Advice - essay

Evidence is mounting that the Republicans have stolen another election. Ho-hum. Nothing will come of it. The Democrats have surrendered for another four years. Unless, perhaps, we could have a "Democrats refuse to be cheated and bullied day." A day in which all Democrats called in sick or otherwise simply refused to participate any longer in the impending disaster. What if all Democrats simply refused to buy anything for a day or two? What would happen? Would they bring the troops home to arrest all fifty-some million of us? Not likely. Anyway, another essay to break the monotony of failure.


Personally, I find it hard to give advice, experience having taught me that (l) those who ask for it don't really want it, (2) I don't know enought about anything to warrant giving it, and (3) in the past it has usually turned out to be harmful, wrong, bad, or even disastrous. Thus I am surprised to learn that the publishing business is "now dominated by the advice and how-to books." I don't know why how-to books are distinguished from advice books. It would seem to me that if someone tells you how to do something they must be giving you advice.
But no matter. This development has stimulated me to reflect upon the general issue of advice. Who gives it? What for? What are their qualifications? Is it any good? I suspect that if one delves carefully into these questions and others they might well find that the giving and receiving of advice has become merely a part of the growing service industry about on a par with, and as necessary as, having your nails artificially lengthened or your pubic hair trimmed into the shape of a heart. And I doubt that professional advice is much different from what might be termed "ordinary" or "lay" advice. After all, are not fortune tellers "professionals," whether they read tea leaves, palms, cards, crystal balls, chicken innards, magical bones or whatever? What qualifications do Ann Landers, Dear Abby, Joyce Brothers, and others of that ilk have that entitles them to tell others what to do or how to do it? I can assure you that in the one case with which I am personally familiar the individual in question has no qualifications whatsoever, other than perhaps knowing the owner of the newspaper. In most of these cases, however, given the nature and general level of the questions asked, it probably doesn't matter who gives the advice or what it is.
But what about advice from those who presumably ought to be qualified to give it. For example, in an interview in a writer's magazine with a successful (read published) author, it was asserted by this luminary that every writer should write l50 words a day. Every writer? Precisely 150 words a day? Why not some writers? Most writers? Beginning writers? Mystery writers? Novelists? And why not 200 words a day. Or 300? Or 500? What about Thomas Wolfe who apparently wandered around announcing that he had written 10,000 words that day? Obviously this advice conflicts with similar advice by similarly qualified authors who previously instructed us to write 300 words a day. Just which "expert" is one to believe?
And what about the duffer who is told by his or her professional to keep his or her head down and his or her eye on the ball when he or she has failed to do this 5000 times in a row? It's not that he or she doesn't understand what to do, it's just that they can't do it. His or her problem is not the lack of advice. Even good advice.
Not all advice is good advice of course. My father, for example, was fond of advising me that if I wore clean (even though patched) clothes and was always on time everything would be fine and I would become a resounding success. Some advice that proved to be! Even worse, as a young teenager just discovering girls I compained to a more precocious friend that I didn't know what to say to them. "Just tell them you love them," he instructed me. That has to be up there with the best of the worst. When I entered college, quite some time ago as will be obvious, I was advised not to major in engineering as there were too many engineers. And I don't know how many female Ph.D.'s I know who were advised by their High School counselors to forget about college and just get married.
My favorite piece of advice has to do with a man I know who was to be parachuted into a remote part of Papua New Guinea during WW II to act as a forward observer. Being naturally somewhat concerned about being dropped from the sky into villages of potential headhunters and cannibals he asked one of his instructors, an anthropologist, for advice. "Just treat them like gentlemen," he was told. Actually, that turned out to be good advice. But if you want my advice you won't give advice. And you won't accept it either.