Those of you who grew up in the 90s *pulls at collar desperately hoping Zoomers have left the room* remember the Self-Improvement Movement – hawking everything from books to VHS tapes telling YOU how to better your life.
The Self-Improvement Movement (see it even rhymes, catchy) was a natural culmination of the “express yourself” movement of the sixties, the “feel good” movement of the seventies, and the “get healthy” movement of the 80s – time to fix yourself…after enjoying yourself a little too much.
And as with all things 90s, we had to bring back a modern day bizarro/rehashed version in the form of the anti-self-improvement movement, also known as “you’re fine just the way you are”.
The message of “you’re fine just the way you are!” is a nice thing to say to get through to someone who’s overly down on themselves, but it’s a prescription for disaster. As this message is reinforced, the worst casualty is the natural desire to improve oneself, breeding complacency and self-resentment.
But the movement to stifle the desire for self-improvement is now seen as progressive, even though it’s completely at odds with history.
Societal progress, or the progressive movement in general, was built around the concepts of improving oneself and the society around it.
Obesity has been increasing (of course) and there’s still untold and unmeasured damage wrecked by people being locked up at home for the past year or so. Much as the Progressive movement advocates for universal healthcare, even they can admit the costs of that increase when personal responsibility is not made into a priority.
What follows is an even more expensive graphic:
You can have universal healthcare.
Or you can have a society with an undercurrent of chronic illness.
But you can’t sustainably have both.
Back to self-improvement – a lot of the “self-acceptance” movement of recent years can be attributed to the “body-positivity” movement, which “began to emerge around 2012, initially focusing on challenging unrealistic feminine beauty standards. As the movement grew in popularity, the original focus on acceptance of weight began to shift toward a message that ‘all bodies are beautiful.'”
As with any progressive movement, the movement for body positivity got out of hand. Now the discourse is filled with a variety of grim dialogue:
Ire is now targeted at the portion of the population that enjoys exercise, lifting, and self-improvement.
Those of you familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron know the eventual dreaded end stage of this mentality: it’s the year 2081, and everyone is finally equal. “The strong wear weights, the beautiful wear masks, and the intelligent wear earpieces that fire off loud noises to keep them from taking unfair advantage of their brains.” The story ends with the Handicapper General (played by Tammy Bruce in 2081, the film adaptation) killing the exceptionally gifted Harrison Bergeron (played by a young Armie Hammer) for giving the population a glimpse at him overcoming his government-enforced equality handicaps.
Vonnegut’s book was written in the sixties, and we still have 60 years before this supposed reality would come to be.
Hopefully that’s enough runway, otherwise we’re destined for a future against beauty, against uniqueness, and eventually, against any improvement at all.