Self-Help Guru, Heal Thyself

ARUL MANI

I LOOK BACK on my misspent youth with wistfulness. Mine was a youth spent fine-tuning the old radar till it could identify people who had pimped themselves out to an idea so badly that they had turned into crashing bores: droning on about Religion, Marxism, Ayn Rand, Pink Floyd and Zen till the sound of one hand clapping had been achieved — mine, going at my own forehead. In retrospect, I see that I’ve run from that biodiversity of boredom into a present where practically everybody is a slogan whore. What the devil can you say to people who swish “Follow Your Dreams” or “Live Your Personal Legend” at you like they’ve got hold of the latest in light-sabres? Nothing, unless you want to be told that you must “give more positive vibes”.

Nabokov coined the word ‘poshlust’, to denote “not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever and the falsely attractive”. This sort of imagination has sneaked to victory everywhere, resulting in the smugly formulaic replacing individual expression. For evidence, I point to the burgeoning self-help shelves, and the fact that schools, colleges, and various babudoms spend good time groaning and burbling while they emit visionand- mission statements. The public anguish last year over the departure of one President and the arrival of another is further evidence. The difference between them is that only one inflicted god-awful poetry and vapidly feel-good writing on the public. To my horror, that seemed to be a point in his favour.

To the casual observer in deep space, the earth will no longer reveal itself as a pale blue dot but as a heaving gob of porphyry. The reason for this empurpling isn't geology or global warming. It arises from the fact that pap is the new religion, and Paulo Coelho its pope; from our fondness for celebrating those who offer us ageless bodies and timeless minds and a million other forms of mumbojumbo as a substitute for less spectacular things: good sense and independent thinking. •