Paul Damien

Paul Damien holds a PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College, London.

He is an elected Fellow of The Royal Statistical Society of England, and a recipient of the United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's Outstanding Researcher Award. At present, he is the B.M. Rankin Jr. Professor of Business at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in Austin.

- Paul has published over 75 papers in leading multidisciplinary academic journals and proprietary industry publications.

- Paul was a Finalist for the U.S. National Library of Poetry Award for his poem Cold Feathers, which appears below.

- Prior to joining the faculty at McCombs, Paul held faculty appointments at Duke University, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

- Along with his business associate, Paul was awarded a United States Patent:

US Patent 6826281 - Storage-encryption-retrieval device and method with resulting business processes.

Visit Paul online at http://www.pauldamien.net

 

"An artfully done, laugh-out-loud, scalpel job on self-help literature." --- Dr. Vijay Mahjan, former Dean of The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; The John P. Harbin Centennial Chair Professor of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business; and award-winning co-author of The 86% Solution: How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the 21st Century

"Help! will inform, inspire, and enrage you, make you laugh or sad...you are bound to come to appreciate [Damien's] eloquent, provocative, and witty writing which makes Help! a great read." --- Dr. Michel Wedel, Pepsico Professor of Consumer Science, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.

 

PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Paul Damien: My formative years were spent in India. Reading was the main and most affordable escape from an otherwise dull childhood. Writing was a critical component of the curriculum at the missionary institutions where I studied. Earliest influences, in no particular order, were Bertrand Russell, P.G. Wodehouse, Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare. They struck me as clever, profound, or witty. Enid Blyton and James Hadley Chase provided mindless entertainment, like video games.

PageOneLit.com: Why did you write HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS? Are readers being fleeced by the Self-Help market? Do you feel these self-help authors you mention are sincere or just ca$hing in?

Paul Damien: I wrote Help! mainly to expose the intellectual con that self-help gurus sell. They are no different than Jeremiah Wright, Elmer Gantry, Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, and others in this family of flamboyant fakes; actually, self-help gurus are not even as colorful as these preachers and evangelists. To say gurus like Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle are fleecing their readership is a gross understatement. If they were sincere, they'd quit writing altogether. Of course, their main goal is to make money for themselves by peddling spiritualism to us! The only difference between these self-help gurus and the list of names above is that the former, very conveniently, tagged on the word "Reverend" before their names to anoint themselves with false holiness. How could anyone revere anything about these men who hide their sham behind their obscene and sanctimonious tirades?

PageOneLit.com: You say that HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS is not about science versus religion - Explain.

Paul Damien: Richard Dawkins's book, The God Delusion is a book that pits religion against science…theism versus atheism. My book, while sympathetic to Dawkins's work, doesn't indulge in the science versus religion debate, per se. But, since spirituality is a central theme in self-help books, some contrasts between theology and science are inevitable. To the extent my book does this, it's only to exemplify a specific point, such as, say, the idea of prayer in healing chronic ailments.

PageOneLit.com: In HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS, you write that 'When we are giving, we are really taking.' Explain.

Paul Damien: No one gives anything without a direct or a subconscious expectation that they will be rewarded for it somehow, either now or in some hypothetical hereafter. Even Mother Teresa's actions are no exceptions, for she found great pleasure in helping others. Pleasure is the greatest component of happiness, and altruism is a form of pleasure. As a society, we have conditioned ourselves into believing that giving is good, taking is not. This is absurd. Life has, and always will be, an exchange between living creatures. We are always in relationships with one another, and healthy relationships are always a two-way street. You might disagree with the word "taking"; well, then, you could replace it by the phrase "hoping for something in return." There's absolutely nothing wrong with this hope. With no coherent reason to support it, we've seduced ourselves into thinking that this rational hope is tainted and, furthermore, erroneously, labeled it selfishness.

 

PageOneLit.com: What is the LAW OF DRAMA?

Paul Damien: This is my seventh law to combat Deepak Chopra's so-called Law of Dharma. Without giving too much of the law away, my law starts with the French philosopher Sartre's musing that "Life is the theatre of the absurd." We are in this theatre together. Perhaps, it's the Chopras and Dr. Phils of the world that render the drama in this theatre absurd. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I expose the silliness of Chopra's self-indulgent law.

 

PageOneLit.com: You write that it is unhealthy to be 'childlike' as advised by other authors - Explain.

Paul Damien: The authors to whom you're alluding want us to practice childlike activities, such as launching into a song or strip completely before others, without advance notification…and they mean this literally. It'd be quite startling to C-Span viewers if Dick Cheney were to break out into a song, or drop down to his knickers while presiding in the Senate. You'd agree this would be somewhat unhealthy; indeed, it would be pathological.

 

PageOnelit.com: In HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS you say it is easy to be a Guru - Explain.

Paul Damien: Well, I actually show how this is done in Chapter 1 of the book, "How to Write (Dirty) Secrets". Other illustrations follow in subsequent chapters. A power-point type response to your question is: paraphrase other self-help gurus; be truly childlike, and scribble some gobbledygook non-sequiturs; or combine the first two. The latter art form produced Rhonda Byrne's bestseller The Secret.

 

PageOneLit.com: What did you learn from writing HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS?

Paul Damien: Deepak Chopra, Rhonda Byrne, Scott Peck, Dr. Phil, Eckhart Tolle, and others of this ilk are a strange specimen on this planet that wants to see, but don't quite know what seeing is. And so, they've resorted to convincing those who can see to enter the self-help guru's world where seeing is deemed a nuisance.
PageOneLit.com: What do you hope to achieve with HELP! DEBUNKING THE OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF SELF-HELP GURUS?

Following my train of thought to your last question, I should say, seeing is beautiful. As Emily Dickinson said, "I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough." By reading Help!, or maybe by just reading this interview, I sincerely hope that those who bought self-help books, or are planning to buy such books, will go back and read the classics of literature that capture the essence of human passions, fears, et cetera. Why would you settle for the pimping of the English language that has no substantive ideas whatsoever, which is what Chopra and other gurus do, when there is Shakespeare just around the corner?

PageOneLit.com: What's next?

Paul Damien: The Perfect American, a literary fiction that I've just completed, and would like to see in print.

 

PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?

Paul Damien: I read Emily Dickinson every week, other than that the most recent book I read was Out of the Flames…the true story of Michael Cervantes.

 

PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Paul Damien: I enjoy working out, the NFL, cooking, wines, classical music and opera. I honestly don't know how they contribute to my writing, but I guess they must, for writing is immensely pleasurable, as are the hobbies I've cited.