Our assets are supposed to make us happy. But what if we aren’t supposed to have assets? What are we supposed to do with them? People who lack self-respect do not “deserve” to enjoy their positive attributes, or even to have them in the first place. Positive attributes are inconsistent with self-contempt, and something has to give. Thirty years of self-contempt is not easily budged, so it is usually the positive attribute that must be canceled out, invalidated. One way to invalidate one’s assets is to turn them into liabilities.
People who are predisposed to turn their assets into liabilities usually remember occasions in childhood in which they learned that their positive qualities often bring about adverse consequences:
“Don’t be so smart. Men won’t want to marry you.”
“So you got straight A’s. You still don’t have any common sense.”
“You’re too smart for your own good.”
“So what if you are class president, you still can’t do 20 laps.”
“Sure you’re pretty, but that’s all you are.”
“You’re mother’s favorite. We’re going to get you for that.”
“Because of that smart mouth of yours, I’m going to ground you for two weeks. When are you going to learn that it always gets you in trouble.”
People can be very cruel. We can understand their destructive comments and behaviors as their way of overcompensating for their own feelings of inferiority in the presence of a gifted, precocious or attractive child. These asset-destroyers, like most victimizers, choose their targets carefully. They choose safe targets, ones who will not strike back, such as vulnerable children.
Children, for their part, do not strike back because:
They have perceived this mischief as a victimization, and victims do not dare strike back for fear of making it worse.
They have childish compassion for their tormentors. “Poor Mark, he doesn’t mean it, he’s just jealous. I won’t make it worse for him by kicking him when he is down. Maybe if I let this slide, he’ll appreciate it and like me some day.”
They have begun to doubt the validity of their own judgement, which was not carved in stone in the first place. They may be saying to themselves, “I thought being smart was a good thing to be, but my friends are turning up their noses at me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s a bad thing. Maybe I am too stupid to tell the difference. I’ll get off the honor role just to be on the safe side.”
With their judgement effectively neutralized, they are in no position to respond to these invalidations of their assets;
If their assets are worthless, then they must be worthless too — so what’s the use. They become discouraged. Their self-doubt has been confirmed.