Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - Help
The title of this post is far from appropriate. Help is far too general and non-specific a word to exclude any mortal self-reliant enough not to need any support from a relative or friend or even a stranger. Human beings are brittle vessels intrinsically liable to dents, cracks, and damage. We need good Samaritans to prop us up when the sinewy body reels and the soul threatens to crash in a flat spin.
What I want to discuss briefly is the enormous popularity of books on self-help since 1950 onwards. Visit any book stall and you find an array of self-help books displayed prominently. Ask the manager about the demand and the sales generated, and she will tell you how briskly they sell. Students on the threshold of the job market invariably browse through books on effective communication, body language, etiquette, general knowledge, and interview techniques that will equip them with the skills and the gumption to secure a lucrative position.
I have been, of late, on a spree of reading and shortlisting self- help books with a view to not only benefiting myself from the gems of wisdom but also recommending them to my children and their friends to develop a rounded personality. There was a time when self-help coaches used to brandish--- dynamic, powerful, confident, go-getting, all-round--- adjectives to market their products. But the latest, and by far the most optimally inclusive adjective to project a productive personality is---rounded. If you can boast that, you can carry the globe on your shoulder and douse the wildfires with a puff of your oxygen-rich breath.
Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and Norman Vincent Peale were the three magi whose books were so popular and ubiquitous, they came very close to, but managed not to outsell the Bible. I read and reread two of them very avidly. An uncle of mine made copious notes from the study, and even now, at the degenerative age of 80, urges his indifferent children and grandchildren to avail themselves of the nuggets of wisdom ladled out by the pioneers of self-help.
Most of us buy these books to offset the persistent demands of serious reading by an assortment of books on subjects like history, biography, geography, art, literature, philosophy, and fiction. You can pick up a self-help book, open it on any page and scan a paragraph or two, and replace it on the shelf without any strain. You cannot be that casual and cursory with any other subject. You can dip into the book, but you won't be able to get the drift unless the context furnishes you with the antecedents.
Are these books conducive to your improvement, growth, and self-assurance? Or do they ingeniously regurgitate what you already half-know but did not take the trouble to put it into practice? We all know the importance of courtesy, discipline, assiduity, tolerance, empathy, fairness, perseverance, gusto, and calculated risk, in our day to day living. The self-help books seek to underscore and inculcate the same-- and sundry cognate qualities--- to infuse your personality with dynamism and alacrity. Repetition and déjà vu are an unfailing aid to memory. They can also vex or irritate a sharp intellect.
Without being critical of this genre and its relative ineffectuality in real life situations, I would like to recommend two books which cogently substantiate how and why these books fail to deliver the transformative bonanza hyped on the blurb.
The first book to expose the positivity epidemic in the USA is:
Promise Land: A journey Through America's Euphoric, Soul-Sucking, Emancipating, Hornswoggling, and Irrepressible Self-Help Culture by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro. This was published a decade ago.
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Published in 2009.
A serious study of these books will pique your curiosity to investigate critically the emporia of self-help where pinchbeck and dross masquerade as pure gold. They are based on observation, experience, and research. The examples adduced to substantiate their reservations and recommendations will restore your confidence in the fallibility of human nature.
Each of us is riddled with flaws. The quest for infallibility never ends. The more we fumble and flounder, the more we struggle to regain our balance and stability.
Perfection remains a much sought-after goal, but it keeps receding as we march or limp ahead. It is better to be on the move than stagnate standstill on the wayside.
Read your self-help books with a pinch---and sometimes with a fistful---of salt for what they can give and cannot give. They are not magic bullets.
