rosenberg & henwood

["Gregoire de Nowell (ci-devant)" <GN842@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think Henwood is right, the "acres of self-help books" are indicative
of a malaise.  (some kind of unmet demand)

I think Rosenberg is right, as a political phenomenon the self-help
movement is basically reactionary.

It has been a long time since I've seen fresh figures on per capita
book reading/per year.  Last time I heard, it was something like
95% of the population reads 1 book or less.  As with alchohol,
something like 90% of the books are consumed by 5 or 10% of the
population.

The rest, in my view, are somafied (note to non-native English
speakers: that's a neologism).

In other words, the system produces soma and satifies the herd.
A few are not satisfied and herd off to self-help land.  A
very very few can't get their grounding in self-help land and
wander off to places like the Montana Freemen or PKT.  Whatever
else one might say, it's a stunningly effective system, one which
is all the more powerful since it is *relatively* acephalous as
far as oligarchic systems of domination go (compare, for example,
the role of U.S. media to the former role of the Church in
Europe).

greg nowell