The Best Self-Help is Free: The Myth of "No Pain, No Gain"

Chapter 23

This is Chapter 23 of The Best Self-Help is Free, a treatise by Mr. Stolyarov. You can read all chapters of this freely available treatise here.

A curious fallacy pervades our society - the idea that the quality of a good obtained is directly proportional to the sacrifice of goods, comfort, and convenience required in order to obtain it.  

Mentalities exemplifying this false idea include the following.

Falsehood 1. Thinking that the price of a consumer good necessarily indicates its quality and the higher prices of certain goods are all accounted for by those goods' higher quality. Inversely, this mindset also holds that if a good is not highly priced, then it cannot be of a high quality.

Falsehood 2. Thinking that the amount of effort or labor put into a particular task is a direct indicator of its ultimate quality and value.

Falsehood 3. Thinking that an interpersonal relationship is not a truly strong or worthwhile relationship unless one or both parties are willing to spend colossal amounts of money on ostentatious gifts, occasions, and entertainments. Examples of this trend include expenditures on $10,000 engagement rings, $30,000 weddings, and $1000 wedding cakes that rarely get fully eaten and are not substantially different from particularly ornate $50 cakes.

Falsehood 4. Thinking that the pain involved in exercise or another physical task is directly proportional to the manner in which this task benefits the health and "moral fiber" of one's organism.

Falsehood 5. Thinking that the arcaneness and incomprehensibility of a work of literature is directly proportional to its "deeper" intellectual or "spiritual" value to the reader. This has led thousands of novelists, poets, academicians, and other men of letters to write in a deliberately obfuscating manner in order to be taken more seriously and esteemed the more for it!

Falsehood 6. Thinking that the difficulty, unpredictability, emotional immaturity, and cruelty of an instructor are directly proportional to the educational value of taking that instructor's course.