Great blog post by Freddie De Boer on the philosophy of the self care industry (h/t @helenlewis) https://fredrikdeboer.com/2020/12/28/its-all-just-arms-and-noses/

He’s quite right that the advice to always prioritise your own needs and desires would produce a Nietzschean dystopia if followed by everyone. Currently it works out ok because most of the people who get into self care are super agreeable women, who are irritating but peaceful

It’s another example of what I like to think of as “the problem of normal distribution” - when a trait is normally distributed, any large-scale social change will affect everyone along the spectrum.

So if “be more selfish” is followed by everyone, that’s probably a good thing for the people at the agreeable end of the spectrum who really do put other people first too often. But the disagreeable people are listening too! And they would LOVE an excuse to be even more selfish.