
The lost hope of self-help - samclemens
https://aeon.co/essays/when-did-the-self-help-movement-lose-its-ethical-seriousness
======
mbrock
This is becoming a common theme in critique of "self-help." See also the
charge against the mindfulness movement that it neglects the allegedly
important ethical principles of the religious context of its origins.

I think the reason these critiques don't really work is that they aim at
symptomatic expressions and look past the difficult cultural problems at the
root... which is kind of ironic, it seems to me.

Alisdair MacIntyre's _After Virtue_ , the 1981 "revival" of virtue ethics, is
quite relevant. He starts by asking why discussions of ethics today end up as
mere clashing subjective claim-making and position-taking, and he traces that
back to the "failure of the Enlightenment project of justifying morality."
Then he goes on to advocate an Aristotelian view of virtue as excellence in
the context of life narratives within traditions and societies.

So the fact that people don't seek out ethical advice to personal problems
might itself be a symptom of deeper cultural changes. For an anecdotal
example, I never have an obligation to report to a boss by 10AM, because I
work for companies that don't have such structures. I have a hunch that most
people who tend to read self-help books about habits work in such unstructured
situations.

~~~
themodelplumber
> I have a hunch that most people who tend to read self-help books about
> habits work in such unstructured situations.

Yes. I do this and am self-employed. I developed a measurement spreadsheet for
daily/weekly satisfaction and eventually figured out a good way to keep
negative outcomes in check. A lot of it involves being very protective of my
time and forcing balance into every day.

I also used to teach artists and the really high-end artists always laughed
and said they were very organized, contrary to society's expectations of them.

------
meesterdude
It has been a long long time since I felt any article from HN was worth saving
for later. The last one was what netflix does to debug a server. Also been a
while since I commented.

The good: I've never seen habits bathed in the light of morals before. For me
at least, it has resonated. It's also an interesting exploration of the
history, and how it's changed in tone.

The bad: It's a bit lengthy, and some of the more obscure references seemed
unnecessary in delivering the message, and only served to quench the thirst of
academics.

Still, if its at all a topic of interest or relevance, it's by no means
garbage or fictionary; and I certainly derived value from it.

------
DanielBMarkham
I wanted to like this.

I liked the review of the history of habit-improvement thinking. The problem
is that I felt we wandered too far afield in historical trivia not supported
by the thesis, which although it was repeated at the top and bottom of the
essay, could have used a lot of support in the rest of it.

It's fun riding around in a bus looking at cool sights. But an essay gives us
a destination. The sights we see are part of a journey from where we started
to our goal, proceeding in some kind of self-consistent narrative order. This
felt more like riding around in a tour bus where the guide calls out one
random piece of trivia after another.

Having said that -- and I realize it was harsh -- I could see the structure.
It was in there. The author just needed to turn up the contrast a bit.

~~~
talles
Yeah, I felt that too. The citations are very interesting but they don't hold
up together, the author don't go anywhere.

But for me the Principles of Psychology excerpt alone made it worth reading.

------
nefitty
I see a distinct difference between habits like smoking, a choice which
doesn't make a person bad or good but affects their life in practical ways,
and habits like charitable giving, which do have repercussions in terms of
that person's moral character. There is a spectrum of morality that we each
inhabit, our place on it not necessarily affecting our effectiveness in life.
At the extreme ends, like being a psychopathic killer on the bad end, or being
a person who surrenders the entirety of their surplus time and resources
toward charitable causes at the good end, does have a major practical effect
on an individual's effectiveness in life. This moral spectrum is a bell curve,
with most of us falling toward the middle, wherein morality plays almost no
significant part in our life. A person can live their whole life without ever
flirting with the edges of this curve, and still be a well-adjusted member of
Western society.

The crux here is that in a rationally-minded, secular culture, those moral
habits become idiosyncratic choices, pursued by each individual within the
context of their community. When a person steps up into a cosmopolitan, world-
citizen mindset, relative morality suddenly seems like a massive failure on
humanity's part. Some then don the drapery of the moral absolutist, either
searching for or consciously choosing a moral lens with which to view the
world.

If my comments above mean to convey anything at all, it's mainly that the
planet is slowly becoming one community. Habits like being punctual, following
traffic laws, eating a healthy diet, don't necessarily need to have a moral
aspect. They simply need to help the individual fulfill a functional role in
this interconnected world. That individual may also coincidentally discover
another dimension to their behavior, the moral axis, but that plane is much
more open to interpretation and less easily measured(tracking being an
overarching fetish in the self-help world). I can tell you how punctual you
are by looking at your timesheet, but I can't objectively tell you how good
you are by measuring how many thank-you notes you wrote this year. I think it
is disingenuous to expect the self-help industry to tackle the moral aspect of
behavior and expect it to succeed in any meaningful way. I would love to see
that book written, in a non-alienating, non-judgemental tone, but I suspect it
an impossible deed, an idealistic fool's errand even.

~~~
mbrock
I don't know of any other forums to discuss this stuff, other than philosophy
seminars that I'm not invited to, so... what do you think about this?

The polarity between relativism and absolutism in morality is going to end up
totally irrelevant, since it leads to nothing but squabbles and more
confusion. It's not a productive way forward to try to decide which of those
extremes is best, because they each have irreconcilable stances, and they both
ultimately come down to arbitrary decision (either "because I feel this way"
or "because the ultimate ineffable authority says so").

Even the new school of quasi-objective morality, á la Sam Harris, seems to
fail to be convincing, inspiring, or even as rational as it wants to be.

I think a realistic approach to morality should start with the question of
what people actually care about. What values exist, in the actual society that
I could conceivably influence? How does a person become respected, what
motivates people, what appeals are possible?

I have no influence over, say, Saudi Arabian Islam, except for maybe through
some secular channels... Actually, the recent article about the global appeal
of metal music was interesting. If there is any ethical content in the metal
community, which I hypothesize that there is, then it could end up being a
kind of covert channel for values...

I'm reminded of the story of the Velvet Revolution, which ended Communist
Party rule in Czechoslovakia without violence... and which was rooted in a
story that involves _The Plastic People of the Universe_ , an obscure
experimental rock band inspired by the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa, and
Captain Beefheart.

> " _The Plastic People were ultimately a major catalyst to the overthrow of
> communism in Eastern Europe. History would most surely have been very
> different without them._ "

[http://www.furious.com/perfect/pulnoc.html](http://www.furious.com/perfect/pulnoc.html)

Um, I'm heading for work and don't have time to think up a coherent way to end
this. But a lot of my thinking is influenced by Richard Rorty's _Contingency,
Irony, and Solidarity_.

Just one more random speculation: the focus on "habits" subtly inforces a
morality of stability. People who emphasize habits probably aren't going to
say that the primary ethical injunction is to dismantle the existing
structures of oppression. And you could argue that self-help, including
mindfulness and much of psychology and psychiatry, has a stabilizing function
within the capitalist system of labor.

~~~
rdancer
_> I don't know of any other forums to discuss this stuff, other than
philosophy seminars that I'm not invited to_

You may like
[https://www.reddit.com/r/debateanatheist](https://www.reddit.com/r/debateanatheist)
or
[http://www.reddit.com/r/debatereligion](http://www.reddit.com/r/debatereligion).

~~~
mbrock
Thanks! I'm not really interested in debating pros and cons of religion vs
atheist though. It's not easy to find a serious discussion that can
acknowledge the truths of both sides... maybe I need more friends who are
sociologists or anthropologists.

~~~
fluxquanta
>It's not easy to find a serious discussion that can acknowledge the truths of
both sides

That's because we're not conditioned to debate for the sake of debate anymore.
We debate for as long as it takes for the other side to get mad enough to stop
talking to us or use personal insults or violence.

Probably one of the most enjoyable experiences in the past 10 years of my life
was staying up in a Waffle House until 4 or 5 in the morning debating whether
or not an afterlife, any afterlife, exists, with a friend of mine from college
that I hadn't seen in years. Neither of us "won" the debate or changed our
minds, but we sat there (with our cell phones off) just coming up with ideas
to try to sway the other person.

~~~
mercer
I used to attend a meetup that was specifically about discussing 'big' things.
This would include philosophical questions, but also things like 'discipline',
'motivation', or 'work / life balance'.

We had only two real rules. One: listen to each other and exchange viewpoints
respectfully, so no (or only minimal) discussion centered around arguing or
convincing the other of your viewpoint especially when the topics are
sensitive (religion, for example). And two: keep things somewhat personal, and
avoid purely abstract philosophical talk.

In regards to the second (often contested) rule: the personal exchange makes
the conversation relevant, promotes friendship and group bonding. On top of
that it makes the meetup accessible to shy people or people who are not too
into abstract debates (and who, interestingly, often occupied the crucial
roles of creating group cohesion and continuity!). It also avoids getting into
arguments because a supposed abstract viewpoint turns out to be more personal
than the parties involved thought. Those kinds of arguments happened
surprisingly often when we broke the rule. Furthermore, the abstract /
philosophical debates would inevitably happen after the meetup with the people
who enjoyed that kind of thing, and the personal conversation greatly enriched
even the abstract stuff that would come later.

I can highly recommend anyone who likes 'deep conversations' to join such a
meetup or even organize one. Everyone involved in my meetup expressed how much
they enjoyed, even needed this meetup in a sea of superficial social meetups
and bar talk (which is also nice, just not enough for many of us).

If you happen to live in The Netherlands, hit me up!

------
jokoon
I'm currently doing a Behavioral Cognitive Therapy with a psychiatrist.

Usual rule of thumb: let a professional, which holds enough scientific
baggage, and a trained eye, help you for this. Psychology is already quite
shallow as a science, so I wouldn't use a book.

~~~
mobiuscog
How do you know that the professional is interested in helping you rather than
regular money ?

Perhaps a cynical question, but perhaps one reason why the less expensive book
route may be oft considered ? With everyone advertising to solve your
problems, how do you decide who to trust ?

~~~
jokoon
Well I'd agree to buy a book that is thorough in its science, but how do you
really know its science is good enough? Same problem. Should I extensively
read scientific literature on the subject, or should I just read books that
are close to being mumbo jumbo, since it's aimed to be read by non scientists?

A psychiatrist is someone who had extensive education in psychology and
medicine, who I can talk to. That's a little easier to sense things when
you're face to face with somebody. It's much easier that way, just like it's
easier to learn a complicated subject by asking questions instead of reading
many books.

I guess you're right, I could read a book on the subject, but I'm a little
skeptic...

------
blorgle
I have been an avid reader since a young age and around the time I turned 15 I
discovered and quickly became scornful of self help books.

However, one self help book which I recently discovered and completely changed
my life is "Rewire your brain" (ISBN: 0470487291) which offers explanations of
many things from a neuroscience perspective and includes some practical
anecdotes etc.

I would recommend it to essentially anyone, and all I could think while
reading it was "why is this book not mandatory reading for all humans?".

FWIW.

------
ff_
TL;DR: 'habits books' market is huge. Then the author goes through a looong
comparison in the recent literature and sums up what every author says.
Conclusion: differently from the past, in modern times there isn't basically
any moralising tendency when teaching about breaking habits, and this is
worrying for the development of society, or maybe not.

~~~
jessriedel
Highly useful.

I'll keep saying it: HN should have a short abstract (aka tl;dr) attached to
each article, written and updated by user submission like comments. Maybe
minimal GitHub-like version control with pull requests accepted by vote.

The abstract would be more valuable than comments, so accepted modifications
could get extra karma.

~~~
mkrfox
Some of the better subreddits require a "submission statement," which is
pretty much this.

~~~
jessriedel
Neat. I'd never seen this. Some links in case others are interested:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introdu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/3yh1ll/introducing_submission_statements_for_news_and/?sort=new)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_poli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/1p4gqg/new_policy_for_truereddit_submission_statements/)

Note that there is no support by the reddit software, so this just shows up as
regular comment and can't be edited by the crowd. I'm still impressed that
enough folks have recognized the value of the general idea. (Too often, asking
for a tl;dr is considered ADD/low-class/impatient/etc.) And it also emphasizes
that this could be useful not just to save time, but also to keep article
quality higher, if submitters are required to justify the intellectual value
of the submission.

