I ran across an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The best podcasts for self-improvement.”

I find it (frankly) a bit fascinating that our culture continues this quest for self-improvement when a fair part of the planet still doesn’t have clean water or food.

Do the people of well-off European and Asian countries have this level of anxiety such that these self-help podcasts or books are in equal demand?   That would probably take some real research, which would take me from casual observer to social scientist.

But I wonder if the planet’s push toward meeting everyone’s physical needs (food, water, shelter) will simply push us to worrying about mental/spiritual needs as opposed to physical needs? Maybe we will always need to worry about something?

Is it possible not to worry about things? Does the Dalai Lama worry about things? You’d think he’d be worrying about what the Chinese are up to…? Does the Dalai Lama listen to self-help podcasts? Maybe he’d like to dress a little hipper and that bothers him…?

Should I worry that this blog post is really just a means of testing how you can email a post to WordPress and not anything substantial?

How big is the self-improvement market?  Would the US economy crumble if we didn’t have self-help books and podcasts, Dr. Oz, worthless vitamin supplements, Norman Vincent Peale adherents, gyms, Fitbits, yoga classes and everything and anything that we spend money on that didn’t exist 100 years ago and still doesn’t exist where people are just looking to make sure they have enough food to live?