The miracle that always works (until you move to another town)
A car in the middle of the square, an infallible remedy and an audience hungry for miracles. It could be a scene from a western… or your Instagram feed on a Monday morning.
Centuries change, screens change, but the promise is the same: quick happiness, guaranteed success, and a better life in exchange for following four very simple steps. Too simple.
As the first article in this newspaper, I invite you to recall a scene that has been portrayed in many “western” movies: a wagon arrives at a town, with a sharp-looking stranger who, one ordinary morning, parks in the middle of the square and hangs a bright and flashy sign: “The Magic Formula of Dr. Thompson&co” and then begins shouting to attract a crowd of curious onlookers: “Step right up, pay attention!”.
Then, when he has about twenty or more spectators, he starts to deliver a speech filled with phrases explaining the virtues and miracles of his mir-a-cu-lous tonic, capable of curing sadness, your child's lazy eye, syphilis, or making crops yield more.
Then appears the “bait”, in the form of a gentleman on crutches, slow and looking not very healthy… Until he takes a sip of the magic elixir and look! He throws away the crutches, jumps a couple of hops, and he’s cured!
People can’t believe it, everyone lines up so they don’t miss this miracle and the stock —note this, Jocelyn!— is limited. Once he has sold all the boxes, the stranger shuts down his stall and hurries off to the next town, only making a quick stop to pick up outside a certain gentleman without crutches who looks like a longtime acquaintance…
Let’s change scenes and modernize the background: a very muscular and aggressive guy shouts through a little screen while explaining that exercising, getting up at 5 am every day, and kissing up to the boss will make you rich like him.
Elsewhere, a very calm-looking girl tells you she is su-per-hap-py because she drinks some I-don’t-know-what tea and lights a candle that gives off pleasant smells.
Or a video of a man made by Artificial Intelligence saying that, by doing these exercises for 5 minutes, you’ll have the body of an athlete or another who tells you the secret to picking up girls is to say “seven secret words” which obviously he won’t tell you unless you watch his entire video and pay for one of his courses…
The world is full of “entrepreneurs” who, whether knowingly deceiving or acting in good faith, promise us paradise at bargain prices: if we do this or that, if we pay for this or that, we will become prettier, richer, smell good, and have an easy and happy life…
When, in truth, having an easy life requires a lot of work (or very rich parents) and being happy… "well", it’s complicated.
A historical perspective on the latter will be useful: in the Maxims of Shuruppak, written in Mesopotamia around 2600 BC, a father recommends to his son that, if he wants to have an ordered life, he must avoid excess, control his emotions, and get along well with others.
The Instructions of Ptahhotep from Egypt around 2400 BC (give or take a year) describe how to have a good life: avoid anger, be generous, and listen before speaking, among other things.
And so we could keep searching and searching and searching through the 4600 or so years that separate us from these two: self-help sections have gone from being interesting shelves with books containing good ideas to a set of “Do as I do” and other su-per-e-ffi-ca-cious formulas…
When, if that were true, there would only be one book on the whole shelf!
Be careful with miracle and utopia sellers! Your servant here leaves you now, since I just saw an ad for a course on how to write interesting articles in 5 minutes and it will only cost me 20 euros… and that even though it’s a course valued at 200!!! A steal!!!!