You refer to “the same problem that something like every self-help / hippy / human potential movement since the 60s has run into”, but then don’t say what that problem is (beyond gesturing to a “4-hour-long propaganda film”).
I can think of a number of possible problems that all such movements might have run into (or might credibly be thought to have run into) but it’s not obvious to me which of them, if any, you’re referring to.
Could you either clarify or be explicit that you intended not to say explicitly what you meant? Thanks!
[EDITED to fix a misquotation that made it look like Anna wrote something ungrammatical; sorry]
Sorry. I don’t have a good short description of the problem, and so did not try to say explicitly what I meant. Instead I tried to refer to a 4-hour film, “Century of the self,” as trying to describe the same problem.
I may come back later with an attempted description, probably not a good one.
Thanks. I am, realistically, not going to watch four hours of propaganda (assuming your description of it is accurate!) in the hope of figuring out what you meant, so in the hope that you will come back and have at least a sketchy try at it I’ll list my leading hypotheses so you have something concrete to point at and say “no, not that” about.
It turns out that actually it’s incredibly difficult to improve any of the things that actually stop people fulfilling what it seems should be their potential; whatever is getting in the way isn’t very fixable by training.
“Every cause wants to be a cult”, and self-help-y causes are particularly vulnerable to this and tend to get dangerously culty dangerously quickly.
Regardless of what’s happening to the cause as a whole, there are dangerously many opportunities for individuals to behave badly and ruin things for everyone.
In this space it is difficult to distinguish effective organizations from ineffective ones, and/or responsible ones from cultish/abusive ones, which means that if you’re trying to run an effective, responsible one you’re liable to find that your potential clients get seduced by the ineffective irresponsible ones that put more of their efforts into marketing.
In this space it is difficult to distinguish effective from ineffective interventions, which means that individuals and organizations are at risk of drifting into unfalsifiable woo.
As someone who has watched “Century of the Self” I’d guess it’s more along the lines of
What people want is not what they need. People don’t need much help to self-improve in ways which are already consonant with their natural desires and self-image. So any safe and effective self-improvement program would be a nonstarter in the free market because it would immediately repel the very people who could benefit from it.
Fair enough. FWIW, I found the movie good / full of useful anecdata for piecing together a puzzle that I personally care a lot about, and so found it rewarded my four hours, but our interests are probably pretty different and I know plenty who would find it empty and annoying.
On reflection, I shouldn’t have written my paragraph the way I did in my parent comment; I am not sure what trouble something-like-every self-help thingy has run into, I just suspect there’re threads in common based on how things look. I might be wrong about it.
Still, I wrote up my take on some of the hypotheses you listed (I appreciate that you took the trouble to list them; thanks!), and my take in general as to why we didn’t get a more formidable art of rationality. Many of the factors I list remind me of my guesses at a bunch of stuff that also happened to other self-help groups and the “human potential movement” and so on, but I haven’t researched those well and might be wrong. My take is long-winded, so I posted it blog-post style. I’d love your/others thoughts if you have them.
Seconding gjm’s reply, and wondering what can possibly be so difficult to talk about that even a 4-hour film can only be an introduction? I watched a few 20-second snippets scattered over its whole length (since this is an Adam Curtis film, that is all that is needed), and I am sceptical that the line that he draws through a century of history corresponds to a load-bearing rope in reality.
You refer to “the same problem that something like every self-help / hippy / human potential movement since the 60s has run into”, but then don’t say what that problem is (beyond gesturing to a “4-hour-long propaganda film”).
I can think of a number of possible problems that all such movements might have run into (or might credibly be thought to have run into) but it’s not obvious to me which of them, if any, you’re referring to.
Could you either clarify or be explicit that you intended not to say explicitly what you meant? Thanks!
[EDITED to fix a misquotation that made it look like Anna wrote something ungrammatical; sorry]
Sorry. I don’t have a good short description of the problem, and so did not try to say explicitly what I meant. Instead I tried to refer to a 4-hour film, “Century of the self,” as trying to describe the same problem.
I may come back later with an attempted description, probably not a good one.
Thanks. I am, realistically, not going to watch four hours of propaganda (assuming your description of it is accurate!) in the hope of figuring out what you meant, so in the hope that you will come back and have at least a sketchy try at it I’ll list my leading hypotheses so you have something concrete to point at and say “no, not that” about.
It turns out that actually it’s incredibly difficult to improve any of the things that actually stop people fulfilling what it seems should be their potential; whatever is getting in the way isn’t very fixable by training.
“Every cause wants to be a cult”, and self-help-y causes are particularly vulnerable to this and tend to get dangerously culty dangerously quickly.
Regardless of what’s happening to the cause as a whole, there are dangerously many opportunities for individuals to behave badly and ruin things for everyone.
In this space it is difficult to distinguish effective organizations from ineffective ones, and/or responsible ones from cultish/abusive ones, which means that if you’re trying to run an effective, responsible one you’re liable to find that your potential clients get seduced by the ineffective irresponsible ones that put more of their efforts into marketing.
In this space it is difficult to distinguish effective from ineffective interventions, which means that individuals and organizations are at risk of drifting into unfalsifiable woo.
As someone who has watched “Century of the Self” I’d guess it’s more along the lines of
What people want is not what they need. People don’t need much help to self-improve in ways which are already consonant with their natural desires and self-image. So any safe and effective self-improvement program would be a nonstarter in the free market because it would immediately repel the very people who could benefit from it.
Fair enough. FWIW, I found the movie good / full of useful anecdata for piecing together a puzzle that I personally care a lot about, and so found it rewarded my four hours, but our interests are probably pretty different and I know plenty who would find it empty and annoying.
On reflection, I shouldn’t have written my paragraph the way I did in my parent comment; I am not sure what trouble something-like-every self-help thingy has run into, I just suspect there’re threads in common based on how things look. I might be wrong about it.
Still, I wrote up my take on some of the hypotheses you listed (I appreciate that you took the trouble to list them; thanks!), and my take in general as to why we didn’t get a more formidable art of rationality. Many of the factors I list remind me of my guesses at a bunch of stuff that also happened to other self-help groups and the “human potential movement” and so on, but I haven’t researched those well and might be wrong. My take is long-winded, so I posted it blog-post style. I’d love your/others thoughts if you have them.
My take / my reply to your comment.
Seconding gjm’s reply, and wondering what can possibly be so difficult to talk about that even a 4-hour film can only be an introduction? I watched a few 20-second snippets scattered over its whole length (since this is an Adam Curtis film, that is all that is needed), and I am sceptical that the line that he draws through a century of history corresponds to a load-bearing rope in reality.