[insert essay text here once written]

Basically a jam session about how the “feel good movement” that began in a big way in the early 1970’s has raised the idea of self-esteem to that of a secular virtue, creating a social environment in which we are coached that anything that makes us feel bad about ourselves isbad, while simultaneously having the laundry list of criteria about how we should “feel good” rigorously marketed to us via an “availability cascade” perpetuated in part by persistent mass media repetition.

This perpetuation isolates individuals from collective identity by asserting the importance of personal role over collective role, while at the same time creating a new collective “class” of individuation-seeking persons receptive to manipulations of the self-esteem dogma.

Self-esteem dogma is extremely effective as a marketing tool (cite boom in cosmetic sales and diversification of fashion-based subcultures as examples), but is even more effective at selling and reinforcing ideology than selling product, by framing any disagreeable idea or belief as a threat-to-self that potentially damages self-esteem or self-perception.