High Ego, Low Self Esteem

Seems like people with high ego and low self esteem have proliferated in our culture over the past twenty or so years.
This type of person is very oriented toward self. They have a hard time connecting in a constructive or meaningful way and you will have a hard time connecting with them. The drive for self comes from a lack of self esteem. These people feel worthless. To compensate they must, and I mean must, have everything their way, be the center of attention and accumulate a never ending amount of stuff.
The trouble is that getting your way, lots attention and a bunch of stuff continually only serves to make the problem worse. Eventually this behavior leads to more isolation, less connection and less love. The original void is still there. The ego desperately seeks to compensate for the lack of self esteem.
Interestingly, we celebrate this on social media and most notably on reality TV. As a culture we are captivated by narcissists. I am afraid we even elected one to President, though it was inevitable as both candidates presented themselves as different versions of the same thing; both narcissists, prone to lying, one very structured and one unstructured.
I want to posit a concept here that I think is very evident but little understood; Hierarchies produce leadership that is inevitably populated by high ego, low self esteem people.
The reason is they have such a strong need for attention and control that they are generally willing to do anything to prevail. This gives them an edge in a hierarchical system, like government, corporations, churches, educational institutions, etc., where well adjusted people with more of a conscience are the competition for advancement.
And in a culture where results and performance are valued more highly than people there will be more of these types produced. Self worth comes from being valued by significant others regardless of performance. When that is missing, for whatever reason, an ego imbalance will emerge to compensate for the low esteem, leading to performing and controlling in extreme and perverse ways.
Some of you reading this are recognizing that you are being described and some of you are recognizing that you are subject, either through family or work, to the difficulty of dealing with a high ego low self esteem person.
What to do!
For those of you who are high ego, low self esteem and are feeling the pain of it, you can change. It will take honesty, insight and a relationship with someone you decide to trust to get through it. It will take time. But you can do it.
For those of you who are dealing with a spouse, boss, co-workers or others who are high ego, low self esteem there is also a light that is not at the end of a tunnel. There are some easy, effective ways to be around these type of people and not get strafed by the machine gun fire of their disfunction.
You can become differentiated from them and remain in control of the only thing you control, yourself, despite their efforts to rule and reign in your head, emotions and actions.