I used to read a lot of "self-help" books and blogs. I never enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed reading philosophy. I don't know what good reading all those books did for me. There was a point of diminishing returns reading them, especially when reading them was fuelled by a sense of not being good enough. The suppressed premise in all self-help books is "You need to do more," which can easily bleed into the following perverse premise: "You need to be more."
I love your descriptive categorization of the self-help industry. Thank you for that. You seem to have missed a historical/anthropological fact about status: Almost all social animals have social hierarchies in their communities, whether apes, wolves, chickens (pecking order), or ants. In our closest relatives, some apes accept their social status (determined by those higher on the ladder of power and resources), and others fight to elevate their status. Status seeking and elevation is a natural human/animal phenomenon, not a made-up game from 70 years ago. We need to know where we fit, and where we belong, in our tribe. If you're pushed out of the tribe, you're dead meat, so we adapt ourselves in order to belong. Part of adaptation is taking on the beliefs of the group you want to belong to, and then attitudes and behaviors. That's how you belong. Our primitive brain knows that belonging = survival and being isolated = death. It is a biological imperative.
I like your identification of agency and power as the new game. That is my goal as a teacher of a methodology for clearing limiting and negative beliefs and traumas from the past. The goal is empowerment of the True Self (pick your own definition) toward sovereignty, a combination of agency and self-power. I would fit squarely in your Hacker category, having found that deleting your old pattern gives you freedom to create your own beliefs and your own life.
I'm also a fan of Brian Johnson's "Arete'" and Heroic app because it's wisdom based and encourages commitment to chosen Virtues. Another Hacker aligned with agency and power.
I appreciate your erudition and bold declarations. Thank you.
Noting the phenomenon in 2000, I wrote an essay about the called “shelf help”, as I watched what was once one shelf become a whole section. Self improvement was officially crowned a growth industry. There was money to be made selling hope. And now...
My personal take on the self help movement is that it was the natural outgrowth of 90s optimism and the belief that the conscious mind was all powerful. And could thus command a new reality into being.
Some decades on, it seems clear that conscious awareness is further downstream than we believed.
Yet the story of personal power created a scene that a handful of early adopters could utilise to merc themselves.
Nice synchronicity - I just released part of my book (here on Substack as a weekly series) where I take another angle on the "self-help" and human potential movements. My post today dealt with that head on.
Self-help or even self-actualization are misnomers - in our Western materialistic culture (what I call a Culture of Separation), with it's spiritual supermarket, they imply a "separate self" that is getting help or is becoming actualized. First, that is not in alignment with the nature of reality (from the Wisdom traditions), where we are all connected - there is no separate self to actualize. Second, there is no implied collective or community context that actualization or awareness is taking place.
Just doing more, albeit "wisdom" practices doesn't change the fundamental challenge of self-centered, separated, narcissistic western spirituality.
To me, each of us has a “shared self,” like a two-way portal, one side facing the Transcendent and the other side our neighbor -- the “other” in a community. Maybe we should call this either "no-self" help or better yet, how about "shared-self" help to emphasizes the community component.
What I would add to the focus on wisdom is a broader cultural change approach, where people in local communities get together and their wisdom practices are part of efforts to awaken families, neighborhoods, and the "micro bioregions" we inhabit.
There is an example of this in the world - it is called Sarvodaya and for 65 years they have built a national network of local communities that actually do this. I learned from them and call it Symbiotic Culture and Symbiotic Networks.
It would be great to connect around our very aligned work.
Peter, looks like you're selling something too at the end of your article, through your 'philosophy' practice (and 'selling something' is arguably the basis for the entire movement you describe).
Elders. I learned from my parents, and so on and so forth back generations. That likely came from a mix of European cultures, military training and the Bible. The evolution of man, culturally, is sacrifice.
Ways through exceptionally difficult situations are made by facing them head on.
As a child I witnessed my father save a friend's life when the junction of the boy's brachial, ulnar and radial artery was puntured. I'd never seen that much blood.
He instintually ran to the boy, ripped off his own shirt with his left arm, while applying pressure to the wound with his right.
He calmed the boy. The boy's brother ran to his parents for help, my mother called an ambulance. My dad had to calm the hysterical mother too. He told her he needed to maintain pressure until the boy clotted.
A neighbor who happened to also be a nurse down the block ran as soon as she heard the ambulance round the corner. She assured the boy's mother what my dad had done was the best thing.
It's something you do, you help, you explain to those who don't know. Moreover, you never forget and you absorb the scene into your own life.
I love your descriptive categorization of the self-help industry. Thank you for that. You seem to have missed a historical/anthropological fact about status: Almost all social animals have social hierarchies in their communities, whether apes, wolves, chickens (pecking order), or ants. In our closest relatives, some apes accept their social status (determined by those higher on the ladder of power and resources), and others fight to elevate their status. Status seeking and elevation is a natural human/animal phenomenon, not a made-up game from 70 years ago. We need to know where we fit, and where we belong, in our tribe. If you're pushed out of the tribe, you're dead meat, so we adapt ourselves in order to belong. Part of adaptation is taking on the beliefs of the group you want to belong to, and then attitudes and behaviors. That's how you belong. Our primitive brain knows that belonging = survival and being isolated = death. It is a biological imperative.
I like your identification of agency and power as the new game. That is my goal as a teacher of a methodology for clearing limiting and negative beliefs and traumas from the past. The goal is empowerment of the True Self (pick your own definition) toward sovereignty, a combination of agency and self-power. I would fit squarely in your Hacker category, having found that deleting your old pattern gives you freedom to create your own beliefs and your own life.
I'm also a fan of Brian Johnson's "Arete'" and Heroic app because it's wisdom based and encourages commitment to chosen Virtues. Another Hacker aligned with agency and power.
I appreciate your erudition and bold declarations. Thank you.
Incredible framing; gosh you are so good at this.
Noting the phenomenon in 2000, I wrote an essay about the called “shelf help”, as I watched what was once one shelf become a whole section. Self improvement was officially crowned a growth industry. There was money to be made selling hope. And now...
#withyou
Thank you for your writings. Right now (post-reading your article) I am wondering what your book sources for becoming less foolish, include?
My personal take on the self help movement is that it was the natural outgrowth of 90s optimism and the belief that the conscious mind was all powerful. And could thus command a new reality into being.
Some decades on, it seems clear that conscious awareness is further downstream than we believed.
Yet the story of personal power created a scene that a handful of early adopters could utilise to merc themselves.
Nice synchronicity - I just released part of my book (here on Substack as a weekly series) where I take another angle on the "self-help" and human potential movements. My post today dealt with that head on.
Self-help or even self-actualization are misnomers - in our Western materialistic culture (what I call a Culture of Separation), with it's spiritual supermarket, they imply a "separate self" that is getting help or is becoming actualized. First, that is not in alignment with the nature of reality (from the Wisdom traditions), where we are all connected - there is no separate self to actualize. Second, there is no implied collective or community context that actualization or awareness is taking place.
Just doing more, albeit "wisdom" practices doesn't change the fundamental challenge of self-centered, separated, narcissistic western spirituality.
To me, each of us has a “shared self,” like a two-way portal, one side facing the Transcendent and the other side our neighbor -- the “other” in a community. Maybe we should call this either "no-self" help or better yet, how about "shared-self" help to emphasizes the community component.
What I would add to the focus on wisdom is a broader cultural change approach, where people in local communities get together and their wisdom practices are part of efforts to awaken families, neighborhoods, and the "micro bioregions" we inhabit.
There is an example of this in the world - it is called Sarvodaya and for 65 years they have built a national network of local communities that actually do this. I learned from them and call it Symbiotic Culture and Symbiotic Networks.
It would be great to connect around our very aligned work.
Peter, looks like you're selling something too at the end of your article, through your 'philosophy' practice (and 'selling something' is arguably the basis for the entire movement you describe).
So, which wave of self-help are you?
Maybe I have not read the post that discusses it, but how do you define wisdom?
Elders. I learned from my parents, and so on and so forth back generations. That likely came from a mix of European cultures, military training and the Bible. The evolution of man, culturally, is sacrifice.
Ways through exceptionally difficult situations are made by facing them head on.
As a child I witnessed my father save a friend's life when the junction of the boy's brachial, ulnar and radial artery was puntured. I'd never seen that much blood.
He instintually ran to the boy, ripped off his own shirt with his left arm, while applying pressure to the wound with his right.
He calmed the boy. The boy's brother ran to his parents for help, my mother called an ambulance. My dad had to calm the hysterical mother too. He told her he needed to maintain pressure until the boy clotted.
A neighbor who happened to also be a nurse down the block ran as soon as she heard the ambulance round the corner. She assured the boy's mother what my dad had done was the best thing.
It's something you do, you help, you explain to those who don't know. Moreover, you never forget and you absorb the scene into your own life.
Help others, or at least try.
If everything is extraordinary, we have yet to try being normal?