Self-help has a bad rep, why don't other illusions?

Story time: back in my university years, I was really into self-help. I read Brian Tracy and David Allen and applied their advice to my everyday life, including studies, and ended up graduating 18 months before my friends while working two jobs and going to the gym five times a week. Once, during that time, I made the grave mistake of asking my friends what they thought of self-help.

They snorted and told me that "it's a billion dollar industry". I guess what they meant to say by this is that it's all guru bull crap that only wants to take my money away. So I replied: "Yes, take my money already!"

Simultaneously, those people and countless others who think that personal development is a load of horse excrement spend their time working and building careers, in hobbies and exercising and watching movies or curing cancer.

It sounds like people value projects that "benefit humanity" somehow higher than projects that an individual "just wants to do".

They don't seem to understand that it doesn't matter which illusion you choose, because they're all illusions. One isn't more meaningful than the other; what matters is that you do what you find meaningful.

Doctors have a reputation of being selfless altruists who devote their lives to easing suffering and lengthening and saving lives, so they are respected.

Entrepreneurs are despised because they're seen as selfish and greedy people who want to take your hard-earned money from you by force to buy themselves the thirteenth vacation house they don't need.

People who want to build themselves up to their fullest potential are snorted at for their egoism - why aren't they spending their time and energy on more worthy goals, like feeding the world's hungry?

Why does no one stop to think about the reasons they think it's so wrong to do what you want; why is it more moral to ignore your own wants and only think about the suffering of others?

(Perhaps I've been reading a tad too much Ayn Rand.)

RK out.