Self Help

When I go to a bookstore to find something new to read I always look at the nonfiction section first. It's because that is my preference in literature. I think that if I want real non fiction I need only observe people in place sin life. They are more unreal than what the imagination creates in a fiction novel. One big category of non fiction literature in every bookstore is the so called "self help" section. Curious, indeed, that kind of book.
I never buy those kinds of books (not that I don't need plenty of help....I do, both externally and from within) because I think they are a waste of time fro most people. I don't know about you, but I am not going to change in any significant way because of something an "expert" wrote in a book. Rather, I think we are all a sum total of our genetics and experiences through life, and that once past a certain age in childhood rarely change our basic personality and way of behavior.
Those books always claim to change more than a single thing we do, some to change us entirely. This can't be done. Surely behavior modification may alter one or a fewer behaviors, but nothing more and nothing that can change our natures. For example, you can make me eat tofu (a dreaded thought) but you can't make me only eat tofu or like the taste of it. And there is no "self-help" method that will ever make me eat tofu. Self-help is infinitely harder to achieve than coercion from the outside.
When browsing self-help books I notice that they offer simple ways to change that are simply impossible. I think they only help the authors and publishers of the systems by allowing them to make tons of money selling those books to people who lack self esteem or just doubt themselves too much. This only frustrates the readers because the simple fact is that by resolve most people cannot change or "improve" themselves as those books claim they can do.
Making yourself a better person, more successful, happier, any of those intangible more perfect states we seek by deciding to do so or from reading a self-help treatise doesn't work. It is because we area sum of our past and our genes. That is quite a hurdle for anyone to change in totality. No one can change character and be what another is or what he thinks someone should be.
Further, I think it would be bad for us if we could so easily self-help or change ourselves. Can you imagine how peripatetic, enigmatic and complicated humans would be if they were able to change themselves suddenly and continually. They would become chameleons that could never find others to know them well enough to love them. We are loved or hated for what we are, for better or worse, and that is as should be.
And I see more and more of these self-help authors expanding to seminars and lectures about their books. They fleece the person by selling him or her a pointless book and seduce them to pay even more to hear about ti at a lecture or see a demonstration of how the self-help plan allegedly works. It makes me think that the person who buys those books does need help- help to stop wasting money on the fairy tale of self help.
Go to your bookstore and see if they have these self-help books for sale. they are real....I swear I am not kidding that these are the names.
- 'The Hazards of Being Male' (Must have been written by a woman?)
- 'How to Feel GOOD About Yourself '(The GOOD is capitalized in the title, not by me....but I feel GOOD about it nonetheless)
- 'Reclaiming Yourself' (Hmmmmmmmm I think if someone is dumb enough to claim me they can have me and I am not interested in reclaiming myself)
- 'The Road To Hell and Back' (Must be about vacationing in Singapore???)
- 'A New Look at Growing Older' (What is the old look at it and why look at aging? It is inevitable.)
- 'From Shyness to Social Butterfly' (Is that an improvement?)
- 'Recovery from Compulsive Behavior' (Well, the first step for self-help book buyers in recovering from it would be to stop their compulsive buying of those books)
- 'Getting Your Emotional Act Together' (I don't know about you, but I am not acting when I feel emotion)
- 'What Women Should Know About Men' (kind of arrogant for the author to think think he or she knows the "unknowable")
- 'How To Live With Your Children' (You mean we have a choice?)
- 'Discovering Sexuality That Will Satisfy You' (Paris Hilton must have written that one)
- 'How to Achieve Peace of Mind' (I know it's not achieved by reading my E mail.)
Do any of those make you feel self-help is possible or desirable? Do you think you need self-help? Have you ever read any self-help book? Have you ever benefited from reading one? Sigh....Ok...the inevitable question...Which self-help books do you think I need?