YouTuber Big Joel has done two breakdowns of it that are worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlkJJygIoVU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ30qL7j3Q.
Well, yes, and this is more or less where we're at with Psychology (as I understand it, I'm definitely a lay person): it's hard to make a concrete proof with something as complex as a human.
And Alain's ideas as expressed are certainly not purely his invention - this is pretty mainstream Psychology / Therapy, and borrows a lot from ancient philosophy (with even a dash of Buddhist psychology thrown in).
Specific to this issue: Alain is saying that many times underlying frustrations are not so much about the here and now, but can be related to one's early upbringing and point to frustrations - especially attachment frustrations - from that age. I find that an interesting idea, but it's certainly not ground truth. Nor does it mean that you can't be frustrated with a partner for valid reasons in the present moment. The kind of takedown that Joel makes ("reductive nonsense") is unsophisticated and frankly immature, and certainly not worthy of any more investment of my time.
Edit: typo
This is what immediately struck me when I started watching the video.
It could be possible that everything Joel is saying is true, and yet, his presentation style comes from a place that feels like the opposite of good faith. His attitude is not one that seems to involve seeking truth/understanding, and he comes across as snarky, bitter, and with an undercurrent of some underlying agenda.
It's a style that I dislike generally, but it seems especially problematic given the subject matter - a topic that requires at least an inkling of intellectual curiosity to explore.
Yeah, just looking at the titles of his other videos it's pretty clear that's almost certainly what he's doing. It looks like he frequently makes stuff in the genre of "let's hate that otherside thing you hate, and together feel superior for hating it."
I think his project is more or less the same Sam Harris' - to extract useful (for some definition) ideas out of traditional religious or other moral systems and to secularise them for modern consumption as part of a project to improve humanity. My background and experience with this kind of thing makes me think that it's a doomed project and slick videos on YouTube is a poor way of teaching these things.
I dropped in a few times at critical points in recent years. They helped me look at my current circumstances in a more objective and factual way.
I didn’t necessarily learn anything “new” from their bite-sized videos, but many of them helped me cut through the fog of stress/anxiety. I felt immense relief as they helped me recognise what was really going on behind-the-scenes in my current situation.
I’m thankful for the different perspectives they brought to me, especially when they were so easy to digest at a time when my mind was not able to think as clearly as I’d have liked.
Then he moves to the friendship video. His complaint seems to be that the videos simplify and overstate their claims. Which is true. But he doesn't really refute the main point to the video, which is that friendships, by having lower expectations, suffer less (though definitely not always, we all know about toxic friendships) from the more complicated dynamics of romantic relationships. It sounds more like nitpicking. Then he changes from the descriptive presentation of relationships to a normative one (romantic relationships should be "nice"), which misses the point entirely. (Plus the ideia that relationships should be "fun" and "nice" and not also a space for emotional growth where shit comes to top tells me he probably didn't have really intimate relationships).
Honest question: why is "YouTuber Big Joel" someone I should spend an hour listening to?
If you're not interested in The School of Life, then it's not worth an hour of your time.
Only if you have a very vague definition of 'analysis'. "Chatting about in an entertaining way" would be closer to reality.
... OK I've got it: Advice is only worth what you pay for it.
I guess either one works here...
The UK has a few people - like poverty-cook Jack Monroe - who have faced real financial and emotional challenges and come through them to become inspirational people.
But without becoming Professionally Inspirational™ about it.
de Botton seems like a spoilt dilettante in comparison - an entertainer for the aspirational classes.
IMO someone who has never faced extreme poverty or unusual emotional stress has no business telling others how to live their lives.
- All parties are terrible and you're a terrible person if you like parties
- Women date abusive men because they were traumatized as a child, and they avoid nice guys, so be an asshole to women
- You can't be a good person unless you had a shitty time growing up, and people only start families to deal with their own shitty family trauma, so, good luck
- You are doomed to an unhappy marriage. Don't look for someone you like, look for someone you can endure
- People with bad taste were traumatized as children. All Russians and Saudi Arabians have bad taste
- People give self help books a lot of shit, but you should read self help books (Alain sells self help books)
- For dinner you should order children's fish sticks, cranberry juice, and the most expensive dessert, the last two because you feel awkward about ordering the first one, and this will help you on a date
(most of them come from the 2 takedown videos linked in a parent comment, the rest are from Alain's own press or blog posts writing about them)
Here's the man himself holding forth on interior design. Apparently people who like minimalism are compensating for their inner emotional chaos, and people who like rustic country stylings want a break from being overwhelmed by technology. People who have ornate gold everywhere are terrified of being poor.
It's silly pseudo-psychological nonsense - all opinion, with no empirical basis.
Worse, it ignores the existence of competitive status display and class identification.
Worse than that, he's clearly writing about himself and generalising to other people.
There's an entire book of this. If you want to learn nothing about taste or architecture - but more than you want to know about Alain de Botton - you can read it.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=646338...
From the article:
> De Botton is careful to acknowledge that this line of inquiry might trigger the modern intellectual allergy to the genre of learning dismissively labeled self-help. And yet he reminds us that the quest for self-refinement has always accompanied the human experience and animated each civilization’s most respected intellects — it is there at the heart of the Stoics, and in the essays of Montaigne, and at the center of Zen Buddhism, and in the literary artistry of Proust (whom De Botton has especially embraced as a fount of existential consolation). He aims a spear of simple logic to the irrational and rather hubristic disdain for self-help:
> > To dismiss the idea that underpins self-help — that one might at points stand in urgent need of solace and emotional education — seems an austerely perverse prejudice.
> “The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.”
Is that "wise"? Who reads this and nods?
Self-help is rarely written by successful people. Napoleon Hill (a fraud) was no exception.
It focuses on superficial behavioral and cognitive changes, based on "wisdom" that half the audience will cringe at (see Twitter gurus). The more intellectual kinds of self-help (like De Botton, as opposed to Tony Robbins) essentially help people domesticate themselves, by becoming low energy, excessively self-reflective (which is what the word "neurotic" means) and permanently stuck in their head, as opposed to taking action in the real world.
The more you believe you are afflicted by various subjective, non-clinical, non-diagnosed emotional issues, the more they will consume you. You will be raising waves where there is no wind.
The most effective self-help is either the Lindy kind (reading the Bible; joining a Buddhist monastery), or just aligning your behavior with what you want out of life, without caring for the "childhood reasons" for your behavior. "Self-awareness" is a lie; you are just projecting meaning and patterns where none exists. The ultimate embodiment of this navel-gazing is Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has enormous suicide rates. Just reflect on whether your behavior is aligned with your goals, and choose to change your behavior accordingly, without imagining that you need to change an entire machinery within your mind beforehand.