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I agree with this. I’ve long suspected that “pressure” as you call it is necessary in the right doses to bring about what we call maturity. In other words, if you took a child and remove all negative feedback from his life (which were often doing in the name of “mental health”) you short circuit the feedback mechanisms that teach kids to handle adversity in healthy ways, and furthermore, you stunt their ability to mature. What you’d end up with is a human with a mature body but a mind that’s much less mature. I would probably estimate that the median 18 year old kid would be about as mature as a 19th century 12 year old. A 24 year old adult often thinks and acts with the maturity of a 16 or 18 year old.
I’m also fairly convinced that social pressure can and does move society in positive directions. And in that regard shame is a perfectly legitimate thing to use to enforce good behavior and punish bad behavior in the wider culture. At the same time acclaiming the people who are doing great things can often inspire other people to try. I want my kids to build the future, so obviously one way to go about that is to praise great scientific minds, great inventions, and try to make kids want to build and invent. Our heroes are celebrities. There are lots of books about Taylor Swift but not many about Richard Feynman or Elon Musk or the like.
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