How a Positive-Thinking Self-Help Writer Deals with Criticism

And how I dispose of some excuses for intellectual lameness

Only hours after I took Alberto Garcia to the woodshed for spewing the sophistical claptrap of self-help positive thinking, he blocked me on Medium.

Four days later he posted an article I can’t help but think is an indirect response or at least a rationalization for his lack of a direct response. It’s called “7 Reasons Why My Life Sometimes Sucks (and Maybe Yours),” the subtitle being “#7- Because I waste my time with people who don’t listen.”

He starts by saying,

Sometimes everything is fine, and suddenly all goes to hell.

Do you know that feeling?

When karma hits you hard, and your dog dies, you lose your job, or your mother-in-law says she will spend a vacation at your house and stay for a whole year.

Shit happens

And he quotes Reinhold Niebuhr’s mantra, “God, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, courage to change the things I can change, and wisdom to recognize the difference.”

Is it possible, though, Garcia’s indicating here that everything was going fine until a highly critical takedown of his worldview showed up on his doorstep, namely the one I wrote?

The reason I think that’s what’s going on is that although the concrete examples he gives in his introduction — a dog dying, losing your job, your mother-in-law staying at your house — obviously have nothing to do with my critical article, at least two of his seven pieces of advice are about dealing with critics.

A safe space for adult babies

Here’s his first point:

1. Because I’m not taking a shower

One of the reasons my life sucks is laziness for not making the conscious, daily effort to cleanse the bad vibes out of my life.

You have to shower your soul, spirit, or whatever you call it every day because we get dirty. Toxic people make us unclean; critics make us dirty; even people who love us often make us dirty without realizing it.

Taking a symbolic or real shower, be aware that you are eliminating all that negativity, helps feel good again.

Now, knowing the context, that looks to me like the reasoning behind his choice to block me on Medium. He’s taking a symbolic shower and cleansing himself of this “negativity.” He’s eliminating the “bad vibes” from his life. Specifically, “Toxic people make us unclean; critics make us dirty.”

Wow. Critics make us dirty? I wonder if Garcia realizes that even evil individuals such as mass murderers could resort to this grotesque ideology of positive thinking to enable their worst impulses. Instead of using criticism to reflect on whether the critic might have a point, you just close your eyes and cover your ears, block out all negative thoughts, and presume you’re in the clear. That way, you go through life like a sheltered child, confining yourself to your safe spaces.

Yet you don’t eliminate negativity by blocking it out, by pretending it doesn’t exist. No, what sane, rational adults do, if they have any intellectual integrity is to weigh the merits of objections with at least a modicum of critical thinking. You engage with critics if it looks like they’re making substantive points against what you hold dear. Otherwise, you’d just be retreating to your tribe and making excuses for your fear of the potential for negative truth.

After all, why should all truths be positive? If there’s something wrong with your worldview, shouldn’t you want to find out what that is so you can improve your outlook? Isn’t it possible for a grown-up to learn, to confront the facts as they are and to deal with them with honour and integrity as a member of Homo sapiens, that is, as a relatively wise person?

But if you’re incapable of thinking logically and you’ve immersed yourself in a stew of hippie wokeness and feel-good neoliberal excuses for self-indulgent consumerism, you’ll of course be helpless when you face real opposition in life. You’ll block out the “negativity” as much as possible and throw a tantrum when you finally discover that the outer world isn’t looking out for your best interests after all, that you’ve been fooling yourself in your solipsistic fantasy land.

Excuses for intellectual lameness

I’ll spare you the hackneyed self-help twaddle in the body of his article and skip to his seventh piece of advice.

7. Because I waste my time with people who don’t listen.

Life does not owe me anything and much less the people. The mistake that causes me the most pain is trying to help those who do not want to be helped.

Expecting too much from others is a great source of frustration. People are the way they are, and changing them is not always convenient.

If someone doesn’t want to listen to your advice, the best thing to do is leave.

If someone doesn’t pay attention to you, the best thing you can do is leave.

If someone doesn’t want to spend time with you, the best thing to do is leave.

Remember that the time you give to someone who doesn’t appreciate you, you take it away from someone else who may enjoy it more.

Again, this looks like a rationalization for his inability to respond to criticism like an adult. Of course, if my article were just a deranged screed of toxic name-calling, personal attacks, and nonsense, there would be no dishonour in ignoring it. In that case, indeed, it might even be morbid to engage with undue negativity. Alas for Garcia, though, I quoted him at length and engaged with the very substance of his worldview at a philosophical level. I dismantled his sophistry and trounced his presumptions.

At first glance, then, Garcia does have an intellectual obligation to defend himself directly against my criticisms. The obligation isn’t to me, mind you, but to himself and to his readers.

Instead, what Garcia appears to have done is respond obliquely by way of these excuses. Here, with his seventh point, he’s just resorting to a personal attack, presupposing that he’d only be wasting his time responding because I wouldn’t listen or because I “do not want to be helped.” If someone doesn’t want to listen, pay attention, or spend time with you, he says, “the best thing to do is leave.” Translation: the best thing is to block the critic on Medium. The more time you spend on “someone who doesn’t appreciate you,” the more time you take away from your adoring fans.

Yeah, that’s the advice you’d expect from a sheltered man-child with no honour, intellectual integrity, or critical thinking skills. This is the worldview of a pure consumer, of someone who insulates himself against the damage he does directly or indirectly because he has the First World prerogative to live in a bubble.

Of course, there’s no indication that I wouldn’t listen to any reasonable response to my article. I engage with hundreds of readers in the comments, and I have extensive philosophical training. Garcia’s only trying to save face with himself, pretending that his avoidance of this negativity is justified because it’s necessarily his critics who are at fault, not him. He’s an innocent do-gooder. And as I quoted from Alexander Pope in my first response to Garcia,

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Throwing down the gauntlet

This weakness is both pathetic and sad because it reflects the cult of Wokeness and the predominant faith of neoliberal consumerism. But honestly, that’s not why I’m bothering to write about Garcia’s playpen. Clearly, my writings aren’t going to have much of an effect on those bigger problems. Indeed, having been blocked by Garcia, they’re not going to affect even that one tawdry corner of Medium.

So, you might be wondering why I bother, now and again, to repudiate this drivel. Well, I’ll tell you why.

It’s because I refuse to let this wrongness pass unchallenged. I can’t refute everything under the sun with which I disagree. There’s not enough time in the day and I have other things to do. But when one of the only viable platforms for online self-publishing drowns out intellectually responsible and artistically meritorious writing with hackneyed listicles and neoliberal propaganda for the happiness industry, the dubious creator economy, and Silicon Valley’s nefarious plots for world domination, I can let only so much of that pass.

I can’t change any of it, but I can prove that I’ve repudiated it, that I saw it for what it is and that I took a stand against it, ineffectual as that stand may be. With this series of articles, I’ve thrown down my gauntlet against the dragon. I’ve let the record show that I’m opposed to what’s going on there, so close to an online home of mine, so that I can focus, as I do, on worthier topics.