I have a distinct memory of an admired author recalling his own sages, emploring him to never write a book unless you absolutely had to. Why, then do I hear so many “authors” in modern times cobbling together and churning out a deluge of autobiographies and how-to manuals on life? Why is it that on the shelves of the bookstores, I see copy after copy of nameless authors telling me how I can make a name for myself? I mean really if we look at the swaths of purported self-help books, they are little more than resumes of the authors, cleverly masqueraded behind soulless clichés, big words, and unconditional positive regard. Who is it they are helping again? Given that it is a $10.5 billion industry that has shown steady growth since 2013 to the tune of 11%, somehow, I lean against the direction of this sophistry. The late comedian George Carlin had a great stand-up bit wherein the humor lay in the glaring etymology behind the language:
If you’re looking for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else? It’s not self-help. That’s help. There’s no such thing as self-help. If you did it yourself, you didn’t need help. You did it yourself. Try to pay attention to the language we’ve all agreed upon.
I think Carlin also properly articulated the treasured Zen story about the nature of waking and enlightenment. Let us compare the two:
Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
Life is not that complicated. You get up, you go to work, you eat three meals, you take one good shit, and you go back to bed. What’s the fuckin’ mystery?
And everybody thinks their story needs to be told, don’t they? What is rarely considered in that nascent approach is Who would want to read my story? Everyone is so busy making a name for themselves that they forget the essence of the word sonder1 - that everybody else is too, man.
In my experience, people want to hear a story that makes it their story. A true work of art manifest in oration or on paper draws the audience in and as we read the story the words lift off the pages and cease to exist. In their wake the reader becomes enmeshed in the vision of the author insofar as there exists a dance between the two of them: someone articulating the very ubiquitous emotions and experiences through their unique flavor of dictation - and the individual receiving the vibrations of that communication, making their own intimate connections and weaving together a tapestry of their own subjective experience. This is how my story becomes your story, which is in turn OUR STORY.
It is that very thing in which the mark is so often missed.
Self-help books, like mission statements, tell you the plan of action as to how to get there. They highlight the path as a means to an end, endlessly dangling a carrot of “sick and tired of being sick and tired” in front of their consummate consumers. See that’s the scam… the 10 steps to success presuppose the path is something that must be bested and conquered and changed and tailored to make it to the finish line, your final form. It covertly tells us that everything we are today is merely an opportunity for what we could make it into tomorrow. Sounds catchy right?
The point I’m trying to espouse here is that it’s a bait and switch. They sell you on the promise of tomorrow, so you’ll keep buying their shitty books today. The thing is that it never delivers because you are buying books on “How to Be Yourself” written by someone who only wants to tell you about themselves. From their curated perspective, generating more impossible standards to meet.
Let us not soon forget the adage: seek out those who search for the truth but flee from those who claim to have found it.
Or this one: “You know the problem with you? You don’t know who I think I am.” These people have no clue who you are! They have never met you. They don’t like you. They know nothing about you. They don’t care about your kids, your sex / life partner(s); they don’t even like your dog. And like every politician that promises they are your buddy, their bullshit honeypots their way into your pocketbook for your vote and for your dollar. Again. And again. And again. They want your fuckin money, man!
Publishers and their legions of - soon to be AI-Unemployed - thanks ChatGPT - book writers know fear responses, behavior patterns, and reward centers. But they can never know what is in your head nor presume what you need.
And that is why you cannot franchise self-help. Mindless platitudes come from nowhere because they don’t mean anything. Words on words. Taken to their logical conclusions, those articulations that would conveniently fall into sound bites – what the dominant culture absorbs in unfettered saturation – do nothing but get the targeted audience riled up and feeling ways about things, but with not a clue as to what to do with those emotions. Maybe go buy something…
We live in a time where we are being sold to like no other. With the advent of implantable devices such as Neuralink, the hard work is being diligently performed to erode the last bastion of freedom that may soon exist; your mind.
So in the spirit of transparency. I don’t know what you need. Fuck, I don’t know what I need most of the time. Other than for you to buy this book.
That one I certainly need.
There are no solutions in this book though. I am not trying to sell you solutions nor convert you to a certain way of thinking, only some ideas and thoughts I would like to share. I fancy myself a scholar and an entertainer. That is what I have to offer you.
I cannot tell you how to get there any more than anyone else because that which claims to be the Tao or to know the Tao is not at all The Way2. Think of it more so as one who points the finger in the direction of the thing. The quiet spaces. And in those spaces, like picking out the constellations in the sky, we glimpse through space and time and look back upon ourselves and say “Well now isn’t that curious?” And that is just the beginning…
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
-The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
-Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.