Are Americans obsessed with self-help? I, along with most of the non-American world, would say yes. Americans seem undoubtedly preoccupied with the idea of self improvement.
Before I go any further I have to make it clear that I am in no way suggesting that making in effort to improve on an area of one’s life is a foolish or pointless endeavor. Quite the opposite: I think that it is very important and beneficial to try and learn new skills, improve on the ones we have, strengthen our memory, improve reading comprehension, discover new hobbies or simply get better at something. However, there comes a point when this ideology goes too far and can actually become harmful.
If you go into an American bookstore one of the largest sections, possibly the largest, will be the section on self help. Why is this? Are Americans putting less value in literature, history, poetry, and humor, or is it that the need to make oneself smarter, handier, and thinner takes precedent over these? Countless books have been published outlining the steps to lose fifty pounds in three days, to create the perfect happy family, or to make everyone in the world think you’re just the nicest most capable person who ever lived.
While it is not necessarily harmful to want to know how to do these things ( however grandiose they may seem) the process of achieving them might be. Americans have this compulsion to complain about life and how terrible it is and how they need to change things up and try to make it better. This is the problem with living in a very individualistic society- we are too focused on ourselves and we develop the “I” complex. The words “we”, “us”, “our”, and “they” leave our vocabulary. We begin to use the singular more and more often. Everything becomes about us. Problems, complications, difficulties, and inadequacies all surround “me”. We begin to say things like, “I need to do this…” or “I need to do that…”, or “My problem is… blah blah blah”. This gets very tiring very fast to those who have to listen to these unending lists of complaints.
Sometimes when listening to people who are like this we just want to grab the by the throat and yell at them. We want to scream “Yea, that does suck, but unless your going to suck it up and do something about it, please shut up!”
Self help it seems only helps to fuel these attitudes. We are constantly coddled by books, videos, articles, and talk shows that tell us that nothing is our fault and that if we just dig deep enough, and buy enough of these products, we will be able to pave our own way to happiness. This can be more harmful than we realize. Maybe instead of sitting around and complaining about our lives and then buying books and videos in an attempt to rid ourselves of the causes of these complaints we should just get up and do it ourselves.
I know what you may be thinking: If we could just get up and solve things ourselves then why aren’t more people doing that? It’s a perfectly valid question. That’s exactly how people had to solve their problems before YouTube and Oprah and, to me at least, that method appears to be more effective and rewarding.
Again. I’m not bashing people who have genuine problems that need a lot of work to solve, but if you’re going to sit there and spend days wondering how to make your life happier you probably won’t find the answer from a self help program alone. It is important to remember that while these programs may help for a little while, they are rarely a permanent solution to any problem.
I definitely agree with you that people are starting to put a greater emphasis on themselves and their own needs before others and their community and this could turn and is already becoming a large problem. With everyone looking out for just themselves, who’s going to be there for those who don’t have the ability to do so? I guess in that sense this is where things such as youtube or Oprah or self help books come in handy. I find that there’s been a lot of glorification, especially by young girls, on the internet about being mentally ill or having self harm or body issues. From what I gather they feel like it makes them seem more “beautiful and fragile”. Instead of having self help books that only generate more of a selfish attitude, maybe there should be more books on helping others or helping a community as a whole. When people stop acting a selfish, i’m sure many of these problems will cease to exist.