DISPATCHES FROM THE PIT, 2: SELF-HELP VIA SELF-HARM

                                

There is a notable glut of self-help books available today.

I’m sure that some of them are, in the main, inoffensive, and a few might even contain the odd jot or tittle of wisdom. But on the whole, the enterprise seems built upon a faulty premise: that a person can “improve” himself by reading books which instruct him concerning the alleged art of “self-actualization.”

It might be interesting to chart the development of this breed of post-modern pop pseudo-philosophy. What was the first of its kind to be published? Perhaps How to Win Friends and Influence People? Or I’m Okay, You’re Okay? Or something with a similarly egregiously eye-rollingly nauseating title?

While many of the authors of these tomes are no doubt sincere (as opposed to being shamelessly parasitic hucksters at heart), still the fact remains that they have taken money from many a credulous and vulnerable soul, casting about desperately for spiritual sustenance. By making these artful pitches to this hapless demographic, these authors have grown quite wealthy at their targeted readership’s collective financial expense.

The desire for self-improvement, to be sure, is great. The need to feel valued and significant is real. The author who spins the best pitch, hits all the right notes, and expertly strikes all of the most pertinent and germane heart-buttons within the chests of his marks…. no doubt has much to gain. 

Even if such an author is truly motivated by a desire to help people, he nevertheless ends up exploiting them for his own benefit, whether that was what he meant do, or not.

Self-help, then, amounts to a kind of racket, regardless of whether its practitioners are complicit as racketeers, per se. They take advantage of a conspicuous compulsion on the part of many to improve their lives, to become self-actualized, etc. Perhaps some readers have even managed the feat of legitimate self-transformation through reading this material: it is not for me to say that the books themselves are valueless, insofar as the goals touted within such works are indeed worth striving for.

Instead,  I take the view that the entire notion of “self-improvement” is itself a sham.

That is, seen within a wider context, the idea of “self-help” is itself built upon a spurious premise: that the “self” is a thing which ought to be “helped,” that if only “help” were applied, one would find himself snapped back into place, like a properly re-tuned musical instrument, again able to achieve the maximum degree of happiness possible in life.

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But… man is not this sort of instrument. Man is a misfit. Man is broken by nature. He is “insistent out of tune.” He consistently wants what is bad for him, and only shuns that which would assist him in becoming his best self. He is prone to “toss yonder like a rind” that which would bring him salvation, and at the same time, to avidly court his own destruction. Man cannot change… unless it be through torment.

Therefore, self-help can only come about through self-harm.

It would be wonderful if we could carefully cultivate our better natures through diligent reflection and concerted effort. Alas, such an outcome cannot follow from such a determination.

True: one can make certain strides. And if one’s goal is worthy, one might actually find oneself growing closer to being the sort of person one wants to be… until it becomes clear that, all the while one has felt himself to be moving forward, his seeming-forward step has in fact been inclining to the left or to the right, and as a result, he has only found himself traversing in a wide and far-flung circle, and his ultimate destination has only proven to be the point where he began this futile journey.

Self-help, to be sure, only accrues through self-harm. A person becomes whole only by suffering, which causes him to become still more broken in his brokenness. He finds his way only by making himself more horribly lost. He assists himself only by hurting himself.

None of this is to say that I recommend doing anything that I will mention in forthcoming dispatches concerning specific methods of self-harm. These missives are not intended as a blueprint to “proper” self-injurious behavior, or an endorsement of any given methods towards this end. Instead, it is a recognition of the necessity of abandoning all hope for self-help as a prerequisite to the task of truly--and enduringly-- helping oneself.

 Seppuku: The samurai's ultimate method of self-harm (not endorsed or recommended)

Andy Nowicki is the author of A Final Solution to the Incel Problem, Ruminations of a Low-Status Male, Confessions of a Would-Be Wanker, Meta-Pizzagate,  and numerous other works, both fiction and nonfiction. His author page is www.altrightnovelist.com