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Friday, May 16, 2014

Why "Self-Help" may have been founded to Condemn, not Help

The self-help industry often been attributed as a source of inspiration and useful principle for many people. But I have raised problems about it, that it is sometimes being used to condemn people to the point of harming them at times. That's what I theorized in my article about The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

Napoleon Hill, writer of many 'self-help' books;
but was this part of an industrialist plot to quell worker dissent?


The Secret itself is a refurbishing of what is often called MagicalVoluntarism, the belief that as long as people will for something strongly enough, it will be magically be 100% certain success for them, whether they take action or not. In other words, they will get what they want and life will be easy as long as they want it hard enough ("focus your mind" or "work hard enough"). This actually panders to people with sense of entitlement and may actually have the effect of making people more mendicant, covetous and arrogant rather than responsible.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Are adults who collect toys immature?

I'm sure you've heard observations about toy collectors and scale model makers: "he's a grown-up, but he's still playing with toys!"



I and a number of adult men are toy collectors. We buy and collect things that only little children are expected to love. Thus, toy collectors, and even scale modelers, are thought to be acting like little children and are considered to be morally deficit.

I'm afraid this is not true, however.