C’est à toi, pas à eux [Critique de “L’art subtil de s’en foutre” (Mark Manson, 2016)]

J’avais une prof au lycée, Felisa, prof d’espagnol, qui semblait toujours heureuse et patiente — mais d’une manière qui paraissait un peu fausse. En réalité, tout le monde pensait que cette attitude de hippie était calculée, pas sincère. Pourtant, un jour en classe, Felisa a critiqué ceux qui méprisaient les œuvres littéraires et le cinéma populaires : « Si des millions de personnes aiment ça, ce ne peut pas être si mauvais », disait-elle. En prenant position et en s’exprimant sincèrement contre le snobisme académique et intellectuel — je ne sais pas si elle avait raison ou pas — Felisa gagnait quelque chose de plus important : de la personnalité, de l’identité, de la force, du charisme.

La première fois que j’ai vu la couverture du livre The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, à Manille en 2017, j’ai pensé que ce n’était qu’un pamphlet de développement personnel bon marché, avec une couverture trop commerciale pour être sérieuse. Mes étudiants de psychologie à l’UST en parlaient beaucoup : un truc d’ados, me disais-je.

Mais après presque une décennie, avec plusieurs traductions, des dizaines d’éditions et des millions d’exemplaires vendus — et même une certaine présence dans les milieux universitaires et psychologiques — j’ai décidé de le lire. Et je dois admettre que c’était une bonne idée : avec plus de rigueur que je ne le pensais, je ne peux pas nier qu’il m’apporte, dans ma situation personnelle actuelle, quelques clés très intéressantes.

Ainsi, une œuvre initialement critiquée par les philosophes et psychologues devient un outil pratique de réflexion philosophique et psychologique, rédigé par un coach qui, à l’origine, n’était pas vraiment un spécialiste. Il avait commencé en tenant un blog largement nourri par ses expériences de joueur et de globe-trotter pendant dix ans.

L’esprit du livre et ses idées ne sont pas révolutionnaires : en réalité, le stoïcisme qu’il défend est presque aussi ancien que l’humanité. Mais le bon choix de l’auteur est de l’adapter à la société actuelle et à des profils comme le mien, esclaves d’une certaine philosophie “Manu Chao”. Le cœur du message : sois toi-même sans attendre de récompense, et ne deviens pas ce que tu penses que les autres veulent que tu sois. Sois toi, en sachant que tu n’es rien — et que c’est très bien ainsi.

Ironiquement, Dale Carnegie disait que pour améliorer ses relations, il fallait s’intéresser aux autres, les écouter, suivre leurs intérêts. Mark Manson, lui, affirme que pour avancer vers le bonheur, il faut être sincère et se recentrer sur soi. Mais loin d’être incompatibles, ces deux idées sont complémentaires : notre manière d’être au monde doit s’ancrer dans notre authenticité, sans peur des autres et en acceptant qu’on n’est qu’une personne parmi des milliards. Et, au quotidien, l’une des meilleures stratégies reste de s’intéresser sincèrement aux autres.

Bien sûr, la frontière entre « eux » et « nous » est floue, difficile à tracer. Mais c’est justement une affaire de pratique continue — en somme, c’est ça, la vie.

Manson, M. (2016). The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. HarperOne

Audjourd’hui, la communication directe est plus efficace [Critique de “Comment faire des amis” (Dale Carnegie, 1936)]

Warren Buffet, probablement le meilleur investisseur de l’histoire et l’un des hommes les plus riches du monde, a dit plusieurs fois que le cours qui avait changé sa vie était celui donné par Dale Carnegie, sur la psychologie sociale pratique. Et ce cours est résumé dans un livre publié en 1936, qui est devenu l’un des ouvrages les plus importants du XXᵉ siècle, et une véritable référence pour le traitement des relations sociales ainsi que pour le développement de tactiques économiques. Je parle de Comment faire des amis.

Et si Warren Buffet recommande cette œuvre, un tas d’investisseurs et d’économistes, même presque un siècle après sa publication, parlent encore de ce livre, qui a aussi une très bonne note sur les sites de livres, de vente et dans les librairies. Donc, après avoir terminé mes examens de mathématiques pour devenir fonctionnaire, j’ai décidé que Comment faire des amis serait la première de mes lectures d’été.

Tout d’abord, l’écriture de l’auteur est si amène et facile, pleine d’exemples et de situations quotidiennes amusantes, que même en français, je n’ai eu besoin que de trois jours pour le lire et écrire cette critique. Mais cette simplicité se traduit aussi par une simplicité des arguments et des conseils : dès la première page, les enseignements de l’auteur semblent très simples, rien de nouveau, et très centrés sur le fait de flatter l’interlocuteur : on sait tous que cela n’est pas possible dans beaucoup d’occasions, comme lorsqu’il y a des conflits.

En plus, une partie des enseignements écrits là et des situations correspondent au début du XXᵉ siècle, voire au XIXᵉ siècle, et les contextes et mentalités des personnes aujourd’hui ne permettent pas toujours de les appliquer. Cela devient particulièrement délicat lorsqu’il s’agit des relations sentimentales et de la galanterie dans les derniers chapitres du livre. Mais en même temps, le fait que ce livre ait été écrit dans un contexte de crise, après une guerre mondiale, et par un membre d’une génération très marquée par les événements et les générations précédentes, fait que certains aspects de l’esprit du livre gardent des similitudes avec la situation des milléniaux d’aujourd’hui.

D’un autre côté, même si l’œuvre est simple, elle présente quelques conseils encore très utiles, que j’ai notés dans mon téléphone portable pour les lire le matin : soyez plus intéressé par les autres, laissez-les parler au moins autant que vous ou plus, et d’autres recommandations. Je suis déjà en train d’appliquer ces conseils et j’ai déjà noté des différences, même si souvent il n’est pas facile de faire en sorte que les autres s’ouvrent.

On peut dire que Comment faire des amis est une des références majeures en psychologie sociale pratique et en économie, que son importance pour comprendre la société du XXᵉ siècle est indéniable, et que même aujourd’hui, il fournit encore quelques conseils valables. Mais je trouve que, dans notre société, il est plus important et efficace de parler directement, sans détours, même lorsqu’il faut exprimer des mécontentements et des désaccords, sans flatteries ni mesures palliatives — bien sûr avec politesse, et surtout, avec honnêteté. Et en plus, j’ai toujours aimé pouvoir dire “je te l’avais dit” quand j’ai raison, et je ne veux pas arrêter de faire ça.

Carnegie, D. (1936). How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster. 

How the Philippines changed, How the Philippines changed me [Review of “El individuo flotante”, of Marino Pérez Álvarez]

Manila, 2017. I am excited about my new job at the University of Santo Tomas and the new experiences I am having in the Philippines. I find a new surprise every day, a new intellectual or physical stimulus, and it took me nine months to feel routine. Joining a jeepney means losing the control of your body to become part of a communal body, no matter your age of gender, and everyone accepts it. And never say no to a karaoke, because singing alone makes no sense, and singing together is the best of enjoyment, even if you don’t have the right pitch, because there is no “right pitch” or “the best pitch”. And if you think you have it, the group will allow you to sing the same number of songs as the rest, and everybody happily accepts it.

But at some point, I needed an (individualistic) break, I needed to walk calmly alone in the park, breathe deeply, and relax. It is not easy when there is virtually only one large park in the city, Luneta, but luckily, I lived relatively close to it. I went there, but during the few hours I stayed, many nice people came up to me wanting to talk about anything or offering to street-dance cheesy songs. I deeply appreciated it, but I just wanted to be alone! Some days later, after discussing this experience with a young independent illustrated upper-class colleague, she recommended that I use headphones or pretend to read a book, even if I weren’t listening to or reading anything at all, and she was right. But after half an hour, I needed to feel pinoy social hearts warmth. And all that reminded me of my childhood in Venezuela.

Manila, 2024. After a bunch of bad experiences, especially in Vietnam, I came back to the Philippines, and I came back to my trips around the country, to my walks around the barangays, and to my chilling moments in Luneta. However, I found crowds looking at their smartphones -bought thanks to the economic development of the country especially after Covid-, more foreigners than before, and no one coming to greet me and wanting to have a small conversation. I found, as “El individuo flotante” states, people living together alone. And I felt sad and even desperate.

Still in Manila, strolling around the disappearing traditional lower-class barangays and markets, the cemeteries, or the cockpits makes you feel like you are in the Middle Ages. And “El individuo flotante” accurately adds this kind of communal society, based on social habitudes in which there are very few means for individualism, is the society that existed until the Renaissance. So yes, it seems the disappearing Manila takes you back to the Middle Ages even in the deepest unrealizable touches. However, here’s one of the challenges the book faces: it is always suspicious to establish the first moment for something, and even though Marino Pérez Álvarez strongly defends the birth of modern individualist societies after the Middle Ages, he also opens the door to some kind of individualism during the evolution of the ancient Greek polis.  

Back to 2017’s Manila, many people -among them my colleagues at Miguel de Benavides Library- sadly looked at me when I said I lived alone. For them, it was like the most depressing fact on Earth for a human, but I internally thought that I would never live together with anyone, except for a couple or a family maybe, because I would not want to deal with anyone, and I wanted to be always free. Interestingly, one of the people who looked at me with compassion when I said I was living alone got a nice opportunity to develop an individualistic life in Madrid, and it seems she doesn’t want to return to the social Filipino life anymore. And this is one of the other weak points of “El individuo flotante”: it doesn’t focus enough on the economic conditions that enables and enhances individualism, although it mentions them. In my case, I enjoyed -and I miss- the communal societies like 2017’s Manila, but I did so from the individualistic side: I did not live in a room with other five or more people and a bunch of mosquitoes, cockroaches and rats, but just alone, with all the possible amenities and services, and with a nice salary. They -the social Philippines- were a psychological and philosophical relief to my needs and wrongs derived from my excessive individualism, and I took advantage of it when I needed without renouncing to the advantages of the individualistic way of life, which makes such a hypocrite illusion even more individualistic.

The rise of individualism after the Middle Ages made humans abandon their traditional references -God, family, king, and later nation- to gradually make themselves their own reference points, and finally to get totally lost in their individualism, as they need to find some meaning inside themselves. Ironically, these meanings are chosen from external “markets of meanings”, and simultaneously, the buyers find others as entities to “conveniently use”. Even though this analysis has been present for more than a century, Pérez Álvarez clearly explains and structures it, considering the idea of “salvific communities” as substitutes for the traditional references. Nowadays, individuals substitute God or family for bachata, Aragonese language, new religious options, or CrossFit communities, even when they do not have any traditional -e.g. Family, village- or other substantial reason to adopt them. Or even worse, they try to solve individualism self-exploiting -taking a Master, then another Master, and then a PhD, and then another PhD, and then a BA in Mathematics- generating more stress and more individualism.  This process becomes even more pernicious with the spread of smartphones and social networks, plenty of easy-to-access “salvific communities”, developed following colorful addictive individualistic patterns like the “like culture” and the “selfie culture”, with the final goal of the profit of a few global corporations that sell an image of freedom while enhancing addictive slavery.

The previous analysis is not original, but it is accurate and well-founded in Pérez Álvarez’s piece. However, the draft solutions the author suggests -e.g., controlling spaces, timings, or swimming- are weak and detract from the overall power of the piece. Pérez Álvarez also defends a progressive limitation of social networks, while from my own experience, it might be total -as with many other addictions. While criticizing mindfulness and other cheap -often individualistic- psychologies, what he does in his book is not so different, but more formal, refined, and, from my experience, useful. In this sense, his veiled reluctance to scientific and analytical psychologies and philosophies, in favor of rigorous humanistic options, is too radical.

“El individuo flotante” is a piece that deserves to be widely read and spread, not only because of its analysis on how smartphones and social networks are making us increasingly unhappy, but because of its reflections on how we are becoming increasingly individualistic, with no references, with no paths, considering the others as entities to “properly use”: as a result, loneliness is filling our souls, being the base for many of our current psychological pathologies. Interestingly and ironically, I read “El individuo flotante” a week I had three cancelled dates by different people in different places, always at the last minute: trying to overcome my individualism and set commitments after my Manila’s experiences, what I am finding is more and more individualism.

Before finishing, I would like to apologize for writing an individualistic review of a book that offers clues for solving individualism, but I could not have done it another way. I find “El individuo flotante” an excellent self-help and social analysis book, even though the author tends to criticize the former. In fact, it helps me as much as writing my blogs.

“He feels overwhelmed with exhaustion and can no longer bear his doctoral thesis, his mother, his house and his street, the hypocritical people he has to greet or who greet him. So, he decides to move to another city, one that is there, waiting for him—empty and brand new—where he will have a different job, a different woman, see a different landscape when he opens the windows, spend his nights on different hobbies, friendships, gossip. And so, his life is renewed, move after move…” (adaptation from “Invisible Cities”, Calvino, 1972, mentioned in page 165 of “El individuo flotante”).

Pérez Álvarez, Marino (2023). El individuo flotante: la muchedumbre solitaria en los tiempos de las redes sociales. Deusto.

You are as special as everyone else. Review of Daniel Bernabé’s “La trampa de la diversidad”

Joven-Romero, M.A. (2020). You are as special as everyone else. [Review of the book La trampa de la diversidad: cómo el liberalismo fragmentó la identidad de la clase trabajadora, by Daniel Bernabé]


Tondol Beach (Pangasinan, The Philippines) is probably the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. Crystal waters, coral sand, palms and a small islet at the end of the landscape. Still virgin with no hotels apart from some humble cottages addressed to the local tourists of the province. A day of 2018 I fled Manila, I arrived there and I found two couples of western foreigners with dreadlocks, the only foreigners apart from myself. While I was having a bath, some poor local children were taking star fish in the shore and were throwing them deep into the water as a matter of game. The foreigners shouted and scolded the children: You are damaging the starfish! A few moments later, the same foreigners were bargaining a meal in a humble local canteen. That meal costed 60 pesos -a bit more than one euro- and they required it to be vegan.  

Some months later, a dumb foreigner was playing and feeding crocodiles with a fishing rod in a crocodile farm, still in the Philippines. He uploaded his stupid video in Facebook and quickly one of his friends replied: That’s not ecofriendly! In her analysis, the friend did not take into account that that crocodile farm fed poor families in the region. Actually, out of the last ten publications of the mentioned friend, two of them were memes or jokes, seven of them were related to ecologism and feminism, and only one of them was related to poverty and inequality associated to Mexican ethnic minorities.

Similarly, ecologists are boycotting diving with whale sharks in Oslob (Cebu, Philippines). But still, in their analysis they do not take into consideration that such activity improved the miserable material conditions of around one thousand people in the area.

January 8, 2020. The #FEMINISM event is taking place in Uptown Mall, Bonifacio Global Center, one of the richest cities in Metro Manila, where there is a luxury you can hardly find in western cities, in contrast to the miserable living conditions of more than half of Manileños. A bunch of young women wearing expensive trendy clothes and hairstyles sing, shout and show the same global feminist mottoes while some local media record the event. Feminist demonstration in March also take place in that city, governed by a counsel of big corporations’ representatives, the same corporations that built the city. At that moment, an anecdote of 2019 while doing some cooperation work in the poor district of Punta came to my mind. There was a young woman with some children and, after a short conversation, we trusted each other. I asked her about feminism, and she admitted having suffered sexism, but in a different way I was expecting. Far from being violent, her husband was lazy, did not work and used his time playing basketball or computer games. He even allowed her to have sexual relations with other men. But she had to work, supply money, do the housework and take care of the children. She confessed that many days she could not sleep. Sexism translated into a material inequality inside a class problem, something mainstream feminism does not pay enough attention.

Being a passionate of multiculturalism and multilingualism, when I came to the Philippines I was excited about the huge diversity of the country, with more than 180 languages. Rapidly I did and I am still doing some linguistic research, as I had previously done with the Aragonese language. But if in the latter case the main parameter to find good informants was the age, in the Philippine case the social class is the parameter to follow: rich people tend to acquire the lingua franca, English, and sometimes they even forget the community language, while poor people preserve it more pure. While researching, another question prompts my mind: Is it really worthy and ethical to work for the preservation of these languages when the real and urgent problem of these people is to improve their material conditions?

Here we arrive to go one of the key ideas printed by Daniel Bernabé in his book “La trampa de la diversidad” [From now on: The Trap of Diversity]. Diversity seems to be a good and even necessary value, especially in contrast to values of systems that try to eliminate it, like fascism. But diversity can be defended and promoted once material conditions are guaranteed for everyone, not before. The same friend who criticized the dumb guy feeding crocodiles with a fishing rod admitted the poverty problem, but she replied: We can and must work on all these causes! Stop thinking about priorities! Life is not about priorities! – I am sorry, but we have limited resources and that makes our lives to be a matter of priorities, and decisions according to these priorities. And our global basic priority must be to guarantee basic material conditions for everybody. Unfortunately, we have reached a point in which people value more their diversities than basic economic conditions for everybody: ecologists take more care about starfish and whale sharks than about poor children, feminists focus in rich women and their gender concerns according to their own economic and social class, same for LGBTI advocates, and multilingualism supporters might defend inequality if that means linguistic preservation.

The trap of diversity does not stop here. It has become so corrupted that it splits society into an infinitum of identities, which may conflict and whose cause is an extended selfishness. A few years ago, a friend’s buddy, a young feminist woman, told my friend in a Facebook discussion: “Revise your privileges”. My friend is a fruit seller that can be perfectly identified with the traditional meaning of working-class member. Even worse: imagine you are a heterosexual, white, omnivore, male and you do not speak any endangered language. Then it seems you must feel both lucky and guilty for being the continuously privileged individual according to this diversity trap. There is no better soil to feed extreme right political options and ideas, as Daniel Bernabé exemplifies at the end of his book. Setting apart personal examples, recent discussions between feminist and LGBTI backers are also good examples.

Furthermore, the irruption of innumerable identities and lifestyles according to sexual, ecological, cultural or aesthetic parameters broadens and creates markets, which are not accessible for everybody. Ecological and vegan products are far more expensive, recently emerged sexual practices and fetishes usually require pricey devices, learning local or global dances or watching trendy TV series require amounts of money not everybody has, as well as taking some Pilates or Bodypump sessions. This markets’ world also influences politics: parties and ideologies are not entities to follow, but just entities the consumer shops according to his moment tendencies. Subsequently, Daniel Bernabé criticizes the use of the trap of diversity neoliberalism: diversity here feeds social and class differences, and it also devalues politics.

David Bernabé points key contemporary social and political issues and he relates them to the trap of diversity. No matter your ideology, it is difficult to be against most of his descriptions. Diversity is a hotspot and at the same time its social handling is challenging. Material conditions are not at the same level but axiomatic, even if the illusory middle-class people do not realize. Social quandary after the Great Recession opens the door to a revision of diversity, a criticism against individualism, a vindication of materialism and universal values, and subsequently, a Marxist analysis and a vindication of socialist solutions. However, if the ideas and the context are appealing and necessary, the way Bernabé argues and gathers his thoughts is disastrous. He continuously jumps from one case to another without linking them together, like if you are listening to your grandpa’s tales. He mixes brilliant paragraphs with unnecessary childish jokes -e.g. references about Clinton’s sexual affairs or Operación Triunfo singers’ quality- and many times he uses logical fallacies or sentences like “It is not the goal of this book … but I shall say …”. Other times, it seems he is just pasting together different parts of previous press articles. In short, while he defends the Modernity project of reaching universal ideals and he criticizes the fuzzy logic of Postmodernity, many times he seems to write a propagandist book addressed to his followers while he could have written a universal piece to be read by anybody, who later on could agree or disagree. He has lost a good opportunity.

But honestly, I do not regret having read Daniel Bernabé’s The Trap of Diversity. Many of its paragraphs -and especially chapter 5 that names the whole book- are brilliant and necessary pieces that make you think for hours about our contemporary circumstances. Even if deficient in form, The Trap of Diversity points to the right and necessary idea: You are as special as everyone else. Bernabé would add: And material conditions are over all. I add: And far from being a trauma, it is liberating.