones who will commit crimes, drive dangerously, risk their health with drugs and alcohol.
“There is absolutely no evidence that low self-esteem is particularly harmful,” says Professor Nicholas Emler of the London School of Economics. “It’s not at all a cause of poor academic performance; people with low self-esteem seem to do just as well in life as people with high self-esteem. In fact, they may do better because they often try harder.”
Some studies show that people suffering from low self-esteem are entirely non-violent. By contrast, incarcerated criminals with high self-esteem are quite likely to respond aggressively if anyone dares even to criticize them. What I remember most vividly about my prison interviews with Louis van Schoor, South Africa’s worst mass murderer, for example, was the preening self-satisfaction that turned quickly to hostility when he was questioned about his violent history.
Inevitably, though, there is a catch to the pitfalls of self-esteem, psychology being the science that invents problems by defining them (in the process rendering the word normal almost meaningless).
Apparently, those who do not have high self-esteem often strive to fake it. Pseudo self-esteem, unlike the real thing, relies on purely external sources, such as physical appearance and being admired. Vanity and self-absorption affirm a grandiose sense of self which is, in fact, a personality disorder known as narcissism - not positive self-esteem at all. A good example: the knife crime gang members in London who frequently tell police that they were provoked by “lack of respect” from their stabbed victims.
Even when high self-evaluation is not masking self-doubt, it may be associated with limited concern for others. Interestingly, studies show that a moderately positive self-concept is most strongly associated with sensitivity and responsiveness to others.
So where does that leave the idea of SA as an under-achieving country due to its victim-like, poor self-image?
Cultures, like individuals, carry blueprints for dealing with problems. Our fatal flaw seems to me to be  aggression, not a lack of confidence. Perhaps self-control rather than self-confidence should become our collective goal, and a rewarding subject for The Dinokeng Scenario to explore. We might like ourselves a lot more if we were less aggressive, in the process moderating our self-image.
Freud once remarked that the successful individual is one who has achieved meaningful work and meaningful love. The self is not about how good it feels, he argued, but how well it does, in work and love. He never thought confidence was the key to a life well lived.
Maybe what we need most as a society, in addition to Dr Ramphele’s recommended “serious conversation about our identity, our sense of insignificance and our under-performance”, is a narrative on what really makes life worth living – which might lead to an improved self-image.