Let's talk about something that interests every person on earth.
If you want my opinion on Panino numero sei, I can assure you that it was pretty good.
No, it's not about food.
It must be about your visit to Monte Carlo, then.
Wrong, not about money or gambling.
Oh, oh, does it start with the letter 's'?
Don't be hypocritically prudent. What I have in mind does not rhyme with "regression of y on x."
I'm lost! Tell me what interests me and everyone else, but I am unaware of. It must be something very special.
Self-help books.
It starts with the letter 's'! But I swear, I've never read one.
If you don't want to admit it, that's fine.
It's not a matter of admitting or not, I am speaking the truth and only the truth.
If you indeed haven't read any, I am pretty sure you will be reading one soon.
How can you be so confident?
Recently, I have been noticing the conspicuous growth of self-help publication industry around the world. What I thought was a typically American phenomenon has been transplanted in countries with long traditions of literature, be it Europe, Asia or the New World, and is doing well in new soil.
You mean writings on how to lead a satisfying life, how to have a fulfilling relationship, how to grow rich, how to raise children, how to deal with annoying people, how to retire comfortably, and so on?
Yes, they are sometime called "how-to" books.
Fear not, such books have existed for a long time. It was in 1922 that Emily Post wrote "Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home." We can even go back further in time. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" in 1513 and "The Art of War" around 1520. Probably already in the thirteenth century, "Book of the Civilized Man" was penned by Daniel of Beccles. We may say that "Kama Sutra" that came to be in the present form around the second century is also a self-help book.
If you stretch that far, we can say that all Sutras, Torah, the Bible and Qur'an, too, belong to the genre. They tell you how to behave.
Older is the Analects of Confucius, which was written sometime between 480 BC and 220 BC, and "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, written in the 6th century BC. I think any conduct guidance, if in a written form, is a kind of self-help manual. I don't see anything new here.
The problem may have existed from time immemorial, indeed.
So, what is that problem of yours with self-help books?
They give us short-cut answers to life's challenges.
Hurray! I now know why I should be reading one.
Almost in any language there is an adage that says the seemingly shortest route is in fact the longest one to your goal, remember?
Hmmm... I don't see why reading a book on how to write your will would lengthen my time to write a good will.
You are right. Do-it-yourself manuals are justified for issues which require a fair amount of factual information. I am thinking more of topics on life in general.
I don't see anything wrong with, let's say, "Marriage for the Thick-skulled."
That is a borderline case, I would say.
I know that you would not put "Physiologie du Mariage" or "Scènes de la Vie Conjugale" by Honoré de Balzac in your self-help category. But I don't see any fundamental difference between "For the Thick-skulled" and "Physiologie."
How insolent! Philosophy tackles with life's problems, even practical ones such as marriage, but refrains from dishing out detailed what-to-do lists.
Balzac says in "Physiologie": a lover not only gives her life everything, but also makes her forget about life, whereas a husband gives nothing to her life.
He does not say a wife should or is allowed to have an affair. By the way, he ended up marrying his lover.
"The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue." From Bertrand Russell's "Marriage and Morals," as you may have recognized.
But he does not say you should or are allowed to commit adultery. He does not say how to start an extra-martial affair either.
Based on that criterion, they are not self-help writers, but philosophers?
You can say that. The biggest problem with contemporary self-help books is that they exist to minimize your own analysis of your problem. Philosophers write books to present their views of life. You may agree or disagree, and it is up to you to decide what to do with the information. Present day self-help books, on the other hand, very often include a guided analysis of the reader's character. In that sense, most of the books that we cited as self-help books from the old times are more philosophy than self-help.
An analysis of your character... Are you an extrovert, an introvert, a school clown who chews on nails after dark in the backyard, a saint who would not kill an ant, but eats pork chops, a professor in ethics who moonlights as a drug dealer... that kind of a thing?
You and your perversity! Anyway, self-help books not only tell you who you are, but also based on that information, what you should be doing and that in practical terms.
Isn't that awfully helpful?
I agree and there lies the problem. We are asking the self-help gurus to do the thinking for us. But a great deal of the value of solutions to life's problems is in the process of reaching a solution.
In other words, "no pain, no gain"?
I believe so. It may sound easy to memorize a self-help rule, such as "always lend a willing ear to your partner's problems." If it is not a conclusion that you have reached through self-examination, however, you wouldn't be acting according to that rule when you are caught up in the situation.
That may be why there are so many self-help books. People read one, expecting that it would be a panacea, but because of the drawback that you pointed out, their life problems remain as they are; they have to buy another self-help book.
Thinking on your own is extremely important... I think! It should be emphasized more in education.
We don't want rowdy dissenters, you see.
But think about populism, or worse totalitarianism and fascism. Constituents who shirk from thinking on their own are breeding grounds for them.
If you want my opinion on Panino numero sei, I can assure you that it was pretty good.
No, it's not about food.
It must be about your visit to Monte Carlo, then.
Wrong, not about money or gambling.
Oh, oh, does it start with the letter 's'?
Don't be hypocritically prudent. What I have in mind does not rhyme with "regression of y on x."
I'm lost! Tell me what interests me and everyone else, but I am unaware of. It must be something very special.
Self-help books.
It starts with the letter 's'! But I swear, I've never read one.
If you don't want to admit it, that's fine.
It's not a matter of admitting or not, I am speaking the truth and only the truth.
If you indeed haven't read any, I am pretty sure you will be reading one soon.
How can you be so confident?
Recently, I have been noticing the conspicuous growth of self-help publication industry around the world. What I thought was a typically American phenomenon has been transplanted in countries with long traditions of literature, be it Europe, Asia or the New World, and is doing well in new soil.
You mean writings on how to lead a satisfying life, how to have a fulfilling relationship, how to grow rich, how to raise children, how to deal with annoying people, how to retire comfortably, and so on?
Yes, they are sometime called "how-to" books.
Fear not, such books have existed for a long time. It was in 1922 that Emily Post wrote "Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home." We can even go back further in time. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" in 1513 and "The Art of War" around 1520. Probably already in the thirteenth century, "Book of the Civilized Man" was penned by Daniel of Beccles. We may say that "Kama Sutra" that came to be in the present form around the second century is also a self-help book.
If you stretch that far, we can say that all Sutras, Torah, the Bible and Qur'an, too, belong to the genre. They tell you how to behave.
Older is the Analects of Confucius, which was written sometime between 480 BC and 220 BC, and "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, written in the 6th century BC. I think any conduct guidance, if in a written form, is a kind of self-help manual. I don't see anything new here.
The problem may have existed from time immemorial, indeed.
So, what is that problem of yours with self-help books?
They give us short-cut answers to life's challenges.
Hurray! I now know why I should be reading one.
Almost in any language there is an adage that says the seemingly shortest route is in fact the longest one to your goal, remember?
Hmmm... I don't see why reading a book on how to write your will would lengthen my time to write a good will.
You are right. Do-it-yourself manuals are justified for issues which require a fair amount of factual information. I am thinking more of topics on life in general.
I don't see anything wrong with, let's say, "Marriage for the Thick-skulled."
That is a borderline case, I would say.
I know that you would not put "Physiologie du Mariage" or "Scènes de la Vie Conjugale" by Honoré de Balzac in your self-help category. But I don't see any fundamental difference between "For the Thick-skulled" and "Physiologie."
How insolent! Philosophy tackles with life's problems, even practical ones such as marriage, but refrains from dishing out detailed what-to-do lists.
Balzac says in "Physiologie": a lover not only gives her life everything, but also makes her forget about life, whereas a husband gives nothing to her life.
He does not say a wife should or is allowed to have an affair. By the way, he ended up marrying his lover.
"The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue." From Bertrand Russell's "Marriage and Morals," as you may have recognized.
But he does not say you should or are allowed to commit adultery. He does not say how to start an extra-martial affair either.
Based on that criterion, they are not self-help writers, but philosophers?
You can say that. The biggest problem with contemporary self-help books is that they exist to minimize your own analysis of your problem. Philosophers write books to present their views of life. You may agree or disagree, and it is up to you to decide what to do with the information. Present day self-help books, on the other hand, very often include a guided analysis of the reader's character. In that sense, most of the books that we cited as self-help books from the old times are more philosophy than self-help.
An analysis of your character... Are you an extrovert, an introvert, a school clown who chews on nails after dark in the backyard, a saint who would not kill an ant, but eats pork chops, a professor in ethics who moonlights as a drug dealer... that kind of a thing?
You and your perversity! Anyway, self-help books not only tell you who you are, but also based on that information, what you should be doing and that in practical terms.
Isn't that awfully helpful?
I agree and there lies the problem. We are asking the self-help gurus to do the thinking for us. But a great deal of the value of solutions to life's problems is in the process of reaching a solution.
In other words, "no pain, no gain"?
I believe so. It may sound easy to memorize a self-help rule, such as "always lend a willing ear to your partner's problems." If it is not a conclusion that you have reached through self-examination, however, you wouldn't be acting according to that rule when you are caught up in the situation.
That may be why there are so many self-help books. People read one, expecting that it would be a panacea, but because of the drawback that you pointed out, their life problems remain as they are; they have to buy another self-help book.
Thinking on your own is extremely important... I think! It should be emphasized more in education.
We don't want rowdy dissenters, you see.
But think about populism, or worse totalitarianism and fascism. Constituents who shirk from thinking on their own are breeding grounds for them.
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