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A portrait of a woman in Sudan who was a victim of rape as a weapon of war, just one of the 4.2 million women and girls at risk.

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A photo of a girl’s body trapped under the rubble of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran after the school was struck by the United States, her hand frozen while reaching out for help.

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A video of yet another cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo collapsing on top of hundreds of workers living on slave wages.

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A white woman talking into a microphone giving me “10 tips on how to protect your energy.”

Today we’re faced with the realities of today’s world in a way which we never have before. The constant feed of images feels unbearable, but as we continue to scroll, the frightening reality is that it becomes hauntingly normalized.


We watch, we flinch, we scroll. And then, somewhere between a video of a bombed hospital and a carousel about how “Rest is resistance”, we are intentionally redirected back to ourselves.

In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag explores how photographs and videos of violence have affected us. She states, “If one feels that there is nothing ‘we’ can do -- but who is that ‘we’? -- and nothing ‘they’ can do either -- and who are ‘they’ -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”

This redirection back to the self and, as a result, this chosen apathy is a result of what the wellness industry is selling.

What the wellness industry does in order to sell their product is reframe structural problems as personal failures. If you think that you’re doing something wrong and someone promises you the solution, you’re going to buy into that. And you’re going to keep buying into it as “coaches”, “mentors”, and “gurus” continue to lure you in with solutions that don’t actually work. Because the reality is that most of the issues you’re trying to solve stem from systemic issues. But no one financially profits off of fixing those.

This is nothing new. This is a pattern that the wellness industry is based on and has existed from the beginning. What feels different now is the clearer connection of this industry’s teachings and the systemic failures we see in our feeds every day.

Because the truth is that there’s no vitamin for being born into a sky full of bombs. There’s no meditation that can calm an occupation. There’s no amount of journaling that can make a missile miss its intended target of civilians and children.

And yet we see the same messaging being spread every single day as people post: “I had to stop watching the news for my mental health”; “I’m protecting my peace”; “I’m focusing on what I can control.”

I’m not saying that taking care of your mental health is a bad thing. Seeing these images and understanding the weight that they hold does impact your mental health. There would be a bigger problem if it didn’t. The nervous system is not built to process this endless violence and it’s important to take care of yourself. But there is a thin line here. More often than not, this mentality slips from “this is too much to hold for me right now” to “this is not mine to hold at all.”

And this is what not only the wellness industry profits off of, but the larger systems as a whole are that are implementing this violence.

Individualism and the messaging that the self is both the problem and the solution has become the operating system of not only the wellness industry, but those in power. It tells us to turn to ourseleves over and over again in order to redirect our attention away from the harm that these systems are causing.


And because all of this personal wellness that they’re trying to sell us forces us to turn inward, we don’t have the energy to focus on anything outside of ourselves. We choose not to. We become numb.

And numbness is not neutral.

The more we’re told to interpret suffering as something to be managed indvidually, the less we’re able to respond to suffering publicly. The more we’re told to protect our energy, the more excuses we have to look away. These excuses make it easier to not take the collective steps needed towards any kind of real, systemic change. The steps that would actually lead to greater wellness for everyone.

Real wellness doesn’t exist in isolation and it’s not something you can truly achieve while the conditions around you remain violent and unjust. Any cure, product, industry, or individual that ignores systemic issues that affect wellness are selling you lies in beauitful packing.

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So what’s the answer?

The answer isn’t to do more doomscrolling so that the horrors of the world consume you. The answer is to refuse the idea that ignoring the world around you makes you better. Real wellness comes from recognizing that a focus on individuality will not bring the kind of change you need in order to live a healthier life. And it certainly won’t bring forth the kind of change needed to end the images and videos you see on your phone every day.

Once again, Sontag said it best when she said:

“That we are not totally transformed, that we can turn away, turn the page, switch the channel, does not impugn the ethical value of an assault by images. It is not a defect that we are not seared, that we do not suffer enough, when we see these images. Neither is the photograph supposed to repair our ignorance about the history and causes of the suffering it picks out and frames. Such images cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged?”

What we’re seeing right now is the increase of people embracing political apathy. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that our obligation is not to each other, but to our own “improvement”.

Our feeds show us genocide and then immediately offer us a solution in the language of self-care. The danger of this is not just that we become numb, it’s that we’ve started to believe that this numbness is wellness.

A culture that teaches people to look away in the face of preventable suffering is not promoting wellness. It’s training obedience. People consumed with self-improvement have very little energy left for public resistance. And that’s the greatest gift of all for the people and systems in power.

It’s time to stop turning away and to start paying attention.

I’m not saying that just by paying attention, we will save anyone or oursleves, but every system that depends on violence also depends on public disengagement and chosen ignorance. The systems we live in depend on people deciding the suffering they’re witnessing is too complicated to confront or change. And that’s the biggest lie of them all.

The question is not how we can personally cope with seeing another image of horror on our feed. The question is what kind of people we will become if we choose ignore them.

Related articles

• “Why it’s more important than ever to step away from the self”

• “Self-help wouldn’t exist without capitalism”

• “The sinister truth behind the self-help industry”

Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own (backed by feelings) and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.

This past week, Mel Robbins (unsurprisingly) became the latest grifter shilling AI.

In Robbins’ video posted to Instagram, she uses fear-mongering tactics warning women that they’ll be “left behind” using AI because it “feels intimidating”, citing a 2025 Harvard study on the gender gap adoption of AI.

She goes on to partner with Microsoft and encourages her users to start with inputting a prompt into Microsoft’s Copilot. The prompt? Sharing bank account statements, debt statements, and income info in order to help create a budget.

This latest grift in the self-help industry is far from surprising. It feels like the era of Matt Damon’s cringy 2021 crypto commercial all over again. And that’s because that’s exactly what it is.

Although this wasn’t disclosed in Robbins’ post, it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft paid Robbins a large amount of money to promote Copilot because they know that her audience is vulnerable, largely female, and trusts Robbins when looking for advice. In order to literally capitalize on this, Microsoft didn’t just pay for Robbins to promote AI usage, but also preys on her audience to get extremely valuable data (note: Please, please, please don’t give AI sensitive documents like this).

Profit is king here and it’s a trend we’ll continue seeing in the self-help world and beyond. Self-help gurus like Mel Robbins aren’t just promoting AI use, but they’re profiting off of it and even creating their own products with it (as we know, there’s nothing self-help gurus love more than selling a product).

Jay Shetty launched an “Al Coaching Companion” to his newsletters for only $47 a year.

Tony Robbins is selling an AI chatbot so you can “Chat with Tony now” for only $39 a month.

Mark Manson is selling an “AI-powered growth mentoring app” that only costs $19.99 a month.

Natalie MacNeil is selling an AI business course for $997 (don’t worry though, it’s a $9,500 value!)

The most egregious part of these products (apart from them being AI) is the fact that, once again, self-help gurus are selling a product that you can get for free. I guarantee that these “products” are just using an AI prompt that asks the AI to reference all the guru’s materials and tone of voice to answer the questions. You could input the same prompt into any AI and get the same quality of responses for free.

Regardless, you shouldn’t be doing this to get your advice on anything. To be fair, you’re probably going to get the same quality advice from an AI agent that you would from one of these self-help gurus who have no qualifications whatsoever to be giving people advice. All of it is slop and all of it is dangerous.

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FOMO is not the problem

What Mel Robbins and other AI grifters don’t understand is that the reason why people aren’t adopting AI isn’t because they’re afraid of change or of new technology. The way to get people to adopt AI isn’t to fearmonger.

Gurus are also trying to soft-launch AI by saying they get why people don’t like it and Jenna Kutcher even said, “You Don’t Have to Love AI to Use It”.

But what they fail to understand is that not using AI has nothing to do with being afraid and if you actually think the technology is detrimental then you don’t have to use it.

The reason why people don’t use AI is because they clearly understand the human and environmental costs of using it.

Data centers for AI are generally built in low-income areas and the environmental injustice that’s a consequence of this is staggering.

Many data centers use diesel-powered backup generators which emit 200-600 times more nitrogen oxides into the air compared to natural gas plants. This results in air pollution causing asthma and respiratory diseases for those who live in the community.

The HVAC systems used in data centers create a constant noise pollution of up to 97 decibels.

Finally, the power and water use increases electricity prices and water scarcity in the areas.

The environmental impact of AI goes beyond just the communities near data centers. It’s estimated that by 2030, data centers will consume over 660 billion liters of water each year with 500ml being used for small prompts.

So, no, I don’t think you can assume that women don’t use AI simply because they’re afraid of new technology. Not when there are ethical implications of using it.

The end game

The obvious reason for the shift into AI for the self-help industry is because that’s what’s profitable right now. And who is profiting matters.

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, is currently using AI technology for targeting and murdering civilians with drones, satellites, and sensors throughout Palestine and the Middle East. Karp himself has stated that “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world. And, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.”

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI has faced a myriad of lawsuits and is facing sexual abuse charges from his sister.

It matters who is profiting off this not just because they’re making money, but because their end goal goes beyond just profit.

In recent studies, it has been proven that AI is making us less intelligent, and this is by design. A 2025 MIT study showed that ChatGPT users “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” all of this worsening over time.

A 2025 report from Stanford, showcased the dangers of using AI for mental health purposes due to its biases and hallucinations (again, further proof that you should not be using any of these self-help guru chatbots).

When oligarchs are in power, they will do anything to maintain that power. And the most impactful thing that they can do in order to maintain that power is to make those they rule over powerless. And the most effective way to do that? Eliminate critical thinking and human interaction.

This is what AI is built for. And it’s what we need to fight against.

This all fits hand-in-hand with the overall goal of the self-help movement. By focusing on problems of the “self” and internalizing everything as your fault, the people in power successfully steer you away from recognizing that many issues we face as individuals stem from systemic causes. Those in power don’t want to change these systemic causes that continue to help them profit.

The self-help industry plays a key role in this mentality and of maintaining the status quo by continuously repeating this messaging of self-improvement and distracting people with products that promise to change their lives if they only try hard enough. The addition of AI is only strengthening this mentality and further dismantiling critical thinking and community care.

We are not falling behind because we’re not listening to billionaire propaganda that’s begging us to use a product we don’t need so their bubble doesn’t burst. It’s being acutely aware of the future ahead and holding tight to what creates actual, positive change in this world.

Further reading

contains affiliate links

• “Empire of AI” by Karen Hao

• “Code Dependent” by Madhumita Murgia

• “Palestine Laboratory” by Antony Loewenstein
  
  

  Kaitlyn’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Related articles

• “Self-help wouldn’t exist without capitalism”

• “Let me plagiarize: a new theory from Mel Robbins”

• “Mel Robbins made me break up with my therapist”

Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own (backed by feelings) and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.

There’s a trend in self-help books that when I come across it, I immediately know it’s a sign that the book is going to be full of bullshit. And that’s when the introduction of the book spends its time trying to convince you that it’s not like other self-books, it’s a cool self-help book.

“The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson doesn’t even wait until the introduction, it screams it from its title. Before you even open it, you already know exactly what tone you’re going to be greeted with: insufferable, annoying, and cringey.

“I swear (quite literally) that I’m not like other self-help books”, the title screams.

But then you open it and it’s exactly like all the other self-help books that came before it: filled with lazy writing at best and toxic positivity mixed with victim-blaming at its worst.

From pickup artist to self-help guru

It’s important, as always when reading a self-help book, to understand where and who this book is coming from.

It’s always important to look at the author’s credentials before diving in. So, let’s look at Mark Manson’s:

• Is Mark Manson a psychologist? No.

• Is Mark Manson a therapist? No.

• Is Mark Manson an academic in any relevant field to what he’s talking about? No.

• Is Mark Manson a failed dating blogger? Yes.

Manson started his own dating blog back in 2008. In 2010, he launched his new blog, post masculine, which focused on giving dating advice to men on how to attract women with their confidence and status.

From his success from his three self-help books, Manson has launched a classic self-help business complete with a podcast, a newsletter with fluffy freebies, speaking engagements, and even an “AI-powered growth mentoring app” that only costs $19.99 a month. (Note: please, please, please do not use any AI tool for personal or mental health advice).

Now, of course, you don’t have to have an education in order to give advice to people, but it does matter when those insights are packaged as universal truths about how people should live, suffer, and take responsibility for their circumstances.

And this is especially important when those “truths” align with a worldview that minimizes systemic harm.

Offensiveness framed as honesty

Before we dive into the contents of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, we need to talk about the writing style, particularly its voice and tone. The whole thing reads like a frat boy trying to give you life advice, which is unsurprising now that we know who Manson is and where he came from.

There’s a kind of aggressive, alpha-masculinity running through it where offensiveness is reframed as honesty. As if saying something blunt, or crude, or vaguely insulting automatically makes it true.

You see it in the language. Words like “loser”, “lame”, “couch potatoes,” are thrown around for people who are “lazy” and not being productive enough in Manson’s limited view of productivity in a capitalistic society. We see this type of limiting language often in self-help books meant to cast judgement on anyone who fits outside of the norm of expectations. These words completely disregard not only physical and mental health, but the socio-economic factors that influence them.

In even more egregious moments of this tone, Manson throws around lines such as a “deadbeat boyfriend you caught wearing pantyhose one too many times,” played off as “humor” in the book when it’s just pure transphobia.

All of this is brushed under the same defense: I’m just being real with you.

And this all leads to the most annoying (and lazy) part of this book.

The word “fuck” is everywhere. Every page, every paragraph, sometimes every sentence. And the thing about “fuck” is that it’s actually a very good word. It’s sharp. It’s expressive. It can carry anger, humor, and emphasis when it’s used with intention.

But when you use it constantly, it loses all of its meaning.

And this was a common trend in self-help books when this book was published back in 2016. We also saw it in the deeply troubling book, “You Are a Badass” by Jen Sincero.

The overuse of swear words in the self-help industry, and especially this book, starts to feel less like a stylistic choice and more like a crutch for lazy writing. It’s a desperate attempt for writers to signal edginess without actually saying anything new.

Weaponizing blame for inaction

The tone of this book goes hand-in-hand with its thesis which is just as tone-deaf.

Like a lot of other self-help books (contrary to what it wants to believe), “The Subtle Art of Giving A F*ck” opens up with a rejection of toxic positivity. It positions itself as an antidote to the “good vibes only” culture of traditional self-help. When first reading this book, I was pleasantly surprised, but not for long. It didn’t take many pages for the book to circle right back to the exact thing it claims to resist.

You can see it most clearly in the way it talks about trauma and suffering.

There’s an entire chapter, “The Value of Suffering”, built around the idea that pain is not only inevitable, but necessary. That adversity makes us stronger. That struggle is good for us.

The chapter argues that if you’re suffering, then you need to make it into an opportunity. And its final thesis is that if your life is hard, then that’s only because of your perception.

Manson states, “You are responsible for everything in your life, no matter the external circumstances.”

And this is where Manson, like most other self-help gurus, turns the tables from something that sounds nice into something far more menacing.

Because what starts as “pain is part of life” quietly transforms into “your pain is your fault.” This kind of messaging transforms all societal issues into personal failures. It turns any uncontrollable, external circumstances into your internal mindsets. And it turns injustice into something you’re supposed to reframe.

This is where toxic positivity is tricky, because most people treat it as a mentality of “everything happens for a reason”, when in reality, its main message is, “Everything that happens is on you.”

And of course, you can’t have toxic positivity in a self-help book without some good, old-fashioned victim-blaming.

The book complains about “victimhood culture” and how it has led to a lack of resilience and people expecting handouts without sacrifice.

It’s a narrative we’ve all heard before, especially with the rise of the far-right (and it’s not a coincidence). It’s a narrative that changes structural failings into a moral failing. One that suggests the problem is not systems, but weakness.

This all reaches the primary thesis of this book: that we should choose what to care about and stop caring about too many things, a similar message to Mel Robbins’ latest book “The Let Them Theory”. And I have the same problem with both of these messages.

From the onset, the idea of prioritizing your attention to specific things feels reasonable. It’s not something I would argue against. But this overall message in these books depends on the execution.

In practice, this philosophy can slide very easily into complacency and disengagement. We see people weaponizing this all of the time. How many times have you seen people post “Rest is resistance” (let’s be honest, it’s mostly people that look like me, white women), but in reality that’s the only “resistance” that they’re participating in. This mentality of “protecting your energy” breeds a culture of curated indifference in a world that requires attention and action.

And this is where it starts to overlap with a much larger pattern.

Self-help books love to position themselves as revolutionary. Different. The one that finally tells it like it is. They often spend entire introductions distancing themselves from the genre they are very clearly part of.

And this is intentional. Because if you’re not “wasting” your efforts and energy on larger societal issues and internalizing them instead, then you remain upholding the status quo.

And this status quo is exactly what these self-help gurus profit off of and will continue to profit off of until we finally decide to start giving a shit.

Right now, the U.S. is facing a situation in which its own government has militarized itself against its people. ICE is pulling humans off the street, ripping children from their homes, and executing civilians trying to protect each other in the middle of the streets. Genocides continue in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Myanmar. Protests in Iran are met with mass killings from their own government.

And people around the world are sitting behind their phones (me included) wondering, “What can I do?”

And this is exactly the narrative that people in power want you to be thinking and telling to yourself. This idea of individual responsibility and growth keeps us busy.

This is the root of the dangers of the self-help industry. It’s why it has always been a pipeline to alt-right ideologies.

The primary message of self-help is that only you can help yourself and that you are the problem. Your “self” is at the center of it all. Your primary goal in life should be to be “better”. And in terms of the self-help industry, being “better” means getting rich, not caring about what other people think (“let them”), and the power of a positive mindset.

This mentality helps keep individuals trapped in a cycle where they blame themselves for things that are systemic. The real reason for not being able to have enough money to feed our families is not us having a bad relationship with money. It’s capitalism doing its job. Not caring about what other people think allows for systems to keep getting away with oppressing marginalized individuals without being questioned. And focusing on a positive mindset encourages people to turn a blind eye to the realities of the world around them.

And this blind eye equals silence. We see it every day with the people who tell us that they don’t watch the news because it’s too depressing or that they don’t “do” politics. This is a direct result of being told for years, centuries even, that we need to improve ourselves.

This mentality of focusing on ourselves distracts us from our true power: focusing on each other as a collective.

The question isn’t “What can I do?” but “What can we do?” Are there individual actions that need to be taken to answer this question? Absolutely. But we can’t stop there. The true power in the question is action and coming together as a collective unit in order to demand change.

So what should we do?

• Check out my fascism/resistance syllabuses in order to find books and other resources to start educating yourself. If you actually want to focus on self-improvement (because it’s inescapable that the starting point is educating yourself), start learning.

• Protests are a nice place to start when it comes to expressing collective beliefs, but history has shown us that demonstrating peace in a time of violence doesn’t bring change (read these books to learn more).

• Participate in mutual aid. Financially supporting and supporting your community through your different skillsets is a great way to make a huge impact. Find mutual aid efforts in your community or ones focused on the things you want to change. If you want to start your own mutual aid project, some resources on how to do that can be found here. You can also find mutual aid opportunities in all of my syllabuses.

• As far as supporting the people of Minneapolis, here are some mutual aid projects to donate to/participate in:

  • Community Aid Network MN

  • Deportation Defense & Relief Fundraiser

  • The Women’s Foundation of MN’s Immigrant Rapid Response Fund

  • Stand with Minnesota

The self-help industry, and those in power who embrace it, has successfully stripped power down to individuals. And once you bring a collective down to individuals, you take away their power.

It is only through a collective fight for systemic change that true liberation can be realized.

It’s time to stop being polite, to start wishing for a better world, and to start taking direct action into making that better world our reality.

Cover photo: Jake Dietrich (give him a follow for on-the-ground photojournalism in Minneapolis)

Over the past year, many multi-level marketing companies have eliminated the portion of their business that makes them an MLM (these businesses include Seint, Rodan & Fields, and BODi) while some have completely closed their doors (Modere). Companies that have changed their business model now only allow their independent contract representatives to make commissions off of sales, rather than profit off of recruiting others to join their downline.

This is in direct response to the rising anti-MLM movement which has been educating the public about the predatory, harmful, and illegal practices of MLM companies where 99.6% of representatives not only don’t make any money, but actually lose money. They were pyramid schemes that got away with it because they hid behind selling a product.

The fact that public (and perhaps legal) opinions surrounding MLMs has drastically shifted over the past few years, should be good news. And it would be if the self-help industry wasn’t so deeply tied to the MLM industry.

Although a lot of key players in the self-help industry will be losing income from speaking engagements at MLM conferences and events, I’m worried that this will only strengthen the self-help industry.

MLMs and their reps will re-brand to self-help. They’ve already started doing so.

MLMs work because individuals are blamed and shamed for “not succeeding”, even though they’re in an industry that is built for them fail and that industry is crumbling around them.

As these companies go under or reframe their business models, the companies certainly won’t take accountability and say that they failed because of their exploitative business models or because their company is selling over-priced, non-essential goods in a looming recession. They will blame their distributors for not working hard enough.

This will prompt victims of the MLM industry into thinking that they need to “be better.” This will lead them right into the hands of self-help.

And the MLM industry knows this. In fact, this is exactly what they want because this places their victims right where they want them to be as they rebrand.

MLMs and individuals who are perpetuating the harms of MLMs (now unemployed reps) will lean on the self-help industry to further profit off of individual’s vulnerabilities.

And this is nothing new.

In fact, the interconnectedness of MLMs and self-help has been there from the inception of the industry.

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With the rise of Direct Selling companies in the 1920s, there also came an even bigger boom of the industry teaching people how to sell. The man at the forefront of this was Dale Carnegie, who you may know from his bestseller that still tops the charts today, “How to WIn Friends and Influence People.” This book is still widely used across MLMs and courses are also encouraged, costing individuals $2,000.

The book, “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill was published a year later and is also still widely used and read today. Hill’s book was one of the key books that started the “positive thinking” movement, used within the self-help industry to manipulate and keep vulnerable individuals complacent still to this day.

In Bridget Read’s book “Little Bosses Everywhere: How The Pyramid Scheme Shaped America”, Read states, “Hill claimed [rich people]…weren’t rich and powerful because they had access to something other people didn’t. It was simply that they knew how to manifest wealth.”

This is a blatant lie. Individuals under capitalism are born into certain privileges which makes access to wealth more readily available than others. However, sharing the truth of this takes the power away from those individuals, something these individuals will do anything to prevent.

And as Read argues in her book and I have argued in the past, the rise of the MLM industry and the self-help industry is directly related to the rise of alt-right ideologies.

Changing the understanding of capitalism was vital in the early years of MLM companies as can be seen through the example of Leonard Read, an MLM keynote speaker and think-tank head.

As Read states in her book, “He wanted to promote the idea that a society in which every individual has an unlimited capacity to accumulate wealth is not greedy, it is democratic…Big government was bad for everyone, unions were bad for everyone, and the welfare state turned people into parasites. They needed to get workers to root for the boss.”

The ties between the MLM industry and the self-help industry can be seen through self-help’s largest celebrity, Tony Robbins who was a protégé of Jim Rohn, an evangelical preacher and former VP of the MLM Nutri-Bio.

This messaging has continued throughout the years, especially within companies such as Amway. Read states, “Amway turned positive thinking into a patriotic call of duty: You are the only thing standing between yourself and vast riches, and getting rich is your American right.”

For a large part, MLMs have been very successful at convincing the American public that this is the truth. To root for the boss. That the government isn’t standing in their way of wealth, they are.

They’ve convinced the public of this narrative so much so that the MLM and self-help industry are directly tied to the American government. The DeVos and Van Andel families (founders of Amway) have held (and continue to hold) prominent positions within the U.S. government and have also spearheaded Project 2025.

Donald Trump himself has direct ties to the MLM industry. He formerly partnered with Rich Dad, Poor Dad’s author Robert Kiyosaki whose books were spread by Amway; he had a business relationship with an internet and phone MLM called ACN; and even rebranded an existing vitamin MLM to “The Trump Network” from 2009-2011.

So what does this all mean for the MLM industry as a whole? The MLM and self-help industries are inextricably linked and both are also deeply connected to the current government. With the fall of the MLM industry, the logical step for the industry to take would be to rebrand themselves as the self-help industry and to sell self-help products instead of shampoo.

And this is exactly what’s happening.

As stated earlier, larger companies have started new models of work to get rid of the MLM model in order to combat the bad PR of MLMs. We’ll see how successful that ends up being for them. My guess? We’ll see many of these remaining companies go under in the coming years. You can’t eliminate the model that makes money for your company and still expect to profit.

However, former MLM reps and business owners are on track of starting new businesses focusing on self-help. These businesses will sell courses, seminars, educational materials all focused on how you can better yourself and profit more. In reality, as is true within the entire self-help industry, these products will make you feel like you’re making progress when in reality, they’re stringing you along to buy the next product because nothing will actually change.

Many former MLM reps are embracing an industry called Master Resell Rights where individuals purchase the rights of a pre-made self-help course, which allows them to sell that course to someone else, who then purchases the rights themselves. If you think that this sounds suspiciously like an MLM model, you’d be correct. But it’s disguising itself as an opportunity to sell.

This also isn’t anything new. Remember Tony Robbins and his connections to the MLM industry? Well, he’s the forefather of this business model. He initially sold his seminars as a franchise opportunity where individuals could purchase “exclusive rights” to sell his courses for $16,000. This model was also embraced by the self-help cult NXIVM.

It’s for this exact reason that while I’m glad that the anti-MLM movement has led to the closing of so many predatory companies, I’m worried about what this means for the future of the self-help industry as a whole.

If unregulated, the risk of extreme predatory behavior is inevitable.

The education in regards to the predatory behavior behind the MLM industry worked and pressured companies to change course or go under. We now need to do the same thing for the self-help industry as it continues to profit off of individuals who are caught in a capitalistic society that tells them time and time again that they’re the ones that need to change, not the system. The more that these ideas are perpetuated, the more conservative the politics of America will continue to become. There’s no escaping the interconnectedness of the two.

Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.

TW: Homophobia, abuse, racism

I’m sure you’ve been asked before, “What’s your love language?” Most people have a general idea of what the different love languages are and which one they most identify with.

“The 5 Love Languages” is an interesting phenomenon in the self-help industry because it’s something that’s been able to spread far beyond just the self-improvement sphere and has permeated into our everyday culture.

What’s interesting about this phenomonon is that most people don’t actually have any idea where the love languages come from and the truth is disturbing.

A small disclaimer: the facts about where “The 5 Love Languages” comes from doesn’t negate if this information has helped you navigate your relationships in any way. If it has, great! I’m not going to take that away from you.

However, I will always argue against this mentality that you should separate the art from the artist. This mentality forgets a key component of being an artist: making money. When you buy a book from an author, when you recommend that book to someone else, you are directly sending financial support to the author. Therefore, keeping the art and the artist at all times is crucial if we actually want to hold people accountable for harmful actions or ideas.

This is especially important to remember as we dive into the 5 Love Languages, a concept created by a bigoted religious counselor.

Who is Gary Chapman?

As I would hope that you wouldn’t come to me for mental health or relationship advice seeing as how I’m not an accredited therapist or psychiatrist, I would hope that you would treat the author of “The 5 Love Languages”, Gary Chapman, the same. Because, like me, he is not an accredited therapist or a psychiatrist.

His education is from the Moody Bible Institute where he has a Bachelor and Master of Arts in Anthropology and has a doctorate in Philosophy (hence the Dr. in front of his name) from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Gary Chapman is a Baptist minister at the Calvary Baptist Church in North Carolina. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there’s a common thread running through his education and practice: Christianity.

The book itself, “The 5 Love Languages” was specifically written as a “counseling” book for Christian couples, specifically only for heteronormative, cis-gendered couples (as to be expected in this genre). This point is important to mention because Chapman himself holds homophobic beliefs that he showcases in both blatant and discrete ways, which makes it far more sinister.

In Chapman’s podcast, “A Love Language Minute with Dr. Gary Chapman”, you can see that his blatant homophobia. One of his episodes asks what to do if you find out your child is gay. Chapman’s response is:

“Disappointment is a common emotion when a parent hears one of their children indicate that he/she is gay. Men and women are made for each other—it is God’s design. Anything other than that is outside of that primary design of God.”

This is a blatant example of homophobia. But he continues in a Q&A answer on his website (that has since been deleted) to be a little more discrete with his homophobia:

He says that even if you disapprove of their (a gay child’s) lifestyle, that you should “demonstrate” love, implying that real love and understanding is impossible.

Unsurprisingly, Chapman also has a relationship with racism as well. In 2003, he wrote the forward to a book entitled “Winning the Race to Unity” which, in summary, is a book that blames “reverse racism” (an unfounded idea that says that white people are oppressed) for breaking apart the church. In his forward, Chapman basically spends his time letting the readers know that he had a Black friend once when he came to play basketball at his church and that only after talking to him, he gained respect for him. Chapman argues that to bring the church together, all races need to love each other “more overtly”, ignoring the idea that oppressed individuals shouldn’t have to prove that they love their oppressors in order to not be oppressed.

Now, due to Chapman’s religious upbringing, these instances are sadly not a huge shock and just a mirror of the overall teaching he was taught from a young age.

On top of his education above, Chapman also serves as a pastor and minister for the Baptist church. In fact, his experience advising couples in the church inspired him to write “The 5 Love Languages” which becomes a horrifying fact when we look at his “advice”, especially when it comes to his comments regarding physical abuse.

In 2019, Chapman sent out an email condoning physical abuse and then subsequently sent out an apology email explaining his stance. He states:

“In my last email, I shared about one couple’s experience with explosive anger and a pattern of abuse that fortunately worked out for them in the end…but not all situations are as fortunate.” In this story, the wife got back together with her abusive husband in order to work through their marriage. The word “fortunate” is holding a lot of weight in this email.

This type of thinking is quite common in churches that encourage members to go to “couples counseling” with their pastor/priest. In instances such as these, some pastors/priests will encourage couples to stay together, even in instances of abuse, because their marriage is sacred.

In the church’s eyes, and clearly Chapman’s eyes, the biggest tragedy in this situation isn’t the abuse itself, but in a marriage ending.

Inside the book itself

Again, if the basics of these love languages have helped you communicate better with your partners, amazing. There’s obviously a lot on the internet that simplifies these ideas without the added bigotry.

But even within the basics of the five languages, there is also an opportunity for manipulation (which Chapman actually does acknowledge in some parts of his book, though I would argue that his examples of couples don’t really support his warning):

For example, if one partner’s love language is touch, they may manipulate or shame their partners into being intimate when they don’t want to because they need to feel loved.

Another example could be that if one partner’s love language is acts of service, maybe the other partner will tell them they should do all of the chores to show their love.

At surface level, these love languages all make sense as things people need to have in their relationships to some degree or another. There’s nothing inherently broken about this idea, so I’m not going to say that this idea is wrong or dangerous at its core, disregarding the extreme instances I talked about above.

However, the way that these ideas are presented in the book itself, is a cause for concern.

The first concern is how Chapman positions himself in the book. He makes himself out to be, not just a guru, but almost a spiritual figure. In one chapter, he gives an example of how his seminar was a “miracle” to a couple and ended up saving their marriage. Throughout the book, he referenced people calling his practice a “miracle” and him a “miracle worker”.

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The most concerning thing in this book is the use of couples as examples that Chapman has helped in the past. Every single one of these examples portrays an incredibly unhealthy marriage based in traditional gender roles and expectations. Some examples include a wife who shares that her husband said that he hated her, one in which the husband had a long-term affair, and one where the husband expected to come home from work to a clean house and have dinner waiting.

The goal of all of these examples is to share how the 5 Love Languages and Chapman himself “saved” these marriages. Due to Chapman’s religious background, it’s no surprise that his ultimate goal is to keep marriages together, no matter the environment of the relationship. As a side-note, the book is filled with religious messages and bible quotes, which isn’t a surprise.

In one example of a wife whose husband consistently treated her with contempt and hate, the wife stated that all of her friends were telling her to get out.

Chapman states, “I can understand the advice of your friends and there is a time to ‘get out.’ However, many people ‘get out’ too soon.”

He tells this woman, who is also religious: “It seems to me that you are torn between your religious and moral beliefs that tell you it is wrong to get out of a marriage, and your emotional pain, which tells you that getting out is the only way to survive.”

This kind of faith manipulation is rampant throughout this book and is weaponized, I believe, into pressuring wives to stay with husbands who, at best, don’t love them and, at worse, are emotionally abusive.

Another example of this is Chapman’s push for forgiveness.

The book states that not forgiving your partner is living in resentment and revenge and that forgiveness is the only way to love. This is such a blanket and dangerous statement that we’ve seen play out in Chapman’s email newsletter itself (forgiveness in an abusive relationship). In his book Chapman states, “The best thing we can do with the failures of the past is to let them be history.”

Of course, this can be true for some things. Maybe your partner said something unintentionally hurtful to you. Sure, forgiveness (and more importantly having a productive conversation around healing and understanding) is not dangerous. “Failures” in other aspects such as abuse in any form, deception, intentionally hurtful behavior, etc? The “failures” are not rooted in love and a partner should never have to forgive in order to showcase an unreciprocated love at their expense.

In a more basic sense of this all, again, it’s clear that Chapman’s religious beliefs believe that the most important thing about a marriage is to stay in it. In my more cynical viewpoint, I do wonder if there’s a financial motivation to keeping these couples together. As a marriage counselor, Chapman needed couples to stay in marriages in order to maintain these clients.

Within the self-help industry, this isn’t a far-fetched conjecture to say that a self-help guru’s main motivation is money, and Chapman doesn’t even try to hide it.

The end goal of profit

The most unsurprising part about reading “The 5 Love Languages” was the capitalism of it all. The edition I read was the 2024 edition in which the entire introduction was an ad for the Love Languages Premium Assessment coming in at $39.99 (but that’s 29% off! What a deal!). At the end of every single chapter, there was an ad for it again.

And of course at the end of the book that provides readers with action steps, the biggest action the reader can take is through purchasing additional tools from Chapman’s website.

This is of no surprise. We see this happen all the time in self-help books, most recently in Jenna Kutcher’s “How Are You, Really?”.

Like all self-help gurus I’ve covered, Chapman not only seems to be in it to spread the good word of the Lord, but he’s also in it to make money. He’s profited around $5 million off of his “counseling” and self-help empire. His empire includes countless books, online courses, online resources, and in-person events which are hosted by churches across the country that charge $60 for couples to attend.

While it looks like Chapman isn’t accepting new clients for counseling, he does recommend that people turn to counselors in their church and is still making a profit through his public speaking gigs, charging anywhere from $10,000-20,000 to speak at a live event.

At the end of the day, it's important to take a look at ideas we’ve adopted into modern culture and not just where they come from, but the people behind them—especially when those people profit. “The 5 Love Languages” may have helped you in your relationships, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the harmful ideology and financial motivations behind its creation.

Reading the world

It’s always been important for me to read books from other cultures and one way I conciously do this is by tracking my reading by the countries I read from. It’s a personal goal of mine to read a book from every single country in the world.

Right now, I’m tracking my reading on an app meant for travel, Skratch. It’s a fun way for me to track my progress and see my current gaps:

But I also wanted to help others read from every country in the world too, so I spent the last couple of months working on something I’m truly excited about: a Reading the world spreadsheet.

Reading the world spreadsheet

The spreadsheet

Inside the spreadsheet, you'll find a tab to every country in the world and books from that country.

How are the books chosen?

In order to be listed under a country, the book either has to take place in that country, discuss the country (if it's non-fiction), or the author needs to be from that country. Sometimes it's all of the above.

This is a living document

I don't want this to be something that I just send out. The comments are open. So if you have a book recommendation or if you have a review of any book mentioned, please leave a comment with a link and I will be sure to add it. As you'll notice, some countries have a LOT of books listed and a few have little or none, so I need your help finding gems to add.

Some things to note:

🌎 You'll notice that there are some additional tabs for places not officially recognized as "countries". I wanted to recognize them as such due to their current occupation or colonization. If there are any such places that you think I missed, please let me know.

🇺🇸For the United States, I only put books written by indigenous authors or books that critique systemic issues in the country. The majority of books people read are from the US, so I wanted to highlight voices that need to be read more.

✍️ Most of the descriptions were taken from other websites such as Goodreads, StoryGraph, and publisher websites.

Want to support this project?

Like I said, please add any and all comments to this document. If you want to support me and my work, please subscribe to my Substack (there are both free and paid options). Your support means the world to me.

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There's nothing more powerful than learning about the world around us and exposing ourselves to history and culture that we may not be familiar with. I truly believe that educating yourself through reading brings powerful change to not only yourself, but the rest of the world. Let’s help each other out, hold ourselves accountable, and learn about each other, together.

Other creators to follow who are also reading the world:

• Courtney Henning Novak

• Tonje from @reading.all.the.world

• Lydia from @lydloves

• Hanna from @theworldtoread

Cover photo from: LAYİHA

Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.

There’s three stories as to how Mel Robbins’ newest theory and book originated: two that Robbins tells and one that’s likelier the truth.

“The Let Them Theory” is Robbins’ newest addition to her self-help catalogue. I’ve talked about her before , so I was fully expecting her latest book to be much like her others: an avenue for her to profit off of an idea that holds no lasting meaning. What I discovered was unexpected.

The origin story

Before even getting into the book itself, the reality of where her idea comes from is proving to be the most telling of Robbins’ representation of the self-help industry as a whole.

Like I said, there’s three stories for how this Let Them Theory came to be (which Robbins is attempting to trademark):

1. As Mel Robbins says in her book and on her podcast, “I stumbled upon these two words: Let Them, and it was like flipping a switch in my life.” Very much in line with Rhonda Byrnes’ “The Secret” in which she discovered an ancient wisdom in an attic.

2. In her book, she tells the story a bit differently stating that yes, she “stumbled” on it, but it was also when her daughter Kendall starting yelling at her as she was getting her son ready for prom, saying “LET THEM” when Robbins tried to over control her son’s prom details. Robbins states, “Little did I know, that one moment would fundamentally change my entire approach to life.”

3. A more likely story is that back in 2019, Cassie Philips wrote a poem called “Let Me” which ended up going viral in 2022. The poem iterates the same ideas that Mel Robbins does, that you should let people show their true colors and be themselves, and to stop worrying about what other people think. Because only then can you focus on being your true self.

While I admittedly can’t find the viral post with a receipt of the written date, there is a Facebook post from 2022 in which Philips acknowledges going viral and even gets a “Let Them” tattoo to commemorate the moment and says that many people got a tattoo after being inspired by her words. Robbins says the same thing after her original “Let Them” post went viral in 2023.

The poem, it appears, inspired a movement and inspired Philips to make merch and create a community. A detail I find interesting is that “LET THEM” is captialized in the poem and it’s often fully capitalized in Robbins’ book as well as how her attempted trademark is written.

Philips has posted publicly about the situation on her Facebook stating, “she [Robbins] didn’t come up with it. She should not be claiming it or the movement that helped so many before she charges people and gets finances. So, I don’t endorse it being sold by her, and I’m warning people away.”

In an interesting turn of events, it does appear that this version of the story is one that Robbins actually told 4 months ago when promoting her new book, stating in a now deleted Facebook post: “My former student, Cassie Phillips , is the original author of the "Let Them" poem. She chose to help people rather than profit from her …” So the question is, why was this post taken down and why was the narrative changed to exclude credit from another author?

Now, did Robbins’ plagiarize an entire book, word for word on the subject? No, of course not. However, she did take someone else’s idea without credit, and I believe this is on purpose. It’s incredibly easy to just add half a sentence to a book and say, “One day I read a poem by Cassie Philips and I was so moved that I decided to start researching how this could impact someone’s life.” I’m sure she didn’t because 1. She wants the credit and wants to monetize off of it and 2. Citing sources isn’t exactly common practice in the self-help industry.

On top of not coming up with the idea herself, Robbins also didn’t even write the entire book herself. On her podcast, she’s very open about the fact that she co-wrote the book with her daughter, Sawyer Robbins, which she had on her podcast to talk about the process of writing the book.

Mel talks about how she desperately wanted to be closer to her daughter and her daughter wanted her to be in her life more. They talk about how Mel was a workaholic and often praised her other daughter which made Sawyer feel resentful towards her.

Then one day when her daughter needed a job, Mel approached her and said as Sawyer tells it “and mom approaches me and ever so slightly she says, ‘Hey Soy, you need money, clearly, and I need a little bit of help.” She proposed that her daughter work on a “little research project” she’s calling the “Let Them Theory” after a post she shared online about it (in 2023) went viral and she wanted to see if the idea had legs.

Sawyer completed the research behind the book and helped add a new section to the theory and the book called “Let Me”. I would argue that this framing that was added to the book took a potentially dangerous book and made it one that is largely unharmful.

I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not going to comment on the nature of their relationship as a whole, but I will say that when you look at the book, whose name do you see? Mel Robbins. Whose name don’t you see? Sawyer Robbins. Her daughter is not given a byline anywhere. At least not on the original publication, in which she was just given a nod in the dedication and listed third in the acknowledgements.

Not only that, but Robbins wrote two bonus chapters of the book about parenting and about the workplace which she co-wrote with two experts. Both of these experts got a byline on the e-book cover.

As an aside, I went to go check to see if Sawyer was credited on the publisher’s website and I am seeing that not only is she now credited, but has a byline on the cover. Could a reprint be happening to amend this intentional error? I’m not sure, but I’ll be updating you.

The idea of letting people be themselves and not worrying about what other people think isn’t a new idea, but not crediting an author for a poem you clearly knew about and then not giving your own daughter a byline is a whole other story and a story which Robbins is facing real consequences for with multiple publications coming forward with stories on the subject.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this new cover with her daughter’s name on the cover is a direct response to criticism. And it would also not surprise me if Robbins made a blanket PR statement either feigning ignorance or stating that her “discovery” was in fact this poem. Either way, I fully expect her to continue to get a trademark and to profit off of it as much as possible.

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The theory itself

But, enough about the backstory of the book. What about the book itself?

I always try to be as honest and unbiased as possible when reviewing self-help books despite the fact that I’m very conscious about the bias I come in with, so I’m going to say something that may shock you: this book isn’t bad.

I think it’s not bad if you apply the teachings to what I would consider safe and normal relationships in your life. What do I mean by this? I mean that this method could work for you if the biggest worry in your romantic life is someone not texting you back. I mean that this theory could work for you if your biggest worry in friendships is sometimes not being invited to brunch. And I mean that this theory could work for you if your biggest worry in your parental relationships is them not agreeing with some of your life choices. I think that this theory could work for you if you’re a middle-class white person that doesn’t face the consequences of oppressive systems on a daily basis.


I think that more serious issues, like abusive relationships and dealing with oppressive systems are where the Let Them Theory can become harmful.

Mel Robbins opens up the first chapter of her book (while using the introduction to recap the other two books she wrote) by saying, “If you’re struggling to change your life, achieve your goals, or feel happier, I want you to hear this: The problem isn’t you.” And this echoes back to what I’ve said about Robbins in the past. She is so close to getting it. This statement above is something I say all the time in order to point to the fact that we need systemic change in order for everyone to be able to equally have access to happiness. However, in the same paragraph, her ideas contradict herself, as they often to, as she states “The problem is the power you unknowingly give to other people.”


This may not seem like a contradiction at first, but she goes on to say that the only person we have power over is ourselves, which brings us right back to where the problem lies with most self-help books: feeding us the lie that says the only thing that can change our lives is ourselves.

The Let Them Theory is all about letting other people behave and act the way they are without “managing” them and without the need to feel like you need to impress or please them.

The idea that we need to just allow others to be who they are and be less worried about what they think can sound nice. But the negative consequences of this can be dangerous when we’re looking at abusive or toxic relationships.

In one of her first examples in the book, Robbins states, “Maybe your dad makes another comment about your life choices, and it hits you like a brick. Instead of letting it ruin your day, just say Let Him. Let him have his opinions.”

I think this idea on its face is a powerful one, which is why it works so well in a self-help setting. It’s seemingly easy to understand and we’ve all had relationships where we wanted the other person to act or behave differently and didn’t have control. And the only thing we had control over was responding to their actions whether that be accepting the things you don’t love or by creating boundaries.

But going beyond just reacting to a small disagreement or stressful situation, what if someone’s opinions are harmful, bigoted, hateful? What if their actions are manipulative, abusive, dangerous? It sounds empowering to just say, “well, I’m not going to change them, so I’m not going to worry about it.” But taken in the wrong way, I worry that the Let Them Theory encourages and allows abusive behaviors by some and keeps others in vulnerable and dangerous situations because they resign themselves to having no power.


This is where I see the Let Them Theory being harmful. However, as I stated earlier, I do believe that Sawyer truly helped save this book with her addition of Let Me to the narrative. Through this, the book talks about yes, you can accept the fact that you have to let people be who they are and accept that they may never change, but that you can choose how you react to it. If you’re in an abusive relationship, you can choose how you respond.

Yes, this helps give some power back to the individual and the fact that Robbins brings this up as a subject is good. However, I will say that saying that every individual has a choice in these situations is not necessarily reality. Individuals who are in dangerous relationships could very well be stuck in them due to financial manipulation or dependence, a lack of a social support system, lack of access to basic needs, etc. I think that saying that everyone always has a choice is an unfair statement and can potentially be used to blame victims in situations they have no control over. Robbins has an entire section about romantic relationships in this book which doesn’t bring up this dynamic at all and I think that’s irresponsible.

While “The Let Them Theory” is a book focused on relationships, I also see that issues arise with this idea when it comes to systemic change. If we only have power over ourselves and we can’t change any other person’s opinion, ideas, or actions, how are we expected to ever make systemic change?

Robbins’ views on this come apparent when she talks about sitting down with Martin Luther King III about the Let Them Theory. She states that he said, “Peace is not not weakness—it is power. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, and his father, Daddy King’s vision of non-violent action. ‘Let them’ doesn’t mean giving away control; it means reclaiming it. By choosing how we respond—by not feeding anger, hatred, or negativity—we exercise the ultimate power over ourselves.”

Robbins goes on to say that our power comes in our choice: “You’re releasing that grip you have on how things should go and allowing them to unfold the way they will go. You’re freeing yourself.”

Again, she does redeem herself here a little bit later on in the book, when she brings up politics when it comes to the Let Me part of the book:

If peace is what we’re after, then leading a life of inaction and allowing those in power to behave and do as they please will allow the fact that peace will never happen. Peace requires a response. Peace requires us to challenge and push back against the way that things are.

If Robbins is saying that the Let Them portion of this is letting people in power do what they want, then Let Us take that power back.

In conclusion

“The Let Them Theory” by Mel Robbins (and Sawyer Robbins) is not the worst self-help book I’ve ever read. In fact, it’s not even a book I would say is incredibly harmful for people to read. I think that there are general good ideas in here when it comes to creating healthy boundaries and expectations in relationships, when it comes to relationships that are mostly healthy and normal to begin with. I think there’s advice in here that most people could apply to at least one relationship in their life.

However, I think when we start to think about abusive relationships with other people or within systems, this book and theory start to fall apart.

On top of all of that, the question remains if you want to support an author who is okay with not only not crediting another author for the idea of “Let Them”, but also not crediting her own daughter who, I believe, was instrumental in mitigating the harm that this book potentially could have caused?

As Robbins would say, “Let Me”. The choice is yours.

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Books to read

A collection of books read to read. For the best learning experience, try to read the books in this order.
(*note: this section contains affiliate links)

• Fantasy
  “A Broken Blade” by Melissa Blair
  Starting with a fantasy book to learn about fascism? You read that right. One of my favorite things about fantasy is its ability to mirror our world today in fantasy settings which helps a whole new audience of readers make connections and take real-life learnings away from a setting that is rooted in magic. Fantasy isn’t escapsim. In fact, good fantasy helps us see our own world in a new way. There were a few books I was contemplating putting here, but I wanted to share a more popular book that has a world that mirrors the genocide and forced assimiliation of Native Americans.
  

• Non-fiction
  “How Fascism Works” by Jason Stanley
  A perfect introdcution to not only fascist regimes throughout history, but how patterns of fascists roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. This book looks at the structures, patterns, and language used to foster this environment, particularily focusing on the “us” versuses “them” linguistic technique to instill fear and hate.
  

• Fiction

  “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler

  Now that you have a general understanding of the characitsitcs of fascism, it’s time to head back into a fictional world that isn’t so fictional anymore. Written in 1993, this dystopian book paints a picture of a possible (and nearly accurate) 2024 where America struggles with greed, wealth inequality, and climate collapse.

• Journalism
  “Some People Need Killing” by Patricia Evangelista
  A lot of times when we think of fascism, we think of WWII and it being a thing of the past. But, recognizing that it still very much exists in today’s world can help contextualize our current moment. This incredible piece of journalism reports on the Philippinne’s war on drugs in which the state murdered approximately 30,000 innocent civilians because they were “dangerous” “drug addcits”. The rise to power of Rodrigo Duerte and his use of language to instill fear is reminiscent of Trump’s current tactics.
  

• Non-fiction
  “We Will Not Cancel Us” by adrienne maree brown
  Once you’ve grasped a good understand of fascism, the question remains, what now? What can we do about it? I think this book has some answers. This is book that’s a great partner to read with “Mutual Aid” by Dean Spade that I’ve recommended in the past. While, I don’t think this book is perfect, I think it’s a hopeful look at movement-building in the face of fascism.
  

Other media to consume

• YouTube video
  "The 10 tactics of facism” by Big Think
  If you don’t have time to read Jason Stanley’s book above, this is a nice and easy-to-understand summary of how fascism comes to be.
  

• Poetry
  “How Fascism Will Come” by Terry Ehret

  This poem was written back in 2011 and is an eerie premonition of sorts.
  

• Report
  Human Right’s Watch World Report 2025
  Every year, the Human Right’s Watch puts out a global report outlining human right violations in every country in the world, much of these a direct result of authoritarian and fascist governments. However, the theme of this report focuses on 2024 being “A Year of Reckoning” as people responded to and even sometimes rose up against these governments through protest in countries such as Bangladesh, Venezuela, and Georgia.
  

• Article
  ”The rise of disaster nationalism” by Richard Seymour

  Seymour published a book called “Disaster Nationalism” last year and this article serves as a brief look into his analysis on the rise of far-right movements around the world and what we can do about it. This is definitely one of the more complex (in terms of language) reads on this list, which is why it’s at the end.

  

  .

Who to follow

When learning about a subject where community is key it’s important to find people to help you along the way. Here are a few people and organisations I encourage you to follow:

• Emily Gorcenski: A former data scientist, Emily is very active on Bluesky and is consistently documenting far-right activities and tools to combat fascism, from an anarchist lens.

• Shane Burley: Author and journalist who consistently writes about fascism in today’s world.

• : Author and journalist who has long covered authoritaian governments.

Take action

2025 has been a year of immense overwhelm and panic. Some people have turned this into feelings of hope and some of hopelessness. But one thing that I think most people are collectively feeling right now is anger. And this anger is important. Here’s how you can utilize this anger in ways that can collectively make a difference:

Break up with big tech
As we’ve seen over the years and even more egriously over the past year, big tech is planning a huge and contorlling role in today’s fascism. This includes Apple (and it’s participation in the human rights violations happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Google (as well as Apple) changed “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America”, Facebook has long had a history of using censorship and not using censorship in order to support certain ideologies, and Elon Musk is self-explanatory at this point.

While we unfortunatley live in a world where big tech holds a strong monopoly, we can break up with these companies where we’re able to.


Boycott, Divest, Sanction
Speaking of breaking up, one of the best things you can do with your money right now is not spend it, especially when that money is supporting billionaires or companies who are directly contributing to facist leaders or situations that could create an environment for facism.

I highly recommend downloading the Boycat app that helps you make ethical shopping decisions. You can search for companies to see if they’re on the boycott list and even scan QR codes at the store. It also gives you recommendaitons for alternatives.

This may seem like a small thing, but BDS movements have literally toppled facism in the past. World-wide boycotts helped lead to the fall of apartheid in South Africa.


Participate in mutal aid groups and efforts
Listen, mutual aid is probably always going to be in my action list for all of my syllabuses. But, it’s especially important when it comes to fascism. Fascism feeds off of overwhelm and hopelessness. This is where fear breeds and hate grows. The best way to combat this is to take care of each other.

If you don’t know where to start, think of a topic that you’re deeply passionate about or something you see being destroyed or targeted by the government. Surround yourself and find a group who is passionate about keeping that certain law in place, organization in tact, right maintained, or people safe. Start organizing. Encourage others to do the same.

Big Door Brigade has a toolbox for starting a mutual aid project depending on what type of mutual aid you’re interested in.

Resist
I often end these syllabuses encouraging individuals to protest. But now, I’m going to ask you to resist. As I said earlier, violent systems don’t respond to simply protest. Resistance is necessary. So, resist where you’re able to. This is going to look differently for everyone dependant on their ability and access to safety. Take part in the actions above (these are all forms of resistance). And if you want to be more physically active in your resistance, I would recommend another book as an honorary mention to this list: “How to Blow Up A Pipeline” by Andreas Malm.

As I mentioned earlier, learning is an ongoing practice. If you would like more resources, don’t hesitate to reach out. And if you have any resources to add to this list, please add them to the comments below.

Cover photo by: Dominik Türk

Disclaimer: All opinions shared are my own (backed by feelings) and all facts are backed by linked and cited sources. This post is meant for educational purposes and not meant to personally attack an individual.

Over the last few years, I’ve watched as a disturbing trend has emerged on social media. Young women have been diagnosed with cancer at an alarming rate. In fact, according to the American Cancer Society’s yearly survey, cancer incident rates among women under age 50 were 82% higher than their male counterparts in 2021.

This fact is troubling enough. But what I’ve seen transpire on social media time and time again is unsettling. Influencers in the wellness industry (mostly) who have been diagnosed with cancer at a young age are promoting the idea of “healing yourself” from cancer and forgoing traditional medical treatment.

A few weeks ago, I saw yet another influencer stating that she was going to be focusing on healing her stage 4 cancer with a positive mindset. She recommended that her followers read “You Are the Placebo” by Dr. Joe Dispenza. And of course I had to pick up the book myself to see what it was teaching and promoting. It was worse than I thought. On top of preaching that you can cure anything by changing your mindset, the book also set up some dangerous messaging surrounding Dispenza himself. It was filled with narratives I’ve seen time and time again when it comes to cult leaders and I knew that I needed to dive deeper in Dispenza himself and the harm he’s causing. This is that deep dive.

As a disclaimer, I support people’s decisions to do whatever they want with their own bodies. However, promoting the idea that mindset and pseudoscience will cure your cancer and encouraging others to do the same with their own treatment is killing people. And I believe that Joe Dispenza is at the forefront.

A love affair with unaccredited universities

When I saw “Dr.” in front of Dispenza’s name on his book “You Are the Placebo”, I was admittedly surprised. Most often when reading self-help books of this nature, I find that the authors have no credentials whatsoever. But as I read on in the book, it quickly became clear that he doesn’t either. Joe Dispenza is a Chiropractor. Dispenza’s theories all rely on and reference quantum physics and neuroscience. As a Chiropractor, he’s not qualified to “research” these topics.

As a disclaimer, I did find in one of his bios that “His postgraduate training covered neurology, neuroscience, brain function and chemistry, cellular biology, memory formation.” It is unclear what this “training” is or where it was conducted. Dispenza also currently teaches at The Quantum University, which you can guess by the name, is not an accredited university.

As far as his Chiropractic training, we do have more information. He graduated from Life University, a private chiropractor college with the 12th-highest debt-to-income ratio among all graduate programs in the US, at 490%. The school is known for discouraging vaccines and has a contentious past of being de-accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the Council on Chiropractic Education due to students “not being taught how to detect and deal with problems that require medical attention.”

This mentality aligns with much of what was in his book “You Are The Placebo” in which his main thesis is that people can cure anything (including Parkinson’s, depression, and even cancer if they just change their mentality). The idea is that you create a new reality for yourself and cure yourself through an internal Placebo effect because you’ve changed the reality around you with your mind.

And Dispenza even shares his own story in which he was hit by a truck, breaking six of his vertebrae. Instead of the medically recommended surgery, Dispenza decided to heal himself. He claims that he visualized healing and meditated every day, and after 11 weeks, he was healed.

“The placebo response is about being healed by thought alone,” Dispenza states.

Dispenza encourages a deep meditation practice that focuses on positive thoughts of healing to change the reality of what’s outside so it reflects on the inside:

“The key is making your inner thoughts more real than the outer environment, because then the brain won’t know the difference between the two and will change to look as if the event has taken place.”

Dispenza gives “examples” that prove this theory such as one where he states that “Thinking that you can get better from depression can actually heal depression just as well as taking a drug.” He goes on to say that placebos actually outperform the effectiveness of anti-depressants.

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This is very reminiscent of “The Secret” by Rhonda Bryne which promotes the same idea. And the promotion of this idea has actually proven to be deadly.

He continues to echo the sentiments from “The Secret” by also using a common tactic in self-help books which is all about blaming the individual.

He asks the question: “What percentage of diseases and illnesses are due to the effects of negative thoughts?” His answer as the book continues seems to allude to the fact that all illnesses and diseases are a result of our negative thoughts and emotions. That all negative emotions or thoughts we have will result in negative reactions in our body and that all positives will have a positive effect:

“Thought by itself, is unmanifested emotion. Once we embrace that thought emotionally, it begins to become real–that is, it becomes reality.”

As someone who graduated as a Chiropractor from a school that doesn’t seem to believe in actual medicine, this doesn’t necessarily come as a shock. But the harm that it causes those who read it and think that it’s their new reality is monumental.

In order to help individuals achieve this placebo effect, Dispenza takes advantage of individuals who are looking for cures for chronic and terminal illnesses and charges them for workshops and seminars filled with false promises and harmful ideas.

His retreats cost anywhere from $2,499 (accommodation and travel not included) for a week-long retreat to a $349 online course.

The rise of a cult leader

While most self-help figures will stop their harm there, Dispenza takes it a step further by creating an environment and narrative that, in my opinion, is priming his readers and followers to view him as some kind of guru or even savior. Much of the language in his book and his practices outside of it are eerily reminiscent of a cult leader’s behavior.

Throughout this book, Dispenza boasts about how he has changed lives through his seminars and has literally healed people from chronic and terminal illnesses in just one afternoon. Here are a few examples he shares:

• A woman with multiple sclerosis “who was using a walker when she arrived, was walking unassisted by the time the workshop was over.”

• A person with Parkinson’s no longer had tremors

• He healed a traumatic brain injury

• And “people with tumors in their brains and bodies found that these growths went away.”

On his website for his retreats, Dispenza shares the stories of people who have attended them sharing that blind people were able to see, deaf people were able to hear, and that individuals were cancer-free after experiencing stage 4 cancer. Individuals thank Dispenza in these videos for saving their lives.

This type of gratefulness and crediting someone for saving your life is far past a slippery slope and one that quickly hurdles into worship.

Most cults and cult leaders seize control over individuals through molding individuals to change into someone easily manipulated and who has lost their sense of true self. When this happens, individuals rely on their leader to inform them of how they should live, act, and who they should be. And Dispenza seemingly doesn’t try to hide that this is his goal. In his book he states:

“In order to change your life, you have to literally become someone else” and “And it’s uncomfortable. Why? Because when we change, we no longer feel like ourselves.”

This kind of narrative not only causes people to ignore any red flags that may be going off (it’s just uncomfortable and it’s supposed to be) and may make them ignore concerns from loved ones in their lives who see them changing in an alarming way (you’re not supposed to feel like yourself).

This kind of language and communication is worrisome to see in the hands of someone also claiming to help cure people of disease and illness.

As someone who is promising followers to be cured from chronic illnesses, what happens when it inevitably doesn’t work? Dispenza has that covered as well, like most cult leaders who aren’t able to materialize what they’re preaching.

In “You Are the Placebo”, Dispenza warns his readers that “It’s tricky, though. If you overintend (that’s called “trying”), you’ll get in your own way and always fall short of your vision. If you oversurrender, you’ll become lazy, apathetic, and uninspired.”

Essentially, if this practice doesn’t cure your cancer, then you are the problem. Either you’re trying too hard or not enough. But ultimately, the fault is yours. Not the man who’s “teaching” you.

Dispenza has taken this cult-like path to the next level in the past and even taught at Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, founded by a woman named J.Z. Knight who claims that she’s channeling a 35,000 year old being named Ramtha the Enlightened One. Unsurprisingly, Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment is widely seen as a cult by many, including Knight’s former husband. Former students have also accused the school of brainwashing and mind control.

And I’m afraid to say that if you’re interested and have had the COVID-19 vaccine, you’re not allowed to attend the school as their website states: “If you had to take the Covid-19 Vaccine for any reason, please DO NOT attend events In-Person.”

Dispenza actually owes this school for his rise to fame as him and former faculty of the school created a documentary entitled “What the Bleep Do We Know?”, which argued that there’s a connection between science and spirituality. An interesting tidbit is that one of the directors, Mark Vicente, was also an active member of the infamous NXIVM cult before he escaped and exposed the realities of that cult.

With his exposure to these cult-tactics, Dispenza utilizes these skills to cause harm and manipulate his readers and followers.

At the beginning of “You Are the Placebo” Dispenza states that this practice is meant to go alongside chosen medical treatment, but then proceeds to give example after example of why the “placebo” effect is more effective than medicine.

Even though Dispenza is spreading these ideas and charging people $2,000 to teach people how to cure themselves, ultimately it’s not his fault if it doesn’t work. If you die. He dismisses all accountability.

In my opinion, this goes beyond negligence and starts going into malpractice that and ultimately costs people their lives.

Demonizing a man, not meditation

Meditation isn’t evil. Meditation is a useful tool that is proven to decrease stress and anxiety. While this can be a helpful tool for individuals with chronic or terminal illnesses, to promote the idea that you can meditate yourself into a cure is deadly.

The influencers who are sharing these ideas online to their audiences are victims of Dispenza’s empty promises and his practice of preying on individuals who may be feeling hopeless. And it’s not their fault that they’ve fallen for it. It’s understandable that medical treatment may not be financially available to you. It’s understandable that the trust of healthcare in America is low. And it’s understandable that people are willing to do and try anything that could possibly help them. Who wouldn’t do that? What’s tragic is that these individuals are brainwashed and manipulated so deeply by a cult-like personality that they truly believe in these ideas and spread it to others.

Meditating and maintaining a positive mindset can certainly be useful when navigating through difficult medical diagnoses and treatments. But please, please don’t pay for a fake doctor’s teachings when that “doctor” is only concerned with making money off of your vulnerability.

Earlier this year, I wrote about an Idaho law looking to place “adult” books in a separate area of libraries, not accessible to anyone under the age of 18. This kind of censorship has been rising for the last ten years in our country and not just in our libraries.

I quit teaching back in 2018 due to never-ending scrutiny from my administration and increased observations in my classroom. I taught debate to 17-18 year olds in Wisconsin. In order to properly educate my students on how to form their own opinions based off of primary and unbiased sources, I made sure that my students openly talked about and learned how to have productive discussions on all topics: race, abortion, international relations, gun laws, etc. I never told my students what to believe, but gave them the tools to form their own opinions. This didn’t make everyone happy.

And while I wish I could have fought harder for my student’s right to learn, my own mental health was suffering and I saw the writing on the wall: if I continued to teach what my students needed, then I would no longer be allowed to teach.

In fact, in the years that followed in my district, one teacher was suspended due to displaying a rainbow flag in her classroom; another was fired for teaching her students a song called “Rainbowland”; and the teacher that replaced me was given a warning for receiving a grant to put diverse books in her classroom.

This goes beyond symbolism. This is a warning.

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The most important tools we have as individuals is the power of education and knowledge. Knowledge weakens propaganda and takes away its power. Our government (and governments of history) know this all too well.

It’s not a coincidence that one of the first steps of any fascist government is to destroy or take away books from the general public.

Throughout history, authoritarian governments have banned books to silent dissent under the guise of protecting people from “obscenity”. Some historical instances include:

• The Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, in which books were burned that opposed Nazi ideologies, resulting in a cultural genocide.

• The Soviet Union banned pre-revolutionary texts from libraries.

• In 1973, the dictatorial government of Augusto Pinochet burned leftist and Marxist literature, sometimes executing those who owned them.

• In 1981, the Jaffna Public Library was burned to the ground, destroying nearly 100,000 volumes and destroying records of Tamil culture.

• During the Bosnian genocide in 1992, Serbian forces set the National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovnia on fire, killing anyone who tried to rescue what was inside. 1.5 million books were destroyed.

• Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed another cultural genocide as 13 public libraries were destroyed throughout Gaza.
  

The United States is currently on this path.

In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America reported 10,046 instances of book bans. This number tripled from the previous school year.

Idaho isn’t the first nor is it the last state to try to impose laws around information access. According to the American Library Association:

“A primary goal of the library profession is to facilitate access to all points of view on current and historical issues. All proposals for restricted access should be carefully scrutinized to ensure that the purpose is not to suppress a viewpoint or to place a barrier between users and content. Libraries must maintain policies and procedures that serve the diverse needs of their users and protect the First Amendment right to receive information.”

And of course, the TikTok ban wasn’t built out of fear for our data. It was banned due to the way the platform’s algorithm allowed for increased education, the spreading of knowledge, and effective organizing.

All of these measures are designed to take away power from anyone not in the ruling class. We have to make sure we resist and hold onto our power. One of the most revolutionary acts of resistance you can partake in right now is educating yourself. Read books. Read a lot of them. Read articles from independent journalists. Follow these journalists on social media. Read Substacks (which you’re already doing, thank you).

In order to support your library, get a library card. Get a new library card every time you move. By doing this, this increases patron numbers which can directly help increase library funding.

If your school district is imposing or talking about book bans, go to your school board meetings. Make your voices heard. Follow RachelwithReads to get inspired.

But, most importantly, keep learning. If you don’t know where to start, I’ve created syllabuses for Palestine, Resistance, and the Climate Crisis (more to come soon).

Through this education, we’re not only able to identify patterns and propaganda techniques, we’re also able to learn how to organize effectively.

The Milwaukee Public Library showed us what the world would look like if we were forced to turn off the lights. It’s time to turn them back on.

First, I’ll take you through books to read through various genres and the order you should read them in to scaffold and layer your learning. But learning isn’t all about reading, so I’ll also share video resources, shorter articles, and give you a list of people to follow on social media in order to stay up to date well beyond today. Finally, learning means nothing without action, so I will also provide you ways that you can do something with what you’re learning.

This isn’t meant to be overwhelming and is laid out in a way that it’s learning you have time for. Therefore, the list isn’t extensive and manageable. Of course, there’s always more learning to be done.

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Books to read

A collection of books read to read. For the best learning experience, try to read the books in this order.
(*note: this section contains affiliate links)

• Fiction
  “Migrations” by Charlotte McConaghy
  A devastating yet healing novel (also one of my all-time favorites) that takes place in a near future where the main character is following arctic terns on what may be their last migration.
  

• Essays
  “Vanishing Treasures” by Katherine Rundell
  An accessible colleciton of essays each focused on a different endangered animal. The essays focus on why these animals are endangered (usually due to climate change and/or human interaction) and what we can do about it.
  

• Memoir

  “Life on the Rocks” by Juli Berward

  This is a blend of memoir and science writing (one of my favorite genres) that follows a marine biologist focused on saving our coral reefs from the impacts of climate change.

• Non-fiction
  “The Great Displacement” by Jake Bittle
  An increidble and timely piece of journalism that looks at the climate change impact (and the impact of our systems and capitalism) on every day lives of people in America. This book argues that climate displacement and refugees will continue to grow in our future and showcases what that could look like and what we can do about it.
  

• Non-fiction
  “The Weight of Nature” by Clayton Page Aldern
  A look at the effects of climate change on our brains that gives us a new and eye-opening look as to how we’re affected by climate change on a daily basis and how it’s not just something that’s affecting our outside lives, but our inside ones as well.
  

Other media to consume

• TV series
  "Our Planet” on Netflix
  Just like the rest of the Planet Earth series, this series explores the lives of different animals around the world. What makes this particular one different is that it focuses on the impact of climate change on these animals. Warning: this show absolutely destroyed me.
  

• Article
  “Watching Hurrican Helene” by Nathan Shuherk

  An exploration of the experience watching natural disasters occur in real time from our phones and what it means for our future.
  

• YouTube video
  “Can clean energy handle the AI boom?” by Vox

  Looking at the amount of energy needed to support our data and AI.
  

• Article
  “Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe” by Nina Lakhani
  This article was written at the beginning of the genocide and reports that the emissions generated during the first 2 months were “greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations”.
  

• Report
  "A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing” by UN Environment Programme

  A report published in 2024 that lays out 18 signals of change within the climate, what we need to be aware of, and what we can do about it

  

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Who to follow

When learning about a subject where community is key it’s important to find people to help you along the way. Here are a few people and organisations I encourage you to follow:

• : If you’re looking for not only incredible book recommendations about climate change, but also personal writing about the climate crisis that’s a beautiful mixture of science writing and memoir, look no further. Also recommending reading his Substack.

• ’s “Heated” Substack: A Substack focused on the fact that you aren’t the reason the world is burning and exposing the systems that are responsible.

• Xiye Beara: A climate justice activist from the Otomi-Toltec Indigenous community in Central Mexico.

• Greta Thurnberg: Arguably one of the largest voices in the world when it comes to climate change, Thurnberg is consistent at challenging the systems responsible for climate change including colonialism and genocide.

• Nina Lakhani: Check out her backlist of articles on “The Guardian”. She’s doing some really important reporting.

Take action

Donate to mutual aid efforts
In the midst of and after a climate disaster, we’ve seen time and time again that the systems that are built to help us, aren’t. As we work towards systemic change, we will need to rely on mutual aid in order to recieve and give immediate help to those in need.

Whenever a disaster occurs, find people who are on the ground and either living there and/or sharing resources. Pay attention to mutual aid opportunities and give where you can (whether that be through monetary donations, donations of goods, donations ot time, etc). At the very least, you can share these resources to your own communities if you’re not able to give.

Here are some places that you can donate and help with the current wildfires in LA:

• Mutual Aid LA Network has a huge spreadsheet of mutual aid resources

• Pasadena Humane has had an unprecedented influx of animals that continues to grow. They’re no longer looking for physical donations, but do still need monetary donations and foster homes.

• LA Street Care needs volunteers and donations for their mutual aid work providing resources to individuals who are unhoused.

• Donate to individual family’s GoFundMe Pages. Here are spreadsheets for displaced Black families, Latine families, Filipino families
  

Don’t use AI
AI is one of the things that is rapidly impacting climate decline. According to the UN Environment Programme:

The electronics they house rely on a staggering amount of grist: making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw materials. As well, the microchips that power AI need rare earth elements, which are often mined in environmentally destructive ways, noted Navigating New Horizons.

The second problem is that data centres produce electronic waste, which often contains hazardous substances, like mercury and lead.

Third, data centres use water during construction and, once operational, to cool electrical components. Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million, according to one estimate. That is a problem when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation.

While it may be impossible to not use AI at all in our current tech climate, be aware of what’s using AI and when and try to not utilize it.

Protest
You’ll notice a pattern that this will always be an action step for me here. If you are able, protesting helps make our voices louder. It’s a tool meant to disrupt and force those in charge to take action. Make sure that you continue to make your voice heard on the issues you care about.

If you’re unable to physically protest, there are ways to spread information and awareness from your home. Use social media as a tool to educate, inform, and push for systemic change. The reality is that individual changes won’t make a dent in curbing climate change. In order to make a dent we need to focus on who is affecting it the most: corporations, billionaires, and our governments. We need to push for systemic change here.

As I mentioned earlier, learning is an ongoing practice. If you would like more resources, don’t hesitate to reach out. And if you have any resources to add to this list, please add them to the comments below.

Cover photo by: Soly Moses

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To be clear, I’m not saying that everyone who reads or has ever read self-help is on the path to becoming part of the alt-right movement. I mean, look at me. But I do think that if we’re not careful, more and more people will follow down that path. In order to stop this from happening, we need to understand the link and work on providing other resources to educate people who may be going down that path.

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What’s the link?

The main message and ideology of the self-help industry is that only you can help yourself. That you as an individual are the problem that needs fixing in order for you to live a better life. This same thinking is also tied to the wellness industry where self-care (an ideology stolen and bastardized from Audre Lorde) and personal responsibility are believed to be the answer to perfect health.

Both industries encourage questioning of authority and institutions, promoting a focus on individual success and health. In the self-help industry, this messaging turns into promoting that anything is possible if you have a positive mindset and in the wellness industry, this messaging turns into taking wellness into your own hands by foregoing traditional medicine.

This individualistic ideology is a slippery slope. Because the same thinking is the basis of alt-right movements and this is something alt-right movements prey upon. 

In 2011, Charlotte Wad and David Voas wrote a paper in the Journal of Contemporary Religion that introduced the term “conspirituality”. The paper defines it as “a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews.”

This movement continued to grow and connect the wellness and alt-right community, specifically during the start of the COVID pandemic. Both communities shared common ideologies in regards to the distrust of institutions, promoting a life of self-reliance. The increase in self-care mentalities and industries has slowly demonized community care and has caused a growing distrust of social programs. And this distrust is what the alt-right movement has grabbed onto as a gateway of sharing further alt-right ideologies to those in self-help/wellness circles. 

Interestingly enough, while individuals are prioritized in the alt-right movement, the enemy that alt-right movements focus on are collective groups of people that they blame for societal issues. While these groups’ concerns for global health, poverty and inflation, and human trafficking may be valid, their scapegoats are anything but. 

All of these ideologies from the self-help, wellness, and alt-right world encourage the focus on individuals. As a result, this thinking “others” everyone who isn’t them and everyone who may be part of a different ideology or belief system. This othering has the effect of every type of othering—a creation of a common enemy within groups. And when you other groups of people, that enemy is always another group of people.

This breeds the racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and sexism that we see and fear today. The real root of this evil lies within the individualistic and selfish ideologies of these movements. Instead of focusing on the real enemy (the systems created to harm), these groups are focusing on groups of people that have been created as scapegoats by the systems who are oppressing everyone.

And this is where the real danger lies. This is where humanity is losing because community care is being destroyed.

What can we do about it?

The answer to stopping this cycle is to change our thinking and ideology as a whole. Instead of embracing an ideology that focuses upon an individual’s need to fix a problem, we need to collectively look at and combat the systemic issues that harm us.

Unfortunately, the alt-right movement is considering groups of marginalized people as the systemic reason for their problems and have concrete plans rooted in hate and harm to “solve” these problems. These groups are empowering individuals and community by encouraging them to spread messages rooted in hate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world who hope to combat these narratives seem to still be embracing self-help narratives that only you can make a difference. Yes, they’re embracing the same narratives that the self-help industry perpetuates, but what is different about the alt-right movement is that they’re mobilizing individuality and self-reliance ideologies while also creating a collective to push for harmful change.

These groups understand what journalist Talia Lavin outlined in her book “Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy” where she states: “No hate is an island.”

Because of this, love can’t be an island.

As Lavin continues, she states:

“Dismantling the rise of fascism is best not left to lone vigilantes, nor to the punitive mechanisms of the state, but to people working together to stamp out hate wherever it arises.”

The self-help, wellness, and alt-right movements have placed an emphasis on individuality in order to place a veil over alt-right’s true motivation: power. Once you strip a group of people down to individuals, you take away their power.

It is only through a collective push for systemic change that true liberation (and health) can be achieved. This is the answer and the only way we will be able to stop the flow of the self-help to alt-right pipeline. 

And I know that this is possible. Although, ironically, I am only one individual, I am proof that through education and awareness, opinions can change. I was on this pipeline (as much as it pains me to admit) and I was able to break it within myself. Individuals are single drops of water. However, when we come together, we can change the flow. 

Further reading 

• Ages, Alexandra. “The Alt-Right’s Co-Optation of Wellness Subculture at the Intersection of Health, Purity, and Ideology | Perspectives Journal.” Perspectives Journal, 30 Aug. 2024, perspectivesjournal.ca/alt-right-co-opt-wellness/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2024.

• Fariha Roisin. Who Is Wellness For? HarperCollins, 14 June 2022.

• Harrison, Christy. The Wellness Trap. Little, Brown Spark, 25 Apr. 2023.

• Lavin, Talia. Culture Warlords. Legacy Lit, 13 Oct. 2020.

• Newman-Bremang, Kathleen. “Reclaiming Audre Lorde’s Radical Self-CareReclaiming Audre Lorde’s Radical Self-Care.” Www.refinery29.com, 28 May 2021, www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2021/05/10498352/reclaiming-self-care-audre-lorde-black-women-community-care. Accessed 9 July 2022.

• Raphael, Rina. The Gospel of Wellness. Henry Holt and Company, 20 Sept. 2022.

First, I’ll take you through books to read through various genres and the order you should read them in to scaffold and layer your learning. But learning isn’t all about reading, so I’ll also share video resources, shorter articles, and give you a list of people to follow on social media in order to stay up to date well beyond today. Finally, learning means nothing without action, so I will also provide you ways that you can do something with what you’re learning.

This isn’t meant to be overwhelming and is laid out in a way that it’s learning you have time for. Therefore, the list isn’t extensive and manageable. Of course, there’s always more learning to be done.

Subscribe now

Books to read

A collection of books read to read. For the best learning experience, try to read the books in this order.
(*note: this section contains affiliate links)

• Fiction
  “Pet” and “Bitter” by Akwaeke Emezi
  In order to best understand resistance and revolution and the role you could play through your talents, I highly recommend these two books by my favorite author. They’re short and easily accessible and while they explore themes in a magical realism setting, the ideas are easily applicable to our own lives.
  

• Non-fiction
  ”Mutual Aid” by Dean Spade
  This is the book to help begin to understand the importance of mutual aid and the role and change it plays in our world. It’s great to not only understanding how mutual aid works, but how to effectively create mutual aid networks and participate in them.
  

• Essays
  “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” by Angela Y. Davis
  A collection of essays, interviews, and speeches that explores struggles against state violence around the world and how they’re connected. It’s also a call to action for a collective movement towards liberation. This is a nice book to get a brief overview of various topics.
  

• Non-fiction

  “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance” by Kellie Carter Jackson

  If you enjoy “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” and want to dive deeper into the history of Black resistance, pick this up. It’s important that we reframe the narratives surrounding the history and present of Black resistance and this book does just that.
  

• Non-fiction
  “Let This Radicalize You” by Kelly Hayes
  After you understand the history and basics surrounding resistance, this book all about sustaining organizing and activism as the systems you are resistance are built to break you down. This is to help you keep going.

Other media to consume

• Video
  “What is Mutual Aid (Classroom Version) by Dean Spade
  A super clear explanation of what Mutual Aid is, if you don’t have time to read Spade’s book from above.

  

  
  

• Case study

  “Farm-to-Community: Critical Elements of a Successful Farm Mutual-Aid Program” by Chris Newman
  A breakdown of what a successful mutual aid effort where a farmer started a mutual aid fund to help bring his food to individuals facing food insecurity.
  

• Article
  “The co-option of mutual aid” by Regan de Loggans

  If you don’t have time to read any of the books above, this article is a great primer on mutual aid and how it differs from charity. It also explores the dangers of white people co-opting the term “mutual aid” when talking about charity.

• Keynote speech
  “Designing Rest as Practice” by Tricia Hersey
  Hersey wrote a book called “Rest is Resistance” which focuses on the importance and revolutionary act of rest in our capitalistic society. Here’s a speech where she talks about this idea.
  

• Podcast
  “Movement Memos”

  A podcast that connects experts, activists, and journalists around the world who are on the front lines of movements and mutual aid networks.
  
  

Who to follow

When learning about a subject where community is key it’s important to find people to help you along the way. Here are a few people and organisations I encourage you to follow:

• Sam @expertbooksmuggler: In my opinion, Sam is one of the best examples of how to use social media as a tool for mutual aid. She has consistently been sharing resources and opportunities for you to participate in mutual aid by donating money directly to families currently experiencing genocide around the world.

• ‘s Substack: A substack dedicated to focusing on community organizing and mutual aid topics.

• Dean Spade: The author of “Mutual Aid” listed above, I would honestly go to Spade’s linktree and read all his articles/interviews.

Take action

Donate
A large part of mutual aid is supporting members of your community (including your global community). One way to do this (if you’re able) is to financially help. There’s a million ways to do this.

I would recommend finding a cause or community you care about (Palestine, Sudan, natural disaster relief, etc) and search for mutual aid and that community on social media. I find Instagram to be the best place to search for these opportunities.

Start a mutual aid project
This might seem like a daunting task, but there are resources to help you. Big Door Brigade has a toolbox for starting a mutual aid project depending on what type of mutual aid you’re interested in.

A good place to start might be through creating a neighborhood pod or create a pod within your local community. Some resources on how to do that can be found here.

Protest
If you are able, protesting helps make our voices louder. It’s a tool meant to disrupt and force those in charge to take action. Make sure that you continue to make your voice heard on the issues you care about.

As I mentioned earlier, learning is an ongoing practice. If you would like more resources, don’t hesitate to reach out. And if you have any resources to add to this list, please add them to the comments below.

Jenna Kutcher and I have a lot in common. We’re both from the midwest. We both went to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. And we were both wedding photographers in Wisconsin at the same time (yes, I was a wedding photographer, but that’s a story for another time). 

So when I first heard of Jenna Kutcher, I was immediately intrigued. We had a lot in common and she quit her job to pursue photography full time just like I had. When I first started in the photography world, I felt like I could learn a lot from her.

I listened to a lot of her podcasts, did some of her free classes, and tried to learn as much as I could from her over the span of a year (as you can guess, I was heavy on my self-help bullshit at the time). But it took me a while to realize something: I wasn’t being taught anything, I was being sold everything. 

Every single one of her podcasts was an ad for an online course she was launching, a mastermind, coaching, or a free course. However, when you went into the free course, that course was an ad to buy another course. This is a highly common marketing tactic (one I even used for other companies when I was a freelance writer, again, a story for another time and a story I’m not proud of).

And it’s a marketing tactic that used to work. People are so desperate to learn that they’re okay being strung along and when it becomes time to pay they think, “well, I made it this far, might as well try to actually learn something.” Because up until that point, most oftentimes these self-help leaders or coaches will have shared information that is readily available online for free. They might have added some of their own charisma, but nothing that they have told people is new, special, or exclusive. They promise these things in paid online courses, but the reality is is that it’s the same stuff repackaged. 

It took me a long time to recognize this, but once I did, I stopped following Kutcher as closely and soon fell into the hole of trying to dismantle the self-help industry as a whole. But, when I saw that she had published a book “How Are You Really?” back in 2022, I knew I had to read it.

It will be a shock to no one that this book is a giant ad for her products and website. It will be a shock to no one that this book is filled with toxic positivity contradictions and capitalism celebrations.

But what was surprising to me about this whole book was the research I did after reading it. After reading it last year, I decided to go back and start to re-look at the content Kutcher was posting in a new lens and I found that she has really turned into an influencer who truly showcases the symptoms of everything I warn about in self-help: using trauma as a marketing ploy, making sure every piece of content is tied to making money off of her audience, displaying harmful rhetoric surrounding health and disguising it as empowerment, and copying other people’s work. 

Does this sound like anyone else you’ve read about before?

Kutcher is friends with Amy Porterfield and Mel Robbins. one of which we’ve already talked about, who employ much of the same tactics. However, I think Kutcher is an interesting case, because I think that she has been influenced by her closest influencers to take what was once her “authentic” content and exploit it for the sake of capitalism. 

How did we get here? 

Although we went to the same university at the same time, I never knew Kutcher personally. I started following her and her story when we were both Wisconsin wedding photographers. Kutcher quit her corporate job at Target to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. She quickly excelled and became well known within the industry. As with anyone in the industry at the time, she also ran a blog and then created a podcast (the one I used to listen to obsessively–Kutcher has a great podcast voice).

She went viral after posting a photo of her and her husband telling the story of how they met. It went viral for two reasons: 1) people expressing their gratitude at seeing a real couple represented and 2) trolls who bullied Kutcher due to the differences between Kutcher and her husband’s body types.

Through this, Kutcher was able to create a brand of authenticity and body positivity which turned into courses, coaching, and a mastermind (which we’ll talk about later).

Naturally, the next course of action for her to take was to write a self-help book, which is why we’re here. In 2022, Kutcher published her first book “How Are You, Really?” a book that encourages people to be honest with themselves in order to take control of their lives. But I think it’s time that we’re honest about the true motive of this book. 

Let’s be honest

At the end of the day, like almost all self-help books, “How Are You, Really?” should have been a blog post. While I think Jenna Kutcher is generally a decent writer, I don’t think a book format is the right fit for her because there’s far too much space to fill. In order to fill that space, Kutcher repeats the same sentiments over and over again, so much so that any hope of using repetition as a tool of impact goes out the window.

Beyond just the writing though, I was excited at the beginning of the book and actually hopeful that Kutcher might be on the right path because she talked about how you can’t choose joy. She actually mocks other self-help gurus and says: “Or it’s probably our fault we aren’t content or happy, and we should just “choose joy” like the coffee mugs and water bottles say.”

I don’t know how this can be anything but a dig at Rachel Hollis who sells merch that says “We Choose Joy”. This confused me because I had assumed they were friends due to social media posts stating that her, Porterfield, and Hollis were a group of friends. However, this expose makes the compelling argument that that friendship was a marketing ploy and that Kutcher doesn’t agree with her on many things. This came out after Hollis’ famous toiletgate incident in which she created a reel calling out her fans saying “why would she want to be relatable” while degrading her housecleaner as someone who “cleans the toilet” and then comparing herself to Harriet Tubman and Malala Yousafzai in the caption.

Anyways, it makes sense that Kutcher would want to distance herself from her PR friend, once the PR turned sour. 

What makes this the most interesting to me, though, is the fact that Kutcher digs at Hollis’ main messaging and says that they don’t agree on a lot of things, but then proceeds to write the same book as Hollis. True, Kutcher’s is better written and far less offensive, but the general messaging and attempt at relatability remain the same. 

Hollis isn’t the only self-help figure Kutcher attacks. She even attacks Marie Kondo by name a few times, which is baffling to me, as Kondo is largely unproblematic. 

Remember how I was hopeful at the beginning of the book when Kutcher was attacking toxic positivity? That hope went out the window quickly as Kutcher falls into the same played out narratives that toxic positivity feeds on. She states, “The more optimistic our words become, the more optimistic our minds become.”

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Throughout the book, Kutcher is trying to inspire you to monetize your hobbies. She also pulls money advice reminiscent of “You Are A Badass.” Her advice for getting out of debt include:

“Are you wasting your hard-earned money on Target candles and clearance sweaters? Can you cut date-night costs by dining in? Can you shop secondhand for a few months while you build up your savings?”

I don’t think I need to point out how privileged and unhelpful this advice is as it doesn’t look at any systemic factors that may lead to someone being in debt. And maybe, wild idea, people who are in debt enjoy to have moments of joy in their lives too. So, buy the Target candle. 

But the main point of the book isn’t even this generic “motivational” messaging or tips on how to save money, but it is to prompt the reader to buy more from Kutcher. 

There are literal pop-up ads for her podcast and website throughout the book where it literally tells you to “learn more”.

In her book, Kutcher states that joining a mastermind is “investing in yourself”. Tip: if anyone is ever trying to sell you a mastermind or telling you to invest in yourself, run. An investment is something that happens gradually over time, so inevitably when you’re getting no results from the mastermind you sign up for, they can just keep telling you to wait and keep stringing you along. Because here’s the kicker: Jenna Kutcher’s mastermind costs $20k a year.

I’m no mathematician, but a Target candle won’t put you in debt. A $20k/year mastermind will. 

The most egregious ad pop-up in the book is when Kutcher talks about her fertility journey. In this section, a pop-up appears that reads: “If you or someone you love is grieving a miscarriage, find support at WWW.JENNAKUTCHER.COM/MORE”. This kind of behavior that uses trauma (even your own) to advertise your products is common practice for Kutcher on social media.

Kutcher’s end goal

Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched Kutcher really start to use trauma (her own and others) on social media to advertise for her products. This is behavior often encouraged by Multi-Level Marketing companies (MLMs) whose distributors often share their own traumas that they were able to “overcome” thanks to their MLM company. We see the same behavior from Kutcher. 

When her friend Dave Hollis tragically died back in 2023, she posted a reel of her talking about losing her friend and reads an excerpt from her book. In the caption, she stated: “If you don’t have your copy yet, comment BOOK CLUB below and I’ll send you the link to get one. They are on sale right now, so you can snag a copy for just $18.30!✨” Using your own trauma to manipulate people is one thing. Using a friend’s death to advertise your book is a whole new level of malice. 

Kutcher has since taken the post down.

Speaking of the Hollises again, even though Kutcher seems to want to distance herself from Rachel, the two have way more in common than not, including plagiarism allegations. Just this past week, Jenna Kutcher posted a reel about ADHD where she copy and pasted not only the text on the reel, but the caption as well (changing a couple words) from Marketing Strategist & ADHD Business Mentor Emily Schwalbach.

Schwalbach emailed Kutcher and didn’t receive a response from Kutcher until Schwalbach’s followers started calling Kutcher out in her comments. The email from Kutcher states that she takes “full responsibility”. At the same time, she states the reason for the copied content is:

“We’ve been in full-on launch mode, creaking out tons of content and pulling inspiration from all over –trends, tools like ChatGPT, and just everything we’re exposed to. Sometimes it’s hard to even realize where all that inspiration’s coming from!”

Using AI and being too busy is not an excuse for blatant plagiarism. Not to mention, “inspiration” is not a synonym for "plagiarism”. As someone with a degree in communications (which Kutcher does have), she should know better.

Kutcher has since taken the post down.

All of this and we haven’t even discussed the fact that Kutcher owns multiple properties in Hawaii that she rents out or the fact that Kutcher built a lot of her initial audience for her body positivity posts and now a health influencer that talks about biohacking. 

At the end of the day, it’s very clear that Kutcher’s end goal is money. Just money. 

It seems that Kutcher, who created an entire brand off of her authenticity has unknowingly fallen into the trap of the self-help industry which monetizes authenticity to the point where nothing is real.

First, I’ll take you through books to read through various genres and the order you should read them in to scaffold and layer your learning. But learning isn’t all about reading, so I’ll also share video resources, shorter articles, and give you a list of people to follow on social media in order to stay up to date well beyond today. Finally, learning means nothing without action, so I will also provide you ways that you can do something with what you’re learning.

This isn’t meant to be overwhelming and is laid out in a way that it’s learning you have time for. Therefore, the list isn’t extensive and manageable. Of course, there’s always more learning to be done.

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Books to read

A collection of books read to read. For the best learning experience, try to read the books in this order.
(*note: this section contains affiliate links)

• Non-fiction
  “Palestine: A Socialist Introduction” edited by Sumaya Award and brian bean
  This is a great place to start if you don’t know or understand the history of Palestine. The book is a collection of essays from all different authors exploring various parts of Palestinian history and present. Of course, this book is also written from a socialist lens, but from that it pulls in calls for action as well. Overall, this is a really helpful and easy to understand text that helps you understand historical context.
  

• Fiction
  “Minor Detail” by Adania Shibli
  Sticking with understanding Palestinian history as well as how that history carries into the present, I recommend reading this incredible piece of fiction next. This is a super short book (144 pages) that is impressive and haunting. It starts in the summer of 1949 during the Nakba (the mass displacement of Palestinians from Palestine) and follows a young girl who is captured by Israeli soldiers. Years later in the present, we follow a young woman who finds the girl’s story that is considered a “minor detail” in this history. She becomes obsessed with finding out what happened. Check content warnings before reading this book.
  

• Poetry
  "Rifqa” by Mohammed El-Kurd
  This is a collection of poetry that looks at Palestinian history, but also addresses the present. It’s both a deeply emotional eulogy and a call to action for the liberation of Palestine.
  

• Poetry

  “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” by Mosab Abu Toha

  This is a really accessible collection of poetry where the author talks about his life living under siege in Gaza. This was published in 2022 and helps paint a picture of what every day life was like for Palestinians. In 2023, Abu Toha was captured and imprisoned by Israeli forces. His newest collection which comes out this November will look at the horror of the last year.
  

• Non-fiction
  “The Palestine Laboratory” by Antony Loewenstein
  This is definitely the most dense book on this which is why it’s at the end of the list. This is an incredible piece of journalism that looks at Israel’s development of occupation-enforcing technologies that they test out in Palestine and then sell to other Western countries to help them enforce their own occupations. It helps showcase the danger of these technologies well beyond Palestine and the dangerous (and deadly) effects it’s had on the rest of the world.

Other media to consume

• Mixed media
  “Not That Complicated” by US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
  An incredible resource that plainly lays out history and common misconceptions about Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This provides a general overview of specific topics that makes everything easy to understand while also providing links and videos to learn more about each subject.
  

• Infographics
  Visualising Palestine

  If you’re more of a visual learner, this is the resource for you. Again, this project breaks down various subjects into interactive infographics that are constantly updated to not only talk about historical facts, but up-to-date information.

  

• Article
  “We Volunteered at a Gaza Hospital. What We Saw Was Unspeakable.” by Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa
  The deliberate targeting and destruction of hospitals over the past year has been a well-documented war crime through first-hand accounts and videos. This is an example. Written by two doctors from the U.S., this is a primary account on what they witnessed in Gaza.
  

• Documentary
  "Investigating war crimes in Gaza” by Al Jazeera
  Just published on October 3, Al Jazeera has done an extensive investigation into the war crimes perpetrated by Israel in the last year as well as exposing the individuals behind them. Content warning: graphic images of death and violence.
  

Extra credit

Since I first wrote this syllabus back in 2024, there have been many new incredible pieces of media published on Palestine and the fight for liberation has continued. If you want to continue learning about Palestine, here are some futher texts for you to read.

• Non-fiction book
  "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This” by Omar El Akkad
  If you or someone you know is new to learning about Palestine or is still not understanding the weight of what is happening, I think this is a great book to read. This book grapples with what it means to live in the West and our role in watching a genocide occur before our eyes.

• Non-fiction book
  "Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal” by Mohammed El-Kurd
  After you read El-Kurd’s poetry collection above, pick up his newest book, a denser exploration as to why it is that Palestinians need to prove their humanity to the Western world and who holds the power to shape narratives.

• Report

  Latest UNRWA report on the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and West Bank

  A detailed report that outlines the latest data since Israel broke the ceasefire and the effects this has had on health, food scarcity, civilian protection, and aid.
  

  30+ more books on Palestine

Who to follow

When learning about a subject where up-to-date information is key, it’s important to find people who are experts and on the ground to help keep you informed. Here are a few people and organisations I encourage you to follow:

• Lets Talk Palestine broadcast channel on Instagram shares news every single day about what is happening in Palestine (as well as Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen). This is what I use to stay the most up-to-date.

• Bisan Owda: One of the few freelance journalists still in Gaza (Israel has murdered and targeted 175 journalists in the past year). Bisan reports and posts from the ground every single day.

• Hind Khoudary: Another journalist who has been reporting from Gaza.

• Adam Rouhana: a photographer currently living in Gaza.

• Mosab Abu Toha: The same poet mentioned above is also consistently active on Instagram, often posting breaking news stories before news publications.

• Leen (@vivafalastinleen) : This Palestinian-American content creator is consistently posting about what is happening in Palestine and encouraging calls to action.

• Naz (@bdsbabe): Naz is consistently posting updates on the BDS movement and creating guides to BDS-friendly brands (learn more about the BDS movement below)
  

Take action

Mutual aid
Mutual aid is an incredibly effective way to utilize community in order to directly impact those who need our help. One way that we can do this is by donating to families currently in Palestine where food, shelter, hygiene, and access to healthcare are hard to come by (and in some cases impossible). Our help can make these things more accessible.

Here are some families that I have been in contact with that I would encourage you to donate to:

• Mahmoud, Tamer, and Tala who lost their mother and wife earlier this year. Tamer has Autism and navigating this cruel world is especially hard for him.

• The Tareq family including Amani who is suffering from multiple medical conditions and needs urgent care

• Mohammed’s family including his wife and three kids as they struggle to survive in Khan Younis

• Rozana’s family including her husband and three-year-old son (Ziad) who used to live in Gaza City and now have no home or clean food and water which is making Ziad’s health deteriorate.

Here are organizations on the ground to donate to:

• The Sameer Project: Led by Palestinians, the project hosts multiple campaigns to help families across gaza with medical supplies, food, tents, and other necessities. You can also support their Medical Campaign specifically as they work directly with hospitals.

• North Water Aid: Salah Shabat is raising funds to provide displaced families in the north of Gaza with clean drinking water.

• Amal for Palestine: Organization thats been providing meals in the north of Gaza since 2021.

• Gaza Soup Kitchen: Family-run organization that helps provide meals to displaced families.

• Sulala Animal Rescue: Father and son team who help rescue and rehabilitate stray animals.

Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
If you’re not financially able to support, here’s a great way to make a huge impact (in my opinion, this is what will make the most impact systemically). The BDS movement is a movement to pressure companies, organisations, and governments that support Israel by withholding money. The ask is that you do not spend money at these organisations and/or pressure organisations. This type of organizing has been proven to be effective in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. To double-check that you’re not supporting companies who support genocide, I highly recommend downloading the Boycat app.

Pressure politicians
If you live in a country that is currently funding Israel and/or supporting them through complicity or silence, it’s pertinent that we continue to pressure them. If you live in the United States, you can use 5calls.org to get started (note: not all the information in the script is up-to-date), but could be a good template.

Protest
If you are able, protesting helps make our voices louder. It’s a tool meant to disrupt and force those in charge to take action. Here’s the most up-to-date list of world-wide protests that I was able to find.


Educate
Use whatever platform you have (whether that be on social media or in-person) to speak up about Palestine and continue to educate others. Share resources, share stories, share news. The more we can make people not turn away from Palestine, the more we can collectively come together to enact change. We need to make sure that everyone in the world doesn’t have the excuse that they didn’t know. We are all complicit.

As I mentioned earlier, learning is an ongoing practice. If you would like more resources, don’t hesitate to reach out. And if you have any resources to add to this list, please add them to the comments below.

Who is Stephen Covey?  

With any book, it’s incredibly important to understand who the author is, but with “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, it’s crucial.

Stephen Covey grew up in the Mormon church and his parents were quite important in the church itself. His father was a leader within the LDS church and his mother was the daughter of Stephen L Richards, an apostle (called on by Joseph Smith’s nephew) and counselor to the First Presidency of the LDS church.

Covey’s education is vast with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a Doctor of Religious Education from Brigham Young University. BYU is a university sponsored by the LDS church and is infamous for its conservative policies, including a Personal Conduct Policy that students must abide by which until recently (2021) had strict anti-LGBTQ rules as well. Not only did Covey obtain a doctorate here, but went on to be a professor at the school as well.

In his thirties, Covey carried on his parent’s impact in the Mormon church and served as the President of the Irish Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Before and after “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Covey wrote a variety of religious texts including a book titled “The Divine Center” (1982), which was written for a Mormon audience. While I haven’t personally read this book, it’s widely believed that this book formed the foundation upon which “7 Habits” was written as a few of the anecdotes and principles are the same. 

After his success of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Covey followed in the steps of many self-help personalities and cashed in. He created a whole universe of books (including “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” written by his son). This all led to him joining forces with Franklin Quest to create FranklinCovey, a business focused on leadership training. It’s a platform stuffed with courses, personal workshops, coaching services, and they even (horrifically) partner with schools, which is probably how I ended up reading that book in health class. Think of every red flag I’ve talked about in the self-help world and you can find it here.

Is “The 7 Habits” Mormon propaganda? 

Let’s circle back to the origin of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Like I said before, it’s widely believed that Covey’s book “The Divine Center” (a book written for Mormons) was the start of “7 Habits.”

Covey’s intention with “7 Habits” was to take these ideas and write it for a more general, secular audience. There’s two questions here:
1. Was the goal of this book to carry Mormon teachings to a secular audience without their knowledge in order to further evangelize the teachings of the church?;
2. If not, was Covey successful at removing religious teachings from the book?

In order to answer those questions, we need to first have an understanding of the Mormon church itself.

The LDS church was founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 and the core of the religion believes in the salvation of Jesus Christ and that the LDS church is a church established by Christ himself and that members of the church are living apostles and prophets. Because of this, church presidents are seen as modern-day prophets and church members are expected to pay 10% of their earnings (tithing) to the church.

Key beliefs and practices in the Mormon Church include, but are not limited to: believing that families are the most important unit in society; missionary work is an important practice where members are sent on “proselyting” missions around the world; abstaining from coffee and R-rated movies can be viewed to some as a good practice, and it’s encouraged by the church to keep a few months of food supplies in storage in case of emergencies.

(Of course, it’s important to note that these practices and beliefs don’t account for everyone in the church and as with all religions, there’s a spectrum of beliefs and practices)

However, like most religions, the church has a dark history. Church presidents have a history of child sexual abuse, some members still practice polygamy (sometimes including child brides), and the church has a history of overt racism, homophobia, and forced assimilation of Native Americans. Not to mention, there’s a whole history of financial controversy as well. To learn more I highly recommend the book “Under the Banner of Heaven”,  and the documentaries “Keep Sweet”, and “Murder Among the Mormons”.

Now, to answer my two questions from above:
1. I think it’s impossible to know for sure whether or not Covey hoped to teach Mormon beliefs to a wider audience through a self-help book disguised as secular. However, based on the church’s strong push for evangelism and through Covey’s own history leading the Irish Mission, I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to think that Covey may have done this. 

In fact, in “The Divine Center”, Covey even states that, “I have found in speaking to various non-LDS groups in different cultures that we can teach and testify of many gospel principles if we are careful in selecting words which convey our meaning but come from their experience and frame of mind.”

While Covey has never explicitly admitted that this was the goal of “The 7 Habits” series, all evidence points to this being true. 

2. If we were to give Covey the benefit of a doubt, I can still say that he wasn’t successful at making a secular book.

Throughout the book, many of the examples Covey uses includes faith in some way and at the end of the book itself, Covey even claims that his principles come from God: “As I conclude this book, I would like to share my own personal conviction concerning what I believe to be the source of correct principles. I believe that correct principles are natural laws, and that God, the Creator and Father of us all, is the source of them, and also the source of our conscience.”

Before we talk about the book, we can now assume a few things to be true: 1. Stephen Covey was a prominent member of the Mormon Church and 2. He used his influence to write books for people outside of the church, sprinkling Mormon teachings into a book meant for everyone.

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“I’m not like other self-help books”

“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is one of the most successful self-help books of all time with over 25 million copies sold. It’s the 5th most sold self-help book in the world (“Rich Dad, Poor Dad” beat it for the #4 spot). 

In the beginning of the book, Covey actually criticizes the larger self-help industry in the same way I do. He claims that self-help books usually focus on image and positive thinking, in what he calls the “personality ethic.” However, that’s where Covey and I’s similarities end. The book’s main thesis is that true success comes from living by “correct principles” (again, principles he later claims come from God).  

While Covey talks a tough game in the beginning, many of his teachings actually fall right back into typical self-help messaging: 

• He uses weight as an example of what someone may want to change: ‘““I’ve started a new diet–for the fifth time this year. I know I’m overweight, and I really want to change…I just can’t seem to keep a promise I make myself.’” 

• He romanticizes work and the importance of just doing work without question or complaint: “‘I want to teach my children the value of work…Why can’t children do their work cheerfully and without being reminded?’”

• He is completely unaware of mental health and his advice is largely only helpful for neurotypical people. For example, he states: “We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts.”

• He completely disregards any systemic issues and privilege, once again saying that only we have the power to change our lives: “Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.” ; “Where does intrinsic security come from? It doesn’t come from what other people think of us or how they treat us. It doesn’t come from the scripts they've handed us. It doesn’t come from our circumstance or our position. It comes from within.”

But on top of the usual self-help prattle, this book is also filled with things I didn’t expect: strange family relationships, extreme victim-blaming, and even the call to accept oppressive governments (all sprinkled with Mormon teachings on top).

Strange family relationships 

We largely see Covey’s Mormon ideologies sneak (not so subtly) into the book when he talks about family and every day life.

Not only does he villainize TV because some “programs” “waste our time and minds and may influence us in negative ways”, but also reiterates that nothing is more important than family. He states: “A strong intergenerational family is potentially one of the most fruitful, rewarding, and satisfying interdependent relationships.”

I would be curious to know what Covey thinks a “strong” family looks like, because the stories he share portray anything but. 

Covey consistently uses his children as examples and not always in a fond or respectful light. For example, he told two separate stories of how both his son and his daughter embarrassed him because one was socially “immature” and the other didn’t share her toys with other kids. In order to fix this problem, he and his wife prayed in order to be able to see his own kids in a new light.

On top of this, he also talks about the importance of having more of a boss relationship with his children rather than a nurturing one (it’s also no surprise that at least two of his children went on to work for him at FranklinCovey). This could be coming from either his Mormon teachings or his importance of teaching his kids to love work, or both. Either way, advice I hope people don’t take to heart.

Speaking of advice, he also shared a moment in the book in which he was giving advice to a married couple. In the middle of the conversation, the husband turned to Stephen and said, “‘‘Stephen, could you endure this kind of dumbness in your marriage?’…’Honey,’ he said to her ‘that’s your problem. And that’s the problem with your mother. In fact, it’s the problem with every woman I know.’”

Did Covey call-out the husband for the verbally manipulative, abusive, and sexist remarks. Of course not. He considered this marriage and his help with it a success.

Extreme victim-blaming

Like many self-help books, Covey quickly turns to victim-blaming and instead of looking at and critiquing larger systems at play that could be influencing people’s lives, turns to blaming the victim of those systems. However, he takes this one step further and particularly blames victims of oppression and occupation.

He builds up this argument by starting within individual selves and the narrative that people are responsible for their situations: “What I have seen result from the outside-in paradigm is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weaknesses of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation.”

He states that people who blame what happened to them in childhood for how they are today just have a limiting belief with the common idea in self-help that: “It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.”

Going off of that, he argues that another limiting belief is blaming other things in our lives for our problems. Instead of complaining, he argues that we should just smile and accept the things we don’t like in our lives: “No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom on our face–to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them.”

In a world without oppressive systems, maybe this idea works. But that’s not the world we live in today. And by smiling and accepting those harmful systems, we are limiting not only our selves, but the entire world.

Covey goes on to take this far beyond any other self-help author I’ve read and applies this thinking directly to oppressed people today and throughout history.

I’ve read a few self-help books that like to quote Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”, a book written by Holocaust survivor (I have yet to read this book, so I’m not sure about its messaging). However, Covey uses it to imply that Frankl was able to find meaning and dignity in his suffering, which allowed him to survive.

He follows up this story with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “‘No one can hurt you without your consent.’” The indirect correlation being that those who suffered a genocide had to consent to the harm that was brought to them. 

And Covey doesn’t just think this about one genocide. He even references modern-day examples of apartheid and occupation: “South Africa, Israel, and Ireland–and I believe the source of the continuing problems in each of these places has been the dominant social paradigm of outside-in. Each involved group is convinced the problem is ‘out there’ and if ‘they’ (meaning others) would ‘shape up’ or suddenly ‘ship out’ of existence, the problem would be solved.”

When it comes to occupation, when the occupiers leave the occupied land, then the problem is solved. It is not the occupied’s responsibility to do some internal enlightenment work and accept the world they live in. 

As a successful example of this, he tells the story of Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt who “had been reared, nurtured, and deeply scripts in a hatred for Israel.” He led with the idea that he would never support Israel as long as they occupied Arab soil. Covey said that, “It was also very foolish, and Sadat knew it.”

Covey uses this as an inspiring story because Sadat rescripted himself through meditation and learned to “vacate his own mind” and brought forward the Camp David Accords “one of the most precedent-breaking peace movements.”

In reality, The Camp David Accords were a series of political agreements that determined the future of Palestine that were condemned by the United Nations because guess who wasn’t a part of the negotiations? Palestine. The UN also condemned it because it didn’t meet the Palestinian rights and a comprehensive solution to peace due to Israel’s continued occupation.

The acceptance of oppressive regimes and governments does not make an individual more enlightened or the world a better place. It only helps keep corrupt governments and people in power. 

When I first read “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” in middle school, I knew something was wrong. At the time, I did what Covey would have wanted me to and blamed myself. However, with a new lens of understanding not only the self-help industry as a whole, but Covey himself, I now know I was wrong.

Most self-help books are sinister because they share messages that diminish people’s experiences, disempower them, and brainwash them into thinking they themselves are the problem (when many problems lie within the systems we live in). Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is even more sinister in the fact that it’s a collection of all of these messages with the added bonus of being Mormon evangelism disguised as a secular self-help book. 

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