OPRAHDOXY
Joseph Sunde:
This is cultural consumerism at both its highest and lowest — humanistic in its instincts, privileged in its priorities, and carefully glazed with all the right marketing to deceive itself that justice is at hand and Neighbor Love has the wheel. It’s as if human desire has grown so weary of natural constraints and so content with its own appetite that it would prefer to label self-indulgence as "self-help" and be done with it.
It’s faux-self-empowerment for the self-centered, heart-religion as a mantle for hedonism.
“It’s about living the life you want,” Oprah explains, “because a great percentage of the population is living a life that their mother wanted, that their husband wanted, that they thought or heard they wanted…Start embracing the life that is calling you and use your life to serve the world.” We ought not be blind slaves to the arbitrary demands of others, of course. But as tourmate Elizabeth Gilbert unknowingly demonstrates, we also ought not eat-pray-love ourselves into oblivion, divorcing our "callings" from external needs and our desires from absolute obligations. If the "life you want" begins with the life you want, you’re not likely to find much life at all. When all you’ve got is an "opened self," a "cleared mind," and "the will to dream for yourself," that delicious taco you ate on your Meditation Vacation to the Andes is probably your best bet for filling the void.
