Self-correction is survivalist. Self-monitoring is adaptive. There is no evolutionary benefit to self-annihilation. Yet somehow, the 21st-century college demographic reports intense levels of negative internal criticism that go beyond humility and self-deprecation. In high pressure environments, self-loathing is normalized, even attributed to a desperate scavenge for identity. It proliferates depression, anxiety and isolation. But where does it come from?
Beyond our surroundings, it's a baseless construct produced by social circumstances and temporary accidents.
The sheer dominance of self-loathing dawned on me during a furniture bonfire, built at some Thread Magazine party in the fall of ’24. Through my pre-abroad junior prime, I succumbed to arson most weekends we rented out The Lodge, dallying while my ex ended shifts at the bar. Lawn chairs, scrap wood, Papa Johns pizza boxes, lighter fluid hazard season. A kerfuffle of drunk strangers congregated at each past midnight. I was always with the s’mores bag and mulled wine, posing bold impertinent questions when unprompted.
“I mean, I get why she left, it's not like I’m all that …” One toasted sophomore’s drunken admission ricocheted around the campfire, then half a dozen punk-dressed party-goers staged an open consensus on why situationships fell through, all stemming from a unanimous sense of self-hatred.
At this point, I’d already denounced self-loathing as void on two accounts. First, it’s a product of external judgement, picked up through mirroring and retrospective fixation. Second, it’s rooted in past mistakes, which aren’t continuous and shouldn’t become attachments.
The realization dawned on me two years prior and became a mantra in practice until I’d undone some amount of conditioning: that self-loathing is the default predicament. I wouldn’t perpetuate a midnight riot against myself, but I aligned with the onslaught of self-doubt and resentment that follows romantic rejection.
For many, the fiercest form of early external judgement comes after being dumped, ditched or uncommitted to play into the “Looking Glass Self,” a term coined by American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley. Cooley asserted self-concepts are formed by imagining how others perceive us; we fabricate both positive and negative aspects of their evaluation and internalize it as identity. At a university, where feedback is quantified, constant and comparative, this process is exacerbated. Via resumes, grades and media-performative relationships, public opinion is obvious and inescapable.
But what Cooley brushes over is that the “looking glass” is a socially trained orientation rewarded by modern institutions. It presents more strongly in individualistic than collectivist cultures and proliferates an unrealistic understanding of self as something controlled by uncontrollable perceptions. Humans can reflect without condemning, observe without internalizing and handle critique without assuming it as part of our personas.
Author Erving Goffman embellishes Cooley’s findings by examining social life as theatrical: We see ourselves through others and sustain that image through unconscious rehearsal. Mistakes thus become dramaturgical threats to self-presentation, as they risk us breaking character. At the college level, audiences multiply and errors become exposures with little protected space for repair. The combined consequences of aired ulterior perspectives and constant fuck-ups in the public eye collapse into identity. Here lie the grounds for the youth self-loathing epidemic.
In other less pressure-cooker-esque societies, this pattern is nearly impossible. Whereas the self is often centralized on American campuses, it is deprioritized amongst communities that place collective interest over personal importance. But beyond priorities, the entire mindset of self is different when it's not continuous. If the self is born anew in every instant, it cannot be entangled with regret.
This ideal is embodied by anicca and anatta — a pair of intertwined concepts ingrained in old Buddhist theology. Anicca is impermanence, the devastating then grounding reality that nothing exists unchanged across time, including self. Anatta, the doctrine of non-self, declares no fixed identity exists for which one can attach wrongdoings or criticism. Impermanence and the non-self follow Buddhist cliches of relinquishing attachment. While repentance and guilt translate across other faiths, they are also absent from Buddha nature, denying the two dimensionality of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people. There is no inherent payment for error, excusing karmic consequence, so previous happenings settle as storied lessons. Dharma logic provides no foundation for self-hatred.
Now I’m not saying to ignore criticism or external opinions — appealing to public awareness is a key component of developing empathy. But the self is not someone’s evaluation, and at Cornell, that reality is often confused. I’m not destroying the ‘villain-hero’ extreme to erase accountability for making morally unjust decisions, but who we are in our worst or best moments is just history. The self is an independent present form with full authority over the instant. That authority — the ability to work with feedback and stay open to perspective, while acting on character, moral compass and conviction — is the only determinant of true self. It isn’t narcissism, it isn’t minimalist, it’s exercising freedom of thought.
I spent regrettable amounts of time trying to mitigate self-loathing circa age 18, 19 before arriving at its restrictions. It deprives the mind of autonomy, while defying human patterns. It’s utterly unnatural in practice, not solely because it's an outside force but because of the self in development. Our lives’ work constructing identity revolves around attaching those concepts, interests and categories we appreciate to the nature of our being. To experience an inclination towards art, and become an artist. To experience a preference towards order, and become organized.
We are what we value as we pass, but around the bonfire, admitting exes and temporal flaws, we disassemble the meticulous self-empire with a few bad reviews or regrettable memories. The entire construct of self-loathing becomes contradictory — how can you defend hating the collection of what you love?
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Kira Walter '26 is an opinion columnist and former lifestyle editor. Her column Onion Theory addresses unsustainable aspects of modern systems from a Western Buddhist perspective, with an emphasis on neurodivergent narratives and spiritual reckonings. She can be reached at kwalter@cornellsun.com.
