you're like an apartment with plants inside of it

 One way to approach being a human is thinking about yourself as an apartment with plants inside of it. 

The apartment is your outside body and the plants are your inside body aka your spirit, your soul, your internal experience, your organs, your innards, and your viscera.

Isn't it kinda crazy that there's a little electrical current or spark or whatever that keeps your heart pumping and makes your brain work. electricity?? in your body? how'd it get in there? how do we pass it on? Electricity comes from a wall outlet not from your body. 

Anyway you gotta arrange your plants to get the proper amount of sun. Too much sun, plants get sunburned and shrivel up. Too little sun, plants don't grow as good. 

Are your blinds shut? Has the roof of your apartment been torn off and is completely exposed to the elements? Have you completely blocked off all entrances and exits to your apartment so nothing can get in or out? Do you have the right kind of plants for growing indoors? And let's not even start with watering. 

Andy why do you think you make so many analogies to plants and why do plants play such a large role in externalizing your experience? 

You'd probably think it's because I take care of them and there's a clear relationship between what I do and how the plants are doing but you'd be wrong because that's not the reason. The reason I do it is because it's correct in an absolute Kantian sense. 

But don't you think self-help is a kind of bankrupt genre of writing that is trying to put a band-aid over atomization and the loss of community and shared cultural experience? It's just another example of putting risk and responsibility on the individual. In what world does it make sense that a person born into a world and community without their consent be judged insufficient and denied community and food and water?

Growing up this idea of personal responsibility was very important and I agree that it makes sense in a lot of ways but I have this memory of it being set against the idea of 'you can't just give people things without making them work for it or testing them some way.' Society is a pyramid and the people at the top are at the top because they're the best people. If you tried to make it a square or a rectangle or whatever it wouldn't work. And it's so blatant and undeniable now that the excesses we were warned about are all at the top. We didn't filter power and responsibility to the most deserving. The most powerful hoarded it all for themselves. None of this is new, obviously. I think part of me wanted to be in denial. 

One thing I'm trying to process is the difference between personal responsibility as it relates to being a productive part of a system that lets a complete idiot become the richest man in the world and personal responsibility that participates as much as needed to still have a life that is meaningful to me.