Oooh, wait until you turn 40 and the whole world decides that being 40 is a criminal act that must be concealed at all costs. God forbid you look your age! To me, this isn't even self-"improvement", who decided that looking younger is necessarily always an improvement? I prefer my current appearance to the one I had in my twenties, when I had acne from still eating dairy, hadn't figured out what to do with my hair, and didn't know how to dress. I remember reading something along the lines of asking yourself, when you feel like you're not good enough and need to self-improve, "who profits from this emotion?" I think that's brilliant. This so-called "self-improvement" is another capitalist trick to make us part with our money, and like you say, it's set up to make us fail and go back to spend even more.
"I remember reading something along the lines of asking yourself, when you feel like you're not good enough and need to self-improve, "who profits from this emotion?" I think that's brilliant. This so-called "self-improvement" is another capitalist trick to make us part with our money, and like you say, it's set up to make us fail and go back to spend even more."
Bravo. Here in the US we've deified capitalism. You can never limit it. You must always trust the "unseen hand of the markets". A more reasonable, healthy version of capitalism would involve a government that regulates things like unhealthy advertising, or that at least counter with PSAs on the dangers of say various beauty or health trends. Rather than simply shrugging and saying, "We can't intervene because people are making money" or something about jobs.
The bombardment becomes so relentless that you just have to step off the hamster wheel. I’m 52 and I have never been kinder to myself with the exception of my behavior towards others, which must be impeccable. Wrinkles, cellulite, hair on my mammalian body. All fine. Good luck. You are on a great path for your age.
One day, I’d like to live in that sort of future where, to quote one sci-fi movie, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
But I’ve also found beauty in the fact that the Voyager Golden Record, humanity’s calling card as it were, described us as we were at that point in time, a diverse and argumentative, but friendly race, doing all these everyday things and taking in all this everyday culture. The only part of it that got close to conveying human ambition and drive was President Carter’s matter-of-fact statement to civilized aliens, “We are attempting to survive our time so that we may live into yours.” Then there’s the overview effect that astronauts regularly experience when they are far from Earth. It enhances our cosmic perspective of the fragile yet stunning universe.
What I’m struggling to say is, it’s okay to not just rest but stargaze every once in a while; if only our society were built upon that kind of profound thinking.
Nice essay Katie! I feel for you and all women especially because the multi-billion dollar beauty and self help industries in particular are really geared toward women. Guys get away with being slobs or growing old or gaining weight/a Dad body but there seems to be more pressure on women to maintain timeless beauty. When you look at Madonna or now even Nicole Kidman with too much plastic surgery - it's kind of sad and just looks weird. But at the same time so many women buy into (literally$) the beauty consumer vibe so easily - no? There needs to be more women leaders who rebel and refuse to wear make up all the time or dress up all the time. Although the other extreme also exists in big numbers here in the USA obese, daytime pajama wearing generations. I am a High School teacher for over a decade and there are now a significant number of kids who just let themselves go physically and appearance wise. Yet I am vain and was a sort of a Dandy when I was young but now I just wear comfy jeans and cotton tee shirts again like I did when I was a kid. I have some nice clothes that I never wear that just sit in my closet and drawers. I also like to stay in shape so when I look in the mirror I like what I see. When I sleep I like the feeling of being thin - I like that bones and guts are just beneath my skin when I stretch out. It just feels good. If you look at pictures before the late 1970s - humans were mostly on the thin and in shape side, before people started getting fat and out of shape via eating processed foods and sedentary life styles with the birth of cable TV and popular video games etc. I feel like we are headed toward the WALL-E pixar film where everyone is fat floating around in chairs with screens in there faces - maybe on their faces as in virtual goggles? I won't be around thank God! God bless this human made mess!
I don't get the improvement for the sake of improvement. It seems like a waste of time. I need a goal for improvement. Like i'm trying to learn how to slow down because i got tired of the constant "running". Or an ex-friendship made me go down a psichology "rabbit hole" (due to wanting to understand how to navigate their troublesome/hurtful/draining behaviour) and i realised that i'm an enabling people pleaser. So now i'm trying to reduce the people pleasing and stop enabling people, because i have experienced what that behaviour leads to and i don't want to experience it again.
I also sort of started journaling as an exercise of expressing my thoughts in written form (as i tend to have a bit of hickups there and stuff takes a lot of time to write). And my "journal" is just noting something that happened that day. This also made me a bit more perseptive of the present, because i'm also looking what to write in that days entry.
And technically, i'm constantly improving due to just doing thing without the goal of it being improvement. Like by reading books i'm improving my grammar and vocabluary. But i'm reading not to improve grammar or vocabluary, but because i enjoy reading. Improvement is just a side effect.
It might be a factor of me being a sheltered man, but it wasn't until fairly recently in my life that I understood that women grew hair on places other than their heads. So when they talked about shaving their legs and armpits...I was confused.
This self-improvement attitude has also extended to film and television production in Hollywood, specifically the relentless and overblown resurrection of older known properties at the expense of funding innovative new ones. There is a relentless devaluing of film and TV as art and more of a focus on presenting inoffensive filler material to fulfill stock quotas, not unlike how the products you speak of are made and marketed to consumers. The fact that the same shareholders and investors are involved in both sets of companies, and their remote neglect of the products' actual intended usages, has a lot to do with this.
I was late teen when i realised that women shaved their legs, even though i am a woman. The ads of women foaming hairless legs and then sliding somethi g to remove the foam didn't make any sense, i thought that it was just some kind of cleaning method akin of using soap.
I think i was gender/sex blind and just thought that bodyhair grew for some people and didn't grow for other people. When my hair started to grow - i just thought that i belonged to those to whom bodyhair grew.
Its tricky, because when saying im okay i dont need to improve, you risk not seeing your mistakes that you gonna do. I am more inclined into accepting the defeat and the fact that im gonna be really ugly if i turn certain age.
I loved this! Very Schopenhauer of you to think that the collective effort should be put somewhere else, rather than chasing what won't ultimately make us any happier.
I had no idea how much self help was influenced by Judeo-Christian principles, but this still doesn’t take away the urge I feel to do. To be better, to do more. I’m afraid I may never reach a point in my life where my happiness isn’t dependent on finding another flaw to fix.
Have you read Real Self Care by @poojalakshmin ? I think it speaks to much of what you're saying here. It helped me reshape my beliefs around what exactly needed to be "fixed" and what self-care truly is/should be.
Oooh, wait until you turn 40 and the whole world decides that being 40 is a criminal act that must be concealed at all costs. God forbid you look your age! To me, this isn't even self-"improvement", who decided that looking younger is necessarily always an improvement? I prefer my current appearance to the one I had in my twenties, when I had acne from still eating dairy, hadn't figured out what to do with my hair, and didn't know how to dress. I remember reading something along the lines of asking yourself, when you feel like you're not good enough and need to self-improve, "who profits from this emotion?" I think that's brilliant. This so-called "self-improvement" is another capitalist trick to make us part with our money, and like you say, it's set up to make us fail and go back to spend even more.
So many industries would go out of business if women embraced their appearance at every stage of life.
"I remember reading something along the lines of asking yourself, when you feel like you're not good enough and need to self-improve, "who profits from this emotion?" I think that's brilliant. This so-called "self-improvement" is another capitalist trick to make us part with our money, and like you say, it's set up to make us fail and go back to spend even more."
Bravo. Here in the US we've deified capitalism. You can never limit it. You must always trust the "unseen hand of the markets". A more reasonable, healthy version of capitalism would involve a government that regulates things like unhealthy advertising, or that at least counter with PSAs on the dangers of say various beauty or health trends. Rather than simply shrugging and saying, "We can't intervene because people are making money" or something about jobs.
As someone in my early 20s I can attest to all of the aforementioned problems (except, thankfully, the acne)
The bombardment becomes so relentless that you just have to step off the hamster wheel. I’m 52 and I have never been kinder to myself with the exception of my behavior towards others, which must be impeccable. Wrinkles, cellulite, hair on my mammalian body. All fine. Good luck. You are on a great path for your age.
One day, I’d like to live in that sort of future where, to quote one sci-fi movie, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”
But I’ve also found beauty in the fact that the Voyager Golden Record, humanity’s calling card as it were, described us as we were at that point in time, a diverse and argumentative, but friendly race, doing all these everyday things and taking in all this everyday culture. The only part of it that got close to conveying human ambition and drive was President Carter’s matter-of-fact statement to civilized aliens, “We are attempting to survive our time so that we may live into yours.” Then there’s the overview effect that astronauts regularly experience when they are far from Earth. It enhances our cosmic perspective of the fragile yet stunning universe.
What I’m struggling to say is, it’s okay to not just rest but stargaze every once in a while; if only our society were built upon that kind of profound thinking.
More stargazing would do wonders for our collective mindset.
After all, it’s not possible to self-improve out of mortality.
Nice essay Katie! I feel for you and all women especially because the multi-billion dollar beauty and self help industries in particular are really geared toward women. Guys get away with being slobs or growing old or gaining weight/a Dad body but there seems to be more pressure on women to maintain timeless beauty. When you look at Madonna or now even Nicole Kidman with too much plastic surgery - it's kind of sad and just looks weird. But at the same time so many women buy into (literally$) the beauty consumer vibe so easily - no? There needs to be more women leaders who rebel and refuse to wear make up all the time or dress up all the time. Although the other extreme also exists in big numbers here in the USA obese, daytime pajama wearing generations. I am a High School teacher for over a decade and there are now a significant number of kids who just let themselves go physically and appearance wise. Yet I am vain and was a sort of a Dandy when I was young but now I just wear comfy jeans and cotton tee shirts again like I did when I was a kid. I have some nice clothes that I never wear that just sit in my closet and drawers. I also like to stay in shape so when I look in the mirror I like what I see. When I sleep I like the feeling of being thin - I like that bones and guts are just beneath my skin when I stretch out. It just feels good. If you look at pictures before the late 1970s - humans were mostly on the thin and in shape side, before people started getting fat and out of shape via eating processed foods and sedentary life styles with the birth of cable TV and popular video games etc. I feel like we are headed toward the WALL-E pixar film where everyone is fat floating around in chairs with screens in there faces - maybe on their faces as in virtual goggles? I won't be around thank God! God bless this human made mess!
That was so very well said! Thank you for talking about this subject. I, too, just want to "be."
Thank you, glad you appreciated it!
I don't get the improvement for the sake of improvement. It seems like a waste of time. I need a goal for improvement. Like i'm trying to learn how to slow down because i got tired of the constant "running". Or an ex-friendship made me go down a psichology "rabbit hole" (due to wanting to understand how to navigate their troublesome/hurtful/draining behaviour) and i realised that i'm an enabling people pleaser. So now i'm trying to reduce the people pleasing and stop enabling people, because i have experienced what that behaviour leads to and i don't want to experience it again.
I also sort of started journaling as an exercise of expressing my thoughts in written form (as i tend to have a bit of hickups there and stuff takes a lot of time to write). And my "journal" is just noting something that happened that day. This also made me a bit more perseptive of the present, because i'm also looking what to write in that days entry.
And technically, i'm constantly improving due to just doing thing without the goal of it being improvement. Like by reading books i'm improving my grammar and vocabluary. But i'm reading not to improve grammar or vocabluary, but because i enjoy reading. Improvement is just a side effect.
I find that some of the most meaningful progress happens when you're not chasing it.
One of the very valuable things I learned, and often remind myself, in a 12-step program: "I am enough, I do enough, I have enough".
That's an important reminder.
It might be a factor of me being a sheltered man, but it wasn't until fairly recently in my life that I understood that women grew hair on places other than their heads. So when they talked about shaving their legs and armpits...I was confused.
This self-improvement attitude has also extended to film and television production in Hollywood, specifically the relentless and overblown resurrection of older known properties at the expense of funding innovative new ones. There is a relentless devaluing of film and TV as art and more of a focus on presenting inoffensive filler material to fulfill stock quotas, not unlike how the products you speak of are made and marketed to consumers. The fact that the same shareholders and investors are involved in both sets of companies, and their remote neglect of the products' actual intended usages, has a lot to do with this.
I was late teen when i realised that women shaved their legs, even though i am a woman. The ads of women foaming hairless legs and then sliding somethi g to remove the foam didn't make any sense, i thought that it was just some kind of cleaning method akin of using soap.
I think i was gender/sex blind and just thought that bodyhair grew for some people and didn't grow for other people. When my hair started to grow - i just thought that i belonged to those to whom bodyhair grew.
Its tricky, because when saying im okay i dont need to improve, you risk not seeing your mistakes that you gonna do. I am more inclined into accepting the defeat and the fact that im gonna be really ugly if i turn certain age.
I loved this! Very Schopenhauer of you to think that the collective effort should be put somewhere else, rather than chasing what won't ultimately make us any happier.
Well said
Thank you!
What a fascinating examination of the capitalistic underpinnings of the self improvement culture. Thank you for this!
I hope some day you’ll re-write this title without the “What if” and the question mark.
I had no idea how much self help was influenced by Judeo-Christian principles, but this still doesn’t take away the urge I feel to do. To be better, to do more. I’m afraid I may never reach a point in my life where my happiness isn’t dependent on finding another flaw to fix.
Wonderful essay Katie.
Have you read Real Self Care by @poojalakshmin ? I think it speaks to much of what you're saying here. It helped me reshape my beliefs around what exactly needed to be "fixed" and what self-care truly is/should be.