For months, if not years I have been chased by two bald, muscular men. They wear earth tones and tight T-shirts that you see their nipples through. In the Bruna they stare at me, or else from my television screen. I’m talking about Dai Carter and Ray Klaassens: former commands, TV personalities and bestseller authors.
The time that (former) commands hidden hidden in helicopters and barracks is far behind us. Since their first TV performances, Carter and Klaassens wrote various books, more of which have been sold than men died at the Battle of Verdun. Dozens of weeks they infiltrated the bestseller 60. These books, with titles like Growth pain,, ” Mental strength and Or never All about personal development. That means: Carter and Klaassens have developed personally, and now it’s our turn.
Why is this new genre-in the wake of the two men, many other writing ex-soldiers followed-is so incredibly popular? And why do readers so much want the hard lessons that Klaassens and Carter learned to apply in Afghanistan and Lebanon to their office jobs and relationships?
At first glance it has something ridiculous to want to measure yourself as a reader to the Special Forces. The idea of commands seems to me that they have special physical and mental capacities that the ordinary citizen simply does not have and will never have. Think of a bizarre endurance with which you survive a violent kidnapping, or complete a self -help book. For the sake of convenience, we assume that the Ministry of Defense has collected enough of these types to protect us all as soon as the pleuris breaks out (don’t like to deny). And instead of luckily praising that they do not have to be as stress -resistant or disciplined as these professional soldiers, readers try to attract this ideal en masse, although I am a mystery to me.
Personal growth is, well, personal. I think it’s great for Ray Klaassens that “he was able to” develop in the jungle of Belize and with a hostage situation in the Middle East “, but my brain is in no way able to translate these anecdotes to the lesson” Viets outside your comfort zone “. That development seems more like something you have to happen to than what you can force with lessons from others. Anyway, maybe that attitude has never made me a command.
Fortunately for Carter and Klaassens, who seem to be just as sympathetic and intimidating, there are plenty of other readers left. Possibly the increasing war threat is simply the explanation for their growing market. The further Putin advances, the more people sometimes want to learn how you actually do that, “apply resilience and resilience.” Last month Carter published a new book: Shock -resistantwith nasty concrete tips about what to do “in case of high stress/emergency situations/first aid/disasters/evacuations”. Klaassens also wrote a new book that will appear in September: You are what you do. Subtitle: The situation is a fact. How you deal with it is your character. The situation: WWII. How we deal with it: hopefully not as bad as the last time we were in conflict with the rest of the world.
The difference with 1940 is that the nation is now en masse to Special Forces VIPS and Kamp van Koningsbrugge (the program with which Klaassens and Carter became known) watched. More Dutch than ever have heard a corporal explain that it is all about what is happening in your head. And otherwise this message can now also be read in one hundred different ways. As soon as the war breaks out, the bookshops will be the first to be looted.
Tessa Sparreboom is Neerlandicus and former editor of Propria Cures.