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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
cult-leader some day). suffers a 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 -- " the
doctrine they are about to share
with their good friends who
ponied up the speakers fee.
(I wonder if you might be
able to drive this from even
earlier in the process: 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; "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
is dorky and uncool is that she's trying to fill
not the same thing as with this quest, but for me
disproving it. much of it is filled with
other things, which I will
At some point, just flatter myself by calling a
dismissing things with deeper understanding of the
an eyeroll begins to world.
seem like just a teenage
defense mechanism. Beth Lisick is by no means
a fool, but she often seems
The truth, or a hint of insufficently skeptical of
something like the some of the worlds she
truth, may be found in cruises through...
many quarters...
At a psychic's demo, she
A technique of insists that if the guy
reverse-snobbery; look was using a shill, she
to the uncool as well would've spotted it.
as the cool; overcome
your revulsion of the That's a really dangerous
positive thinkers and attitude to take: you're
see if there's up against people who are
something there you can pros at a certain kind of
salvage, and thereby deception. If you're an
demonstrate how untrained amateur, it's
radically open-minded grossly naive to think
you can be for you can see through every
condescending to grant veil.
some small degree of
acceptance to members There are some classic
of other tribes. 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
'one of those recovery people.' At listen 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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