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FREAKING_HELP
September 2, 2009
November 5, 2009
BETH_LISICK
"Helping me Help Myself"
Beth Lisick
An overview of self-help movements of various sorts,
discussing a year that she spent investigating them.
Interesting, funny,
possibly even useful
(my ambition is to be a From my point of view it suffers a
cult-leader some day). little from too broad a focus.
The Richard Simmons stuff is
amusing, but not the kind of cult
I'm interested in designing.
On the other hand, the recurring
motifs in all of them are
good to know about:
The cult leader invariably
proclaims "I was a failure
before I discovered -- " that
doctrine they are about to share
with their good friends who
ponied up the speakers fee.
(I wonder if you push it further:
you should help make me a success,
because that will validate the
work you've put into my cult.)
A touch of sadness here and there:
Beth Lisick's humor runs along the
lines of trying to get you to Lisick is not alone here:
laugh at her tales of humilating this may be the central
experiences. Sometimes this comes motif of post-90s hipster
of as less funny than pathetic... writing...
Under no circumstances are you
to come off as pretentious, but
"look at how lame I am!" is
always allowed.
STAGGERING
There's something a little
disconcerting to me in her
intellectual adventures,
and I think it's that we
are both like and unlike.
BETH_LISICK
There's a tribe we might call
"hipster", and Beth Lisick
and I are both members of it:
She's compulsively skeptical, But there are a number of
cynical, and yet she's willing tribes I have a foot in
to admit that these different that Lisick knows not of:
self-help movements may have programmers/scientists/
something going for them. science fiction fans...
The reasoning is the same Freaks vs. Geeks?
for both of us:
I think that there's some
Showing that something philosophical hollowness that
is dorky and uncool is she's trying to fill with
not the same thing as this quest, but for me much
disproving it. of it is filled with other
things, which I will flatter
At some point, just myself by calling a deeper
dismissing things with understanding of the world.
an eyeroll begins to
seem like just a teenage Beth Lisick is by no means a fool,
defense mechanism. but she often seems insufficently
skeptical of some of the worlds
The truth, or a hint of she cruises through...
something like the
truth, may be found in At a psychic's demo, she
many quarters... insists that if the guy
was using a shill, she
A technique of reverse-snobbery; would've spotted it.
look to the uncool as well as the
cool; overcome your revulsion of That's a really dangerous attitude
the positive thinkers and see if to take: you're up against people
there's something there you can who are pros at a certain kind of
salvage, and thereby demonstrate deception. If you're an untrained
how radically open-minded you can amateur, it's grossly naive to
be for condescending to grant think you can see through every
some small degree of acceptance veil.
to members of other tribes.
There are some classic
examples of smart people
taken in by charlatans,
SUPERIOR_MAN like the scientists who
were fooled by Uri
Geller, until James
Randi showed them how
it's done.
But then, my own
"Even though my biggest fear is being conviction that I
one of those newfangled parents who possess a "deeper
overthink everything, I also understanding" can
understand that it is ridiculous to itself be dangerous.
concern myself with becoming 'one of I know the answers--
those people.' It reminds me of some or rather I know
of my alcoholic friends who couldn't more of them
face AA, even after years of unsavory than you do--
blackout drinking, for fear of being so why should I listen
'one of those recovery people.' At to your advice?
some point, you need to get over it
and get some freaking help."
--Beth Lisick,
"Helping Me Help Myself" (2009)
p 162
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