Two sides of the same coin, but is the coin worth anything?
#95 If Punxsutawney Phil's was in the MLB he'd be a hall of famer. In Vegas, broke. Perspective and context. Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave.
How come classical philosophy is so fun to read and self-help books are garbage?
Well it’s not that simple.
I want to say there is a fine line between the two but that might be too severe as well. Many “serious” philosophers have written things that could be perceived as self-help. And many self-help books do actually help people turn around their lives.
Where I think the difference comes in is intent and style.
Philosophy at least in the past, was a bunch of polymaths? wise people? who pursued many things in life and pondered our existence in the scheme of things. Many of these thoughts touched on every day life, from how to live, how to govern, and collected wisdom of the past and experience.
What turns people off of reading this is often the trend towards Philosophy as a scholastic pursuit. Making it overly complex or dependent on prior knowledge of the in-group vocabulary and -ism soup that has sprung up over thousands of years.
Self-help books (at least from my point of view) come in all shapes and sizes and are not written by any type of person. While they’re not always marked as such, topics like personal finance to astrology also can dip into the self-help category. They’re mostly people monetizing on people’s distress. Some times they are actually helpful and try to discipline, teach tricks to get things done, or perspectives to cope with loss. Other topics as well, I’m generalizing here.
What stands out here is that much of their knowledge, whether admitted or not, is just ripped off from someone who did the “philosophy work”, came up with a blend of classics to help them govern their own life, repackaged it, and sold it to the reader. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but it’s just like a multivitamin.
It’s a bunch of things derived from other things served in a manner that won’t promote the most absorption. It’ll just come out in your pee, and in the case of self-help, it’ll come out in conversation, where you think you sound enlightened but can easily slide into sounding like you’re a cult member. The same goes for religion and money by the way. You’re not supposed to tell people you are a certain way, you’re supposed to live it earnestly and they’ll pick it up. It’s subtle. (Disclosure: my personal philosophy is bleeding in).
Self-help people need to promote their beliefs in order to grow their business so they have to build a community within their followers and help it thrive. It works, look at Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra**
My point here, if I even have one, is that the two topics live on a spectrum. They range maybe from how objective they try to be to deeply personal… No, no, no that’s not right. Maybe from generalizable to all of humanity to a unique individual… no, that’s not it…anyways. I guess we’re back at the “I know it when I see it”. But in this case, I’m not always sure that I will.
*“I don’t recommend other supplements. If you follow a healthy diet, you can get all of the vitamins and minerals you need from food.” - Larry Appel, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research.
(My academic standards are very low, I cherry picked this quote so I could make my off the cuff analogy work. Some people might say they help, I don’t give medical advice. I still think a healthy diet is more important. Also, my doctor uncle says we should take at least Vitamin D, so it’s probably not a blanket statement. Carry on.)
**I once met two older ladies travelling in a van in South America, sorry I can’t remember where exactly. When they found out I was American they asked if I knew Deepak Chopra, if I’d ever met him, and told me that they were planning to fly to Chicago to see him speak. I wish I had written about this more timely so I’d remember the details. But my takeaway was that they were delusional fanatics.
Recent reasons I find it confusing and why I probably thought of this topic as the sunset slapped me in the face at 6:30 beckoning me to write. Though I had to will myself awake and didn’t get out of bed until 7.
If you believe self-help people they probably would say I’m lazy because I’m not waking up at 4 and starting my day with a cold plunge and a work out. At least the Goggins/Huberman/etc wellness crowd.
I currently am listening to The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, while I have once again picked up The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant (I’m on the Francis Bacon chapter).
Rick’s book comes from him documenting his thoughts on creating from his illustrious career and his familiarity and experience with eastern philosophy and meditation. He claims it’s not meant to be a self-help book, but a reflection on what he has found and that it may be useful to you to try out. Most of the time, it reads like a self-help book. Even if it wasn’t the intent, his long-standing impact on music culture and unique character have made it become one — since the self-help girlies on Instagram have been posting their highlighting of quotes etc… as if any of them are creating art other than their Instagram feeds — the curation of which may be art, but you’d have to make me a believer. It is a useful platform to share art though, so it’s murky. So is everything. As is life. And so it goes. (Look at me ripping off one of my favorite authors/artists — I’ll do it again, probably on March 11, 2024 but my math might be wrong — I’m so utterly lost now..)
The Story of Philosophy gives a bit of a drive-by through history and its biggest philosophers; details about their life, the context in which they created, and some major ideas. It’s not really the same as reading them, but it helps see who you might want to dig into more.
As I mentioned, I was trying to get out of bed this morning, but I was also plotting what I’d write about. What I had been hoping to get to was to say that Francis Bacon’s creation, the “Scientific Method” is a good bar for delineating philosophy and self-help. That philosophers, at least as I see them, try to get to objective truth, even if they aren’t or can’t use the scientific method to prove things. Obviously many could not have used it when it did not exist. Whereas, self-help authors, of all flavors, try to share their truth, use their experience and research to help do something — deal with tragedy, make yourself better (however you define that), etc. There is a lot more room to interpret, it’s supposed to be somewhat generic so that you can read into it and customize it to yourself, find it useful and pass it along. How to find your truth, or something.
It gets murky though, some of people’s favorite philosophers offer life advice, just look at how popular some new versions of Stoicism have become or Montaigne’s essays. (Google modern stoicism and see for yourself).
A friend of mine once said Stoicism is the male version of astrology.
I don’t fully agree, but the same kind of people adhere to it. I think the difference is that Stoicism and related fields of philosophy teach habits and ways to live your life to obtain results, whereas astrology (though I could be wrong since I know very little more than the 12 zodiac signs) is more deterministic — people, events, etc are likely to happen a certain way because of the way the universe is lined up or how they were lined up at birth. So it’s a much more external rather than internal locus of control. it doesn’t really matter, to each their own.
Conveniently, I just started reading the only article I have pulled up today for some inspiration on how to finish this week. Lo and behold, the topics reappear. Funny how that works.
“The marketplace rewards conformity over creativity, but also presents a challenge —an invitation even—to defy the status quo and carve out a niche that balks at convention and legitimately cares about the product, the user, the art vs pure spectacle and value extraction.”
Feeling inspired? Good. Go take a walk, think up some ideas, create something, and enjoy your week.
Ending note: I made octopus from scratch tonight and it went well. First time’s a charm! We watched the Grammy’s during it, utter trash. But at least Karol G won one.