Why Growth Is Good: New Free E-Book
I'm pleased to introduce you to a collection of articles from this site that I've put together called "Why Growth Is Good: The Case for Personal Growth, Self-Help and the 'New Age'," which is available here as a free e-book. I've edited many of my posts together into longer essays, and I've also written a new introduction.
These essays have the same goal as this site -- to present a compelling, organized argument for the value of personal development ideas and practices, and respond to their critics.
This book will be great food for thought if you've ever wondered about any of these questions:
* Are there practical benefits to self-development practices like meditation, yoga, and transformational workshops?
* Does self-help advice that encourages taking personal responsibility invite us to beat ourselves up?
* Does the same kind of advice discourage us from caring about others?
* Is psychotherapy about nothing more than whining about our families of origin?
* Did too much "positive thinking" cause the recent economic downturn?
* Do people who are into self-help tend to be more selfish and less generous?
* Is there a danger that self-development practices may make us feel "too happy" and neglect problem areas in our lives?
* Do personal development ideas discourage us from getting involved in politics?
I hope you enjoy this compilation, and I'm looking forward to your feedback!
(Sponsored by http://e-library.)
Can Politics And Science Cure All Ills?
It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled, but I was inspired to write here again after my recent review, on my other blog, of Robert Augustus Masters’ Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters.
Spiritual Bypassing is about how we tend to use spiritual practice to escape from, rather than confront, our psychological wounds. One thing that particularly struck me in the book was Masters’ statement that, ideally, spiritual practice is about releasing everything in our lives from the “obligation to make us feel better.”
The point is that spirituality is certainly far from the only thing people use to “take the edge off” their pain. Drugs are another obvious example, but there are subtler and more “socially acceptable” examples as well. I regularly notice instances of what I’d call “political bypassing” and “scientific bypassing” in our culture.
To illustrate the former, some people I know came close to hailing Obama as a messiah when he was elected — looking, for the next few days, like they were in a spiritually-inspired state of bliss, and their personal tribulations were healed or at least put out of their minds. (Ironically, the same people usually scoff at the mere mention of spirituality, associating it with evangelical Christians and/or Republicans.)
Most importantly for our purposes, we can also see the embrace of political and scientific “bypassing” among critics of personal growth and spirituality.
Political Bypassing and Personal Growth
I’ve commented before on personal growth critics who basically claim — much like Marx — that the main source of discontent among human beings is economic inequality. Personal development distracts people from this issue, by encouraging them to focus on their private achievements and relationships. Thus, self-development is not only ineffective — it retards social progress.
These critics’ vitriol often obscures the wide-eyed idealism of their basic assumption: that, if everybody only had equal material resources, nobody would suffer again. No more loneliness, depression, or alienation for the human race, ever.
If the notion that spirituality can address all our “issues” is unrealistic, I think, the same can surely be said of the utopian notion that state-mandated “equality” will cure all human ills.
Scientific Bypassing and Spirituality
As for scientific bypassing, I think we can see this in the “New Atheist” critiques of religion that have been so popular over the last few years, by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. These critics say that spirituality and science/reason are in irreconcilable conflict, and we’d have a much better world if we only discarded the former and embraced the latter.
One problem these critics face is that science seems incapable of answering moral questions. Some have no problem with this, and simply deny the existence of objective morality, because “there’s no scientific evidence for it.” But this answer is instinctively unsatisfying for many people — to use a timeworn example, can we really accept the idea that Nazi medical experiments on prisoners weren’t objectively wrong?
Others respond that science can, at least, tell us what actions and policies will advance “human flourishing” — how to eat nutritiously, for example. However, these critics need to explain why our actions should serve the goal of human flourishing at all — why shouldn’t kangaroo or algae flourishing be our priority? Science can’t tell us why we ought to prefer the well-being of one species to that of another.
My point is that I think it’s important to be wary of “bypassing” — relying on one particular practice or institution to “make us feel better” — in all areas of human life. The realm of spirituality and personal development certainly isn’t the only place where this happens.
Thoughts On “Thinking For Yourself”
Critics of personal development often assert that, rather than reading self-help books, we should "think for ourselves." In fact, many critics even fear that personal growth products are actually stripping people of their ability to think independently.
"The self-help tradition has always been covertly authoritarian and conformist," writes Wendy Kaminer in I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional. "Merely buying a self-help book is an act of dependence." Similarly, literary critic Stewart Justman writes in Fool's Paradise: The Unreal World of Pop Psychology that the self-help "genre seems inherently authoritarian, implying as it does that we live and act according to sets of instructions."
These criticisms certainly make personal development sound unnervingly Orwellian. But do they make sense?
Is Advice Anti-Thinking?
It's true that many self-help books offer us advice on how to live our lives -- how to find inner peace, parent our children, and so on. But this alone can't be enough to strip us of intellectual independence. After all, books on origami, changing tires, investing in bonds, and so on also offer advice, but no one seems to be concerned that these books are "brainwashing" anyone.
Kaminer seems to recognize that the mere fact that self-help books give advice doesn't make them "totalitarian." Thus, she says she's not interested in critiquing "practical (how to do your own taxes) books." Instead, she is aiming at books with "a strong emphasis on individual, personal, or spiritual development." In other words, it's only people who give advice on personal or spiritual development who threaten the cognitive freedom of their listeners -- not those who tell you how to fix your car.
I think the trouble with this distinction is that it neglects the vast amount of advice on personal and spiritual development that writers outside the self-help genre offer. Philosophers, at least since ancient Greece and probably before, have wrestled with the question of how one ought to live. The world's religions also have pretty clear ideas about how we should develop spiritually. But I suspect Kaminer wouldn't claim that we shouldn't read books on philosophy or religion because they might control our minds.
Is Simplicity Sinister?
On some level, I think Kaminer is aware of this objection, and thus she tries to distinguish personal growth from philosophy and religion on the ground that self-help teachers' advice is overly simplistic. Personal growth books, she writes, encourage an intellectual "passivity and search for simple absolutes."
I actually agree that much personal growth advice is simplistic. I think the personal development blogosphere, for example, could stand to churn out fewer "50 Quick Happiness Tips"-style posts, and dive deeper into what really creates motivation and suffering in human beings.
However, the fact that some self-help advice may be simplistic doesn't necessarily render it sinister and manipulative, as Kaminer seems to believe. In other words, another person's mere act of offering you simple advice doesn't turn you into a mindless zombie under their command.
Suppose, for instance, you come to me with all kinds of concerns about your relationship, and I tell you that you should leave your partner. My recommendation in this example is certainly simple, and perhaps simplistic, because it doesn't address the underlying feelings and behaviors creating your relationship issues.
However, it would be absurd to claim that, merely by offering you simple advice, I've put you at risk of becoming my brainwashed slave -- just as it would be silly to argue that a book called "5 Simple Steps To Doing Your Taxes" threatens its readers' mental autonomy. You're free to accept or reject my advice -- or, at the very least, my advice won't make you any less free to do so than your current cognitive capacities allow. 
Sometimes Simple Is Superior
What's more, in some cases, simplicity is a virtue. The most complicated advice or viewpoint is not always the most helpful one. I think there are great social advantages, for example, in simple moral rules like "rape is wrong" that leave no room for exceptions. A society where people accept such a rule, I think you'd agree, is better off than one where the morality of raping someone depends on a nuanced cost-benefit analysis.
In other words, I think it's entirely possible to both "think for yourself" and read a book, or listen to someone, offering simple advice -- even if it's of the self-help stripe. What's more, the simplicity of a message alone doesn't rob it of merit.
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