Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
― Albert Camus
Introduction
According to NPD Group, the self-help industry was worth $10.5 billion in 2020 selling over 18 million volumes.
18 million volumes sold worth $10.5 billion! - yes, you read that right.
Clearly it’s a big industry with writers selling ‘help’ and others buying it.
The definition of self-help as per the Oxford Dictionary is “the use of one's own efforts and resources to achieve things without relying on others.”
In the pure sense then the ‘self-help’ genre is an oxymoron. If we are using other people’s advice to help ourselves then is it really ‘self help’?
Regardless, it seems that we all seem to be searching for something — that missing piece, the elusive ingredient that will make us feel complete, fulfilled, successful, happy, content, and at peace with ourselves.
We turn to self-help books, gurus, and programs in the hope that they will help us find this missing piece of our puzzle. That what they offer, if put into practice will make us whole.
But why is it then that despite all the reading we cannot initiate the action that we so yearn to change ourselves? Why is it that we are unable to keep the New Year's resolutions after reading them? Why do we give up a few weeks into implementing their shiny new framework?
Why do self-help books, despite the best intentions of the writers, fail to help us?
Delusions make us Human
Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.
— Rumi - Masnavi VI, 3682-87
The answer to these questions lies in the true nature about ourselves — we don’t really want to know the truth; the truth about what we are missing, what will make us whole. We ourselves are the enemy at the gates, allowing truth not to enter.
We do this because it is our own delusions, deceptions, falsehoods — lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, our friends, our spouses, and the society at large — which help us function as social creatures.
Without these delusions we would be overwhelmed by the harsh realities that often lie beneath the surface.
And thus we cling on to them in every aspect of our lives.
In our friendships, we overlook the flaws and shortcomings of our friends so we can continue the relationship:
About friends — Just think to yourself some time how different are the feelings, how divided the opinions, even among the closest acquaintances; how even the same opinions have quite a different place or intensity in the heads of your friends than in your own; how many hundreds of times there is occasion for misunderstanding or hostile flight. After all that, you will say to yourself: "How unsure is the ground on which all our bonds and friendships rest; how near we are to cold downpours or ill weather; how lonely is every man!"
If someone understands this, and also that all his fellow men's opinions, their kind and intensity, are as inevitable and irresponsible as their actions; if he learns to perceive that there is this inner inevitability of opinions, due to the indissoluble interweaving of character, occupation, talent, and environment— then he will perhaps be rid of the bitterness and sharpness of that feeling with which the wise man called out: "Friends, there are no friends!"?
Rather, he will admit to himself that there are, indeed, friends, but they were brought to you by error and deception about yourself; and they must have learned to be silent in order to remain your friend; for almost always, such human relationships rest on the fact that a certain few things are never said, indeed that they are never touched upon; and once these pebbles are set rolling, the friendship follows after, and falls apart. Are there men who cannot be fatally wounded, were they to learn what their most intimate friends really know about them?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (376)
In our marriages, we overlook the shortcomings of our partners so we can make things work:
Friendship and marriage — The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on a talent for friendship.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (378)
In society at large, we often overlook the flaws of others to maintain harmony and keep things running smoothly:
Goodwill - Among the small but endlessly abundant and therefore very effective things that science ought to heed more than the great, rare things, is goodwill. I mean those expressions of a friendly disposition in interactions, that smile of the eye, those handclasps, that ease which usually envelops nearly all human actions. Every teacher, every official brings this ingredient to what he considers his duty. It is the continual manifestation of our humanity, its rays of light, so to speak, in which everything grows. Especially within the narrowest circle, in the family, life sprouts and blossoms only by this goodwill […]The sum of these small doses is nevertheless mighty; its cumulative force is among the strongest of forces.
Similarly, there is much more happiness to be found in the world than dim eyes can see, if one calculates correctly and does not forget all those moments of ease which are so plentiful in every day of every human life, even the most
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (49)
In the company of others, we overlook our own self-deception in order to be more persuasive:
The point of honesty in deception - In all great deceivers there occurs a noteworthy process to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception, among all the preparations, the horror in the voice, expression, gestures, amid the striking scenery, the belief in themselves overcomes them. It is this that speaks so miraculously and convincingly to the onlookers. […]
Self-deception must be present, so that both kinds of deceivers can have a grand effect. For men will believe something is true, if it is evident that others believe in it firmly.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (52)
And we don’t stop there, creating fabrications about the world outside. No! Our delusions extend inside us to the very core of our identity and the very nature of our selfs:
But how can we find ourselves again? How can man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: 'this is really you, this is no longer outer shell'.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations - Schopenhauer as Educator (1)
The list of our self-deceptions is endless. We delude ourselves not just about the nature of everything around us but also about ourselves. Without these delusions, we cannot live—neither with ourselves nor with others.
Our delusions make us human. And the removal of these delusions is a dangerous task which is why Nietzsche writes that a person who embarks on the journey of self discovery:
“…proves that he is probably not only strong, but brave to the point of madness. He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
And this is exactly why the self-help books are so ineffectual: because they never try to remove our delusions. If anything, they try to reinforce them — in favor of the writer.
The Evil Hour - For every philosopher there has probably been an evil hour when he thought to himself, 'What do I matter, if people do not adopt my weak arguments too?' And just then some wicked little bird flew past him and chirped, 'What do you matter? What do you matter?'
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyous Science (332)
Fiction: the lie that reveals the truth
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
— Emily Dickinson
And therein lies the problem: if we are so deeply entrenched in our own delusions, which make us human, and which make us unable to see the truth behind things around us and thoughts and emotions within us — how can we ever hope to find out the truth?
How can we rend the veil of these deceptions, to make an attempt at knowing our true selves without risking blindness, fragmentation and possible madness?
How can we finally, and with confidence instigate action towards making ourselves whole?
The answer may lie, not in the vaunted books from the self-help genre but in a more subtle form of truth-telling; one that allows us to confront our delusions without shattering our sense of self — Literature.
Literature — “the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Literature — the lie that allows us to overcome the major obstacle in our path to self-discovery: ourselves:
The Incomplete As the Effective - Just as figures in relief make such a strong impression on the imagination because they seem in the act of emerging from the wall and only stopped by some sudden hindrance; so the relief-like, incomplete representation of a thought, or a whole philosophy, is sometimes more effective than its exhaustive amplification,—more is left for the investigation of the onlooker, he is incited to the further study of that which stands out before him in such strong light and shade; he is prompted to think out the subject, and even to overcome the hindrance which hitherto prevented it from emerging clearly.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (178)
Literature — the lie that allows the truth to seep through our consciousness, rather than being thrust upon it:
The poet anticipates something of the thinker's pleasure in finding a central thought and in doing so makes us covetous, so that we snatch at it. But it flutters past over our heads, showing the loveliest butterfly wings and yet it slips away from us.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All too Human (207)
Literature — the lie that shows us the path to the truth, without revealing it, so that we may discover it for ourselves, claim it as our own, and in doing so more effectively put it into action:
It may sometimes happen that a truth, an insight, which you have slowly and laboriously puzzled out by thinking for yourself could easily have been found already written in a book; but it is a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself.
For only then will it enter your thought-system as an integral part and living member, be perfectly and firmly consistent with it and in accord with all its other consequences and conclusions, bear the hue, colour and stamp of your whole manner of thinking, and have arrived at just the moment it was needed; thus it will stay firmly and for ever lodged in your mind.
— Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms - On Thinking For Yourself (4)
Literature — The lie that allows us to maintain our cherished self-deceptions while simultaneously illuminating profound truths. Truths which we can then adopt as our own, not as someone else’s, and which then gives us a better chance at instigating action which we so desperately seek.
Literature can do what the ‘self-help’ genre can only hope to achieve.
The year of reading Novels
Parables of the Real
I've called that Unlimited Beneficence a garden,
because it's the source of all abundance
and the gathering of all gardens;
and yet, it's "something no eye has seen":
how could one ever call it a "garden"?
Yet God called the Light of the Unseen "a lamp."
Parables are offered so that one who is bewildered
might catch the fragrance of that which is Real.
— Rumi, Masnavi III, 3405-3407
Last year was a big year in reading fiction as I recapped in my post A Year in Reading. I hardly read any non-fiction, if any at all, in the first half, with the latter half occupied with poet-philosophers and non-fiction by fiction writers.
This is normally not how skewed towards Literature by reading list is. But I could not help myself despite trying to return to history, philosophy, memoirs and other non-fiction genres.
I believe it was because I was I was captivated by the inner turmoil of the characters as they grew and their delusions and self-deceptions were gradually shattered. I couldn't stop reading about their journeys of self-discovery and the painful process of confronting the truth about themselves and the world around them
I believe it was because I could not stop reading about the turmoil the characters in these novels were thrown in as they grow and their delusions and self-deceptions are shattered one by one.
In Tolstoy’s War & Peace, Pierre Bezukhov realizes that his search for meaning was deluded to begin with. That the meaning he was seeking all along in his attempts to get married, being part of a secret society, participating in war and plotting the murder of Napoleon was all futile. That what he sought the whole time in fact lay, in fact, right underneath his nose, masked by his delusions. The reader is left wondering why it took him so long to find what he was looking for?
In Austen’s Emma, the eponymous character, possibly one of Austen’s most deluded protagonists, realizes through her failed matchmaking attempts, which end in heartbreak, misunderstandings, and social embarrassment, how deluded she has been the whole time of not only the world around her but of her own capabilities. Her journey provokes the question why she was so deluded to begin with and her ending leaves open the question whether she has completely grown up.
In Gogol’s Dead Souls, Chichikov, the ambitious and morally suspect protagonist, suffers with similar self-delusions, where, despite all his attempts, he is unable to find success and unable even to understand the basic ingredients of success until he catches a glimpse of insight in the characters of the hardworking Murazov and Kostanzhoglo towards the end of the novel. And even then the readers are left guessing whether those insights have really pierced through his delusions or not — whether like Emma and Pierre he has finally matured or not?
In Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer, the young and idealistic heroine, finds herself tricked into a loveless marriage with the manipulative Gilbert Osmond, despite the warnings of everyone around her, as a result of her delusions. She continually misjudges people for what they are and we are left wondering the prism through which she filters facts — why can’t she see the intentions of her antagonists which her friends and family so clearly see?
In Cervantes’ Don Quixote, possibly the most popular novel of all time, the reader cannot help but wonder why Don Quixote cannot see things clearly despite his ever faithful squire Sancho Panza trying to tell him otherwise each time?
But perhaps the most self-deluded characters, characters whose delusions are the death of them, can best be found in Dostoevsky’s novels. Unlike Pierre, Emma and possibly Chichikov, there is no redemption, no happy endings for Dostoevsky’s Ivan and The Underground Man — the reader can only help wonder why that is the case?
And therein lies the beauty of these works — or any other great work — in the questions they provoke but refuse to answer.
At best they give us the action and some awareness into the character’s thought process.
We have to figure out the rest. We have to solve the puzzle ourselves. We have to figure out why Pierre, Emma, Chichikov, Ivan and The Underground Man are the way they are, and why is it that they change, or don’t change, over time.
And in trying to solve these puzzles, we can finally understand what we are missing, how we can find it and how we can integrate it with us to make ourselves whole?
Conclusion
Marks of the good writer. – Good writers have two things in common; they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims (138)
In my post The Power of great Storytelling I asked why writers write literature in the first place? Why can’t they give us the truth straight in simple plain prose? Why do they have to hide it behind parables, metaphors and allegories?
Why do they do this despite the tortuous writing process?
Well, the answer, or at least part of it, lies in them knowing the power of our delusions. They know how we need them to survive. They know how anyone trying to ram the truth into us will likely either fail or drive us mad.
They know that the only chance they have of showing us the truth — truth which we can not only understand but also put into action — is to show it to us indirectly, incompletely, circuitously, and obliquely.
And that is why they are the only truth sayers worth listening to:
The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.
— James Baldwin
Don’t get me wrong. Books in the traditional ‘self-help category’ have their value. I previously wrote about them categorizing them into three categories - Books of Wisdom, Books of Personal Insights and Books of Action.
And in my article Instigating Action I even recommended these books for idealists when I said “I believe that idealists, who live in the world of ideas and read primarily from books of wisdom and insights, have the most to benefit from Books of Action: traditional self-help books which prioritize execution over ideas, action over knowledge, and iterative experimentation over contemplation. Reading these books, with an open mind, can teach them about the strong pragmatism required for anyone to benefit from the knowledge they have acquired.”
But I do think that if we really want the truth, truth that we can accept as our own, which we have then best chance of then putting into action, then we are better served listening to someone who goes through the painful process of hiding that truth
Books of Literature are not seen as books of self-help. But I think they should be — explicitly.
In our bookshops and libraries the self-help section is full of books that offer quick fixes and easy answers.
The real self-help books, however, are housed in the fiction, literature, classics or poetry sections. Books, often spanning hundreds of pages, often full of parables, metaphors and allegories, and written centuries ago by authors who knew that their only chance of telling us the truth — was to tell it indirectly.
Further Explorations
As usual, I want to end this article with posts from fellow substackers who explore the topics related to our deceptions, self-delusions, and the importance of literature (fiction and poetry) from different angles.
publishes a list of thirty to forty useful concepts each quarter. A lot of them are essentially concepts where we delude ourselves into believing something that is not true or where these delusions are shattered. I link some of them here: Winter 2022 - Spring 2023 - Summer 2023 - Autumn 2023 - Spring 2024. in his post ‘The Truth About Self-Deception’ delves into the evolutionary and psychological aspects of self-deception. in her post ‘#180: Against self-analysis’ reflects on the pervasive habit of negative self-analysis and its implications. Her thoughts on excessive introspection and self-deprecation reminded me of how, when we tackle are delusions, they have a tendency to suck us in like quicksand. It reminded me again of Nietzsche’s quote on the dangers that lay on the path of self-discovery.Dr. Kathleen Waller in her post ‘Why do you read fiction?’ questions why we read fiction? And shares her brief views on the topic.
in his article ‘Why Study Literature?’ critiques the utilitarian defense of the humanities, emphasizing instead the intrinsic benefits of literary study for understanding human experience and fostering creativity. in his post ‘Serious Popular Fiction’ makes the distinction between ‘serious fiction’ and ‘fanciful fiction’ and makes a case for the revival of ‘serious’ popular fiction. in her post ‘81 things about poetry’ discusses the challenges and rewards of the poetic process, the role of fear and courage in writing, and the spiritual and personal significance of poetry — I really enjoyed this piece, returning to some of the reflections over a few days especially ‘Poem as window into a feeling. Poem as hand to hold’ in his post ‘The Substack Poetry Manifesto’ explores the potential for Substack to rejuvenate poetry as a major cultural force.I also enjoyed some of these pieces in the traditional media which relate to the topics in this post: Improving Ourselves to Death - Quit Lying to Yourself - The Key to Success May Be Lying to Yourself - “May December” Exposes the Art of Self-Deception - Should Literature Be Useful? - The Pleasure of Reading to Impress Yourself
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I would love to hear from you about your own personal experience of self-discovery. Have there been deceptions that you have overcome which have helped you make progress on the path to self-discovery? Are there others whose removal was actually detrimental for you?
In the meantime I would love to leave you with this lovely poem, titled ‘Exordium: the song of the reed’ from Rumi which stands right at the start of his six-volume Masnavi.
Rumi tries to remind us about our mutual struggle in trying to make ourselves whole and then tells us about the difficulty in communicating the path to our unity, wholeness, and harmony which we we all so desperately seek. Hope you enjoy it:
Exordium: the song of the reed
Now listen to this reed-flute's deep lament; About the heartache being apart has meant:
'Since from the reed-bed they uprooted me; My song's expressed each human's agony,
A breast which separation's split in two; Is what I seek, to share this pain with you:
When kept from their true origin, all yearn; For union on the day they can return.
Amongst the crowd, alone I mourn my fate, With good and bad I've learnt to integrate,
—
That we were friends each one was satisfied; But none sought out my secrets from inside;
My deepest secret's in this song I wail; But eyes and ears can't penetrate the veil:
Body and soul are joined to form one whole; But no one is allowed to see the soul.'
It's fire not just hot air the reed-flute's cry, If you don't have this fire then you should die!*
Love's fire is what makes every reed-flute pine, Love's fervour thus lends potency to wine;
—
The reed consoles those forced to be apart, Its notes will lift the veil upon your heart,
Where's antidote or poison like its song, Or confidant, or one who's pined so long?
This reed relates a tortuous path ahead, Recalls the love with which Majnun's heart bled:
The few who hear the truths the reed has sung Have lost their wits so they can speak this tongue.
The day is wasted if it's spent in grief, Consumed by burning aches without relief—
—
Good times have long passed, but we couldn't care; When you're with us, our friend beyond com-pare!
While ordinary men on drops can thrive; A fish needs oceans daily to survive:
The way the ripe must feel the raw can't tell, My speech must be concise, and so farewell!
Unchain yourself, my son, escape its hold! How long will you remain a slave of gold?
You've tried to fit inside a jug the sea—It only has a day's capacity:
—
A greedy eye is never satisfied, Shells only when content grow pearls inside,
While men whose clothes are ripped to shreds by love; Are cleansed of greed like this to rise above.
Be joyful, love, our sweetest bliss is you, Physician for all kinds of ailments too,
The cure for our conceit and stubborn pride Like Plato here with Galen, side by side;
Through love the earthly form soars heavenward, The mountain dances nimbly like a bird:
—
Love made Mount Sinai drunken visibly, So Moses fell and swooned* immediately!
With my own confidant if I'd been paired, Just like the reed, such stories I'd have shared:
Without a kindred spirit there to hear The storyteller's voice must disappear,
And if the rose should vanish from its sight; The nightingale" will keep its beak shut tight—
The loved one's all, the lover's just a screen, A dead thing, while the loved one lives, unseen.
—
When shunned by love you're left with emptiness, A bird without its wings knows such distress:
'How can my mind stay calm this lonely night, When I can't find here my beloved's light?'
Love wants its tale revealed to everyone, But your heart's mirror won't reflect this sun,
Don't you know why we can't perceive it here? Your mirror's face is rusty-scrape it clear!
—
Rumi, Masnavi I, 1-35 - Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi
Thanks for the mention. While it's true that literature can yield enormous insight, both into ourselves and others, it's just as possible to get lost in its labyrinth. As a memoirist, I tell myself that my purpose is to serve others, not to be self-serving, but surely there are ulterior motives for writing about the past: to comfort myself, position myself in the best possible light. I know people who have never gone to college who are clear-headed about who they are and are compassionate toward others. The business of truth-seeking in literature is grand, but art is tricky and sometimes aesthetics becomes its own source of meaning. Whether it's delusion or truth can be hard to discern.
I like to say that, when trying to get ideas across, humor and storytelling function to BYPASS COGNITIVE DEFENSES.
This was not immediately obvious to me, because I genuinely just prefer if people explain their theories to me upfront (I don't mean to say that I'm unlike all the normies or whatever -- but I do have an obsession with truth that drives me to read for hours everyday, and I score very highly on Openness, and I think these help me be a little less self-deluded). For a couple of years, I mainly read philosophy, social theory, and even moral psychology, where very brilliant intellectuals would straight up tell you that you have an innate drive for power, that you would be unjust if you could do so without getting caught, that your moral intuitions are merely meant to help you get along with your group, that religion is the opium of the masses, etc.
But it quickly dawned on me that trying to discuss these things in a group setting produces a weird energy that make you unlikeable (unless you do so in a funny manner). Or if you bring these up in a one-on-one situation, they quickly shut you down and change topics. In any case, saying things as they are, for some reason or other, drains people. It paints you as a cynical, overly serious person, it implies that you have superior intellect, it reminds them of the uncertainties and contradictions in their cobbled-together worldview. All these coalesce to make truth-telling socially unprofitable and ultimately unconvincing.
With humor and storytelling, you get past all these obstacles. I'm not implying superior intelligence -- I'm just trying to make you laugh, or tell an interesting story. I'm not cynical, it's just a joke. I'm not trying to persuade you -- we're just having fun aren't we? And, if reason is truly the slave of the passions, then by inducing a positive attitude in you, you've become more receptive to my ideas.
Social intelligence, then, is virtually synonymous with emotional manipulation. The poets and artists know this. The philosophers, bless their hearts, try to treat their audience as rational creatures, to be convinced on the basis of logical reasoning rather than the emotional sophistry which treats people like objects to be manipulated. Unfortunately, things don't work like that. For better or for worse, we're in a society where any intellectual who wants to get their ideas across must wrap them in the guise of humor or fiction, all because the majority of people have brains that work a certain way.