Self-Respect in an Age of Hedonism and Whoring

The two-part framework to being worthy of yourself

Didion and her 1971 Corvette Stingray

Joan Didion wrote these words in her famous 1961 essay, “On-Self Respect”:

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us..."

The world in which Didion explored these thoughts, was one of rapid change. The Cold War held its fist over the world, and the counter-culture movement that would define the decade began to take root. The sun had begun to set on the norms and ideals that defined previous generations. And, for the first time at a mass scale, young people began to identify en masse around an act of conscious rebellion from their parents.

Whether or not we want to believe it, we’re still living in the shadows of the sixties. And as Didion foresaw in her 1961 essay, we’ve become fully trapped in the catch-22 of being both incapable of love and indifference. We care deeply about what others think of us, while simultaneously finding the people around us lacking. Social media, our culture at large, and our media have contributed to this feeling of existential discomfort in ourselves and the people around us.

Didion in the 60’s

More than ever, we need to develop self-respect. The next generation doesn’t deserve to be inflicted with this modern crisis of being, and neither do we.

So what does it mean to move through the world in 2023 with self-respect and how does this differ from Didion’s conceptualization?

In my opinion, the path to cultivating self-respect today can be visualized as a two-part funnel.

First, you must be able to adopt a third-person perspective of yourself. To see yourself as different people throughout the day.

Here is work me. Here is social me. Here is me that eats 2,000 calories of junk food at 8 pm.

Once you can see these patterns of behavior from the perspective of a stranger hiding in the walls, you can begin to sense the impulses that lead you to behaviors that misalign you. You can begin to judge.

The word judge is crucial for developing self-respect for two reasons:

1. Shame and disgust are the two primary emotions attached to the act of judgment. Whether we are judging ourselves or others, it is primal, and it is an important signal for understanding whether or not our actions, or the actions of others, are blind to the conception of self-respect

2. Judgment has become a bad word. Our teachers, our politicians, our entertainers — they all tell us not to judge. In fact, they tell us to do the opposite. That our behaviors are an expression of our “authentic self”, and that this self, existing in a metaphorical fairy-tale world, is what our current capitalist and tyrannical world wants to hide from us. In other words, if you feel like eating a bag of Cheetos for breakfast, it isn’t you that’s the problem, it’s the world moralizing this action that’s the problem. The meaning of this word, like many others in our society, has become inverted.

Hence the importance of practicing judgment. If you want to develop self-respect you must be willing to see yourself as you are each day, outside of the flawed frameworks that exist around you.

Slim Aarons // Caprice on Capri (1958)

Once you do this, your habits and norms that once ran on autopilot shame you. This might sound harsh, but human beings respond to shame. It is one of the most powerful emotions you can feel.

For example:

If you’re a young man addicted to porn, and you can visualize your daily ritual from a third-person perspective — the blue light of the screen, the secrecy, scrolling through pages of naked women until you find your particular extreme of the day — you will sense a feeling of disgust and shame. Judgment.

Apply this mental model to other areas of your life: heavy drinking, casual sex with strangers, arguing with your crazy uncle on Facebook, scrolling when you should be working. Once you can see this behavior you can change it to align with your goals and ambitions. At the very least, you can simply choose to not partake in these actions or stop them once you’ve started.

This recognition that you’re living a suboptimal, animalistic life, combined with the willpower to command your attention away from these actions, is the foundation for self-respect.

And those who fail to properly judge and then change their actions, take on the quality of an anxious spirit, floating through a world in a state between life and death.

Didion discusses this further in her essay:

"Those who do not find themselves ever satisfactorily represented in other people's eyes, those who doubt the truth of the life they are living, such people are more apt to become spectators in their own lives, objects of a certain cold curiosity about its outcome.”

The second part of this funnel is integrity.

These are the moral principles that will guide your life and your ability to maintain the discipline to look at yourself from an outside perspective. When you can judge yourself in accordance with specific values, you are working up from mere feeling to a conscious understanding of why the action is wrong. You are acting as someone with integrity.

I seldom hear this word, which, like judgment means that it holds even more power and weight in today’s world.

As people become untethered, and disregard the moral teachings that guided us for hundreds of years, it is crucial to do adequate groundwork, reading, and thinking to understand why you think the way you do.

Gustave Courbet // A Young Woman Reading (1866-1868)

It’s important to note, that this will be different for everyone.

The purpose of self-respect isn’t to bring your values to the masses. The purpose is to align your actions with your values every single day.

You might find these values in Church, or in the books of Nietzsche or Hume. But you must find them. And you must be able to reason with yourself to the point where you could explain to a stranger why you believe what you do.

If being able to see yourself from a third-person perspective is your smooth 3-point jump shot, integrity is the game plan that will allow you to maximize the chance of victory each time you step onto the court.

Once you have developed the ability to see your actions from an outside perspective and align them with your values, you are living a life that has integrity. And when this becomes second nature, you develop a sense of deep, and conscience self-respect. Something our world needs a little more of.

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

Ralph Waldo Emerson