
Improving Ourselves to Death - kawera
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/improving-ourselves-to-death?currentPage=all
======
trowawee
I'm a little frustrated at the tossed-off reference to Plato and Aristotle at
the beginning - "The good life may have sufficed for Plato and Aristotle, but
it is no longer enough." \- because I feel like that ignores the fact that
both Plato and Aristotle, along with a lot of philosophers, actually had a lot
to say about physical fitness. Plato was a champion wrestler, and both he and
Aristotle viewed physical education as a fundamental component to living the
good life. Xenophon quotes Socrates saying this:

"For in everything that men do the body is useful; and in all uses of the body
it is of great importance to be in as high a state of physical efficiency as
possible. Why, even in the process of thinking, in which the use of the body
seems to be reduced to a minimum, it is matter of common knowledge that grave
mistakes may often be traced to bad health."

The whole article feels a little too mired in presentism, and ignorant of the
history of self-improvement ideas.

~~~
coldtea
> _Plato was a champion wrestler_

And the name Plato is a nickname -- meaning "the broad/wide one" given to him
for his broad shoulders because of that training and physical appereance. Real
name: Aristocles.

~~~
kernelbandwidth
It's funny to consider that one of the canonically great philosophers in
history is known essentially by the equivalent of his WWE wrestling name. It's
like if in the future there were classes taught on the philosophical ideas of
"The Rock".

~~~
coldtea
Some other amusing related stuff: so, Plato, was called for for the ancient
greek word for broad/wide.

Modern english words that stem from the same root: plateau, platitude, plat,
plate -- via French and Latin (plattus) from Greek (platis "flat, wide,
broad").

------
the_greyd
Very Interesting read. I'm someone who has been reading some self-help
literature for the past year. Topics include Mindfulness, Buddhism, Stoicism,
Social skills, Positive psychology, Habit forming, Assertiveness. I'm in my
early 20s, and I justify this phase as un-learning the coping mechanisms/bad
habits I formed in my childhood/teen years. Well intentioned but highly
critical parents damaged my self-esteem; I also suffered from loneliness. And
self-help books have helped me. I don't see myself continuing to regularly
read as much self-help as I grow older. But I think it's important early on in
your life trying to unlearn bad habits and learn good ones.

~~~
mziel
There's a lot of very bad pop-sci books on this topic. Do you mind sharing the
ones you read and recommend?

~~~
beat
It's not "self help", but anything by Alan Watts will help you think of "self"
in a very different way.

And again, not self-help, but I love recommending _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ ,
by Matthew B Crawford, for reconsidering your relationship with work and
finding joy in your career. The full book is worth reading, but this essay
link gets the gist of it.

[https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-
so...](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft)

~~~
stinkytaco
I'll offer a dissenting opinion on the book. I read it, enjoyed it, but
thought "this should just be an essay". Then I found the essay and feel it
communicates the essential point.

~~~
skrebbel
I mostly stopped reading non-fiction books because of this. You have to
wrestle through seven chapters of introductory bullshit because the author
gets to the point, just because a blog post doesn't sell for $20.

I wish there was a culture where good essays _would_ actually sell for $20.
Something with a "perceived value per word" review score maybe.

~~~
mziel
I find the same thing even with critically acclaimed "Thinking Fast and Slow"
or "Power of habit". On the other hand sometimes blogposts may not be
exhaustive enough. IMO roughly 60-100 pages is the perfect format – you don't
need to overly simplify the topic (like in blogpost, newspaper article) but
you don't need to repeat yourself 10 times over (like in 300-400 page book).

------
jcadam
tl;dr - I made it about two paragraphs in before I started skimming. It's a
rambling an uninteresting rant against the self-help industry, which ends with
a recommendation for another self-help book. I fail to see what point the
author is trying to make.

What is life but a struggle to become the best person one can be? And who
cares if the quest kills us? We're all going to die anyway. What else were you
going to do with your short life?

I can't say I'm familiar with this "self-help craze", as the author calls it.
The only "self-help" book I've ever read is _How to Win Friends and Influence
People_ \- an oldie which I can recommend.

~~~
thwawaywaq23498
> tl;dr - I made it about two paragraphs in before I started skimming. It's a
> rambling an uninteresting rant against the self-help industry, which ends
> with a recommendation for another self-help book. I fail to see what point
> the author is trying to make.

An essay of this length should communicate something that is not necessarily
digestible into a single point. In fact, it's arguable that a good essay
cannot be summarized into a single point, and that the entire article needs to
be taken as a whole before the full nuance of what it's attempting to convey
can be understood. Sometimes "the point" is difficult to articulate and that,
in my opinion, is something to be desired across all artistic forms.

I see this sort of criticism on the internet very often, as if people expect
writers to create digestible, elementary essays that they can only vaguely
engage with and still walk away with something to agree or disagree with.
Personally, I demand more of both the writing I read on the internet, as well
as myself.

Not to defend this particular essay too hard, but the conclusion does the
exact opposite of recommend another self help book. Literally the final
paragraph is the shrugging off of self-help books entirely.

~~~
goodroot
I agree with you, poster. I'm baffled as to why you felt you needed a throw-
away, though. If you don't think you can speak in earnest within this
community, it probably isn't healthy for any of us to be here.

Back to your point, though, I think that the mark of an effective essay on the
Internet is whether or not it drums up interesting conversation. This one has.

~~~
jcadam
> I agree with you, poster. I'm baffled as to why you felt you needed a throw-
> away, though.

I know, this isn't a political topic, we should be able to have a reasonable
discussion :)

In any case, I like a good long-form essay on occasion - this one definitely
failed to 'hook' me in the intro.

------
RobertRoberts
I know I will likely catch a lot of downvotes for this, but I found the
teachings of Jesus to answer questions of how to run life. As well as the
Proverbs of the old testament, and many other scriptures.

Seek and you will find. When I get stuck, I found in the past I would look for
excuses on why something isn't working, or why is this happening to me, or
when will this end. But when I started to actually "seek" I always found an
answer. It may take time and effort, but I always found it.

It's like smoking, drinking or drugs. If you want those things, you seek them
out until find them. Why not do the opposite? Seek a way to change how you
feel about them.

This worked in my family life too, I was very tired, and I blamed one of my
kids for something (he actually did it, but I was brutal in my accusation) he
fired back and we started fighting. At the end of the fight, I was angry
because he couldn't admit his error. Despite this, I sought an answer in my
mind and heart on how I could have changed the outcome. Me, not him.

I was so angry, even hurt by his disrespect, but I kept looking and looking.
Then it hit me, a very obvious answer, if I had talked to him quietly, he
would not have fought with me about how I treated him.

I found an answer. Then I applied it. I told him I was sorry for accusing him
so harshly, and that I should have come to him more reasonably. That was it. I
couldn't change what happened, but I got to replay the event halfway. A while
later he came to me and acknowledged his own error, but I didn't demand this
of him.

Seek an you will find is a generic answer though, as you can seek things that
are bad for you as well. But then wisdom must come into the picture no matter
what.

Once you have studied enough self-help stuff, you will find that distilling
them down, they all end up in a similar place. Change yourself, you have
control over this, and it will change your life. Just be careful what
guidelines you use to change by.

~~~
taneq
TBH, and I say this as a pretty staunch atheist, Jesus sounds like he had a
lot of his shit sorted. Most of what I've read about him is just him being
fair and advocating respect of everyone involved.

~~~
hodgesrm
Between about 1000 BC and 0 AD it seems as if humans worked out how to get
along in life. I'm on your side in following Christian scripture but I think
you can use any of the major texts that emerged during that time and get
reasonable results.

In fact my main beef with self-help programs is that they tend to regurgitate
a lot of basic lessons that already exist in ancient texts in cleaner and more
direct forms, such as Matthew chapters 5-7 in the New Testament (aka the
sermon on the mount). I certainly found this to be the case with the type of
new age precepts that seems to be popular in training classes for corporate
employees.

~~~
walshemj
Have you read any classical history ? Thucydides records death camps in his
history of the peloponnesian war.

~~~
hodgesrm
It does not follow that people necessarily behave, even when they know better.
We still have that problem today.

------
ThrustVectoring
The underlying problem with a lot of folks isn't that they aren't productive
enough. They've got plenty of trait Conscientiousness - working hard and
getting things done isn't the problem.

The problem is pairing it with too much trait Agreeableness. If you can easily
work hard and you easily say yes to other people's demands, you'll _always_ be
busy sating the insatiable hunger for more work at your expense. The solution
isn't to become a better worker, though there's plenty of advice for how to do
that. The fix is to learn how to avoid doing things not in your interest.

For fairly obvious reasons of self-interest, there aren't many people out
there telling you to look out for number one. Especially for people with self-
interested and highly authoritarian parents that taught their children to live
up to a high standard and not push back against their demands.

------
0xcde4c3db
> Duckworth doesn’t think you need talent in order to become, as another of
> Duhigg’s books puts it, “Smarter Better Faster,” and neither do any of these
> other experts. According to their systems, anyone can learn to be more
> efficient, more focussed, more effective in the pursuit of happiness and,
> that most hallowed of modern traits, productivity. And if you can’t, well,
> that’s on you.

The thing that really gets me about self-help stuff (and a lot of clinical
psychology, for that matter) is that there's very little consensus about what
actually works, yet the followers of any given approach are generally pretty
quick to blame you if their preferred method doesn't work for you. In the face
of a failed attempt, a goddamned laundry list of previously unspoken caveats
and requirements appears to "explain" how you failed the method rather than
the method failing you.

~~~
adamsea
I dunno about the no-consensus thing. It's kind of like saying "there's very
little consensus about how to do frontend development with javascript." Well,
perhaps in one sense, but in another sense there are some obvious paths
(proven frameworks whether Angular, React, Vue, etc, proven and well-
documented patterns/approaches - SPA, REST, etc), best practices, and things
to avoid. And context matters, of course. When would it not? Surely life is
not less complex than software development.

A couple things which I believe there are consensus about, at least within the
clinical psychology field:

Exercise is the most obvious thing that comes to mind. And getting into
nature. And meaningful relationships.

Cognitive behavioral therapy generally seems to have good results.

Meditation.

Coffee is good for you (just kidding, that one flips back and forth every
week).

~~~
0xBA5ED
I choose to believe coffee is good for me on faith :P

------
stinkytaco
Here's a related article some may find interesting if you like this one:
[https://www.theawl.com/2011/04/inside-david-foster-
wallaces-...](https://www.theawl.com/2011/04/inside-david-foster-wallaces-
private-self-help-library/)

It's about the writer David Foster Wallace's annotated self-help library. I
think it's fascinating to see the energy with which someone who is brilliant
consumed low-brow self-help literature.

Alas it seems like it did not work in the end.

~~~
byproxy
When you're in such a bad spot you'll look to anything for a way out.

------
tvanantwerp
Most critiques of "self-help" books ring hollow if you've actually read any of
the lampooned works. I feel that authors of such critiques are mostly trying
to make themselves feel superior to those hapless plebs who are ready to throw
themselves prostrate in front of this year's fad guru.

Count me on the side of the plebs. I've read numerous "self-help" books,
including many of the ones named in this piece. And nearly all of them have
useful information that has aided me. I recognize myself as deeply flawed. I
would be a fool to _not_ look for information on how to deal with that from
those who have learned something about it. Are there charlatans with bad
information? Sure. Does that mean I should disregard everyone with something
potentially useful to share? No.

------
goodroot
> Knight, who favors the shouty, super-caffeinated tone of a spin-class
> instructor, calls herself a “bestselling anti-guru.” She is particularly
> proud of the best-selling part, and it’s easy to see why her approach
> appeals. The phrase there is nothing wrong with you takes up two full pages
> of her first chapter.

...

> Then the book became a best-selling sensation. Brinkmann now lives the life
> of a successful European public intellectual, appearing on TV and radio and
> travelling the world to lecture “on the big questions of modern life.”

...

I agree with the sentiment of the article. I find it interesting from a meta-
analytical perspective, too. As the above quotations demonstrate, even when
aware of the sinister, deep nature of the hamster wheel, the author
perpetuates their own forebodings. The pattern is being unable to see value or
usefulness without highlighting the material end; do we want to stoke the
fires to encourage more of the same under a different brand?

There's some reference to the Stoics, aye. That's a good place to start. I'd
suggest this book: The Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
([https://www.amazon.ca/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-
Stoic/dp/01953...](https://www.amazon.ca/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-
Stoic/dp/0195374614))

One of the secrets the Stoics have uncovered, I believe, is to practice will-
power so that we can identify and resist craving. Simply saying "stop it", or
"re-think the system" undermines the reality that billions upon billions of
dollars and our smartest minds are, at this very second, applying our most
advanced technologies to further expand this soul-less, insatiable machine
which we've created.

------
gallerdude
I think there’s a major distinction between actually improving yourself, and
posting about improving yourself. One is true self improvement, the other is
insecurity.

------
mikeokner
_> 2017 was a pustule of a year, politically and personally; the general
anxiety around the degradation of American democracy made it hard to get much
done._

If you're the type of person to make excuses for your lack of personal
achievement due to the Twitter ramblings of politicians, then I have news for
you: you're never going to be successful.

------
jonbarker
Productivity as a term reminds me of collaboration. Just like collaboration
isn't teamwork, productivity isn't <fill in the blank here>. Haven't figured
out the analogy yet.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
productivity isn't progress

~~~
jonbarker
Good one thanks. I was thinking achievement but progress is better.

------
voidhorse
I think part of the issue with the self-help approach is that it's trying to
solve a problem that results from changes that are systematic and fundamental
to the way humans live, and thus which need to be solved at the level of
civilization, not the level of the individual.

In other words, individuals can mitigate the effects of these structural
changes for themselves, but probably not ultimately resolve them.

While our shift to more or less utilitarian principles and capitalism has
yielded large gains in increased production and higher quality of life, we've
lost a great majority of the social structures, practices, and institutions
that used to infuse life with meaning.

I've been reading a great deal about this recently in the work of Georges
Bataille--when you contrast archaic forms of civilization with our own, some
of the differences are striking--while we have much better living conditions,
our ancestor's lives were generally much richer in structures that produce
meaning (ritual, religion, monarchy, family, village...), and I think humanity
is still struggling with their loss. Batialle points out how the biblical
phrase "man does not live by bread alone" is really a truism about humanity,
whether or not you're religious.

Replace "bread" with "material" and you largely have uncovered the problems of
modern society--if you examine your familial and personal relationships you'll
recognize that, subversively, so many of them are still attached to the
acquisition and expenditure of material and are necessarily subordinate to
economic mechanisms, and that pretty much all of man's meaning today is
reducible to some form of accumulation, quantity, and possession (i.e. getting
'likes' on facebook--even in the digital world, the metaphor is material and
centers around accumulation of a phony resource). Man desires sovereignty, but
when he reduces himself to nothing more than a means (i.e. a thing that
produces and acquires) and builds all his relationships around this principle,
he doesn't actually share in any sovereignty--he makes a mechanism of himself.

I think this sort of dynamic is at the root of a lot of contemporary
individual unhappiness.

If you take your time with it, reading philosophy will often yield many
insights that I find help one not only grow as a person, but better understand
one's being in the world. Actually, philosophy was really the original form of
self-help for the ancients--only more effective, because it had attendant
belief systems and thus was a set of practices suffuse with meaning (i.e.
isms, stoicism, platonism, etc.--self-help books generally don't provide an
'ism' and ultimately don't provide a framework for maneuvering through the
world, but rather provide ad hoc techniques which crumble quickly when not
predicated on an underlying system for understanding phenomena). Old
philosophical self-help wasn't merely a collection of tips on how to make your
way through capitalist, isolating, hyper-technical systems without offing
yourself--which is really what most (NOTE: NOT ALL) 'self-help' amounts to.

------
0xBA5ED
The author sounds a bit defensive. She's portraying self-improvement as
robotic self-optimization. What she's really doing is pointing out that there
are "get x quick" schemes for self-improvement, just like every other thing.
Big surprise!

------
TrinaryWorksToo
I've been reading happy by Derren Brown and really enjoying his take on how we
keep thinking in stories and put us as the hero, when no such story exists,
and failing often means very little if you think of it as a positive outcome

------
platz
Tldr: quit your job and move to an island nation with savings & income from
your harvard-educated husband; it's much less stress inducing!

