[HN Gopher] America's Obsession with Self-Help
___________________________________________________________________
America's Obsession with Self-Help
Author : pepys
Score : 87 points
Date : 2021-07-05 20:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newrepublic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newrepublic.com)
| war1025 wrote:
| I gravitate towards self help because expert help has almost
| always resulted in very large expenses and my actual problem not
| being solved.
|
| Every experience I've had with a doctor that was less severe than
| "I am actively dying" has just been "Take pain killers for a
| couple weeks and come back if it isn't fixed by then, also here
| is a $200 bill."
|
| The one time I hired someone to fix something on my house (to fix
| some water damage), I had a literal stream of water coming in to
| my house above the repair the next time it rained.
|
| In most cases, it seems you need to know the answer to the
| problem yourself before you can trust someone else to diagnose
| and fix the problem correctly.
| sixothree wrote:
| My experience with doctors is not too different from yours. I
| had been experiencing sinus pain debilitating enough to affect
| work. I was referred to a doctor who was an hour late, whose
| only actual advice was use saline solution, and then charged me
| $150 (deductible not yet met).
|
| I've been using "concierge" medicine ever since.
| rajin444 wrote:
| Most of us work in a profession where we hire teams of people
| to maintain systems with a fraction of the complexity of the
| human body (not to mention our understanding of how computers
| work is orders of magnitude higher than our understanding of
| the body). Contrast that with a doctor seeing a patient for the
| first time.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Ahhh the good ol "Medicine is Art and Science".
|
| How many people have died because we keep letting physicians
| tell us this?
|
| I'm pro Evidence Based Medicine, but physicians can't buy
| mansions if the medicine can be discussed by scientists.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Alright, now explain why I should pay them $200 (or more) for
| a half-hour consultation where they parrot something google
| could have told me and fill out a form in Epic?
|
| I'm with parent, unless you have a lot of time and money to
| spend, or an obvious problem like a broken leg, doctors
| aren't worth very much.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > they parrot something google could have told me
|
| anecdote time... went to the doctor once about an issue.
| She started typing into the computer. I caught a glimpse
| and she was literally scrolling through a Google image
| search, looking for a match.
|
| That's the catch-22 with professional help. You need to
| hire a lawyer to help keep you out of trouble or solve your
| business problems. But since you're not a lawyer yourself,
| you can't judge the quality of the work. You're at the
| mercy of Yelp-like reputation systems or, possibly worse,
| recommendations from friends and people you know.
| SllX wrote:
| Heh. That Google Image search was probably a substitute
| for some chart already in the office, possibly gathering
| dust.
| deckard1 wrote:
| hopefully that. Because I shudder to think that some
| doctor is going to take Google's results at face value.
| It's the Gell-Mann Amnesia. Every once in awhile I see
| one of those Google instant answer boxes on a search that
| I know is total BS. But then I go and pretend like the
| next dozen searches I do are perfectly reasonable
| results.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I always enjoy the ones that read something like:
| What is a normal weight for a house cat? 150lbs
| <expand> "Is it normal for my house cat to weigh
| 150lbs? No, says every vet ever."
|
| I've found that on more than one occasion so I just
| started ignoring it. I really need to switch the default
| search engine on the rest of my devices to DDG. Google is
| not very useful anymore.
| SllX wrote:
| I think it's a fair bet.
|
| Cards on the table, I've had shingles twice. If you want
| to get technical about it, I will always have the virus
| that causes it, but it will not always be able to break
| through.
|
| First outbreak, didn't know what it was, it was in a part
| of my neck and shoulder I couldn't see and based off feel
| and texture, I figured "eh, Hives", and treated it as
| such. So the shingles progressed, and you definitely
| don't want that, until I felt physically compelled to go
| see a doctor ASAP.
|
| One look, with no reference material, no image searches,
| no charts, the Doctor instantly knew what it was and
| didn't bullshit me about my age. Wrote me an antiviral
| prescription and I was out the door.
|
| Second time, shingles being one of the circles of hell, I
| figure it out before it progresses, and this time I go to
| a an urgent care clinic because I don't need a diagnoses,
| I need a prescription vending machine. Young guy walks
| in, quite a bit less experienced, I all but tell him
| exactly what I'm there for, and he's a bit unsure because
| of my age, but he walks into another room, looks at a
| chart, and vends me my prescription. If not for a chart
| on the wall and my prior and convincing experience, he
| would have wanted a blood test.
|
| Now I'm sure the latter is a fine doctor with a few more
| years under his belt now, and can reference this event in
| his own mind the next time he's feeling skeptical, but
| sometimes being a doctor is just having the experience to
| know what's up, and knowing that maybe it's been too long
| since med school and maybe you should cross reference it
| from somewhere, or ask a colleague. And some doctors
| don't need to look at anything at all, and can pronounce
| a diagnoses on the spot.
|
| I looked at the chart, it just showed the different
| patterns of different skin conditions, and these weren't
| photos but illustrations. Couldn't tell you if that's
| better or worse than Google Images, but I wished I didn't
| have to go to a Doctor in the first place to ask
| permission to buy the same antivirals I used before.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Imagine if someone said I pay that guy 100k a year and I
| peeked at his computer and all he was doing was looking
| up the problem on Google and typing in a text editor!
|
| It's not the typing or the Google search anyone is paying
| for they are paying for the usage of the highly trained
| brain that can evaluate what they are reading in the
| context of the hard earned skills and information
| possesses by the reader.
|
| On the topic of the doctors I wonder how it would work
| out if we combined anonymous analysis of doctors work by
| other doctors with patients.
| lostdog wrote:
| I'm more worried when the doctor is too lazy to even do a
| Google search. Having an expert do a web search is a
| decent way to filter out bad results and find a
| reasonable answer quickly.
| kube-system wrote:
| The same reason that people pay me $200 to parrot some
| javascript that google could have told them.
|
| The availability of reference material doesn't give you
| expertise, context, trained judgement, etc. The value that
| an expert provides is not in their ability to memorize
| facts and regurgitate them.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm not anti-doctor or anything, and see one as often as
| I can. However, I do sympathize with his point -
| especially when it comes to pain. Having had lots of pain
| problems at different points in my life, the response has
| _always_ been "more painkillers". Only a few doctors,
| with some push back, recommended physical therapy (which
| didn't always work, but was more effective than
| painkillers).
| kube-system wrote:
| I think that's just a result of most people having the
| tendency to approach problems the way that most customers
| want or expect them to. The same stuff happens in
| software development and plenty of other jobs too.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Regular checkups can catch developing problems while its
| still possible to do something constructive about them.
|
| If you aren't receiving an annual check up AND don't have a
| problem more complicated than you can google indeed you
| shouldn't waste your money and both of your time. What is
| within the individuals ability to understand is going to
| vary widely.
|
| Your health insurance wont pay for expensive tests or
| treatments based on your say so because if they did people
| less intelligent and more paranoid than yourselves would
| order the moon based on what they found on webmd.
| swiley wrote:
| Trusting other people to administrate your home computer is
| totally ok though because they're actually experts.
| truffdog wrote:
| That is the Kaseya business model.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| Conversely, sometimes you need that outside expert perspective
| to help open your eyes to the real problems.
| war1025 wrote:
| And that's the real rub of it.
|
| I don't know what I don't know, but I also don't know where
| to get that knowledge, so a reasonable first step is to
| investigate the people pushing "self-help" methods.
|
| From there you can often learn the right keywords to get a
| foot in the door with someone knowledgeable and have them
| actually tell you something useful rather than just taking
| your money and sending you on your way.
| guilhas wrote:
| Most important take is people want help
|
| Maybe don't know how to get it, don't have money, feel ashamed...
|
| Society needs help and reform
| rednerrus wrote:
| Many Americans don't have communities to fall back on. I was
| raised by a single mother 6000 miles from her family. We didn't
| have family or community to rely on. I was alone a lot as a
| child. As such I didn't get all of the socialization that many
| people got. I like to think of it like growing up without hearing
| language. I didn't get it as a part of my upbringing. I had to
| seek it out and learn it, in the same way you would a language.
|
| In the beginning I didn't have the tools to seek it out with
| other human beings. I didn't speak the basic "language". I feel
| incredibly fortunate that there were books out there that I had
| access to that helped with where to start. Simple things like how
| to ask for help. Eventually (20 something years later) I have
| enough "language" in my vocabulary, thanks in great part to
| amazing books written by incredible writers who have devoted
| their lives to helping other people, to navigate a complex social
| life. I am incredibly grateful to these authors.
|
| This is an issue plaguing Americans. There are threads everyday
| on Reddit and the like with people asking questions like "How do
| I make friends?" and "How do I get involved in a community?".
| We're an incredibly lonely society.
| ddingus wrote:
| Actually getting help is often associated with high costs, risks
| and stigmas of various kinds.
|
| Obsession?
|
| Hardly.
| rednerrus wrote:
| This is why self-help books are so important. You can figure
| out the issue, make a plan, and get started in the comfort and
| safety of your home for the price of a library card.
| ddingus wrote:
| I consider that dark humor.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| That's if you can even find help. There are many times it is
| lacking completely.
| ddingus wrote:
| Agreed.
| jbrun wrote:
| As a Canadian and a French citizen, America definitely has this
| puritan streak of trying to be the best person you can be - or
| the purest you can be. Work harder, drink less, exercise more,
| etc.
|
| My French grandparents lived until they were 100, were perfectly
| content, had 8 kids, ate great food during long meals and drank
| lots of wine. I don't think they jogged a day in their lives.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| You mentioned hedonism and an accomplishment... Having 8 kids.
|
| While I love my kids, I don't consider it an achievement.
|
| And hedonism seems great until you climb the hedonic treadmill.
| Your claim of the "content" life leaves lots to disect.
| iseethroughbs wrote:
| Americans jog, and then have a meal that is 20 different ways
| to process the same corn into various food-like substances.
| [deleted]
| swiley wrote:
| Coincidentally I think the best self help book I've read was
| written by a Canadian. Maybe it's because he had the rest of
| the culture to contrast his ideas against.
| dqpb wrote:
| American self-help isn't about the simple practical things like
| jogging.
|
| It's more about motivational-life-coach-metaphysical-wealth-
| manifestation-secrets.
| bitwize wrote:
| In other words, multi level marketing indoctrination memes.
| It's why I avoid self-help, especially the slick charismatic
| gurus like Tony Robbins, and the "positive thinking" movement
| altogether.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I don't think they jogged a day in their lives.
|
| i don't think they were sitting all day eating highly processed
| food either.
| markbeare wrote:
| Exactly
| lumost wrote:
| It is curious why we haven't figured out the difference
| between a "healthy" french/mediterranean/home cooked meal and
| a tv dinner yet.
|
| Obviously something gets lost in the macro nutrients/vitamin
| content - but I don't think I've seen a formal study of why
| they are different.
| rusk wrote:
| I don't think the accepted wisdom is that pre packaged
| meals are bad vs what you cook yourself it's the quality
| that matters. It processed foods vs non processed foods.
| You can get posh TV dinners that are good for you but you
| pay for them. The cheaper stuff manufactured at scale is
| almost certainly going to be using cheaper/substituted
| ingredients because that's just how business works. You're
| going to be missing the macros you mentioned, as well as
| fibre and you'll be taking on a lot of dodgy fats and
| sugars and typically many other additives used to flavour
| and preserve the food. What you get with home cooked
| dinners is control over your ingredients. Of course you
| could just eat ketchup and chips and you're not going to be
| seeing a benefit but it's hard to go wrong with rice, fish
| and a few vegetables for example.
|
| There's various other confounding factors such as how and
| when you eat, and ultimately your relationship with food.
|
| There is plenty of research linking processed food with
| health risks.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I think you are correct here in terms of the base
| argument but wrong for the origin.
|
| You don't make food cheaper by reducing the quality of
| ingrediants since decent ingredients are still really
| cheap. You make food cheaper by making it more preserved.
|
| A lot of food cost is in waste and spoilage. Cheap foods
| are typically things that handle well and don't perish
| easily.
|
| You accomplish this by adding more fat, more salt, and
| heavily processing food. You strip all the bacteria and
| cultures from it and you can get a tv dinner to last a
| decade if it's packaged well.
|
| On the other hand, gourmet food is all prone to spoilage.
| Squeaky cheese curds, fresh pasta, homemade tortillas,
| etc.
| handrous wrote:
| Portions are the #1 culprit as far as food goes, I'd say.
| There may be a bunch of other factors, but I'd expect that
| they're secondary to that.
|
| I'm also very curious how much better US health would be if
| we could wave a magic wand and replace all sugary drinks
| with water. 64oz of sugar-water with a meal is a _lot_ ,
| but not uncommon thanks to free refills and helpful waiters
| always topping everyone off. Lots of people have way more
| than that on an average day, too. I'm sure it wouldn't fix
| (anywhere near) everything, but I bet that single factor is
| an awful lot of the cause of dietary-related illness rate
| differences between the US and other countries. The others
| have soda too, but it doesn't flow as freely and cheaply as
| here[0], and enormous cups/bottles of the stuff multiple
| times a day isn't common most places.
|
| [0] With some exceptions--I understand Mexico, for example,
| consumes lots of sugary soda.
| tyjaksn wrote:
| I would add that the ease with which we can access food
| is also a main culprit.
| handrous wrote:
| Right--I suspect one factor is that we have/had a weaker
| and looser food-culture than many countries, which fact
| has been exploited by companies to wedge food (so, food
| sales) into more situations and parts of our day, badly
| eroding whatever weak norms there had been.
|
| Way, way more stores having very late or even 24/7 hours
| than before has probably further disrupted any norms and
| culture we had about when & where to eat--not just for
| the shoppers who have those wares available more hours of
| the day, but I'm thinking especially of the workers--
| believe it or not, young'uns, but as recently as the
| early 2000s almost everything in the US but certain
| districts of major cities were shut down and _dead_ by a
| reasonable hour.
|
| Another, possibly minor factor: I have a _suspicion_ we
| have more waking hours per day, on average, than
| Americans did 50 years ago. You can 't eat (snack) when
| you're sleeping, even if food's available.
| lumost wrote:
| If portions are the problem then processed food should be
| fine, why is it that processed food always comes in
| larger portions?
|
| Why do consumers often think that the smaller portion is
| more filling when eating a properly proportioned french
| meal than the equivalent calories from McDonalds?
| handrous wrote:
| Guesses:
|
| Some of it's food culture. Giant portions are normal so
| you don't think twice about piling your plate high. Norms
| (and, yes, judgement/shaming) about consumption affect
| patterns of same. Snacking, even heavy snacking, between
| meals, is common. This may be suppressed elsewhere by
| stronger "you eat at meal times--if not exclusively, then
| nearly so" norms, and snack-availability that's about
| what you'd expect, given those norms.
|
| Some people think our commonly-accessible "good" food
| (fruits, veggies, not from specialty stores, just the
| main produce section of normal grocery stores) are a lot
| worse than what's normal in some other, healthier
| countries. I don't have enough experience to claim
| anything definitive on this, but what experience I do
| have does support it. If "good" food doesn't taste as
| good as elsewhere, or if getting something as good as
| others' normal produce requires special shopping and much
| higher prices, maybe one tends to reach for umami-bomb
| fat+starch garbage, which is both kinda-addictive and not
| very filling.
|
| A lot of our standard cooking is tied up heavily with
| giant portions. We even seem to do this with imported
| cuisines, for whatever reason. Not-especially-good food
| in giant portions. Heaping plates of mediocre pasta+sauce
| as our image of Italian food, Mexican food with
| bottomless chips & salsa (and huge, cheese-slathered
| plates for the entrees), that kind of thing. I guess
| that's more of the food-culture thing.
|
| I doubt any of these are all of the reason, and maybe
| none of them are correct at all.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Because it is. It's relatively easy to consume 2000
| calories in one sitting in McD, while few people have the
| stomach to stomach the same amount of calories in salad,
| without sugary drinks.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| There is a theory (and I want to stress that it's theory,
| not fact) that many processed foods may not trigger our
| indicators of satiety. Some foods trigger satiety better
| than others, and we have pretty good evidence that a lot
| of sugars don't cause satiety.
|
| On the other hand, foods like rice, potatoes, etc do.
|
| [1] https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/satiety-new-diet-
| weapon (soft ref, appropriate grain of salt)
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27125637/
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I am not operating off any data here, and as far as I can
| tell neither are you so that seems fair, but it is quite
| possible that our conception of what is "filling" or
| "satisfying" is intrinsically tied to the cost of the
| meal. Processed food and fast food are cheaper and we
| know it, so if we get less of it, it is possible that
| that fact alone makes it less satisfying.
| handrous wrote:
| > Processed food and fast food are cheaper and we know
| it, so if we get less of it, it is possible that that
| fact alone makes it less satisfying.
|
| Food pricing, especially at chain restaurants and fast-
| food joints, tends to support this. It's not uncommon to
| pay 20% more for double the food, either because larger
| sizes aren't much more expensive than smaller ones, or
| thanks to "combo" meals. Restaurants seem to be
| optimizing for total sales, not margin on individual
| items, based on how they price--in many cases their
| entire menu seems to exist only to make the "combo meal"
| look like a good deal, but of course it may be more food
| than you _really_ wanted.
|
| To say nothing of the phenomenon of all-you-can-eat
| buffets...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Traditional French food (and furthermore, cuisine from
| Quebec and Louisiana) is far from healthy.
| munk-a wrote:
| The traditional french cuisine of Quebec was eaten by
| folks that regularly canoed hundreds of miles up and down
| rivers so they had an immense amount of physical activity
| to counter that out - an amount quite beyond what you'll
| get sitting at a desk job these days.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Sure. But it was also eaten by folks that stayed home all
| day. By store clerks and children and school teachers and
| grandparents and other normal, every day folks. Other
| folks on different traditional diets worked hard too.
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| > "healthy" french/mediterranean/home cooked meal and a tv
| dinner
|
| Opportunity knocking, are you listening?
| munk-a wrote:
| TV Dinners are absolutely loaded with salt, sugar and hard
| fats so they taste good while being frozen. If I cook a
| delicious meal and then chuck it into the freezer for three
| months it will taste like crap because freezing is not an
| effective method to preserve taste and texture, to make it
| palatable after an extended period of time I need to add
| flavour enhancers like sugar (it's addictive and works on
| anything), sodium (it enhances flavours directly and salt
| is a common craving) and hard fats (ones that won't break
| down as quickly when frozen.
|
| I think America really has figured out the difference and
| that information is pretty easily accessible - but if
| you're working twelve hours then you'll grab the five
| dollar TV dinner and just ignore the downsides.
| newfriend wrote:
| That's great for them. Is there something wrong with trying to
| be the best person you can be? Is a life of leisure and
| hedonism something to be celebrated, while a life of striving
| to achieve is looked down upon?
|
| I think this is part of the reason the US has been so
| successful and innovative. Hard work and improvement are seen
| as virtues here. A life of sloth and mediocrity, avoiding work
| and relying on the government to provide for you was not seen
| as something good until recently. I hope the essence of America
| isn't lost forever: industry, innovation, and individualism.
| jbrun wrote:
| America is built mostly on immigrant work ethic, vast amount
| of arable land, no bordering enemies and the collapse of the
| european powers. Not sure america is that special, just lucky
| - right place, right time.
|
| https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-under-
| pressu...
| newfriend wrote:
| Forgive me if I don't care about an opinion piece by
| someone who hates America.
|
| > America is built mostly on immigrant work ethic
|
| Isn't it interesting how many believe the US was solely
| built by immigrants, slaves, and natives. I wonder what
| American citizens did during this time?
|
| > the collapse of the european powers
|
| The US was already inventing and building in the 1800s, no
| collapse needed.
|
| > Not sure america is that special, just lucky - right
| place, right time.
|
| It's easy to ascribe luck to anything successful. You could
| say Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc were
| nothing special, just lucky - right place, right time, but
| I don't think that's true.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > America definitely has this puritan streak of trying to be
| the best person you can be - or the purest you can be. Work
| harder, drink less, exercise more, etc.
|
| That might describe some parts of America, but it's definitely
| not universal. The German immigrants that formed the generation
| before me were drinking more and exercising less. They were
| also farmers, so they didn't need to exercise.
|
| I would argue that it's the heavy influence of immigrants from
| all over the world that caused the self-help obsession. Those
| who came here weren't a random sample from their home
| countries. Immigration was itself a form of self-help.
| jbrun wrote:
| Yeah, probably true. My background is Jewish European and
| there is an obvious streak of self-improvement in that
| culture (or at least, there used to be....)
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It's been known for a long time that immigrants in the US
| perform better across most every metric than the native
| population.
|
| Sometimes this is seen by policy-makers as indicative of a
| problem with the native population. Sometimes this is cast as
| immigrants taking over.
|
| The reality is rather straightforward, imo. The type of
| person willing and able to uproot themselves from their
| parent culture and set their sails for new opportunity is a
| _huge_ selection event, in and of itself. It 's no wonder
| that the most driven percentage of humanity turns out to be
| the most successful.
|
| (This is also why I think the US would only benefit from much
| less restrictive immigration policy, but that is a discussion
| for another thread.)
| perardi wrote:
| _As a Canadian and a French citizen_
|
| If I may hazard a guess: Quebecois?
|
| I lived in Toronto for a few years, with the occasional trip to
| Montreal. I definitely noticed a cultural difference between
| the provinces--Quebec was rather less stressed out, whereas
| Ontario is just as tight-assed Protestant as the Midwest.
| _(Maybe more so. Can't buy wine at a grocery store? Raw uncut
| Calvinism.)_
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| You can buy most types of alcohol at grocery stores now. You
| have always been able to buy wine at some grocery stores like
| Zehrs or Loblaws, though it was in a separate store-within-a-
| store. LCBO and The Beer Store no longer have a duopoly on
| alcohol sales, but I think it was just fine when they did.
| randomdata wrote:
| Brewers Retail was a reasonable solution coming out of
| prohibition when it was jointly owned by all of Ontario's
| brewers, balancing their needs with the needs of consumers
| along with the needs of those still worried about the end
| of prohibition. However, it should have only been
| considered a short-term solution.
|
| By the time mergers and acquisitions left it to be owned
| completely by foreign interests, all while Ontario's
| emerging craft beer scene were prohibited from inclusion,
| there was absolutely no excuse for it anymore. How the 2015
| Master Framework Agreement got signed continues to boggle
| the mind.
|
| Rural Ontario has allowed the sale of alcohol (all kinds)
| in grocery and corner stores since the 1960s. It is amazing
| how slow the rest of the province is to catch up. It took
| until the _year 2000_ for Toronto to fully let go of being
| dry.
| sparrc wrote:
| I guess, but that's just your personal anecdote largely based
| on your grandparents genetics and the fact that they probably
| weren't exceedingly overweight.
|
| My (100% American) grandpa also lived to 100...he also never
| exercised and even smoked for 20 years or so. He ate whatever
| he wanted but didn't over-eat candy and snacks, which I think
| is the main issue lots of people have.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Genetics are a powerful thing. Trying to be actively healthy is
| playing a statistical game, not all of us have the magical
| genetic sequences to somehow live to 100 in perfect health
| while drinking copious amounts of wine.
|
| Furthermore some of us exercise not just for the sake of it, we
| do it to enable us to become better at activities that we
| enjoy. I enjoy being able to track my measurable improvement at
| sports such as tennis and badminton as a result of my going to
| the gym and work on high intensity interval training,
| anaerobics, etc.
| neogodless wrote:
| While I doubt my experience is even remotely unique, a variety of
| experiences (and perhaps genetics) from my childhood, teens, etc.
| left me in my 20s as an outgoing but (very) insecure person. I
| was constantly seeking but failing at relationships. I had
| dropped out of college, and was flighty and inconsistent with my
| career.
|
| Maybe I'd come out of all that just by time passing / aging...
| but I decided to read about the things I was failing to
| accomplish. Having a self-identity and the integrity to maintain
| my identity when faced with challenges. Understanding boundaries
| in relationships. Learning how to accomplish tasks at work and
| succeed in projects.
|
| I suspect a combination of the bad experiences, surviving them,
| learning from mistakes _and_ the things I learned from books all
| contributed to an overall more capable person. I gained
| confidence, stability in relationships, greater diligence and
| sense of responsibility at work. Not everything is sunshine and
| roses. There 's still a long list of projects I dreamed of or
| started, but failed or abandoned. But the list of people that
| seem to trust me and seek me out for "adult" advice has grown.
|
| In many ways, I am not the picture of American success, but I am
| happy with what I've done with myself, with the potential I've
| tapped, the relationships I've built, and so on. I think of
| myself as leaning towards the side of being discontent with
| unpleasant circumstances that I'm capable of changing. There's
| plenty that's bigger that I might not be happy about, but by
| having a clear picture of your locus of control, the gist of the
| Serenity Prayer applies. And improving your self is top of the
| list of things you can change.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| This is a common type of HN thread where the linked article is
| pretty bad, but the headline topic is interesting enough that
| people want to comment on it from their own experience. In this
| case, every single comment (100% as of this posting) is a riff on
| the headline topic and says nothing at all about the content of
| the article.
|
| Well, I will say one thing about the article. It summarily
| dismisses Stephen Covey's Seven Habits as nothing special,
| without engaging the content of the book in the slightest, and
| criticizes Covey for not talking about racism and sexism. If you
| want this article and its writer in a nutshell, there you go.
|
| There are a ton of articles like this out there, even on this
| exact topic of ridiculing self-help from the compulsive,
| perfunctory woke standpoint that dominates our elite media
| culture. This one was very middle-of-the-fairway. The best I can
| say about it is that it contained a tiny bit of history, and we
| were spared the usual exhortations to adopt more collectivist
| politics. (In their prescriptions for America, the writers always
| talk exclusively about politics, never even thinking about what
| people could be doing differently in their own families,
| friendships, neighborhoods and communities. Slaves to
| individualism in their own way, they would never imagine that
| anything but the State can save us.)
|
| Frankly, these dull, robotically woke articles from legacy media
| are a much more nauseating aspect of this cultural moment than
| bad self-help books. And Seven Habits is more worth your time
| than anything this author will ever say.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Agreed. These articles are becoming a formulaic bad trope.
|
| 1. Grab some classic American media.
|
| 2. Look at it through a perverted lens it wasn't meant to
| address.
|
| 3. Decry this lack of coverage as some evil ploy to suppress an
| outgroup.
|
| Seven habits is a great book that anyone would be better for
| having read.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| America, in contrast with most other countries, has very little
| cultural infrastructure to guide people. Freedom and
| individualism (however shallow) is emphasized.
|
| To quote an american catholic saying something very uncatholic,
| but very american: "At the heart of liberty is the right to
| define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the
| universe and the mystery of human life."
|
| We should not be surprised that into this psychic vacuum rushes
| various alternatives such as self-help, sports-worship and so
| forth.
| sakopov wrote:
| > America, in contrast with most other countries, has very
| little cultural infrastructure to guide people. Freedom and
| individualism (however shallow) is emphasized.
|
| Very true. I went to a public school in Eastern Europe and
| everyone had to go through the same curriculum no matter what
| you wanted to focus on after graduation. The basic principle
| here is to expose students to all subjects and let them decide
| what they want to focus on in places of higher education.
|
| However, in American schools it seemed that you could pretty
| much weave your way through public schools only taking courses
| you think you need after you cover some of the basic subjects.
| There are several problems with this approach. First of all,
| you're never exposed to subjects that you didn't originally
| have interest in, but could potentially have appreciation for
| had you invested some time learning about them. Secondly, your
| scope of knowledge ends up being pretty narrowly limited to
| things that you're interested in while having little to no idea
| about everything else. Lastly, I think colleges and
| universities end up picking up the slack here when they start
| teaching coursework that should've otherwise been part of
| public school curriculum.
|
| All-in-all, it is my belief that having at least surface-level
| understanding in various subjects does make a difference as you
| get older because it gives you just enough knowledge to be able
| to look at life in a different light and, at the very least,
| have a general idea how to start making adjustments. Not to say
| that you won't need help. In fact, you still might but you're
| in a much better place than where you would be blindly
| following someone's advice in a gimmicky self-help book.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't think you have an accurate account of American
| education. Often times there is some level of freedom in high
| school, but undoubtedly one is forced to take classes from
| most disciplines. I think what changes is often the
| advancement one gets to (some might take Calculus, others
| stop at pre-Calculus or even trigonometry). But I don't think
| there are many high schools where one stops taking math,
| science, humanities, etc at all possibly with the exception
| of the last year. Similarly, most colleges have broad
| requirements beyond your major. I had to take many classes in
| humanities, physical, math, sociology, and other areas, for
| example, even though I was a cognitive science major. My
| understanding is that this is actually more broad than
| typical universities in Europe where one only focuses on
| their area (or certainly at least medical school is that way
| in many European countries).
| dfinninger wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience in American schools, nor
| anyone that I've discussed the topic with.
|
| In my final year of High School education I had some freedom,
| but it was along the lines of, "You have access to advanced
| Biology, Physics, and English. Choose two." (It was more
| complicated than this, simplified for example's sake)
|
| For the rest of high school I had one elective course and the
| rest was more rigid. I was able to choose which foreign
| language I would like to study and I could choose a
| particular artistic pursuit. Everything else was thoroughly
| constructed and regimented. Arts, Humanities, Sciences,
| Mathematics, Language were required each year.
|
| Even when I went to college, the first two semesters required
| the same mix of curriculum before I was able to specialize.
| FredPret wrote:
| Sports-worship is a strong feature of many religious and
| traditional nations as well. Think of European football fans,
| among many other examples.
| timoth3y wrote:
| > Freedom and individualism (however shallow) is emphasized.
|
| It's really not though.
|
| By Western standards, America is a very conformist country. You
| can see this in how schoolchildren are required to pledge
| allegiance to the flag, to the slow acceptance of gay rights,
| to controversy over saying over "Happy Holidays."
|
| I deeply wish America was a country that supported
| individualism in the sense of supporting and even celebrating
| the right to live your life as you see fit.
|
| All too often, however, it seems that this love of
| "individualism" only surfaces when someone needs help or asks
| for cooperation.
|
| That's not individualism. This simply selfishness.
| nkssy wrote:
| Well, if your view is around individualism and shaping yourself
| then maybe the whole self-help industry isn't so accidental.
| Maybe its a progression of a strong need for materials to
| support that view. Other countries also have it as well but its
| nowhere near the seemingly overwhelming desire as in the US.
|
| Or perhaps theres a travelling sideshow element to self-help
| that appeals to the PT Barnum types. But I'm not so cynical.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > America, in contrast with most other countries, has very
| little cultural infrastructure to guide people. Freedom and
| individualism (however shallow) is emphasized.
|
| This is very accurate. Having lived in other countries, I can
| say the "other" side suffers from a different extreme: Sticking
| to flawed social constructs that impede their progress and/or
| happiness, no matter how much research and/or self help you
| throw at them.
| bryananderson wrote:
| As a counterpoint, we in America certainly do not seem to be
| immune to sticking with flawed social constructs that impede
| our progress/happiness.
|
| For that matter, less-individualistic societies such as
| European countries don't seem immune to some of the symptoms
| the parent comment mentioned, such as sports-worship.
|
| There is something to the notion that American individualism
| comes with its unique pathologies, but there's clearly a lot
| more to the story of why things like self-help have exploded.
|
| For one thing, as traditional sources of meaning have
| withered under the harsh lights of science and modernity, all
| wealthy societies have seemed to struggle with a crisis of
| meaning.
|
| This leaves a vacuum that gets filled with self-help (the
| secret to a meaningful life is here in this book), sports-
| worship, celebrity-worship, video-game escapism, neo-
| nationalism, whatever. This can be seen all over the
| developed world. However, America's extreme individualism may
| exacerbate this crisis of meaning, since community is often
| itself a source of meaning.
|
| We cannot go back to pre-modernity, nor should we try.
|
| What can we do to build societies, here and now, that help
| people feel a sense of meaning in their lives without the
| ghastly drawbacks of past sources of meaning such as religion
| and ethnic nationalism?
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Very insightful post. One thing I've often thought about
| America is we have less traditional sources of wisdom and
| value since we basically threw out all tradition.
|
| I think you left out the biggest thing people do to fill
| the void of existential dread: spend money! America is far
| more obsessed with that habit than any of the ones listed
| in my experience.
| et-al wrote:
| I've long joked that the most beautiful word in the
| English language is not "cellar door", but "sale".
| fullshark wrote:
| What is cultural infrastructure in other countries? Is it just
| religion / worship?
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Thousands of years of history, local legends unaffected by
| foreign religions, carefully maintained genealogy trees,
| archives of state decisions from eons ago etc...
|
| To be fair with the US, they have formed a pretty neat legend
| around the founding fathers and the constitution. I would
| consider that cultural infrastructure.
| aerosmile wrote:
| It would be the concept of "tradition," which means very
| different things in the US and Europe.
|
| First and foremost, there's the pure frequency in which that
| term is used. Good luck spending a day in Europe and not
| being exposed to one tradition or another. It's kind of cute
| in a superficial way (the way that people dress up for balls
| in Vienna), and very counter-progressive in others (the way
| that doctors are more respected than programmers).
|
| I would also wage to say that the pure interpretation of the
| term is a bit different. In the US, using the term
| "traditionally" in a sentence could have a positive
| connotation (eg: "traditionally, we celebrate new launches
| with some drinks") or a negative connotation ("those
| traditional companies are usually lacking in technology"). In
| contrast, invoking the term "tradition" in a sentence in,
| let's say Germany, would be to describe a near-religious
| ritual that cannot and must not be changed or even questioned
| (eg: "for Oktoberfest, people dress in traditional outfits
| that include lederhosen and dirndls.") I struggle to think of
| a frequent context in Germany in which the term traditional
| would have a negative connotation.
|
| All this is to say that tradition is a wonderful thing if
| your circumstances lead you to invoke as little change as
| possible. But for those seeking social mobility and other
| types of change in their lives, I would argue that traditions
| can be very negative.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not just religion. In Bangladesh, where I'm from,
| there's a whole bunch of social norms and practices enforced
| by your mom talking about you to your aunties and your dad
| talking with your uncles. In fact, my family was quite non-
| religious, but we still had all this cultural infrastructure.
|
| Two concrete examples. Families have strong involvement in
| marriage. This isn't just "here's your spouse take it or
| leave it." It's a process by which people who have been
| married a long time and coach a young person about what
| qualities to look for in a marriage partner. (I remember my
| wife remarking 8 years into our American-style marriage that
| she was surprised by how inconsequential her dating
| preferences at 25 turned out to be. "Who cares what kind of
| music your husband likes at 2 am when the baby is crying?")
|
| There's also a lot of active coaching in marriage. I remember
| my dad being dispatched by the aunties to fly to another
| state to coach a young couple going through a rough patch.
| _RPL5_ wrote:
| Here is a list of 200 most popular books sold at Ozon, the
| biggest on-line retailer in Russia:
|
| https://www.ozon.ru/highlight/top-200-knig-po-mneniyu-chitat...
|
| Of the Top-12, 6 to 8 are some form of a self-help book:
|
| * 1st: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F _ck.
|
| _ 2nd: Say Yes To Life, a self-help book from an Austrian
| Holocaust surviver.
|
| * 4th: Ben Graham's Intelligent Investor.
|
| * 5th: A Russian-author book on the art of "convincing" &
| "influencing" people (sound familiar?).
|
| * 6th: Another American book, "Radical Forgiveness: A Guide to
| Spiritual Healing"
|
| * 8th: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
|
| * 11th: Women Who Love Too Much: If Love is Causing Suffering.
| Also a US book.
|
| * 12th: Atlas Shrugged. I suppose it's not a self-help book,
| but it's very much in line with the spirit of "open-your-eyes"
| literature.
|
| * If you go down the list, there is a bunch of other titles
| like Rich Dad Poor Dad, the full set of Nassim Taleb's quasi
| self-improvement books, etc.
|
| We can sort of argue whether some of these books are self-help
| adjacent or not (like Ben Graham or Nassim Taleb), but the
| trend is clear: self-improvement literature is very popular in
| Russia.
|
| This shows that the self-help cottage industry is not limited
| to the US. I think people just like the idea of self-
| improvement.
|
| edit: formatting
| azinman2 wrote:
| A very American trait is to assume something is very American
| and doesn't apply elsewhere. Usually 'elsewhere' is just
| defined as a shallow understanding of Europe.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| Agreed. Just last year The Economist had a short article on
| the popularity of self-help books in China[0]. It's estimated
| almost a third of all books sold in the country are self-help
| books.
|
| If anything I would expect self-help to be more popular in
| less well-off countries, where there is perhaps more
| incentive to be hyper-competitive to try get ahead.
|
| [0] https://www.economist.com/china/2020/11/12/why-self-help-
| boo...
| chmod600 wrote:
| I believe this comes from confusion between freedom as a choice
| with consequences, and freedom as a choice without
| consequences.
|
| The latter definition has taken hold over the last few decades
| because it is seen as offensive to reinforce good choices.
| Suggesting that people maintain a good diet and exercise is
| seen as offensive to obese people. Suggesting that people marry
| a good, stable partner before having children is seen as
| offensive to single mothers. Suggesting that people focus on
| jobs and careers that provide stable income is seen as crushing
| someone's self-actualized aspirations. And suggesting that any
| of these groups be responsible for the outcomes of their
| choices is unthinkable.
|
| When such basic advice is off-limits, what cultural
| infrastructure could we possibly have?
|
| Edit: removed distracting example.
| lostdog wrote:
| The cultural infrastructure we had was extremely poor. We put
| a ton of focus into shaming and punishing people for bad
| behavior, and it just didn't work. Fat shaming has resulted
| in even more obese people. Punishing unmarried couples didn't
| increase the number of stable partnerships at all. We lost
| the war on drugs.
|
| I don't agree with the current trends either ("it's
| completely ok to do bad thing X!"). However, in addition to
| good advice for individuals, we need to keep trying to create
| cultural infrastructure that really does work.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Punishing unmarried couples didn't increase the number of
| stable partnerships at all.
|
| That's a bad example. Family stability plummeted after the
| sexual revolution, even as access to birth control and
| abortion made family planning easier: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Single_parents_in_the_United_S...
| [deleted]
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I suspect the lower stress of acceptance, even when it goes
| overboard in cases where the thing can actually be harmful,
| still leads to better outcomes. Stress is a well-documented
| factor in weight gain, for example. My covid 19 after years
| of losing weight is proof!
|
| The loss came from self-acceptance. I stopped beating
| myself up when I slipped up, and I stopped letting other
| people shame me for it. That was good for 50 pounds, and
| I'm headed back down now that I'm vaccinated and getting as
| much back on track as I can. I don't have data handy, but I
| suspect shaming has killed more people and ruined more
| lives than acceptance.
| foolinaround wrote:
| i think a carrot and stick approach would have worked.
|
| if the shaming is the stick, but where is the carrot?
|
| they should be provided alternatives and policies that prod
| towards the better options.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| "is seen as" x 4
|
| By who?
|
| I'm pretty sure they still teach the difference between
| passive and active voice in school. Passive voice is great if
| you want to paint in broad strokes without naming names so
| people can't actually discuss your points. This is choir-
| preaching. Or argument by implication if you want a secular
| term.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "... and so forth."
|
| ... celebrity worship, corporation worship, politician worship,
| money worship, conspiracy theories ...
| adolph wrote:
| https://fs.blog/2012/04/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
|
| _Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the
| day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such
| thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping.
| Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to
| worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some
| sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship-be it JC or
| Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four
| Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles-is
| that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you
| alive._
| 0xEFF wrote:
| None of those things are particularly American, or even
| western.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| As someone who was born and raised overseas, I would say
| they take up a much larger space in the American psyche
| though.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I've been binging Adam Curtis documentaries recently, and the
| unifying thread has been the rise of individualism and its
| being coopted by commerce. In a discussion regarding
| HyperNormalization [1], he argued that we're beginning to
| realize how shallow this individualism is, and religion will
| rear its head at some point to fill this void.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC4NNScEI
| oldmanrahul wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Really enjoyed this take on
| individualism
| jokoon wrote:
| Humans are always looking for things to believe in. When people
| become less religious, they still need something to put their
| faith in.
|
| Motivation and happiness are vague words or concepts.
|
| Existentialism and existential nihilism explain this.
|
| Those books are not based on science, and if they were, they
| would talk about it.
|
| Apart from saving the world from climate change and tax justice I
| cannot find any meaning I could find in those books.
| [deleted]
| alexpetralia wrote:
| There are productive (empowering) and unproductive (parasitic)
| forms of self-help. I have found the former to be useful for as
| long as I can remember; the latter to be strongly avoided.
| alexpatin wrote:
| How does one discern between productive and unproductive forms
| of self-help?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| It's up to each individual to decide, but is progress being
| made, or at the very least, are behaviors changing as a
| result of the person's efforts and not _only_ because of the
| outside help?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > was to enshrine the central myth of early America--that the
| origins and long-term viability of the American experiment rested
| on the image of "the yeoman farmer as patriot and model citizen."
|
| It's not a myth. It's the truth about early America. Big
| businesses really didn't arrive in force until after the Civil
| War.
| toivo wrote:
| Well I'm not American and I read mostly "self-help" books, from
| "In Search of Meaning" to "Code Complete" to "Extreme Ownership"
| to "High Output Management" to "Never Split The Difference". I
| always read one before I go to sleep.
| Sr_developer wrote:
| I think you are confusing "Self-Help" with "non-fiction".
| [deleted]
| topspin wrote:
| Code Complete is a self-help book? I never imagined that book
| would be categorized as self-help. With a definition of "self-
| help" broad enough to include it the question in my mind is
| "What isn't self-help?"
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jf22 wrote:
| I'm going to try and give up self-help and business books and
| podcasts and only read sci-fi.
|
| My career is fine, I'm fine, I know enough about tech and
| engineering management to be at least mediocre.
|
| There is a 50 book 40k series out there I think I'd rather spend
| more time with.
| robotnikman wrote:
| As a fan ok the 40k series as well, which books in particular?
| xyzelement wrote:
| While the quality of self-help material is variable, what I think
| is valuable (and I guess pretty American) is the focus on that
| which you can change for yourself.
|
| It seems more popular recently to talk about external problems
| that you realistically can't impact ("why should anyone be a
| billionaire") rather than focus on what you can actually change
| ("how do I grow valuable skill sets and market myself better to
| increase my compensation.")
|
| Obviously, not every self-help book is going to be good, or right
| for you, and you may not absorb and implement it, but I'd much
| rather bet on someone who at least tries to steer their own ship.
| CJefferson wrote:
| While America seems to spend a lot of time talking about "how
| to improve / change yourself", and the "American Dream", every
| study I've seen (for example
| https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....
| ), shows it does poorly for social mobility.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I bet that people who subscribe to the mobility mindset are
| statistically more mobile than those who don't believe it's
| possible.
| adolph wrote:
| The two items seem not incongruent.
|
| According to that report, the US is a half standard deviation
| above the median of social mobility. It isn't charitable to
| characterize that as doing "poorly."
| KittenInABox wrote:
| If we never talk about external problems such as systems that
| make it impossible to meaningfully increase one's compensation,
| then no amount of change in self could actually fix anything.
| Let's say you're a disabled person who can't even get married
| because then you lose your income and therefore become
| financially dependent on your partner, which creates a super
| uncomfortable relationship between the two of you. What can you
| change yourself, or should you instead talk about the fact the
| government's laws and merit-gating has royally fucked you over
| and advocate for systemic changes? Maybe through writing a blog
| post or opinion article in a newspaper...
| BeetleB wrote:
| > If we never talk about external problems such as systems
| that make it impossible to meaningfully increase one's
| compensation, then no amount of change in self could actually
| fix anything.
|
| This is merely arguing from extremes, and is responding to a
| position your parent did not take (i.e. strawman): He didn't
| say "never" or "always", he said "more popular"
|
| Also, I could make the equally correct/problematic statement:
|
| If we only talk about external problems such as systems that
| make it impossible to meaningfully increase one's
| compensation, then no amount of social reform will improve
| your condition.
|
| You need external things to change, but you also need to
| change yourself internally. The dispute is on how much of
| each.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Thinking of Mortimer Adler's How To Read A Book...
|
| Self Help is either a How To book or Philosophy?
|
| Both have quite a bit of value to the individual. Even as the
| author describes this as feeding the business machine, both self
| help and philosophy can make you aware when this is happening.
|
| I read these genres and can see clearly why my boss was told to
| repeat company statements. I sit back and witness corporate
| propaganda/marketing and am aware they are coming for my brain.
|
| Without self help and philosophy, would I be hacked into mindless
| compliance?
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/RdFmK
| borepop wrote:
| I enjoy some self-help books because they seem to articulate an
| underlying gameplan for pursuing whatever one considers
| "success," which are ideas my parents and school only taught me
| implicitly or inaccurately. My parents' advice to me as a kid was
| "do what you love and the money will follow," which is not true,
| and/or "join the Navy," which I had no desire to do. So I've
| ended up trying to find my own way in life, however imperfectly.
|
| Essentially, a lot of these books are about executive functioning
| skills, the meta-level planning and goal-setting and failure-
| analysis efforts that are necessary to make progress in whatever
| field. I think it is also true, as other commenters note, that to
| some extent they fill an ethical or existential void left by the
| decline of religion.
| pyrale wrote:
| > "join the Navy,"
|
| Maybe they hoped this way you'd get to learn the science
| technology? :-)
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