The Book with a Thousand Titles

by Sam Shamsan

The man has always been fighting an ultimate inner war to better himself. This war within has created civilizations, cultures and regions. Since The Epic of Gilgamesh, the first book ever written that we know of, many books have been written. In this article, we will discuss the common patterns and general similarities between all what we call “self help books”. This will include the earliest books in this domain such as religious books Vidas, Torah, Bible and Quran. The big claim here is that “All these books are the same book”. Titles might differ, language could vary and writing style might follow different formats, but the core message is exactly the same.

“Live better life than what you have now!”

This ultimate seeking to be better is rooted in our psyche as human being. Prior the discovery of the agriculture, the need of body of rules and regulation was not required. But moving into bigger communities, required us to regulate the emotions, behavior of the individual to sustain the peace and prosperity of the the whole socity.

The pattern that could be noticed in all these book are the targeted audience, the people with insecurity. it’s the largest audience in the world, almost everybody has some sort of insecurity, fear and shortcoming. This explain why these books lived through out the years. Book like “art of war” still relevant today after more than 2500 years and can be applied in daily individual life.

But why we still see so many books are written about self-help? the same ideas are re-written and paraphrased. The market still huge and anybody with the minimal writing skills can write one in his own word. We will see more and more of these book simply because the language can be more appealing, simplified and relevant to the user.

Try to pick up a random book and choose of the main ideas that is preached in the book. examine it, and you will find that idea is mentioned in some older book and re-skined to being.

Most of these books preach to us to have a sense of meaning, set a goal, have a faith, stay consistence and you will be in the right track.

In future articles we will discover more about this common theme and teaching.