The age of unreason

To this day I am astonished when I hear that sensible, biologically mature adults allow themselves to be treated as if they were incompetent dimwits by a new army of professional surrogate parents. In days of old, traditional authority figures, like priests, instructed us how to behave in public and told us which rules to observe. Today’s experts are even freer with their advice. They do not simply tell us what to do and think, but also how to feel. A new army of life coaches, lifestyle gurus, professional celebrities, parenting coaches, super-nannies, makeover experts, healers, facilitators, mentors and guides regularly lecture us about the most intimate details of our existence. They are not simply interested in monitoring public behaviour but in colonising our internal life.

Life coaches ‘support’ us with making transitions in our private life while their colleagues feng shui our mundane existence. And every aspect of daily life has become a target of a makeover project. It is sad to see grown-up people needing somebody to show them how to shop for clothes. It is even more depressing when so many of us decide that we cannot make important decisions concerning our personal life without the benefit of a life coach, parenting coach or a high-tech psychic peddling gemstone therapy. This is not just deference to authority but the prostration of the adult imagination.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with expertise. We rely on mechanics to fix our cars and on dentists to extract our teeth. But the posse of 21st-century life experts is not so much in the business of fixing practical problems as in transforming us into needy children. Their enterprise depends on undermining and usurping confidence in our ability to conduct our affairs. The message they transmit is that normal human beings cannot do it on their own.