Welcome To Nonsense: The Age Of Manifesting was originally published on my Medium November 27th, 2024. If you want to support me, check out the article and give it some claps if you have a Medium account.
“I’d love to be doing shorts for my Youtube channel, but right now it’s been a bit of a struggle. I’m more focused on getting a long-form video out every week and leaving it at that.”
Okay
“But if I were to do shorts, some of them would be clips from the previous video, but I’d also like to do a few other ones. Mostly making fun of some of the nonsense that I hear or read revolving around self-help.”
“Like I recently saw a video from Tai Lopez offering a brilliant piece of advice for poor people to make money. His business idea was setting up a business where you provide a service to a rich person.”
Wow, he’s basically over explaining to people to get a job. I bet he’s also going to be selling a course worth thousands too.
“Exactly.”
Following some technical difficulties, I had a call on Monday with another marketer who gets me.
I can’t exactly hire them right now, but I was looking forward to this call to get an idea of what they could offer me and plan for the future.
Next year, I’d like to be more serious about Youtube and make some effort into putting a few more resources into it where I can. Editing would certainly be something worth while.
The conversation also got me thinking about the overall direction and work I want to ideally put into this moving forward. To quantify the workload.
But underneath it all sparked something that I want to be doing more of.
Talking about some of the contradictions or bad advice that big name gurus provide. To offer my own takes and perspectives on the matter.
For Tai Lopez, it’s a variety of short-form video content that has lead to him announcing he is updating his main course that got him into the self-help world — his 67 steps to living a life.
Knowing Lopez, I wouldn’t be surprised that people would be hounded with upsells to his other courses or that he’d have steps dedicated to selling his other courses and tying them into his updated version.
However another prediction that I have is with the way self-help is shifting, some of his advice might be adjusted to fit with the times.
This means talking about something that has had a bit of a resurgence lately.
Manifestation.
Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2024 is “manifest”.
It came about as celebrities and influencers from all over the world used this word to best describe their success this year. Some have even gone as far as to say they “manifested” their success and their belief system is what brought them to their current lot in life.
It’s a potent word in this day and age for several reasons.
When we’re uncertain about where the world is going or the world getting darker, we tend to go through identity crises. We turn to well educated people who can provide clear and concise steps to us and don’t give them a second thought.
It’s why Tai Lopez offered that piece of advice in that way even though he is describing what a job is in the most roundabout way possible.
But this environment is where a lot of these kinds of self-help gurus thrive. It’s an opportunity to shift people’s thinking in many different ways.
Manifestation or manifesting is one of these particular concepts that can sway people’s minds and can go as far as to change what kind of material self-help gurus can provide.
We got our first taste of this when the book The Secret was published. When times were uncertain, Rhonda Byrne comforted millions by saying that The Universe is a giver and we can receive what we’re looking for if we simply tune our thinking to the frequency we want.
She told us it was leveraging the Law of Attraction.
It was essentially manifestation with a hint of religion dashed in there. After all “The Universe provides” is not too different from saying that “God has a plan for all of us.”
It was a popular hit and changed the minds of so many people. It was popular in network marketing circles that thrive on these kinds of concepts to keep people in check. It further validated a lot of other gurus efforts when they dipped more into spirituality.
And we’re seeing a resurgence of this again through an unlikely source — Jordan Peterson’s latest book.
We Who Wrestle with God.
A book that analyzes Genesis and Exodus — two foundational books to the Bible — for roughly 500 pages.
A book that’s in the top best selling books on Amazon.
A book that is framed as a spiritual “rules for living”. Self-help for those with more spiritual leanings or are contemplating it.
It doesn’t talk about manifestation exactly, but it’s a brand of self-help that can no doubt gain traction. That much is clear based on the fact that this latest instalment of Peterson’s work is a further descent into utter nonsense.
To the point that one might ask whether the guy should talk to a therapist.
After all, in the midst of the book you can get such stellar tangents revolving around topics of themes that came from wondrous films like Terminator 2, The Lion King, Aladin, or Harry Potter.
This is meant to be a pseudo-academic analysis of two books derived from a heavily edited (if not made up) religious text. How does other fictional stories weave into this?
Even with that mess, the book is still popular. Enough to warrant a brief top spot on the Amazon best seller list. Even that aside, Christians can’t deny that Peterson has managed to attract a great deal of people — especially men which religion struggles to bring in.
They take him seriously and it comes at a time where religion overall is falling out of favour.
Regardless, what Peterson offers and the growing trend of manifestation could bring about further problems for self-help. It could usher in an age where people lean more on these mystical elements as root problems are left unanswered.
Why Manifesting Is So Bad
There are two kinds of self-help that we see commonly. The first kind is in your face and direct. It often takes a tough love approach or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”. The advice is followed by step by step guides that are specific enough for people to understand but vague enough that you can still be mislead with little help.
The second approach has more to do with your mindset. The approach is generally softer and leans into the mystical aspect of self-help. That if you have the right kind of attitude, you can surmount anything at all.
And to some extent, that is true.
Practicing the law of attraction gives us a chance to be more receptive to new possibilities and opportunities. All around, our mental well-being will be a in a better place too.
But that is the extent of the good as the industry often takes manifestation a bit too far.
Where astrology, tarot reading, and numerology can be fun and quirky conversation starters and a way to open people up, it can also be used for manipulation and giving a false sense of control.
The False Sense Of Control Of Manifesting
That false sense of control is one of the biggest issues because it leads to a dangerous mindset. A mindset where people’s privileges and biases are at full force and can inspire poor decisions from those that lack them.
Take Elle Macpherson, a supermodel who broke up with her billionaire husband years ago over her decision to use holistic treatments to deal with her breast cancer. While it’s great for her that she has recovered and found treatment, it’s one thing to seek that out and another to claim that it’s part of some spiritual growth.
In her case, championing manifesting what you want in your life is terrible for several reasons. The biggest that she lives a life of luxury. She has the privilege to talk to multiple doctors and can afford whatever treatment they like.
And that is the rub here.
Not a lot of women can do what Macpherson has done.
And we see the same thing in Peterson’s new book too.
Christians are spending time trying to dissect what Peterson is talking about and ultimately guiding people on how to be thinking about spirituality moving forward. But in terms of practicality it doesn’t offer much of anything.
It’s 500 pages of a jumbled mess that can’t decide what it wants to be and forces people to fill in the gaps.
It’s what Peterson does all the time as this “brief” overview of him outlines. It’s either that or the logical conclusion with what Peterson has to offer is no real solution. To wallow in nihilism.
It’s an environment that is highly predatory to men around my age group as society has framed men to be providers for decades and, much like religion, circumstances surrounding that mentality are fading quickly and aren’t practical to where the world is right now.
This is why manifestation can be so dangerous as it can easily encourage inaction or regressive thinking. Meanwhile it can position itself as this convenient solution that can address several problems we are experiencing every day.
Declining relationships.
Global uncertainty.
Isolation tendencies.
Lack of community and meaning.
Loneliness.
All the while being wholly ineffective in addressing those problems.
We Should Subscribe To Their “Manifesting”
On one end, mystical self-help could be largely harmless. Maybe Peterson’s popular book is like every other conservative product trend — where it tops charts in popularity before falling off hard a few days later.
But underneath all of that, it could still be a signal for self-help to shift drastically. As more and more people become isolated and alienated the more appealing people like Peterson become. People who push spirituality and self-help in a way that feels right but isn’t overtly religious and keeping people indoctrinated in cult-like behaviour.
All the while the information and advice is utterly useless, contradictory, or deeply out of touch to where the world is going.
All one can hope for now is that people will slowly wake up that people like Peterson are not there to create positive change or growth. Rather it’s a callback to how things used to be and is no longer relevant to where the world is going right now.
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