Think!

No one in this world, as far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. – H. L. Mencken
The worst things in history have happened when people stop thinking for themselves. – Donald Trump

Lately I’ve become very skeptical about the self help industry. Most of the self help books that I’ve seen talk about things that everyone already knows and the few that don’t do that usually take the dangerous path of simply lying to their readers – very dangerous lies.

Reading that you can do everything you want by yourself, in a society based on teamwork, is wrong & dangerous as it discourages consciousness and encourages narcissism. Only a few of us could get food on the table if it weren’t for others, but they teach you that you can earn enough money to buy a 20+ million villa in Maui without help from anyone else. The sick society that this idea creates is too scary to even talk about here.

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Reading that all of us are geniuses – but apparently we’re not aware of it – is so wrong that it is funny! This boy has an incredible brain; see if any of the top self-help millionaire gurus are even close to his ability. If what they teach is correct and if they are at the top of their fields, we must assume that they should be aware of their unlimited potential, so watching them match the boy with the incredible brain wouldn’t be a problem. Not to mention Daniel Tammet, the savant from Salt Lake City who can read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye, and who can recall – in exact detail – the 7,600 books he has read. I’m sure that everyone can do it, we just need to increase our awareness…

Reading that dreams come true if we dream about them long enough… absurd. The place for fairy tales is in the fairy tale books, not in the books & talks that are supposed to help people improve their lives. The reasons why people believe this pseudo-scientific-fluff-talk really works are both simple and complex. One of simple ones: dreaming is easy and pleasant and if it is advertised that it can get you rich… One of the complex ones: it is easy to take a picture out of the original frame, place it in a different one, and then argue that the one you placed it in is the original frame because it seems to fit the picture.

Reading examples of people whose lives have been changed after reading self-help books is silly. Lives are changed, but most of the times they’re not changed for the good. The industry admits that 90% of the people buying these books don’t ever read beyond the first page. Can you imagine the mental laziness of those people? Now, how difficult is it to sell easy dreams to lazy people?… Only 2 working neurons are required for the correct answer. Sure, the industry really helps some, the cherry-picked exemplar, the authors and 1 in 10,000,000 readers. But that is because those people were already smart, driven, and / or lucky enough to get a book published or to appear on Oprah. The typical consumer of such materials isn’t smart and driven, he just takes whatever empty talk comes his way for granted, and if enough numbers of other people follow the empty talk, he simply assumes that it must be correct. In reality, they’re all so wrong that they can’t even dare to start imagining it.

There are a *whole* lot of other issues with this field, but this is what was bothering me at the moment as a result of scanning some disturbingly wrong ideas on a few blogs.

The thing which surprises me the most is the naiveness of the general public, the fact it believes anything and everything that comes from an authority, without ever questioning the truth (and sanity) of it.

Kind intentions can never replace the truth. Sure, there are self-help authors who have real works, based on reality (more or less), that genuinely help, but I could count them all on the fingers of my hand. These real works, which require hard work and sweat, aren’t as attractive as the empty talk that only looks good on paper and pats your back.

The self-help industry has been around for quite a few years now and its business numbers are in the order of billions, I wonder why is it that most people who’ve contributed to those numbers still haven’t found what they were searching for.

The US war on terror is a war inside a nation’s mind. The self-help industry has its headquarters and playgrounds in the same place. Both games will last for as long as people will blindly believe what some authority figures tell them to. To illustrate the stupidity of authority figures, here’s one of the dumbest quotes that I’ve seen lately:

The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn’t really have any effect on me. – Oprah Winfrey (oh really?)

I am aware that this post will make me a little unpleasant for some, but for goodness’ sakes people, START THINKING!!



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  • http://odinkirk.com John

    Whoa, a little edgy there, but valid points all around.

    I, too, don’t like the vapid and empty stuff you find when you start looking at what’s been (and being published) in this arena. Quite often it’s just remixed fluff. I will, however, raise a couple of counter-points:

    As you say, just about the only people who benefit are those who have the initial awareness and/or drive to get started and keep going. For those people, however, they see massively accelerated results.

    Furthermore, while I don’t think I have what’s necessary to match the mental/physiological feats you mention, I do believe that most of us are as out-of-shape mentally as we are physically. Enhancing our minds is not to be frowned upon.

    As always, a very insightful post. If people are actually thinking for themselves, they will know when a promise of becoming a human supercomputer isn’t feasible. More importantly, they will maximize what they do have.

  • http://odinkirk.com John

    Whoa, a little edgy there, but valid points all around.

    I, too, don’t like the vapid and empty stuff you find when you start looking at what’s been (and being published) in this arena. Quite often it’s just remixed fluff. I will, however, raise a couple of counter-points:

    As you say, just about the only people who benefit are those who have the initial awareness and/or drive to get started and keep going. For those people, however, they see massively accelerated results.

    Furthermore, while I don’t think I have what’s necessary to match the mental/physiological feats you mention, I do believe that most of us are as out-of-shape mentally as we are physically. Enhancing our minds is not to be frowned upon.

    As always, a very insightful post. If people are actually thinking for themselves, they will know when a promise of becoming a human supercomputer isn’t feasible. More importantly, they will maximize what they do have.

  • http://armannd.com/ Titus-Armand

    It was even edgier before I edited some ideas out! :)

    Now let’s analyze the counterpoints you present.

    1. The accelerated results of the prepared people can be and at the same time cannot be attributed to the self-help industry, depending on the desire of each individual. We must realize that virtually nothing in this industry is new, all the information contained being a remixed version of old philosophies and ideas. The only merit this industry has consists in reminding us of those old things which we forget about – we don’t usually pay attention to them because they’re old.
    I’m not arguing that prepared people don’t see accelerated results if they read some self-help books, but I do say that prepared people would see 10x that acceleration if they would go directly to the unspoiled source: philosophy and psychology. So yes, self-help books + prepared minds = fast success, but this success is of lesser quality than the success that results from the equation: philosophy + prepared minds. Success achieved by means of self-help is a sort of industrial success – and what a nasty expression that is.
    What’s more, people usually forget even that which is reminded to them by the self-help industry – so the reminding doesn’t really work. The smashing majority of self-help books are only helping their authors and publishers, the very term itself being misunderstood by us. :) It’s not the self-help we think it is, it’s the self-help we’re afraid to think it is. :)

    2. Our minds are clearly in a vegetation state. Otherwise, the mass embracing of false truths couldn’t be explained.
    I agree with you that we should be enhancing our minds, but reading knowledge which has resulted from recycling wisdom doesn’t sound like the best idea to sharpen a mind. What would sharpen a mind more than any self-help book is the lecture of classical philosophy works. But the idea that enhancing a mind takes hard work isn’t something attractive and no industry could be built around it.
    Accepting a dumb industry to do mind-sharpening work is a funny thing. :)

    A general thing to note here is that I’ve been on all the sides of this game: neutral about it, defending it, “teaching” it and now attacking it.

    One interesting article that I’ve stumbled upon today is The 48 Laws of Power. If anyone wants to become a self-help guru: start applying those rules. If anyone wants to know how self-help gurus think and act: read those rules carefully and exploit them.

    As always, a worthy comment from John. Thanks mate!

  • http://armannd.com/ Titus-Armand

    It was even edgier before I edited some ideas out! :)

    Now let’s analyze the counterpoints you present.

    1. The accelerated results of the prepared people can be and at the same time cannot be attributed to the self-help industry, depending on the desire of each individual. We must realize that virtually nothing in this industry is new, all the information contained being a remixed version of old philosophies and ideas. The only merit this industry has consists in reminding us of those old things which we forget about – we don’t usually pay attention to them because they’re old.
    I’m not arguing that prepared people don’t see accelerated results if they read some self-help books, but I do say that prepared people would see 10x that acceleration if they would go directly to the unspoiled source: philosophy and psychology. So yes, self-help books + prepared minds = fast success, but this success is of lesser quality than the success that results from the equation: philosophy + prepared minds. Success achieved by means of self-help is a sort of industrial success – and what a nasty expression that is.
    What’s more, people usually forget even that which is reminded to them by the self-help industry – so the reminding doesn’t really work. The smashing majority of self-help books are only helping their authors and publishers, the very term itself being misunderstood by us. :) It’s not the self-help we think it is, it’s the self-help we’re afraid to think it is. :)

    2. Our minds are clearly in a vegetation state. Otherwise, the mass embracing of false truths couldn’t be explained.
    I agree with you that we should be enhancing our minds, but reading knowledge which has resulted from recycling wisdom doesn’t sound like the best idea to sharpen a mind. What would sharpen a mind more than any self-help book is the lecture of classical philosophy works. But the idea that enhancing a mind takes hard work isn’t something attractive and no industry could be built around it.
    Accepting a dumb industry to do mind-sharpening work is a funny thing. :)

    A general thing to note here is that I’ve been on all the sides of this game: neutral about it, defending it, “teaching” it and now attacking it.

    One interesting article that I’ve stumbled upon today is The 48 Laws of Power. If anyone wants to become a self-help guru: start applying those rules. If anyone wants to know how self-help gurus think and act: read those rules carefully and exploit them.

    As always, a worthy comment from John. Thanks mate!

  • http://www.lifegoalaction.com Tom O’Leary

    The self help industry is so full of useless rubbish because the barriers to entry are so low. Anyone can write a book or a site and instantly become a guru if they are willing to promise something that enough people want. There is very little accountability between the Guru and the followers because most people seem unable to follow through with the program or resource to see if it really works. These are my sweeping generalisations anyway.

    The solution? Perhaps some integrity from the authors would be a start and then maybe if we all opened up our critical thinking we could spot the snake oil before it became dangerous.

    I’m glad to see that other people are growing sick of the hype.

    Thanks

    Tom

  • http://www.lifegoalaction.com Tom O’Leary

    The self help industry is so full of useless rubbish because the barriers to entry are so low. Anyone can write a book or a site and instantly become a guru if they are willing to promise something that enough people want. There is very little accountability between the Guru and the followers because most people seem unable to follow through with the program or resource to see if it really works. These are my sweeping generalisations anyway.

    The solution? Perhaps some integrity from the authors would be a start and then maybe if we all opened up our critical thinking we could spot the snake oil before it became dangerous.

    I’m glad to see that other people are growing sick of the hype.

    Thanks

    Tom

  • http://armannd.com/ Titus-Armand

    The entry barriers are indeed *extremely* low. Inexistent probably. At my last count, there were at least 630 blogs on the topic. And even though it may not seem like the hugest number in the universe, considering that 90% (567) of those blogs talk about and encourage the same exact nonsense is an alarming thing.

    Those 567 blogs, taken together, have somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 *new* visitors monthly, most of which are very happy to read and agree to the same stories again and again and again.

    The current “wisdom” of the self-help industry is nothing but old philosophy remixed in a badly way. The sad thing however, is that most of the new Gurus in the field are so shameless that they remix the remixed version of the millionaire Gurus and people fall for it a second time. It’s funny that we blame governments and corporations and all sorts of other institutions but we never blame this rotten industry – at least not in large enough numbers.

    Thanks for being real, Tom!

  • http://armannd.com/ Titus-Armand

    The entry barriers are indeed *extremely* low. Inexistent probably. At my last count, there were at least 630 blogs on the topic. And even though it may not seem like the hugest number in the universe, considering that 90% (567) of those blogs talk about and encourage the same exact nonsense is an alarming thing.

    Those 567 blogs, taken together, have somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 *new* visitors monthly, most of which are very happy to read and agree to the same stories again and again and again.

    The current “wisdom” of the self-help industry is nothing but old philosophy remixed in a badly way. The sad thing however, is that most of the new Gurus in the field are so shameless that they remix the remixed version of the millionaire Gurus and people fall for it a second time. It’s funny that we blame governments and corporations and all sorts of other institutions but we never blame this rotten industry – at least not in large enough numbers.

    Thanks for being real, Tom!

  • J. Eric Smith

    Bravo on a thoughtful article . . . I’m similarly inclined to
    view the self help/success industry as an opportunistic vehicle for
    preying on our society’s weaker members, and have written about this
    topic here: http://jericsmith.com/2011/07/25/on-success-and-how-it-is-defined/ . . .
    Well done!