Sometimes I think to myself: "where do they find all those happy people?" This thought strikes me every time I see advertising; commercials are filled to the brim with extremely happy people, enjoying a life I can only dream of... Even at the drug-store, where sick people come to buy medicine, the folders are decorated with pictures of smiling happy people. Aren't they supposed to be sick?
source: YouTube
But then I find myself back on the ground with both feet planted firmly on the planet's surface, and remember that this is exactly the purpose of advertising; it exists to make you unhappy, to make you realize you need product X to better your life, to remind you of your sorry situation and make you want more. That's the one constant in our capitalist society: you should never be satisfied or content, you should instead always strife for more. And if you don't want more, there must be something seriously wrong with you. If you do want more, but don't succeed, there's also something wrong with you and you should pull yourself by your bootstraps and start working on yourself. And at that point we enter the horrific world of self-help...
This expression, "self-help", has always bothered me; help is by definition something you receive from someone else or give to someone else. There's no helping yourself, there's only helping others or getting help from others. And that's exactly what "self-help" used to mean long ago, before individualism conquered the world. Self-help used to imply that working class people organized in groups and helped each other to learn mathematics, reading and writing, the skills they needed to possibly climb up the social ladder. But those days are gone; now we learn from a young age that it's you against the world, and every success or failure in that struggle is on you, and you alone. And don't you dare blame the circumstances or any external factors! That's weakness. Also don't help others! That's giving in to weakness. Only the strong survive. Only the strong have the right to survive. Right?
Self-help is now a multi-billion dollar industry and that industry, in my opinion, is one of the signs of how we've degenerated as a society. Don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with trying to better yourself, whatever that may mean to you. But please don't fool yourself by thinking you've helped yourself. You didn't. The one that wrote the book on how to "help yourself" is the one who helped you. The one who gave you your job. The one who educated you. The one whose tools you use. Thatcher said that there's no such thing as society, but believe me, it's the other way around; there's only society, and we all fail or succeed in and because of that society. Individuals exist inside society, and it used to be that society existed in those individuals, that self-betterment meant doing a better job for that society, or at least for your class-peers; that's gone now, which is why self-help gurus have no trouble whatsoever to advice you to do things that harm others, as long as it it beneficial to you. Don't believe me? Then please watch this video; it nicely describes the history of "self-help" and all those books and seminars on "positive thinking", you know, the idea that you can think yourself rich and successful...
Self-Help: What Went Wrong?
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