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Insecurity, self-esteem and post-modern life
I had never really noticed the contradictions about insecurity in our culture until Insecurity (the TA) posted about the origin of his screen name. According to him, men in chat rooms usually choose flattering names conveying the impression that everyone in there was powerful, strong or dominant (which is kind of ironic, if you think about what sort of people you usually find in chat rooms). So, in order to stand out, he chose to do the exact opposite. Personally, I believe it takes a lot more confidence to label yourself as being "insecure" than the opposite, and once I did that, I've had positive results overall. We can be totally secure about anything, as Kierkegaard seems to show in his ideas about dread, so why bother pretending not to be insecure?
As soon as I embraced this "insecure way of life", I instantly realised that all those around me were also insecure, from university professors to teenage girls (and I also noticed that the latter are often a lot more interesting than the former, but this is something else entirely). But, because our culture frowns upon insecurity, people seem to resort to very strange "defence mechanisms", such as being self-righteous, arrogant and judgemental. Either this makes life a lot more difficult or I'm having problems seeing the advantages of doing that.
We live in a postmodern world (or, at least, influenced by it), in which metanarratives have been contested, disputed and made fun of. So, do we need this ideal "secure self"? Why do some people avoid looking insecure if that's part of the human condition?
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