You can have anything you desire and become anyone you wish to be. There are no limits to potential, achievement and reward. The Universe is an endless giver of prizes. Such are the seductive claims of the self help industry. And that anyone who follows the prescribed steps will discover vast, untapped potential. Self help must take some of the blame for fostering the illusion that fulfilment is easy.
Distaste for the fatuous breeziness of self help has also possibly encouraged a rejection of all psychology as light weight and worthless. But the message of serious psychology is the opposite of that of self help - fulfilment is not easy, but exhaustingly difficult. Theorists of the self insist on understanding and transformation but psychology has shown how difficult these can be. Attempts at self understanding will be strenuously opposed by the identities, cunning use of self deception, self justification and self righteousness. Their seems to be no delusion to absurd, no justification to irrational and no righteousness to extreme for the human mind to accept.
The delusion begin with the very idea of happiness. Everyone everywhere, regardless of age, gender, social status or wealth, reports a happiness level over 5 on a scale of 1-10 - and, stranger still, is certain of even greater happiness in the future. the American psychologist, Jonathan Haidte claims that there are similar delusion for all the desiderata, the most europeans and Americans rate themselves above average on wide range of talents including virtuousness, intelligence and of course sexual performance. Haiidte says of college professors, '94% of us think we do above average work' needless to say I am among this 94%. And it turns out that teachers are even more deluded than students - a mere 70% of students believe they are above average. The temptation to laugh is check by another troubling thought; most of my colleagues believe themselves to be terrifically amusing; every one also has an above average sense of humour.
But, as so often, there is an intriguing exceptions Haidte observes that the desiderata delusion is weaker in east asian countries, and possibly non existent in Japan. Is this evidence of the beneficial influence of Buddhist Culture, which attempts to dispel illusion and reduce attachment to the self?
But we exaggerate only our own virtues. On those of others we are realistic. Two psychologist Nicholas Apley and David Dunning, asked people to predict whether they would behave selfishly or cooperatively in a game played for money the result; 84% claimed that they themselves would play cooperatively - but the estimate of cooperative behaviour in others was only 64% and intact 61% did play cooperatively in other words as Buddha and Christ said repeatedly, we are Hypocrites.
