Harry genuinely seems to believe that his life of unrivalled privilege qualifies him to offer advice to the rest of us – and that we’ll be grateful for his nuggets of wisdom. Perhaps this is not his fault. After all, the kinds of statements he comes out with
adorn classroom walls and are made into pretty motivational posters to be sold on
Etsy stalls. ‘I may not be there yet but I am closer than I was yesterday.’ ‘If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.’ ‘Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody.’ We come across these schmaltzy affirmations so frequently it is hardly unreasonable to assume wisdom and life experience can be summed up in the right motivational quote. Who needs to read literature or study philosophy if a snappy quotation will set us on the right track?
Writing in
Ars Vitae, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn explores what happens when we ‘allow our modern therapeutic culture, with its elevation of personal desires into a secular religion of the self, to set the terms for how we make sense of life’. One consequence, she suggests, is the degradation of philosophy into soundbites for self-improvement.
Every time he speaks in public, Prince Harry unwittingly reflects something about our own society back to us. His determination to find and expose his own psychological vulnerabilities; his egotistical centering of the self and the elevation of his feelings above all else; his obsession with mental health as a lifelong individual project, are all a product of a culture that cultivates personal vulnerability and provides only a therapeutic response. Today, every social and political issue from lockdown to unemployment to racism is interpreted as a potential source of trauma and a threat to our mental health. Life-coaching, self-care and professional therapeutic interventions are considered vital to our very survival. So it should hardly come as a surprise that Harry has not only internalised this message but is happy to profit from selling it back to us.
The queen may be head of the Church of England but Harry is pitching to be head of the secular religion of the self. ‘I firmly believe that focusing on and prioritising our mental fitness unlocks potential and opportunity that we never knew we had inside of us’, he tells us. We can – and should – laugh at his Californian psychobabble. But it’s not just Harry – it’s the cult of vulnerability and therapy he’s aspiring to lead that we need to question.
[/quote]