Are you feeling down? Do you have this unshakable belief that the world is out to get you, that you're never lucky? Are happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction and money always just out of your reach? Well, you've come to the right place: follow my simple rules, available as written and audible books, to make you and your life better. If you've tried to follow my advice for a month and you still see no improvement, I'll give you your money back!
source: YouTube
Okay. What are you still doing here? No, really, why the hell are you still reading this? Don't you know that it's a scam? How come you didn't recognize the red flags? Whenever someone offers simple solutions to complex problems, your spider senses should go off, alarm bells should ring hard. Chances are that you already know that, especially if you're a regular here. Chances are you kept reading just out of curiosity, not because you really thought I would uncover The Secret to self-fulfillment. You already know that self-help, more often than not, comes down to self-delusion. Still, I ask you to read on, for I may uncover some aspects of this delusional, yet highly profitable and popular field you did not yet know about...
First thing to realize is this: there are no individual solutions to systemic or collective problems! Individual solutions to systemic problems constitute one of capitalism's great lies. Driving an electric car is not a solution; good public transport is. Separating your own garbage id not a solution; using biodegradable packaging materials is.
Every time one of these solutions targeted at the individual is presented, it's a lie. Capitalists don't earn nearly as much money by selling one train, versus selling 100 cars that have to be individually maintained, updated, repaired, filled with gas, charged with electricity and so on. Capitalists lose money by producing responsibly, versus selling individual solutions to systemic problems; such solutions can be sold to an entire population, right? Let's not look at how the 24-hour rat-race economy depresses us, but let's instead reach record-sales for antidepressants. It's a scam, and we're at the receiving end of it. I'll say it again, and I hope you'll never forget it: there are no individual solutions to systemic problems. None.
Just ask yourself: is climate change a responsibility to yourself? Or is it a responsibility to others and the environment? It's the latter, of course. Yet our modern society seems to be defined by a strange paradox: taking on greater responsibility is useless in ensuring individual, collective or environmental well-being. The reason for this paradox is not that responsibility is pointless, but lies in the kind of responsibility we're constantly encouraged to take on, which is one that places the entire burden of systemic problems on us as individuals. We're made to believe that personal responsibility leads to the Promised Land, instead of collective or shared responsibility.
The age of neoliberalism has changed the role of government. The role of government used to be to safeguard the general happiness of the majority of the people. Now it's to create or facilitate the conditions where each citizen can take on more individual responsibility, thereby absolving the government from its responsibility towards its citizens (and aiding capitalists in their eternal quest for more). Work and personal responsibility became the law of the land. "Responsibility" became juxtaposed with "dependency", igniting a firestorm of rhetoric demonizing those who depend on welfare, and glorifying those who work three jobs to make ends meet. Unemployment however, is a systemic problem, one that's unique to capitalism, no less. For capitalism and capitalists to thrive, there must be an army of unemployed in order to keep wages low and profits high.
Yet, in our sociopolitical and socioeconomic reality it's your responsibility for not having a job. Never mind that your neighbor occupies two or three workplaces to make ends meet; that neighbor is just as much a victim of the same systemic problem, so there's no individual blame to assign either way. But in our world we assign blame both ways: you are a loser for not having one of your neighbor's three jobs, and your neighbor is a loser for having to work all those jobs. You both made the wrong choices in life, it's your own fault, both of you. Hey, there are only two kinds of people: winners and losers. And to "make it", you simply refuse to lose...
There's one field where this truth hits harder than anywhere else, and that's in the realm of the ever more popular self-help books, videos, courses, support groups and seminars. Are you feeling down? Do you believe the world is out to get you? Well, follow these simple rules to empower yourself. You can make it! As long as you buy my book, follow my course, buy a very expensive ticket for my seminar... This is such overt nonsense it makes me mad every time I hear it. Self-help, despite sometimes containing good and helpful advice, is flawed at its core, and I'll try to explain why.
What is the goal of self-help? It's to help yourself. To help the self. This is already very complex. You see, "self" seems like such an obvious and simple thing, but it isn't. Not at all. Try to think of something you really like. Got it? Now try to answer why you really like that thing. If you thought of chocolate, your answer may be: "because I like the taste of chocolate." But that's not an answer, not yet. Why do you like the taste of chocolate? "Because it makes me feel good and makes me have pleasant sensations in my mouth." Sure. But why? If you keep this up long enough, on any subject, you'll inevitably arrive at many reasons that are outside yourself. You were born with certain genes, which you got through your parents. You were raised in a certain way, maybe chocolate was something your parents rewarded you with whenever you did something they liked. Your favorite hobby you learned from someone, or read about, or saw on TV. If you question the nature of the self long enough, you'll discover that the self is just a smallan infinitesimal piece in an extremely large puzzle.
The self is just a crossroads in an intricate and infinite web of interconnected moving parts, always moving, always changing. All this is to say that self-help is only helping that infinitesimal piece of the larger picture. That for you to be happy and fulfilled, all of society has to be happy and fulfilled. That for you not to get depressed by the idea that you won't be able to pay your medical bills if you get sick, everyone has to have access to free or affordable healthcare. That for you not to be obliged to put a barbed gate around your house, I have to own a nice house too. Your happiness is intimately linked to, and depends on the happiness of everyone else in society. To believe otherwise is to deny the reality of your self; a self-delusion.
Self-delusion is, according to the dictionary, "the act of allowing yourself to believe something that is not true." The belief that there are individual solutions to systemic problems is widespread. The self-help genre is growing despite all the evidence against its effectiveness. Sure, some people are helped and genuinely better off for following the, sometimes very expensive, advice of so called self-help gurus. But this anecdotal evidence gets swamped by the reality of growing loneliness, depression, addiction and other so called "diseases of despair". The self-delusion has since long become mass-delusion. Just look at the way government officials, like Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and many others, are rewarded for outrageous fact-free rhetoric and behavior...
Anyhow, I hope this rant had something in it for you. Much of it was inspired by the below linked video, which I invite you all to watch, as it delves deeper into the flaws of self-help, as well as its perks.
Self-Help Is Not Enough: Critiquing Thewizardliz
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