Why has the word 'self-help' become bashed too much?

[charlie cho]

Isn't it obvious? People had philosophies of success, be it a creative success philosophy such as art, economical prosperity, and maybe music composition, be it destructive success philosophy such as golf manuals to beat the opponent, chess manuals, Art of War by Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli's the Prince. Much like novels weren't sophisticated until Cervantes "Don Quixote", most fictions were written by religion, or people like Aesop to teach a lesson about life. Bible is a fiction, a metaphorical book, to teach the realities of life. And so were books like Thus spoke Zarathustra were wisdom compiled to teach what Nietzsche felt why success was important, and possibly how one could attain such success. And now, we can say selfhelp was crude as knighthood books existed just before Don quixote, and many people scoffed at those books because it was more pleasure seeking, then seeking wisdom in the likes of reading books of wise metaphors and fiction like the Bible, or Aesop's fables, or the Illiad and Odyssey. 

Selfhelp is basically a study of success. A philosophy of success. Why should we succeed? And how can we succeed? These two basic questions comprise the whole of self-help. I think the word self-help may have become hurt, because people have forgotten what it means to do self-development, and forgot the two questions that lead self-help. And those two questions had existed from the beginning of human history. 

I've come to this conclusion whilst reading a book called "Guan Tzu". A politician and economical reformer 2500 years ago in the spring and autumn period of Asia, he not only reformed good policies in a country, he revolutionized how business and commerce was done at the time, and made a country tremendously rich. Guan Tzu always had ambition since young, he always had the desire to write out his name amongst history, so his desire for success was eminent, but his desire for wisdom may have been in question. Confucius who cared a lot about wisdom, love, and honor, questioned Guan Tzu's motives, but because his economic prosperity and poltiical genius made the country's civilization more honorable, loving, and educated, Confucius couldn't criticize Guan Tzu outright for not explicitly or time-honoring the likes of moral principles rather than the pursuit of economical wealth and political success. Guan Tzu had written about leader's conduct for good political strategy, a good economical prosperity for the leader's followers, and many more strategies. The whole book of 'Guan Tzu' seemed like a book about creative and destructive success. And as Confucius liked to criticize him for, the book had no care or presumption for understanding morals, spirituality, or about life. It was basically a treatise to understand the philosophy of why one must succeed in art, culture, politics, and economy, and how one leader can attain it. Yes, Guan Tzu talks about Taoism and the spiritual principles needed to succeed, but he doesn't philosophize about spirituality that much (he does a little).

The book made me think, as an Enneagram 3 (I am enneagram 3), who cares deeply about success and achievement, I wonder if there is any wisdom and philosophy that can be sought and found in books like Guan Tzu. Is there a wisdom in achievement? Is there wisdom in getting results? In the end, doesn't God the greatest result maker? He's the one who creates all the art of the world. he's the one who creates all the destruction and diseases, supposedly to cleanse the world. he even makes laws to restrict any bad behavior, from the likes of Moses' ten commandments? Did Moses really write that himself? Or maybe he wrote that from Divine Inspiration. 

I suspect we need to think doubly about the word 'self-help' and not make it taboo or be ashamed of the word. Don Quixote, in the novel, one of the characters argues against Don Quixote for reading too many knighthood books and fiction, saying lies are bad for the brain. Don Quixote argues against that that maybe lies may help one to be more honorable, happy, and more pragmatic about living one's life. And see, how important the books of the bible (a metaphorical fiction to teach the realities of life), books like Crime and Punishment, the Devils, 1984, had taught the masses the philosophies of life as a whole, maybe it had taught much more about life than science! 

Is the word 'self-help' the right word to use really? I guess the word 'philosophy of success' can sound quite ridiculous, but not to me. That is basically what self-help is. And just like the word 'fiction' had come out after the 17th century because of how Cervantes Don Quixote had popularized the genre, I feel the word 'self-help' may not be sufficient, and the word 'philosophy of success' may be more an accurate term so people will not simply bash the word out of ignorance. The genre had existed from the beginning of time, just like the bible, just like Homer's Illiad, only it wasn't as explicitly categorized like that right now. 

Edited May 29, 2023 by charlie cho

[something_else]

The term has got a bad reputation because 90% of the content in the self-help world and 90% of the influencers in the self-help world are full of shit. It's a very scummy industry because if you are confident enough you can peddle almost any snake oil as self-help, even if you have zero real world experience, and people will believe it.

[Jacob Morres]

Just a small note, tho not to ur main point, I think success is a branch of self help but not self help itself 

Edited May 31, 2023 by Jacob Morres

[charlie cho]

@something_else Are we pretending fiction has not scummy people in there? Even history books?

[Recursoinominado]

Most people, ironically, are not developed enough to believe in self-development.

They think that it is a scam.

[Leo Gura]

I have always considered it purely a positive word. Stop listening to fools.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Leo Gura

[Roy]

Because most people are crabs in a bucket and hate when others disrupt established hierarchies by trying to improve themselves.

One of the best way to figure out who your real friends and enemies are is making massive positive changes in your life. It will become VERY apparent who is who based on their reactions.

[mmKay]

I like to call it /  see it more as the concept of "personal evolution" , as in you taking the actual process of EVOLUTION into your own hands and taking responsibility for shaping your development .

In the end its just splitting hairs,  but I resonate with this idea more.

[charlie cho]

@Recursoinominado Why do you think so? I'm curious really. 

Maybe, because people put in too much trust in self-help initially, thinking that it will solve all of their problems, similar to how many stumble on religion? They should have known responsibilities of growth relies all on themselves, but they throw it externally. And when they get disappointed, they become atheists. 

Is this how people generally think? If so, discard the book 'Art of War'. Let's discard Maxim's book 'How To Get Rich'. Let's discard the book 'Influence' by Cialdini. Discard '7habits of highly effective people', let's discard 'The Analects', discard 'leadership' by John Wooden. It's all about personal conduct for success in war, games, business, money. Obviously, philosophy of success is a corrupt business and subject. Let's discard all of them that existed throughout history. 

I would love to discard any corrupt industries and movements out there. 

I assume people think I'm absurd for saying this, but I have to rebut this is basically what people are saying when they bash the word. It's intriguing and why wouldn't I want to understand them? I observe that people desparately need to not bash the category as a whole, therefore not seeing it at all, but simply categorize the category in itself, from a book of bad quality and good quality. Otherwise, there is no hope for real education on this Earth. Or maybe, I'm projecting my past own views of how self-help is on other people, and I'm trying to attack them, but still, I think my arguments here are right. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by charlie cho

[Recursoinominado]

@charlie cho I think they are, essencially, fools, as Leo calls it.

The ones i see shitting on "self-help" usually have some sort of shadow against stage orange and its values.

I see many stage green people shitting on self-help.

To be fair, it is a niche filled with scammy grifters, yes, BUT the core of it is pretty valuable.

They see it like "oh it's just generic phrases, doesn't really help anyone and if someone charges for this information, they are con-artists".

It's like throwing the baby out with the bath water, as they say.

I also see much victim mentality and hopelessness.

People FIGHT HARD to keep their problems and excuses.

[UnbornTao]

To the average guy, self-help may have a reputation of being a shallow, BS field filled with motivating content that isn't very effective after all -- "believe in yourself", "focus on what you want", etc. It's a broad term. Real and effective self-help exists but it isn't as accessible as the viral stuff.

Call it something like personal empowerment and it could turn into a social media fad. Using the word empowerment may have positive connotations in people's eyes whereas self-help doesn't. And yet we might be talking about the same thing, just with different terms.

The work is essentially the same whether it's called self-growth, empowerment, self-help, or self-actualization. It is working and moving towards actualizing one's potential, whatever that looks like in your case.

Edited June 18, 2023 by UnbornTao

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

A lot of scam artists in the self-help field, the stereotype of people who blindly consume self-help without applying any of it, and people just being idiots. It's mostly criticisms from below. The criticisms are valid, but they're coming from people who haven't actually learned how to navigate all of these traps and so they just dismiss the entire thing as a whole, because that's a lot easier than to think for yourself (including questioning the way of thinking you've been conditioned with since birth), which will be required of you if you want to help yourself.

 

Some world views are simpy incompatible with self-help. If you believe in some big, bad evil out there in the world which must be stopped, being told to help yourself might seem counter-intuitive or even selfish. I've talked to socialists who were against self-help because they believed that it was nothing but a cooperate farce to keep you from looking at the material conditions. They couldn't differentiate between self-help and the good old conservative "Just pull yourself up by your own boot straps" and equated it with ignoring the problems of the world. If that's what someone believes it's logical that they won't like the idea of self-help.

Edited June 4, 2023 by cetus