While I think it is a valuable thing to root out corruption and critique shallow ideology, it has never been my intention to be the self-help police, nor is that the focus of this group blog project. (Other people do it better anyway.) As a philosophically minded person, I am more interested in general principles, in seeing the pattern.

In particular, I see several problems with focusing too much on a critique of individuals:

1. Unethical behavior is often fueled by systemic or structural forces. If we self-help critics succeed in deposing one guru from their throne, a thousand others will scramble to take his place. If we focus too much on specific individuals, we could miss this larger systemic pattern and thus “hack at the leaves” instead of digging up the roots of the problem.

2. All people are a mix of good and evil. If we demonize others as being the bad guys and gals, this might imply we are all good. Demonizing others also is a less-than-compassionate response to another human being. At first this is a very understandable response, and as we learn and grow we can even better than that. We can protect ourselves and others from harm without causing additional harm.

3. A focus on corruption can solidify cynicism. While a sober assessment of humanity can be useful at times, a rigid focus on what’s wrong with people—if calcified into one’s only perspective—can distort one’s view. I think it’s important to be able to sincerely advocate for something too, and see people’s humanity.

The key here is having a flexibility of mind where you can think critically, observe unhelpful or unethical behaviors in yourself and others clearly, but also think optimistically about future potentials and see positive intention behind harmful behavior.

My hope for this blog project was that it would free up many others to openly discuss ideas and behaviors in the personal development community using critical thinking. That has happened in a very small way, but not as widely as I would have liked. Some personal development folks are still doing very harmful things, while some academics are so cynical about the possibilities for human change they censor opposing ideas. I suppose I was a bit naive about the possibilities for changing the world through blogging.

What has happened in the past two years of blogging is that I’ve been able to clarify and refine my values and ideas about personal development and change. Despite being much more aware of human evil, I’m even more optimistic about the possibilities for people to make positive, deep, and significant personal change. Every time I’d write about something I felt angry about, or someone would comment or disagree with my opinions and I’d feel hurt, I’d do Core Transformation or some other process to integrate my feelings and gain a more resourceful response. I also encountered my own evil within and made positive changes with those parts of me. We can use critique and discussion to fuel our personal development, but only if we have effective methods of doing so, and we use them.

Now I can clearly see corruption in action. I’m not as reactive and instead feel more compassionate and resourceful when I hear about abuses of power in self-help or elsewhere. I also feel like the most important thing I can do now is to teach people practical change methods so they can make positive changes too. As I’ve changed, I expected people would change with me—but most have not. I’m optimistic that if people knew how to change in a way that respected all parts of themselves, was non-manipulative, and was clearly explained and taught, they would embrace it and go for it.

I hope that some Beyond Growth readers will join me in my new focus. Together we can grow and change and discover better ways of doing so.

(Note to commenters: due to an overwhelming amount of comment spam, all comments require creating a free Intense Debate or WordPress.com account.)

Nowadays the glossy, full-color printed Guinness Book is only a small sample of the total number of records. There has been an enormous explosion in record-keeping leading to a kind of freakshow bubble. People have come up with all sorts of stupid things to set records in, from the number of tango spins in one minute, to the number of hula hoops spun at a time (107). One man has even made a pseudo religion out of breaking ridiculous world records under the inspiration of his Indian guru Sri Chinmoy.

Mr. Ashrita Furman has spent many thousands of hours of his adult life devoted to breaking records like how many hopscotch games one can play in a 24 hour period (434), how far one can travel with a milk bottle balanced on his head (80.95 miles), and how fast one can duct tape himself to a wall (5 min, 9 seconds). Furman even holds the record for most current world records held at one time (119). Here is a video documenting his world record for rolling an orange with his nose, a feat which took place in the JFK airport:

At 1:45 Mr. Furman says of rolling an orange with your nose…

Well, it’s actually uh really, physically very very demanding. But besides that, a lot of it’s technique.

Technique, right.

From Mr. Furman’s own about page…

What compels this 56-year old health food store manager from Queens, New York, to perform these fantastic feats? “I’m trying to show others that our human capacity is unlimited if we can truly believe in ourselves,” he says. Ashrita maintains that while some of his records may draw more laughter than respect, each one requires a great deal of determination, concentration and fitness.

While part of me appreciates Mr. Furman’s dedication to weirdness, I don’t think we need more inspiration to show that our human capacity is unlimited—certainly not more competition for how much jello one can eat with chopsticks in 1 minute (1lb, 5oz), nor for how many candles one can burn on a cake simultaneously (48,523). When do we concede that enough is enough? I think focusing on what capacities are important to develop, and to what extent, are far more important than breaking a record just to say you did it. Being able to do 50 pushups in a row is a sign of a strong, enduring upper body. Being able to do 10,000 might instead be a sign of an unhealthy obsession and monomania.

If we measure growth with a single metric, we inevitably get a freakshow like The Guinness Book of World Records. If instead we think of growth as more like an ecosystem, or a tree, or a human physical body, we realize right away that maximizing a single metric doesn’t capture what makes for a mature, healthy, or wise result. While growth has an important function in the adolescent period of any system, once a system reaches maturity, different factors come into play, or growth may take place in a more complex fashion with multiple dependent variables.

If you are at all familiar with social media, you probably had a  good idea what was going to happen after Bill Harris decided to threaten Duff McDuffee.  Twitter lit up in support of Duff, a smattering of notable blogs wrote about the threat, and in the end Beyond Growth received a ton of traffic.  Perhaps the Law of Attraction works after all–Bill threatened Duff in a blast  of negative energy, and the result was a lot of negative publicity.  Mission accomplished Bill.

Old Media vs New Media

If anything, this ordeal has been the perfect case study for how not to do public relations in the age of social media.  Over on MindTweaks, Tori Deaux wrote a post titled “How To Trash Your PR At The Touch Of A Button: Of Holosync, Bill Harris, and Silencing Critics.”  Deaux explores why it isn’t such a good idea to try to silence bloggers, whether they are in the right or the wrong.  She writes:

You will lose in the court of public opinion, because you’re not really dealing with the ONE small blogger, but the entire blogosphere.  See, threatening a lawsuit against a blogger is like, well…

It’s like pushing a big red button that releases a pack of rabid hounds.

A pack of rabid hounds that  races wildly around the countryside unchecked, braying about it at the top of their lungs until EVERYBODY knows.

It’s not pretty.  It’s very slobbery.  It’s wildly infectious.

And it’s very, very bad PR.

Tori concludes with some exceptional advice for those who have public disagreements with bloggers.  She suggests they try calming down, talking to the blogger about the disagreement, and forming friendships with other bloggers who will support your side.  Effectively playing within the rules of social media  as an alternative to destroying your PR via lawsuit seems like a good strategy.

Enlightenment For Sale

From a Buddhist perspective, Marnie Louise Froberg wrote a post titled “The Ugly Face of Commercial Pseudo-Buddhist Self-Help.”  Froberg is critical of the pseudo-Buddhism that Harris spouts as it appears on his blog.  She wrote:

No what’s stuck in my craw is the way this “Secret” afficianado blathers on about Buddhist terminology and concepts on the pathetically amateur blog he keeps entitled The Blog That Ate Mind Chatter. (from the author of The Program that Eats the User’s Ability to Think)   It’s fairly clear that he gets all these Buddhist buzzwords from Genpo since there is nothing but rabid adulation from the second post onward. And if Holosync is so hot why would Harris bother to try Big Mind?

Froberg is also critical of Harris’ claims that Genpo Roshi has  “the largest lineage outside of Japan.”  She demonstrates that Harris doesn’t exactly have a good handle on the lineage business, and goes on to suggest that Harris “attempts quite a reach when he talks about Buddhism.”  It seems Froberg’s post overall adds support to the notion that Harris himself is nothing more than a salesman, and he is willing to say whatever it takes and paint whatever picture necessary to sell his expensive products.  At the end of the post she provides an extensive listing of the coverage  regarding the threats to Duff by Bill Harris from other blogs.

Used Car Salesmen, a Beautiful Marriage, and the Salty Droid

Not willing to be outdone, the Salty Droid wrote three posts regarding Bill Harris, starting out with “Silencing of the Lambs.”  As you will no doubt find, the Droid is quite the direct robot, he starts out calling Harris names like “sleazy used car salesman,” “Bill Hairless,” and “Bill ‘What’s it going to take to get you into this 2002 Chevy Tahoe today?’”  In a delicious twist, it seems that there actually is a used car salesman named Bill Harris, as seen by his website here: Bill Harris Used Cars Inc. “You’re simply the best!”

The Droid goes over the basic turn of events, provides an exclusive on one of the threatening emails that Duff received from Harris, and ends the post with a threatening letter of his own to Harris:

You have 24hrs to notify Andrew McDuffee that you have decided not to pursue legal action against him :: or you are going to have a MUCH more serious problem than one measly post by a mild mannered and fair minded gentleman.  I WILL END YOU and your transparent fucking scam Bill Harris :: with elegance and ease.  It will consume your life :: your bank account :: and it will be HIGHLY stressful {ask around}.  Your deep {and probably intimate} connection to Bringer of Death of James Arthur Ray :: the obviousness of your swindle {including new FTC reg violating testimonial based sales} :: and the surface ugliness of your soul make you a low hanging fruit for an anti-scammer on a roll.  Don’t fucking temp me … don’t.

Think this over Bill.  Look before you leap.

Unfortunately for Harris, the deadline was missed, and he became the Droid’s latest play-thing when he parodied both him and James Arthur Ray in the post “New Year’s Wedding.”  It seems the Droid might have a secret side-hobby of writing old-fart erotica based on his descriptions of the Ray and Harris love affair.  I’ll let you click on the link if you want the gruesome details.

Finally, the Droid put together a brilliant video montage titled “Bill Harris Reccomends“  beautifully demonstrating the link between Harris and James Arthur Ray.  He used a testimonial video uploaded by James Ray International on YouTube in which Bill Harris emphatically suggests that “if you get involved with what he does, it will totally change your life.”  Is Harris more in-tune with the secret than we originally thought?

Why the hell is everyone being so negative?

Bill Harris himself rung in the new year by complaining about the “negative social mood.” Perhaps Harris doesn’t see how threatening to sue Duff was a negative thing, but in my mind he is definitely a contributor to the negativity.  However, there is a bright side to his post, as he writes:

My wish for you, then, is that you move toward your dreams regardless of the prevailing social mood; that you look for ways to be helpful and compassionate to others; that you learn to love yourself, as you are, with all your human failings and quirks; and that you extend that compassion to others (who also have human failings, just as you do).

What Harris doesn’t realize is that by sending Duff that cease and desist letter he has helped us do just that.  Our dream is to make personal development more responsible and make to make those who we believe to be scammers less culturally relevant, and by exposing himself he has furthered our mission by leaps and bounds.   So Bill, in gratitude for your wish to us (and everyone else),  I want to dedicate this image of our web traffic following the lawsuit post to you:

Perhaps that will help bring the positivity back.

On December 22,  Duff McDuffee received an email message from Bill Harris, the founder of “Holo-sync” and the “CenterPointe Institute” claiming that he had been served with a cease and desist letter regarding the post titled “The Hollow Sink of Push-Button Enlightenment.”  Harris claims that he intends to file suit against Duff for “defamation” in federal court.  Harris finally sent the cease and desist document via email to McDuffee, you can read it at the bottom of this post (updated 12/29). In response to Harris’ email, Duff revised the post to insure no defamatory statements exist within it, and that it is clear that everything contained therein is his opinion.  This effort itself was mainly done to in good-will, as we do not actually believe that anything in the original post was defamatory simply because it was clear that the post itself was an opinion piece on a variety of intangible and unprovable subjects.

First off, I want to make a few things clear about what we do here on Beyond Growth.  We are not a news organization, and as such do not claim to offer any sort of “objective” reporting therefore all of our articles are critical, subjective, and opinion based.  While many of our contributors share similar views, each of the opinions expressed in our articles solely represent their authors and no one else.  Thus far, we have found this to be quite implicit that these are our opinions, nothing more.  We generally use forms of literary and critical analysis, of which do not imply nor suggest we are making statements of objective fact.

With that in mind, I will take this opportunity to express my supreme disappointment with Bill Harris’ behavior on this matter.  Harris is a man who implicitly claims to be enlightened, and as such I would think the frivolous and childish threat of a “federal lawsuit” directed at small time blogger would be quite beneath him.  Unfortunately it appears that this is not the case.  He has made no effort to speak to us about this matter before jumping the gun and threatening a lawsuit.   In his email message, Harris effectively threatens to ruin Duff’s life:

Perhaps you do not realize the severity of the consequences for the defamatory statements you have made and how a Federal lawsuit to enforce those rights would work. The costs of such a suit will be huge, both financially and also in terms of time and stress. Legal fees for such a lawsuit can be, at minimum, over $150,000, the time commitment will be extensive, and the stress will be enormous. It will change your life in a way I suspect you will not like.

What Bill Harris does not realize is that Duff McDuffee (and I for that matter) have zero monetary assets to speak of.  Additionally, if Harris does actually bring suit against Duff, we will do everything in our power to make it as public as possible.  This publicity would negate the whole point of a defamation lawsuit in the first place, the preservation of the “public image” that Harris’ seemingly holds so near and dear.  Finally, Harris will have to prove in the court of law that he does not use manipulative marketing techniques and that his “holosync” program does exactly what he says it does.  We are confident that Harris would not be able to prove either of these things in any manner enough to satisfy a federal judge.

Shouldn’t an arahat be able to handle a little criticism without threatening lawsuits?  Threatening to sue Duff in order to maintain a positive public opinion seems to be nothing more than bullying via the courts, in a manner that is quite reminiscent of the legal behavior of the Church of Scientology:

Critics state that the ultimate aim of Scientology lawsuits is to destroy church opponents by forcing them into bankruptcy or submission, using its resources to pursue frivolous lawsuits at considerable cost to defendants. In doing so, they draw particular attention to certain controversial statements made by the church’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in the 1950s and 1960s.

In my mind this is not the way an enlightened being should be behaving. If anything this action by Bill Harris indicates that we are doing something very right on Beyond Growth.  Expect more in the coming days.

Edit 12/29 : I’ve made it clear that Harris’ “enlightenment” is implicit.

Edit 12/29 : Here is the fabled cease and desist letter:

McDuffee Cease and Desist

Edit 12/30: The Salty Droid humorously joins in; Silencing of the Lambs

Have you seen the movie Fight Club? The unnamed protagonist lives a modern life of quiet desperation. Working as an auditor for a major automobile corporation, he flies around the country investigating deadly car accidents, to calculate a cold-hearted cost-benefit analysis for whether the company should recall the dangerous cars they manufacture. In response to his meaningless and unethical work, he becomes a hyperconsumer–purchasing his liberation in the form of cute Ikea furniture and a Yin-Yang carpet. He learns to cope with his insomnia (presumably fueled by his inner torment) by consuming cathartic experience; joining self-help groups under false pretense, he finds liberation when he surrenders to his sadness.

But he grieves for problems he does not have, for there are no support groups for what truly ails him. His addiction to these groups increases until he spots another faker. Eventually he develops a bad boy multiple personality, starts an underground full-contact boxing ring, blows up his apartment, and eventually forms a destructive cult that engages in acts of terrorism that eerily predict 9/11.

It is significant that many people–especially personal development bloggers–list Fight Club as one of their favorite movies. Why do we love this movie about a self-destructive, violent cult leader with Multiple Personality Disorder? Because we suffer as he suffers, and we find similar self-destructive solutions.

(Note: the embedded video contains violence and has one “swear” word.)

We are torn apart inside. We have meaningless work. We buy stuff we don’t need. We are addicted to consuming Personal Development books and blogs that rehash the same ideas again and again, never really getting to what is most important. But worse than that, sometimes our rebellion is even co-opted into obedience to a new destructive authority–in the name of freedom.

We Must Talk About Fight Club

Rule #1 of Fight Club is “You do not talk about Fight Club.” This is a great rule if you want to create a destructive terrorist cult like Tyler Durden. Cutting off lines of communication with arbitrary and absolute rules creates a insular culture, unable to take feedback and evolve.

The truth is, we are all already members of Fight Club. We have an inner war raging, a war between parts of ourselves. We try to kill our “resistance” to the culturally conditioned goals that we choose for ourselves because there is seemingly no alternative. We reinforce an inner dominator hierarchy using thought-stopping affirmations such that we never question the values underlying our choice of outcomes.

The Personal Development community itself is a Fight Club. Using techniques of hype and ego-inflation, we have cultivated this inner war by selectively labeling beliefs as “limiting” and then attempting to destroy our often quite reasonable fears. But why do we never talk about these things? Because unwritten rule #1 of Personal Development culture is “you do not talk about Personal Development culture.” Of the 1000′s of Personal Development books and blogs, very few engage in critical discourse, truly questioning the assumptions of any other. This is beginning to change. As the personal development blogosphere matures, it is inevitable that the dialogue will deepen.

Personal Development Itself is Developing

On a typical personal development blog post, you will see endless positive and enthusiastic comments. Less than enthusiastic feedback or critical thinking in general has typically been considered “negative thinking” within our culture. Not surprisingly, groupthink and guru-worship ensues in such an environment devoid of dialogue. But in the last year or so, more blog posts have been receiving critical feedback and dissent. Popular blogger Merlin Mann has harshly criticized the culture of blog articles with “17 Superficial Tips to Optimize Your Life!” which many of us have participated in writing and consuming. To quote Mann:

In more instances than we want to admit, tips not only won’t (and can’t) help us to improve; they will actively get in the way of fundamental improvement by obscuring the advice we need with the advice that we enjoy. And, the advice that’s easy to take is so rarely the advice that could really make a difference.

This blog will probably not be as enjoyable as Lifehack or ZenHabits. It will almost certainly have far fewer tips. But hopefully it will have more of the sometimes painful inquiry that we all really need to truly grow and develop.

While the criticism has at times been rich, there have been few clear and positive directions proposed. Some of us who have given a critique of Personal Development culture have ceased in order to engage in the creation of the very structures we criticize. Tyler Durden started out criticizing authority and culture and then created a cult of mindless obedience and terrorism, a fact so often left out of the personal development blog articles written enthusiastically with his philosophy. Do we really want to innovate like a terrorist cult leader? If we are to find truly positive directions for the field of Personal Development, we must not fall into the very errors we see presently. Rhetoric alone will not form a new paradigm–a new view must be congruent with new actions that do not recreate current problems. Even whether or not a new paradigm is needed should be up for question–perhaps an older one, dusted off a bit, would do just fine.

None of us can clearly see ourselves objectively without feedback from our peers and community. Nothing grows in a vacuum–we grow through nourishment from the sun, the Earth, and the interconnections between all things. We do not need more advocates for going at it alone. Neither do we need more $47 a month gated communities of self-help seekers. It is time for personal development to develop into a mature, online, and open-source dialogue where multiple perspectives are honored, and the complexity of what it is to be human is engaged with compassionately.

What is Beyond Growth?

Beyond Growth is a Philosophy Club, a Peace Club, a Culture Club. It’s membership is free and open to all who seek self-actualization and are deeply curious about what it means to live “The Good Life,” individually and collectively. On this blog we will fearlessly explore the hidden assumptions of Personal Development and the culture it is embedded within, as part of the wider dialogue taking place within the blogosphere. Instead of just questioning our beliefs that are counter to achievement-based consumer culture, we will attempt to hold all beliefs up for question, while understanding that this isn’t completely possible, and that inevitably we will value some things more than others. We will remain open to even questioning the very way in which we are questioning, reflecting upon our reflections, and criticizing our criticisms. I believe we can also engage in a respectful and intelligent dialogue while simultaneously acknowledging the need to “agree to disagree” when our views and values differ.

We will explore more widely what it is to be a fully “self-actualized” human in the postmodern context, in the global context, and in the face of converging crises of ecology and society. We will highlight specific techniques and discuss the pros and cons, the relative effectiveness, and the appropriate and inappropriate contexts for each technique. And hopefully, we will inspire some original thinking that could lead to true happiness and fulfillment for all of us. We hope that you will join us by subscribing to this free blog and adding your intelligent commentary in the comments section below each article.

That is what I intend for this blog at this time. However, Beyond Growth is collaborative by nature. My co-founder Eric Schiller has a different but overlapping perspective. We hope to get other regular contributors as well, perhaps even inviting particularly useful and interesting commentors to write guest posts. Part of what I value about dialogue is the notion that all of us thinking together can be smarter than each of us thinking independently. I hope to explore with you what the future of personal development can become.