Confidence Trick

by Sam Calvin
Every time I hear the word 'confidence,' my spine twitches in disgust. Partly, it's the way people pronounce it, with the 'n' sticking to the top of their mouths, morphing into an 'm,' or dropping out all together, and the 'ence' sharpening, valley-girl style, into 'ince'. Partly, it's the faint whiff of bullshit and new shoes that always accompanies it. But most of all, it's the sheer repetition of it. I hear it all the fucking time, and it drives me crazy.
'Confidence' came to widespread use in the mid 90s to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the 'self-esteem' movement. We were out of the recession, and the go-getters of the new economy demanded a maxim that was proactive and uncompromising. 'Self-esteem,' once considered the essence of a healthy attitude and a rewarding lifestyle, now seemed pathetic and creepy. 'Confidence' shed the emphasis on queasy self-examination, and promised a simple change of outlook that could banish doubt and insecurity. Wealth, fame, dates, victory-the finest of everything was attainable with the atta-boy verve of 'confidence.' Even alternative goals-cool, independence, change, resistance-were fully embraced by the magic of the term. 'Confidence' seemed to conjure up from nowhere the ability to be a complete individual, fully realized and free from entanglements or restrictions.
It was an infectious image, and by the last years of the 90s, 'confidence' had saturated the media wallpaper. From the lifestyle magazines to the financial markets, from the pick-up bar to the sports arena, from sea to shining sea, 'confidence' echoed across the land as a mantra of the unbounded health and goodness of the American way of life. And it chafed me like a pair of sandpaper underpants in July.
If it was all so fucking easy as a commitment to "living life to its fullest," and a "this time I really mean it," why did the American people need all this reminding? Why did this word incite so much devotion, and to what end?
Over time, a word is like a drug-use it enough you take on its characteristics. Some words are beneficial, some are mild, and some words are many times more powerful and dangerous than any illicit powders or pills. This dimension of 'confidence'-the way it functions in the world, the way it conditions perception and behavior-begged further inquiry. So I started to note 'confidence' use, isolated hard-core users and interacted with them in their natural habitats, watched and re-watched more episodes of MTV's Real World than I care to admit, and even used experimental doses of 'confidence' myself. My results have been striking.
All research indicates that 'confidence' is one of the ugliest and most addictive habits on the market today. The much-hyped benefits do not pan out, and chronic use horribly transforms the user. In its presence and in its lack, 'confidence' produces the most obnoxious, empty, false, boring, petulant, pathetic and downright wrong people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.
I will attempt to lay out the basic course of the addiction.
The opiate dreams of a confidence high are truly breathtaking, to be sure. Everything you ever wanted-all the success, popularity, and wealth you can imagine-if you just say "yes." 'Confidence' promises a perfection of operation that requires nothing and gives everything. Your body is frictionless gliding image: "Just do it." Your future is so close you can taste it, and it is sweet. "Yes Oh God Yes!"
Needless to say, this high is also extremely tenuous. From the minute you open your eyes in the morning, reality shows certain signs of not conforming to your wildest dreams. All effort meets with resistance-it is a physical law. Every action entails a possibility of failure, of refusal, and of something new and unexpected. No matter how fine your image of yourself may be, chances are that not everybody you meet will value it as highly as you do.
The 'confidence' user stakes his self-worth on fulfilling the promises he made to himself during the delirious high. But 'confidence' alone provides no plan for how to live up to this deranged standard, no working physics to deal with real-time change. As threats to his solipsistic self-adoration accumulate, the long-term user approaches personality stasis: devoting all his time to grooming himself, 'talking himself up' and 'building his confidence.' A word meant to signify uninhibited engagement with social reality, becomes, with habitual abuse, a code for avoidance and self-absorption.
In the terminal stages of 'confidence' addiction, the goals that the user set out to achieve are distorted beyond recognition, until the addict is left with no goal but maintaining his 'confidence.' 'Confidence's promise to the user becomes the user's promise to 'confidence,' its liberation a slavery. This is the confidence trick.
It is a swindle that operates so broadly it can easily go unnoticed, but when you tune into its specific frequency its ravages become apparent. 'Confidence' junkies are everywhere. They are the bragging pricks who hog the spotlight at parties and step on everyone else's stories, as well as the gelded clowns who fawn on them. They are the precious princesses who demand constant attention and dish out abuse, and also their cowering, resentful friends. They are the arrogant bosses who take credit for your work and mess things up and leave you to clean up after them. They are the loathsome leeches who purr smugly when you reveal a problem, but pretend to have a bigger problem of their own if you ask for help.
'Confidence' has created a culture of fragile egos, brittleness, and tantrums. And yet Americans are still being promised that 'confidence' is our best hope for a proud future. While 'confidence' apparently values the ability to 'be yourself,' it creates a sharpened sense of mistrust and the possibility of betrayal. It promises a mastery of the moment, but it converts every opportunity for real engagement into an exaggerated confrontation with total personal failure. It embraces social freedom by assuring that "when this relationship fails I will still have myself," and, in doing so, thwarts the vitality of reciprocal relationships. Moreover, by only valuing effortlessness, 'confidence' debases the shared meaning of every accomplishment and aspiration.
'Confidence' is an ugly punchline to the joke millennial capitalism is making of American society. The failures of America are explained away in individual terms, and blind belief is offered as a viable substitute for truth, work, and loyalty. Starving and homeless? "Low consumer confidence, ha ha ha."
In the end, 'confidence' boils down to a very simple operation: image control. A 'confident' country is a healthy country, and suffering is silenced. The monstrosity of 'confidence' lies in the glib way it glosses over exploitation and treachery, and obscures the courage of bearing up under the risk and isolation that is our common condition. 'Confidence' lets its users strut around like halfwit royalty when everything is running smooth, but hit a bump and these assholes completely lose it, flailing around and looking for someone to blame.
And shit is getting seriously bumpy. President Jr. has launched us into a 'difficult and protracted' war with unnumbered casualties and an open-ended list of enemies. The Legislature has giddily swept aside the Bill of Rights, and law enforcement, headed by the lunatic Ashcroft, is indulging in an orgy of secret detention and unrestrained surveillance. The American economy is going into free-fall as the depth of the lies and theft of the '90s is slowly revealed. Feeling confident?