Youtube: Arcane Casebook by Gari

Have you ever wondered why despite reading countless self-help books, attending workshops, and following every productivity hack, you still feel like you’re chasing something that doesn’t exist? What if I told you that the entire concept of your best self is actually a carefully constructed myth that’s been keeping you trapped in an endless cycle of improvement? Today, we’re diving deep into philosopher Michelle Fuko’s revolutionary ideas that completely shatter the foundation of modern self-improvement culture. You’re about to discover why the person you think you should become might be the very thing preventing you from understanding who you actually are. This isn’t just another philosophy lesson. This is a complete reframing of how you see yourself and your potential that could save you years of frustration and self-doubt. Before we begin, let me ask you something. How many versions of yourself have you tried to become in the past 5 years? The productive version, the confident version, the disciplined version, the successful version. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably lost count. And here’s the uncomfortable truth that Fuko would want you to face. Each of these versions was never really you to begin with. Michelle Fuko, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, spent his career examining how power structures shape our understanding of ourselves. But unlike other philosophers who focused on external forms of control, Fuko was fascinated by something far more insidious. How we learn to control ourselves. He called this concept disciplinary power. And it’s operating in your life right now, even as you watch this video. Think about it this way. When you wake up in the morning and immediately check your phone to see your step count from yesterday. When you feel guilty for not journaling. When you compare your productivity to someone else’s morning routine, you’re not just trying to improve yourself. You’re participating in what Fuko called the creation of the modern subject. You’re becoming a person who constantly monitors, measures, and modifies their own behavior according to standards that feel natural but are actually historically constructed. The self-improvement industry, worth over 12 billion annually, didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s built on a specific understanding of what a person should be. Productive, optimized, constantly growing, measurable. But Fuko would argue that this understanding isn’t natural or inevitable. It’s the result of specific power relations that have taught us to see ourselves as projects to be worked on rather than complex beings to be understood. Here’s where things get really interesting. Fuko introduced the concept of technologies of the self. The practices through which individuals act upon themselves to achieve certain states of wisdom, purity, or perfection. Sound familiar? Your meditation app, your habit tracker, your vision board, these are all modern technologies of the self. They’re not neutral tools for improvement. They’re mechanisms that shape how you understand what it means to be human. But here’s the twist that most people miss. Fuko wasn’t completely against these practices. What he was warning us about was the way they’ve become disconnected from genuine self-standing and connected instead to external standards of normalization. When you meditate because a successful entrepreneur told you it would make you more productive, you’re not engaging in genuine self-care. You’re participating in your own normalization. Let me share something that might make you uncomfortable. Every time you set a goal to become your best self, you’re implicitly admitting that your current self is inadequate. You’re buying into what Fuko would recognize as a form of self-serveillance where you constantly monitor yourself against an impossible standard. The best self doesn’t exist because the self isn’t a fixed thing that can be optimized. It’s a dynamic process that’s constantly being shaped by forces you might not even recognize. This is why so many people feel exhausted by self-improvement despite genuinely wanting to grow. They’re trying to become a version of themselves that was designed by systems of power rather than emerging from their own authentic understanding of what it means to live well. The anxiety you feel when you miss a day at the gym isn’t just disappointment. It’s the internalized voice of disciplinary power telling you that you failed to properly manage yourself. Fuko’s concept of bop power helps us understand how this happens. Bio power is the way modern societies manage populations not through direct control but through the management of bodies, behaviors, and desires. The self-improvement industry is a perfect example of bio power in action. It doesn’t force you to optimize yourself. It creates conditions where optimization feels like personal choice and moral obligation. Consider how fitness tracking works. Your smartwatch doesn’t command you to take 10,000 steps. Instead, it creates a system where not taking 10,000 steps feels like personal failure. It transforms movement, which could be joyful and intuitive, into data that must be optimized. This is bio power control that feels like freedom, but actually shapes your understanding of what it means to live correctly. Now, you might be thinking, but surely some self-improvement is valuable, right? Fuko would agree, but with an important distinction. The question isn’t whether you should grow or change. It’s whether your growth is emerging from genuine self-standing or from internalized standards that serve systems of power rather than your authentic development. Real personal development, according to Fuko’s later work on ethics, comes from what he called care of the self. This isn’t about becoming your best self. It’s about developing a relationship with yourself that’s based on understanding rather than optimization. It’s about asking not who you should become, but how you want to exist in relation to yourself and others. This shift is profound. Instead of asking, “How can I be more productive?” you might ask, “What does meaningful work look like for me?” Specifically, instead of asking, “How can I optimize my morning routine?” You might ask, “What does my body and mind actually need to feel alive and present?” This isn’t just semantic difference. It’s a completely different approach to living that prioritizes understanding over improvement. The tragedy of modern self-improvement culture is that it promises freedom while delivering a more sophisticated form of conformity. When everyone is optimizing themselves according to the same metrics, productivity, efficiency, measurable outcomes, we create a society of people who all think they’re being individual while actually becoming more similar to each other. Fuko’s analysis reveals something uncomfortable but liberating. The version of yourself that you think you should become probably has more to do with what others expect from you than with what you actually need to flourish. The best self is a myth, not because improvement is impossible, but because the concept assumes there’s one correct way to be human. So, what does this mean practically? It means that genuine development might look very different from what you’ve been taught. It might mean spending less time trying to fix yourself and more time understanding the forces that convinced you that you were broken in the first place. It might mean questioning whether your goals are actually yours or whether they’ve been shaped by systems that benefit from your constant self-serveillance. Speaking of deeper self-standing, I want to introduce you to someone whose work beautifully extends these philosophical insights into practical wisdom. Think of this as your selfare ritual. Gari Nguyen is a 29-year-old author currently living in Silicon Valley who has published 13 books in Vietnam since she was 17 years old including novels, short stories and personal essays. Her work offers a unique perspective on navigating the complexities of self-discovery in our hyperconnected world. What makes Gari Nguyen’s writing particularly valuable is how it bridges philosophical data with lived experience. You can find some of her works on Amazon.com such as Just Hear Me Out and A Luxury Item called Me. These books provide practical wisdom for anyone questioning the conventional narratives about who they should become. If today’s discussion has resonated with you, Gari Nguyen’s work offers an opportunity to deepen your journey beyond the myths of self-improvement toward genuine self-standing. Her books don’t promise to help you become your best self. They offer something far more valuable. Tools for understanding who you already are beneath the layers of external expectations. In a world that profits from your dissatisfaction with yourself, this kind of wisdom is genuinely revolutionary. The path forward isn’t about abandoning all practices of self-development. It’s about approaching them with what Fuko would call critical self-awareness. Before adopting any new habit or goal, ask yourself, is this emerging from my own understanding of what I need, or am I trying to meet someone else’s definition of success? True freedom isn’t found in becoming your best self. It’s found in understanding that you don’t need to become anything other than what you are. This doesn’t mean stagnation. It means growth that’s rooted in authenticity rather than optimization. The most radical act in a culture obsessed with improvement might be accepting that you’re already enough exactly as you are while remaining open to organic change that emerges from genuine self-standing rather than external pressure. What if the real question isn’t who should you become, but who are you when you stop trying to become someone else?