Self-help nation

Still, the particular conditions of late capitalism have added a new twist to the fantasy of self-creation. The current permutations of self-help reflect what McGee sees as a crisis brought on by the movement of women and minorities into the workplace. She points out that the "self-made man" (an idea traceable all the way back to ancient Greece) was never really that; the unpaid labor of a mother and usually a wife helped "make" him, and he often benefited as well from the underpaid labor of servants and others prevented by skin color or class from enjoying the same opportunities. Now that all those previous unpaid and underpaid workers are demanding their own shot at the brass ring, it's become painfully apparent how impossible it is for individuals to really make it all by themselves. At bare minimum, someone still has to teach us to walk and talk.

No wonder, then, that child rearing and the roles of mothers stand at the center of so much controversy. What Salerno dislikes about the self-help industry is that it makes some people feel entitled to more than they can get and it permits others to shirk personal responsibility. What McGee sees as the problem with self-help is that it deceives us into thinking that we can function in complete independence, that every problem in our lives can be addressed as a purely individual challenge. Child rearing (and to a lesser degree caring for the sick and elderly) challenges this notion because it's both essential to the survival of humanity and proof positive that everybody needs somebody sometime.

For centuries, raising kids has been the unpaid work of women. Now that they have the chance, if women instead choose to invest their time and labor in the kind of self-cultivation -- networking, overtime, maintaining a marketable appearance, acquiring new skills -- essential to survival in today's unstable, loyalty-free workplace, you can hardly blame them. They're only doing what every shrewd "self-made" person is supposed to do. In defecting from the home they're also unwittingly demonstrating that the American ideal of rugged individualism is a big lie. No wonder career women make conservatives apoplectic. Nowadays, those women who do decide to donate their time to rearing their children can count on little job security and the decay of their employability. Rick Santorum likes to complain that "radical feminists" devalue stay-at-home moms, but it's really the free market that treats their contribution as worthless (or worth only the pittance paid to childcare workers).

As shrewd as McGee is at teasing out the anxieties underlying our makeover fantasies, her views on the possible solutions are founded in an unexamined quasi-Marxism. This makes them seem as elusive as the promises of Tony Robbins and his ilk. Throughout "Self-Help, Inc." she evaluates all self-help trends on the basis of how likely they are to lead to "progressive, even radical" political activism. Perhaps, she suggests, the inward-looking little communities formed to follow 12-step programs can be encouraged to agitate for "economic justice" and the "redistribution" of resources and opportunities?

Like a lot of academics, McGee seems to think that the general public is merely ignorant of the principles of socialism and, if properly educated by more informed persons like herself, will surely see that their best interests lie in this direction. This is the sort of well-intentioned but disastrously patronizing attitude that whips red-staters into a frenzy of Bush voting. Many of these citizens do crave a counterforce to the brutality of the marketplace, but they prefer to seek it in church and a retreat to "traditional values." The old ways of life, to their mind, provide at least some emotional security. Socialism they see as thoroughly discredited, a proven recipe for deprivation and oppressive bureaucracy.

McGee has the sense to insist that activists ask themselves "why people have embraced self-help groups -- what do they get there that they don't get in political organizations?" What she fails to consider is the possibility that those organizations have yet to articulate a coherent, alternative and post-socialist vision of society that's sufficiently appealing to lure people away from the siren song of capitalistic individualism. Many people look at the ever-widening gap between rich and poor in this country and think to themselves, Hey, it's a great time to be rich.

As Salerno points out, a motivational speaker who tells all 250 members of a sales staff that with the right attitude every one of them can be the No. 1 salesman is obviously promising the impossible. No one laughs, though, because at that moment, sufficiently pumped up, each candidate believes she's talking only to him. Commentators like to say that self-help speaks to the American faith in the Protestant work ethic. But perhaps what it really taps into is the same impulse that makes poor people waste their dollars on lottery tickets.

Our reckless inner gambler tells us that if we have to choose between a drab little portion of guaranteed security and a long shot at a big, glitzy jackpot, we'll take the chance at winning big. Losing might leave us broke, but the giddy hope of striking it rich, of achieving Life Mastery, of becoming highly effective and having it all is just more exciting than the sober vision of a society whose resources are doled out equitably. Anyone who, like McGee, wants to see the American masses mobilized on behalf of economic justice will have to change this aspect of our national personality. By comparison, Tony Robbins' famous stroll over that bed of hot coals looks like a cakewalk.

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