Self-development: how far?

When it comes to interpreting the course of the world and naming it, I have always given writers of literature, those shaped by life itself, those who live literature as a genuine sensibility, far more chance than social theorists. Social theory has the problem of producing a frozen picture of a limited area of the world's realities and trying to squeeze all of life into that picture. Social scientists who realized that this problem cannot be overcome with the means of theory have therefore become convinced in recent times that listening to literary sensibility too is a path that opens things up.

I have followed Bülent Akyürek's literary line from the beginning. I read his most recent book, "Yılgın Türkler" (The Dispirited Turks), and mentioned it in this column. Against the "frenzy" that the nationalist craze tried to incite and let loose, the book held up the typology of the "dispirited Turk" as a "mirror" that, through subtle ironic touches, called people back to their more genuine limits and exposed their nakedness. While modestly naming the social current or change to which the people of a country besieged by the nationalist wave and sentiment are exposed, it also fulfilled, and still fulfills, a mission of defense and "ironic wave" against this wave.

Akyürek's latest book, "İçinizdeki Öküze 'oha!' Deyin" (Say "Enough!" to the Ox Inside You), both names very well the "personal development" discourses that have become a perfect "parallel religion" in the world we live in, and points to the emotional means of protecting oneself against this parallel religion.

The book, which I read in one breath during the Feast of the Sacrifice holiday, shows a continuing development in Akyürek's literary line, an interrogation carried to extremes and an ever deeper introspection.

"İçinizdeki Öküze 'oha!' Deyin" is, as a reaction to Bülent Akyürek's personal development books, a "personal regression book."

While personal development discourses turn the world we live in into an inescapable hell of consumption, their only accomplishment is to create individuals whose selfish feelings have been stoked and inflamed. Ordinary people enlightened by books of "think and succeed; shoot yourself off like a firework, what are you missing, you can do it if you want, everything is in your hands, who can stop you, go for it champ, the roads are yours..." begin to walk among us as "monuments of arrogance." In these discourses, in which no one is taught humility, respect for others, sacrifice or altruism, and in which, on the contrary, other people are portrayed as insects, the "developing," "utterly ordinary people" launch themselves into life as the wolves of other people.

Capitalist-libertine men who want everything in the world they live in and strive to couple with all values and objects do not forget to add morality to their barbarism with the deception "I deserve everything good and beautiful!" Men one would not even look at want the most beautiful women. No one accepts their lot, no one knows his place.

To live with a community of money-hunters who, as soon as they wake up in the morning, look at the whole world like prey, locked on winning... A terrific description of the world we live in...

Those who have been lost in this world, Akyürek calls upon to listen to these counsels of Hazrat Ali.

"Whoever tries to get hold of the world, it slips away from him. Whoever does not want it, it comes to his feet... Whoever looks upon the world with a lesson in mind, it becomes his eye and its events become a lesson for him; whoever looks upon it with longing, it blinds him. Surely the world is a place whose source is muddy and turbid; it kills with its beautiful appearance, strikes with its mystery, sets obstacles with its pride, destroys with its look, passes away with its shadow, and bends with its pillar. Whoever hates it, it frightens until he grows accustomed to it, it holds back until he is calmed, it kicks him with its feet and makes him fall into its trap, binds him tightly with its nets and plunges its deadly arrows into him. It puts the noose of death around a person's neck and drags him toward the terrifying place to which one returns, the place of questioning, that is, the narrow grave."

Personal development, how far? This far.

It is a fact that, in spite of the rising standard of living, prosperity and comfort of life with each passing day, unhappiness, ingratitude and greed increase in inverse proportion. People are experiencing more hardship in making ends meet even though they earn much more money than ten years ago. Because as their income rises, people become more prone to think that they deserve more. The discourses that Akyürek calls Personal Development undoubtedly have a large share in this.

Akyürek's book is a strong reaction against incited, inflamed personalities, one that "names" the problem. However, it is worth taking it with some warnings against the possibility of certain complications:

1. It has an approach that sees all evil as belonging to the West and all good as belonging to the East; in truth, both good and evil exist in both the East and the West, they may take different guises but both are universal. When we say the West is the source of all evils, we exonerate ourselves excessively and idealize ourselves excessively, and this may lead to another kind of arrogance, to which Akyürek is very sensitive.

2. To say that everything used to be better and that everything has gotten worse in our time is likewise a historiography that sidelines the human being in the history of good and evil. Yet good and evil are as universal as they are supra-historical enough to catch every human being at all times. One must also avoid the effect of an unnecessary idealization of the past.