This is the golden age of self-improvement. People can become better people in many ways. In fact, calling this discovery ‘self-help’ is like calling a doctor ‘doctor’. This may be correct but is very vague. Instead it is called ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘mindfulness’, ‘fine arts’, ‘philosophy’, ‘spirituality’, ‘creative writing’ and many such other things. I am thrilled, because many people will very soon become better people, and then they will take another course to become even better. From what I have seen around me, there are seven types of habitual, everlasting masters.
Kung Fu Panda: In the animation movie Kung Fu Panda, a bubbling panda with low self-esteem falls in love with kung fu and wants to be good at it. He is dissatisfied with the master available to him, and lives a life of remorse. But then a string of mishaps leads her away from home to a qualified kung fu master – an ancient tortoise.
I know some kung fu pandas. They are passionate fans of an art form, and they want to learn. They are looking for a guru, but become disillusioned with the gurus available to them, who are closer to home or of their own cultural type. Their low self-worth makes them feel that what is available to them or that reaches them must be worthless. They always find their master in a person who is racially different. For example, the Indian panda will find its master in an intelligent Caucasian tortoise.
Kung Fu Panda is inspired by a curse. He is of medium talent in the art which he loves very much. Not so bad that they don’t need to bother with it, but not so good that they can be great. That’s why they need a social network of useful people. Thus they are friendly and respectful, and since they are not very talented, they are dangerous, all of which leads to their initial success which they unfairly attribute to their racially-different mentor.
Devotees of the Mind: A few years ago, I visited an Israeli named Lior Suchard, who said he was “a mind-reader.” He is among those who have said that humans “use only 1% of their brain”. This means that unlike most guys, they tend to use their brains a lot, which is how they tend to spoon and tell you the name of their first girlfriend. Not many people want to consider this magic; They want to believe in the mystical nature of the mind, which is why Suchard makes a good living. Dozens of executives attended a workshop held in Gurgaon to inform corporate managers on how to use the “full potential” of their brains that giant companies pay for. 16,000 per mana for this.
The mind should be the most common subject of self-improvement. A typical devotee of the mind is a person who thinks he is a “scientist”, meaning he will believe anything that a person with impressive scientific credentials says including nonsense. As a result, if you have a ‘neuro’ in your past or present job description, you can say a lot of abstract things about mind, focus and inner peace.
But the truth is that the mind is the least understood part of the animal. What we know about the mind today is almost the same as what people knew a thousand years ago, except with today’s general acceptance that the mind is not the heart.
Game Analogy Consumer: A parable is an absurd version of a story. In one illustration, an impossible event occurs – for example, a hare and a tortoise agree to a race. And using this impossible event, the parable delivers an impossible moral message. (Still, the parables sell more than my books.) The modern parable improves upon the ancient form. In the modern parable, a true incident is used by a mentor to tell you what you can do to be successful. Sporting events are a particular favorite. For example, a man will conduct a corporate workshop on ‘Roger Federer’s Lessons in Endurance’. Or, if a dull mediocre football team wins a major tournament, there will be some seminars on why team work is more than individual talent.
There are hundreds of thousands of analog users eager to see ethical and practical messages in games that could change their lives in some way. Naturally, to meet its huge demand, sports analytics suppliers have included some of the greatest athletes who talk candidly about how others can apply their sporting methods. For example, Steve Waugh and Sourav Ganguly will be hired from time to time to speak about ‘leadership’.
Other major clients of self-improvement are The Tradition Miners, who believe in any theory as long as it is very ancient. For example, whatever Chanakya said in Arthashastra. Or some Inuit observation. But in general, the moral should not only be ancient, but also from the scriptures of the forward caste or dominant caste, which has won the culture wars.
And, there are The Autobiography Seekers. I don’t mean that they look for biographies of legends—that’s a very different market. Instead, The Autobiography Seekers are self-absorbed people who think they are looking for self-improvement, but in fact they look for stories that remind them of themselves. And, there are The Masochists, who work hard to highly rate a simple method and are skeptical of methods that are easy, painless, and enjoyable.
And, there are secret disciples, like the columnists, who appear to be teasing people who want to be better but are struggling to improve themselves. Maybe they feel that if they are secretive about something then it is very important.
Manu Joseph is a journalist and novelist, most recently ‘Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous’.
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