Impersonal Development
The best selling books nowadays, by far, are not on literature, science, religion or art, but on personal development.
And the people who bought the most personal development books with titles such as Choose to Become, The Book of Secrets, The Ecstasy Brain, All in My Time are middle-aged men. It’s about people who want to become better, more attractive, more talented, who realize that they are missing something, but all this after 45.
Many don’t have a religion, have lost it along the way, have ignored it or are unsure of the one they have, are divorced or on the verge of divorce, out of work, close to retirement or in a job they are fed up with, and because of this all the previous ideals seem useless.
It’s a very strange and interesting phenomenon. In the past, men in such situations went to the priest, to
prostitutes, found mistresses, became monks, or simply took to drinking heavily. If they managed to keep this pace up to 60–65 years old, the business went smoothly until about 80–90 when it would suddenly stop on a sunny day, and everything became quiet and peaceful…
Today they still do so, but now it seems that some have a new activity going on intensily: reading… They read the ideas of others about what they feel, and follow their instructions. That is, for this category of men, someone else has to tell them what they think and what they should do. It’s like they’ve lost the ability to hear their own thoughts, or even to think for themselves, and they need someone else to hold their hand.
These men read lessons about how to get out of the deadlock, about how to find their way, peace, reconciliation in the easiest and safest way, instead of looking for it on their own, by their own strength and with the help of their own experiences, which should not be few at that age. After all, how much experience do you need to live?
It’s good for publishers, obviously, but I don’t know how well it is for the person himself who accumulates so much crazy stuff inside.
I also started to read more after 45, mostly literature and history, and I am very satisfied with my “teachers”. If you don’t learn from other people’s experiences, real or made up ones, then where else can you learn from?
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I personally find literature much more didactic and instructive than all the books where authors tell you directly what to feel and how to live a better life, to be happy. Because those are actually quack doctors who don’t even realize that they are defective. Some manipulators with good intentions, at most.
The human soul is not an organ to play with, to give your opinion about, to which you recommend treatments randomly, taken from the Internet. No one knows what’s in there yet, and it’s a big risk to give it drugs without knowing what effect they have. Because that’s actually what those books are, some medicine, some dietary supplements for losing weight, fattening up, or maintaining the soul. And it’s not ok.
Obviously, all motivational book topics are tempting. You want to become a better person, more successful, to exploit the capabilities received from nature to the maximum, to feel the “guaranteed” ecstasy, right? You not want to be satisfied with yourself, to heal your wounds, to know success, the find ultimate love…
Literature books, on the other hand, art films, music, art in general are the best medicine for the soul, because they never give you a direct answer to your questions, a solution to your problems, they present your life as it is, only from other perspectives, and you according to your ability to understand, to to feel, which can never be improved by any book or drug, will learn something from each one and become better than before, better and better. Art teaches you in the most honest and effective way, it adapts according to the body, the soul that perceives it. There are cases with which you will certainly resonate, from which you can borrow the much-desired solutions.
Nothing but the experience of others will show you the path to follow. The lives of others, their feelings you empathize with, their ideas complete your mental structure.
Because of personal development books and motivational movies we find robots all over the world
that speak and behave like in the books, have strange behaviour, change suddenly from one mood to another because they remember the teachings from those books, express ideas that are not their own, speak in phrases, in quotes which are somebody else’s.
Many people take up sports, make a regular exercise program, eat according to the calendar, ticking off
lists taped to the fridge door. They believe that life can be rationally organized because the “experienced” authors in the non-fiction books they read say so.
Not so, those authors are only successful as authors, as people they are certainly like the rest of us. They just give advice, they don’t follow it. They’re like those experts who confidently teach you how to trade the stock market and get rich, but they don’t do it themselves, or if they do, they’re no different than a newbie. Life is all about having guts, about inspiration, about courage and madness, and these come from nature, you can’t learn them, you can’t practice them. You are or you are not, you have them or you don’t.
As for the so-called “mid-life crisis” that many mention as a terrifying thrashold, it’s just like any other turning point in life, and its approach depends exclusively on the individual’s innate ability to cope with borderline situations, with changes. Everyone’s psychological and mental structure is such a solid edifice, with a foundation so deeply embedded in history, that it is impossible to change, and revelations and miracles never happen, much less on command.
