Self Help

When I was a lad, I was aware of a world within my world, where anything was possible if I wished for it very hard. The thing is that world within was a more attractive place than the real world we all inhabit. But it was and should remain illusory; just like an imaginary friend it might have been a comfort but it was still a fantasy.

In our dreams we can fight tigers, slay dragons, cop off with the damsel and build empires, but at some point we have to wake up and get on with real life and in real life you have to work for things, find your talents, exploit them to the best of your abilities and basically make do with what you've got. Life's hard, then you die. That's pretty much all there is to it. Have a laugh along the way if you can.

But no longer, it seems. There's a better way. What was once referred to as an inferiority complex, requiring a good slap and a "Grow up and pull yourself together, man!" has regrouped, re-branded and relaunched itself as the shameful hypocrisy that is the low self-esteem industry. Simultaneously promoting the same fear it professes to treat, the low self-esteem industry targets the weak and preys on their genuine inferiority by dressing it up as a treatable condition.

Can't sing, can't act, can't get your lazy fat arse out of bed in the morning? Can't get a boy/girl friend, can't lose weight, not very bright? Feeling a bit off-colour, feeling a bit weepy, feeling a bit inadequate? Wanting fame, wanting fortune, wanting to be a better person? Then you are not special, you are just normal!

But put yourself in the hands of the LS-E Industry and you are normal no longer. In fact you are exceptional, extraordinary, amazing and if you shut your eyes tight and wish just that little bit harder all things will be yours. Except they won't; you may as well click your heels and hope to wake up in Kansas. You'll still be a lazy talent-less, fat, whiny shit, just a little bit poorer and a bit less able to pull your bloody socks up. And you'll feel a little less bad about doing fuck-all about it and be happy to pay somebody to keep you this way.

Britain is drowning in low self-esteem? WTF? If anything, we need more of it. It's evident that the nation is awash with a veritable flood of high self-esteem - what we used to call being up your own arse. The swaggering posture of supposed role models like footballers, bankers and BMW drivers. They are inordinately full of themselves; full of shit, more like. Full of self-importance, a complete lack of respect for others and a chronic incomprehension of the role played by good fortune, of luck in putting them where they are. Their sense of entitlement is overwhelming and nauseating in equal measure.

So, buck your ideas up, Dinglings. Stop snivelling, get them socks above half-mast and get out there. You might well be an under-achiever, but you have a vital role to play - you make the rest of us look brilliant.