Gandhi and our obsession with self-improvement

Self-improvement is the name of the game, be it with shallow or deep intent.

10 ways to fix your back, 10 ways to improve your sex life, 10 ways to earn more money.

This piece is partially inspired by a listicle piece I read on Medium tackling how your habits will dictate your future life, which largely held a lot of truth and weight.

Yet still it niggled.

In the same way that Hind Swaraj did the first time I read it.

Be the change

Gandhi is the perfect person to bring to mind when discussing the concept of self-improvement.

He was an early proponent on working on the man in the mirror.

Making the change you could on yourself before you dictated your ideas to the rest of the world.

In a world of chaos and political instability Gandhi encouraged everyone to “be the change” they wanted to see in the world.

Yet Gandhi was a million miles away from the quick fix culture that pervades these 10 ways, 10 things listicles.

Creeping positive change

In Hind Swaraj he expanded on the idea that good travels slowly.

This writer’s concept that habits will dictate what you will do in later life relates to this quite strongly.

The good you set in place today will take a long time to grow is the inference and you have to keep doing it endlessly, painstakingly over time before your ‘good’ will show results.

This sounds great, doesn’t it? From small acorns great oaks will grow.

Fantastic.

A bit too slow

Only Gandhi also used this same concept to criticise the steam train.

In a country as large as India, would you really have wanted to continue to walk everywhere?

On foot the sage appears, only to discover that the people he wanted to educate have died in a famine that the simple fast transportation of food could have prevented.

Why am I picking apart a man as great as Gandhi in examining a listicle?

Because the same niggle with “good travels slowly” rears its ugly head when someone preaches about forming your character positively.

While you are being the change and fighting the good fight, the guy who just snorted three lines just took control of your country and you are now dictated to by his binges, rather than Gandhian wisdom and all because your habits are so good you never saw him coming.

He has squandered the resources that you would like to use for a beautiful and enlightened project and you are forced to listen to well-wishers preach to you about good habits while your means to achieve your lofty goals have died in a coke fuelled Depression.