Identity, Ideal Self and Self-Esteem
The ideal self, or one major aspect of it, is the acknowledgment of what behavior is morally right and what is not, and that depends on the values and basic attitudes. As I outlined in entry 43, I consider the basic values as the conscious representation of the relative strength of the amount of hard-wired instinctivity and gullibility or rationality and cerebrality in the brain.
The perceived self is the way, that someone experiences subjectively his own behavior, no matter, how it is perceived by others. The more someone perceives both selves as congruent, the better he feels about himself.
The ought self is the knowledge about rules and norms, about what mainstream society expects from people.
Therefore the formation and development and the rules for behavior of the ideal self depend very much on the kind of identity, someone has hardwired into his brain.
Hypoanimalistic individuals, who are guided by rationality, have an ideal self much based upon rationality and a fair exchange of giving and receiving, on tit-for-tat and on treating others as individuals too. The ought self cannot influence them, whenever it is irrational for the individual. They choose carefully, who is worthy to mix with, and then they accept to allow mutual influencing only with those chosen.
Breeders with the particle identity are very different. Their ideal self represents the urges of all the instincts, that are hard-wired into their brain and form their identity. Their ideal self tells them to procreate, to fight for power and resources in a hierarchy, to favor their progeny, and as particles to have a purpose in life pleasing that something higher, their deity. As particles connected with other particles, they incorporate a lot of the ought self into the ideal self. That ought self can add belief-based elements to the ideal self like earning advantages in an afterlife. They need other particles and are therefore prone to be influenced by those, whose influence is detrimental.
For hypoanimalistic individuals, self-esteem is derived mainly from achievements, if behaving in a way, that the perceived self closely resembles the ideal self, also is considered as an achievement. For particles, the esteem of others can modify their self-esteem substantially.
One ingredient to live in harmony is the situation of the esteem of significant people being in sync with the own self-esteem.
Hypoanimalistic individuals need to be rationally convinced by either own experience or given evidence of failure to adjust their self-esteem.
Particles are very prone to adjust their own self-esteem to the opinions of others due to how they are treated. They depend on others, on competition, on comparing themselves for their self-esteem.
The representation of the self-esteem is expressed in what someone feels entitled to deserve in all aspects of what is important to him. Material and immaterial entitlements are very different, I am only referring to immaterial entitlement.
This brings me back to entry 82 (Identity and Forgiving). A transgression is a behavior, which at least in the perception of the transgressee is below of what he is entitled to be impacted with. In the moment of the transgression, the esteem of the transgressor for the transgressee is considerably lower than his self-esteem.
This causes a disruptive imbalance. Forgiving corrects this by reestablishing the congruence between the self-esteem and the perceived esteem of the other.
Earning forgiveness means, that the transgressor adjusts his esteem to the self-esteem of the transgressee and adjusts therefore also, what he considers as appropriate behavior with him. For a hypoanimalistic individual, this is the only solution, else the transgressor is unworthy for further contact.
For particles, who need the entanglement with other particles more than their own self-esteem, the situation is different. In obedience to their deity, they forgive a transgression, even though the transgressor continues to consider is adequate to the transgressee. But in this case forgiving means to lower the own self-esteem to match the low esteem of the transgressor. Both have implicitly accepted future repetitions of the transgression, because the transgressee has indirectly acknowledged by forgiving, that it was really not a transgression at all, but a behavior, that he is willing to be exposed to again.
Thus, particles lower their own self-esteem in the aspects of the transgression, but there is the deity as the third party of the triad in the background. For them, obedience, submission, sacrifice for the deity is also perceived as an achievement. What self-esteem they loose to the low esteem of the transgressor, they gain again from the achievement of being docile to the deity.
