Hope and Change: The Placebo, the American Humbug and Lacks thereof

I know Heroes, the heroic ideal, Nietzche and fun thinkning about all of these things. I was thinking yesterday about my heroes. Who are they? Have I selected the best when I select my heroes?

I've been going around this semester saying, "When I speak to you, I speak to the highest nature of you. I speak to what is best in you. This isn't necessarily spiritual. You know when you are doing your best."

I got this from Dale Carnegie's How to Make Friends and Influence People.

I'm interested in Dale Carnegie because he was born on my birthday and he was wildly successful.

I'm also interested in Carnegie's work in this Age of Obama because the man basically man something from nothing, creatio ex nihilo, with his concepts of granting courage to people.

This is charlatanism, that criminal act of selling something that is more hype than useable product. But who can tell the difference and how?

I read the book, I found it at the Natural Resources Library in the Interlibrary Loan shelf and the person who had ordered it never picked it up.

I like the Obama rhetoric. For those of you who haven't read How to Make Friends and Influence people, he gives about 10 pieces of advice, poses them as chapters. The chapters are comprised of cracker jack 1920's (I think it was published in the 30's) anecdotes, about 3 or 4 sentences long, of how people changed their lives using these techniques.

According to the wikipedia page, Carnegie was one of the first to launch the self-help craze. This reminds me of course of the DIY do it yourself craze, or the New York Times Magazine article Chronicling Spirituality-Self Help Guru Louisa Hay; of Hay House publishing. Hay was able to unite the spirituality craze with self-help, which has made her millions. Among her writers include Suze Orman and Wayne Dwyer, both of whom my mother has read.

My mother and I have also read books by Eckart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture by August Turak; and two years ago my mother and I went to a spirituality lecture with less-well known Gregg Unterberger.

The best and most substantive is certainly Tolle, and I very much like Winfrey. In fact, I like Carnegie, too. The reason, and I don't think I've said this before, is that Carnegie was born on my birthday. The other reason is that I think there is some substance to what he was saying.

One of his tips? Speak to people's higher natures.

But that leads us back to the question: when are people not acting from their higher natures? Why should I have to tell people to act from their higher natures? What's the difference between our higher natures and our lower natures? Is it possible to ask to speak to those parts of a person? What would be the point of talking to a higher personality part, as opposed to any other part.