Et Tu, Oprah?
The Oprahfication of America continues apace:
I'm sick of railing against this nonsense.
Listen up, America:
Listen to Oprah and Dr. Phil. Empowerment is everything. You make your own reality. The only thing that matters is you. When you close your eyes, the universe winks out of existence until you open them again. We are all figments of your imagination. Visualize, then realize.
And while you're doing that, I'm going to be eating your lunch, getting your promotion and your raise, and having the success you left in the gutter, all because you were too weak and lazy to ignore the sophistry of the mealy-mouthed psychobabblers and put your back into your work. And guess what: my kids are going to do the same, since they're not going to worship at the altar of Oprah.
How do you realize dreams? You work, you sweat, you sacrifice.
Anything else is crap.
Update:
Welcome, readers from Ankle Biting Pundits and Dummocrats (and thanks to the Dummocrats for the warnings regarding the vengeance of the Cult of Oprah).
Feel free to look around.
Ever since America began to wean itself off the sociological junk-food of victimization and the much-maligned Culture of Blame, the landscape has been steadily overspread by an antithetical conceit — loosely bracketed as "empowerment" — whose preachments can be summarized as follows: Don't let anyone take away your dreams. Everything you need to succeed is right there inside you. Believe it, achieve it.
Today, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft optimistic business models in bullet points drawn from Stephen Covey's seven (highly effective) habits; families settle disputes using ameliorative diagnostics straight out of Dr. Phil; millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings of "personal power" to prow-jawed fire-walker Tony Robbins, the arguable father of today's mainstream brand of empowerment. And, of course, there is that daily dose of spiritual adrenaline from Oprah Winfrey, who is seldom categorized as a guru in her own right, but whose role as the movement's éminence grise cannot be discounted: The road to self-help's promised land — and a bite of its $8.56 billion-dollar fruit, as per the latest figures from Marketdata Enterprises — goes right through the vast king-making machine that is Harpo Productions. The guiding nostrums delivered via sundry channels by these and other self-help celebrities form a cultural given, an uncontested (and, one is led to believe, incontestable) foundation for the present starry-eyed Zeitgeist.
Lost in all the adulation is the downside of this tireless effort to uplift. The overselling of personal empowerment — the hyping of hope — may in fact be the great unsung irony of latter-day American culture, destined to disappoint as surely as the pity party it was supposed to replace. And in a far more insidious fashion.
I'm sick of railing against this nonsense.
Listen up, America:
Listen to Oprah and Dr. Phil. Empowerment is everything. You make your own reality. The only thing that matters is you. When you close your eyes, the universe winks out of existence until you open them again. We are all figments of your imagination. Visualize, then realize.
And while you're doing that, I'm going to be eating your lunch, getting your promotion and your raise, and having the success you left in the gutter, all because you were too weak and lazy to ignore the sophistry of the mealy-mouthed psychobabblers and put your back into your work. And guess what: my kids are going to do the same, since they're not going to worship at the altar of Oprah.
How do you realize dreams? You work, you sweat, you sacrifice.
Anything else is crap.
Update:
Welcome, readers from Ankle Biting Pundits and Dummocrats (and thanks to the Dummocrats for the warnings regarding the vengeance of the Cult of Oprah).
Feel free to look around.
3 Comments:
I have to say your reaction to the "empowerment" movement is just as solipsistic as the movement itself.
I'll eat your lunch, I'll get the raise, I will succeed, I, I, I, me, me, me.
A good deal of Dr. Phil's advice has to do with fixing yourself so you can CONTRIBUTE--plugging back into your family, etc.
Besides hard work and sacrifice, what can I bring to this company? What do I offer that is unique? What is it that I do better than anyone else?
There are more factors than hard work and sacrifice. Like the referred-to article says, there's timing, luck, and competition.
I agree with the last poster; I think this all comes down to a case of the Greedy, Green Eyed Monster.
Of course I could be wrong, perhaps I will try putting my back into complaining about those who have it easier than we.
An analogy, if you please; In every rowers ship there is the rower and the guy with the drum who coordinates and encourages the rowers.
Work is work, some more strenuous than others, at the end of the day all arms tire. If it's all just a matter of pride, it's simply personal choice.
Old stuff, served up in the past by Edgar Cayce, Dale Carnegie, Paramahansa Yogananda, Claude Bristol, Wayne Dyer, Leo Buscaglia, Shakti Gawain, Louise Hay and that's just off the top of this 58 year old head.
Old stuff, just a different crew serving it. And, for some it works, for others not.
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