The first self-help author would hate what the genre has become
Today’s versions are actually too much about the self
Last year, at least a quarter of the top 20 best-selling non-fiction titles fell under the umbrella we might call “self-improvement.” These books bore names like The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Strengths Finder 2.0, and The 5 Love Languages, all promising some kind of progress, whether in health, home, work, relationships, etc.
It makes sense that the modern self-help movement has been a long time coming: for ages people have been fond of both the idea of improvement and telling other people how to act. The earliest literate societies authored codes of conduct, etiquette, and morality intended to guide the audience along the path of greater virtue. Yet these standards were often thrust upon others by society or authority; rarely were they sought by the individual.
Some older volumes, like The Prince and The Art of War, have enjoyed renewed appreciation by the contemporary self-improvement market, but overall, the self-improvement genre is a product of modern life—a context where largely the freedom and mobility exists to labor and to shape oneself. And this tradition, though having some smaller harbingers, basically began in 1859, with the release of the book Self-Help, written by the affably-named Scotsman Samuel Smiles.
Smiles was a political reformer, and gave frequent lectures about his vision for improving civilization. Essential to his philosophy was the belief that to build a better society, focus should shift to the individual — not to laws or programs. He asserted that a country was tethered to its people for better or worse; a strong population would strengthen a weak government, just as a weak population would weaken a strong one. The virtues and strength of the people were of chief importance. “If this view be correct,” Smiles wrote, “then it follows that the highest patriotism and philanthropy consists … in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve themselves by their own free and independent and individual action.”
Smiles’ book was a success, welcomed by both the elite and the masses it aimed to advise. It was not surprising when those in power came to appreciate the author’s endorsement of hard work, thrift, and sobriety. But Smiles would have to do more than this to capture the minds of the average, and ideally ambitious, individual. Self-Help was not a mere etiquette book. It wasn’t only meant to instruct; it was meant to inspire. The book spoke of high achievement, examining the lives and habits of eminent men in like James Watt, Sir Walter Scott, and Napoleon. Self-Help implied that by heeding its wisdom, one could get closer to greatness. The message caught on: by the time of Smiles’s death, the book sold a quarter of a million copies, finding an extended audience in translation and the US.
In appeal and sales figures, Self-Help is indeed similar to its descendants. But self-improvement books have become more myopic, if not more cynical. Best selling titles concern exclusively personal benefits, like being productive, charming, wealthy, positive, ambitious, as well as whatever the hell Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man is about. It’s easy to note just how, well, selfish the self-help book has become. Interest has shifted away from the ambition and scope that compelled Samuel Smith to write at all: that by working on ourselves, we stand to improve the world.
At their worst, contemporary self-help books are enabled by the sort of self-regard Smiles detested. He disliked the idea of keeping up appearances, and people whose wealth or success were built upon the simple desire to get ahead. It was within the bounds of logic for people to be self-made and wealthy, he considered, and yet “quite possible that they may not possess the slightest elevation of character nor a particle of real goodness.” Personal success, the engine of the contemporary self-help machine, was not enough. Smiles was concerned both with the betterment of society and those prickly, and hard-to-advise ideals like self-cultivation and goodness of the spirit.
