Self-help me Please

Have you ever wondered why one of the biggest sections in any bookstore is the "self-help" aisle? What is this curiously North-American phenomenon, and why do so many Americans feel that they need this help?

I don't think that most people purchasing these books are acting on a whim akin to buying the latest infomercial miracle product. While most people don't follow through on their desires to "get help," I believe that they are initially acting on a natural human state: they know they both desire and deserve to have better lives, and some part of them is desperate for change.

To anybody caring to look, North America is both a wonderful and a tragic place. Wonderful, because we are still the land of opportunity. Tragic, because we have created social structures, media structures, and interpersonal structures that stifle the great American drive.

The great American/Yankee spirit was one of individualism and innovation: if you couldn't make your mark in the urban world, you were encouraged to pack-up and head for the open West. In this time, the government greatly subsidized such ventures. Individualism was seen as a boon to the nation, not a danger.

On a personal note, I bring up the arts as an example of this social hypocrisy. Everybody loves movies, music, television, and perhaps other forms of the "fine" arts. Most parents, however, have no problem watching the Oscars with secret admiration, yet chiding their child when they announce their interest in theater. Some lucky children are allowed to engage in high-school-aged artistic pursuits, but are then pressured into "stable" and "realistic" career paths.

Every year this happens, our nation grows dumber and duller.

Every year that young people are discouraged from the natural individualism born of their adolescence, America grows slowly weaker.

Every year we grow weaker, the "self-help" industry grows, reacting organically to our very real human needs.

I will suggest that for all of the charlatans parading miracle cures, there is a genuine need for the self-help industry. Its very prolific existence is simple proof that in our land of opportunity, something is certainly going awry.