The Advice is Free, the Consequences Aren't

If I could give one piece of advice to everybody coming to me for answers that piece would be "Ask somebody else".  Frankly the things I'm qualified to give advice on are few and don't often come up in day to day life.  Not that anybody does come to me for advice of course but I thought I'd get in early.  To be frank I'm not crazy about the entire advice giving thing anyway.  For starters there is always the danger that somebody might take it.  Taking advice is a rare occurrence but it does happen and people usually contrive to do it on those occasions when they really shouldn't.

Except in highly specific cases taking advice is generally a bad idea.  Of course advice like "don't wander into traffic" and "unload the gun before you start cleaning it" is always useful but by and large advice is a terrible thing.  This is particularly the case when the advice is something like "you should lead your life in such and such a way".  The reason is simple; if you're the sort of person whose decision making is so bad that you require advice on how to live your life then you are unlikely to make any better decision when choosing who to take advice from.

The previous sentence does more than anything else to explain the success of self help books.  It would be an interesting exercise to see how many authors of self help books actually read one before getting themselves into a position where they felt they could dish out advice to others.  I've often considered writing one myself.  It's simple enough really; take a bunch of largely self evident platitudes, mix in with some parables (the type and style will depend on your audience; Emily Post for stay at home mums, Sun Tzu for corporate wannabes) add a couple of examples (they don't need to be real but they should be marginally plausible) and continually tell your readership how wonderful they could be if they apply the lessons of your book.  The unspoken subtext being, how dreadful they are right now.

Ultimately though I decided against writing How to Improve Every Facet of Your Life Beyond Belief in Just Three Easy Lessons partly from moral reasons (if I'm that desperate for the cash I'll go into something a little more respectable like prostitution or drug dealing) but mainly because I doubt if I could write more than a paragraph without descending into mocking sarcasm.  There is also the danger that someone will take your advice.  Then they will blame you when something appalling happens to them (and if they take my advice it probably will).

Of course the absolutely worst result of all would be if they took my advice and were wildly successful.  That would just be a little too much to bear.  Although I suppose I could possibly borrow money from them.