Self Help Nonsense, Goop for men, Trump

                                   Modern Thinking

An antidote to most modern self-help books?

…Whether Seneca, or Nietzsche, Victor Frankl or Rowe, Watts or Oliver Burkeman (The Antidote), or most recently Jordan B Peterson (12 Rules for Life), these thinkers all say much the same thing. Stop pretending. Get real.

It is not easy advice. Reality – now as ever – is unpopular, and for good reason. But the great thing about these self-help books is that, while giving sound advice, they are clear-eyed in acknowledging the truth: that happiness is not a given for anyone, there is no magic way of getting “it” – and that crucially, pursuing it (or even believing in it), is one of the biggest obstacles to actually receiving it.

Such writers suggest the radical path to happiness comes from recognising the inevitability of unhappiness that comes as a result of the human birthright, that is randomness, mortality, transitoriness, uncertainty and injustice. In other words, all the things we naturally shy away from and spend a huge amount of time and painful mental effort denying or trying not to think about.

Alone, Thomas Stuart Smith (1813-1869) 
Photo Credit: The Stirling Smith Art Gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

Peterson perhaps puts it too strongly to say “life is catastrophe”, and the Buddha is out of date with “life is suffering”. Such strong medicine is understandably hard to take for many people in the comfortable and pleasure-seeking west. And despite what both Peterson and the Buddha say, not everyone suffers all that much.

Some people are just born happy or are lucky, or both, and are either incapable of feeling, or fortunate enough to never to have felt, a great deal in the way of pain or trauma. They are the people who never buy self-help books. But such individuals, I would suggest (although I can’t prove it), are the exception rather than the rule. The rest of us are simply pretending, to ourselves and to others, in order not to feel like failures.

But unhappiness is not failure. It is not pessimistic or morbid to say, for most of us, that life can be hard and that conflict is intrinsic to being and that mortality shadows our waking hours.

In fact it is life-affirming – because once you stop displacing these fears into everyday neuroses, life becomes tranquil, even when it is painful. And during those difficult times of  loss and pain, to assert “this is the mixed package called life, and I embrace it in all its positive and negative aspects” shows real courage, rather than hiding in flickering, insubstantial fantasies of control, mysticism, virtue or wishful thinking.

That, as Dorothy Rowe says, is the real secret – that there is no secret.

(Tim Lott, The Guardian, 2019)

Happiness – unhappiness. Pleasure – suffering. Self-control – rashness. Success – failure. Conflict – stability. We all will experience variations of these, and other, mental and emotional states. That’s what part of life is.

Goop for men

The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, Richard Dadd (1817-1876)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

Great news, guys! Goop for men is finally here. That’s right. Goop’s founder… Gwynnie Paltrow has expanded her lifestyle website to include bloke-related stuff within what she calls “the wellness space”. A detoxed scrotum and the chance to spend £600 on a limited-edition jumper woven from specially bred Tibetan monk’s armpit hair cannot be far into any of our futures.

…Only the other day I was telling my wife I needed a new way to become even more self-obsessed while spraying thousands of pounds up the wall. Where better to look for advice than GP’s Goop? She’s into coffee enemas, getting deliberately stung in the face by bees to improve her complexion – if that’s what the “bee sting facial” is … but what of Gwynnie’s offer to us chaps?

Well, judging by the initial ads, advice and articles, as usual she’s bang on trend. I’ve been searching high and low, for instance, for somewhere I could spend $525 (about £415) on a cashmere hoodie made in Italy. Now I know where to go, I can chuck out that warm, comfy Gap item whose risible £19.99 price tag is a source of nagging embarrassment. I reckon I need some “bullet” ear buds for another 300 or so – dollars or pounds, I can’t remember; I’m sure they’re keenly priced either way.

As for the advice, as Gwyneth always says, “we all wrestle our own shifting paradigms. We all want to grow and be present in our lives,” and as I wrestle my own shifting paradigms …I particularly needed to know how best to team Korean-inspired bulgogi sauce with grilled cauliflowers and now, thanks to Goop, I do!

…The Gucci tie clip at $1820 (about £1400) caught my eye. Bit pricey, perhaps, especially for a man who wears a tie twice a year and then never with a tie clip…

My favourite entry on Goop’s new men tab, is the diary from some doctor fella and friend of Gwyneth in Pittsburgh detailing his morning health, fitness and hygiene regimen. This guy, Will Cole, gets up at 5am and spends the next two and a quarter hours exercising, showering, pampering, preening and getting dressed before leaving for work at 7.15 in his Prius. He doesn’t even have breakfast. Instead he makes himself a packed lunch of something called pesto-zoodles with vegan nut cheese.

That all sounds absolutely wonderful and what’s more, entirely realistic. It’s how I intend to live from now on.

(Robert Crampton, The Times, 2019)

May I join you Robert? Besides the cashmere hoodie and the Gucci tie clip, I really need to grow and be present in my life, wrestle my own shifting paradigms and gorge on grilled cauliflowers covered in bulgogi sauce.

Books

The Case for Trump - Victor Davis Hanson                 

Girl Reading, Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)

Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

The Case for Trump is a limited book, a flawed book, but a decent stab at explaining what no one seems quite able to explain in all the snide and snippy media coverage of Trump and his White House: why is he still there? Why do many Americans still support him? And why does he have a decent chance of being re-elected.

…Hanson is at his best on the media. One of the nightmare features of the Trump era has been the ability of this president to turn sober, thoughtful journalists quite mad. Hanson writes of “journalists neurotically obsessed over all imaginable interpretations of every Trump sentence, often to the point of becoming far more unhinged than was the object of their vituperation.”

…There are sound reasons why people will vote for him again. The Trump administration has overseen an economic boom…”In October alone, the economy added a quarter million new jobs, including one thousand manufacturing jobs a day. Unemployment still held steady at 3.7 percent, the lowest peacetime jobless rate in a half century.”

(Justin Webb, The Times, 2019)

If the American economic boom continues why wouldn’t Trump get a second term?