The idea of "bootstrapping" in statistics means re-using limited data in creative ways to draw a broader conclusion. In ordinary discourse, though, the phrase "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" refers to self-help. In my last post I wrote about the current Federal policy backlash against antidepressant medications; some of that antipathy may date from a uniquely American view of how people can improve themselves and their life circumstances. Jess McHugh's book Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books argues that self-help is actually the single more characteristic literary form generated by Americans over the history of the United States.
McHugh used publishing data to identify the books by U.S. authors with the largest circulation and the greatest public impact, from colonial times onward. Her results were not works of literature, science, or religion, but rather books that had a definite psychological slant. They included Poor Richard's Almanac, which printed pithy stories about hard-working pioneers along with long-range weather forecasts; the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which has been cited mainly for its list of 13 virtues endorsed by the author; Daniel Webster's Dictionary, which had a distinctly patriotic slant in defining words like "citizen" or "industry"; Emily Post's Etiquette, which taught people how to behave like they had money even when they didn't; motivational speaker Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which taught them how to get more money through relationships; and Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, which defined the successful American home for thousands of 1050s women.
The genre of self-help can be defined as "books that instruct people on how to solve their own problems." Some key elements are the identification of a problem in living, advice or exhortations about how to address that problem, and above all a confidence that the reader will be able to overcome this challenge on their own and using resources that they either have already or can take steps to develop.
Anti-intellectualism can seem like a particularly modern form of distrust in institutions, science, and political leaders, but in fact some level of disdain for authorities has been baked into our nation since its beginnings. Early colonists sought to be independent from the rule of European kings and queens, and to build model societies along the lines of their own worldviews. The American ideal of the yeoman farmer came to valorize traits like independence, industriousness, simplicity, and egalitarianism, although this model worked less well over time as it migrated further from its socially homogenous, small-farm-economy New England roots. Even as the actual yeoman farmer faded into history, books like the Farmer's Almanac spread the ideal, with most copies of this venerable book now being sold to nostalgic urbanites with no connection to agriculture. America's lasting ideals of hard work and independent thinking fit nicely with the self-help genre, which promises self-generated solutions with no need for expert intervention.
The role of the self-help author him- or herself as an expert is usually glossed over, at least once the person has established their initial credibility as someone who can point the reader towards a self-help solution. Furthermore, the successful self-help author's credentials are more often based on personal struggle and insight rather than on academic degrees, and sometimes on outright falsehood. In Dale Carnegie's case, the "expert" was a salesman who tried and failed at many things before finally discovering a career as a public speaker. He rented out space in New York's Carnegie Hall, which was established by railroad baron Andrew Carnegie in the 1890s, but Dale was no relation; his original last name was Carnagey, and he was born into poverty on a Missouri farm. Betty Crocker is an even more egregious example of a false expert -- she was never a real person, but instead a fictional character developed as a corporate marketing scheme, even though employees of the General Mills company responded to customers' letters using her name and persona. Even American polymath Benjamin Franklin found his way into the newspaper business by publishing under a fake name, and worked his way through a string of business failures until he eventually became a household name. One could point to contemporary leaders like Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump as others who established their expertise in non-traditional ways, and came to be admired largely for their unorthodox roads to financial success.
The methods espoused by self-help books also frequently remain outside of traditional channels or institutions. The self-made man is another archetype baked deeply into American consciousness, which gives self-help authors credibility based on success alone. Emily Post's guide to proper behavior came about as a business venture to support herself after her high-society marriage ended in a scandalous divorce. Carnegie's business success was based mainly on his public-speaking endeavors, not on the actual business ventures that he taught people to pursue. It's still a common retort to ask academic experts, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" as though the two traits were necessarily joined at the hip. The readers of self-help literature are often encouraged to use nontraditional methods, and to judge these methods by their results alone. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard observed that American civilization is often similarly image-focused; his book America details a road trip contrasting the stark emptiness of western deserts against the artificial glitz of places like Las Vegas and Disneyland. For American self-help enthusiasts, though, the artificial nature of these places is beside the point. Their sheer size and impressiveness is its own justification. Even Baudrillard is forced to admire and disdain them at the same time.
There are of course many disadvantages to a life structured around self-help. People are not actually as independent as they would like to believe, and tend to ignore the many advantages of birth and circumstance that allow them to succeed in the world. Our uniquely American disdain for experts is playing out in the contemporary destruction of collective knowledge resources around health, the environment, economics, and even weather forecasting. The yeoman farmer ideal crashed against indigenous Native American cultures in destructive conflicts that caused enormous suffering and loss of collective memory about earlier civilizations on this continent. But it's not enough to simply bemoan the problems. We need to recognize that they come out of a deep unconscious worldview that is not peripheral to American society, but baked deeply into our national consciousness over the past 400 years.
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