This is becoming a common theme in critique of &quot;self-help.&quot; See also the charge against the mindfulness movement that it neglects the allegedly important ethical principles of the religious context of its origins.<p>I think the reason these critiques don&#x27;t really work is that they aim at symptomatic expressions and look past the difficult cultural problems at the root... which is kind of ironic, it seems to me.<p>Alisdair MacIntyre&#x27;s <i>After Virtue</i>, the 1981 &quot;revival&quot; of virtue ethics, is quite relevant. He starts by asking why discussions of ethics today end up as mere clashing  subjective claim-making and position-taking, and he traces that back to the &quot;failure of the Enlightenment project of justifying morality.&quot; Then he goes on to advocate an Aristotelian view of virtue as excellence in the context of life narratives within traditions and societies.<p>So the fact that people don&#x27;t seek out ethical advice to personal problems might itself be a symptom of deeper cultural changes. For an anecdotal example, I never have an obligation to report to a boss by 10AM, because I work for companies that don&#x27;t have such structures. I have a hunch that most people who tend to read self-help books about habits work in such unstructured situations.