In recent years, as I developed some form of maturity about life from a philosophical perspective, it occurred to me that the entire success of self-help as a sub-genre of non fiction is predicated on the neoliberal principle if you want, you can or if there’s a will, there’s a way.
Tragically, life has taught me that focus, determination, ambition, plugging at it, and rarely giving up are not directly correlated to one’s success. In fact, in many, many instances, they have no correlation and your next job is down to luck. Education and ambition are nothing at all without the third key element, which is opportunity. Some may be sitting there thinking that if you are determined and ambitious, you will create more opportunities for yourself. Yes, that is true. But do not expect that your class, genre, race won’t play a part because they absolutely will.
Still unconvinced the world is unfairly random? I know of someone who is at Dignitas right now and by the time tomorrow morning will tick into brunch time, he will be no longer. He is forty, and has two tiny little children. He has been devastated by cancer.
Think that the people of Gaza can get themselves out of their predicament simply by wanting to and applying themselves harder? To what? Think that Dan, who has a GoFund Me page open following a redundancy, can turn his life around simply by trying just a little bit harder? He has spent the past two weeks going door-to-door asking people whether they need their lawns mowing.
Self-help isn’t useless. I have plenty of those books, very many of which have been of great support in several ways. But bettering oneself through self-help is a privilege that not many people have. Self-determinism does not take into consideration that the universe is cruel and chaotic, that cancer is impossibly democratic, and that we do not choose where we are born or what we are born into.