The Secret is: the Secret is stupid.

[tahnan]

I hadn't heard about this whole "Secret" thing until two different people posted about it today. If you've got 20 minutes to spare, you can watch the start of the self-help video at this Google Video link. Or you can just read Salon.com tearing into Oprah for backing it.

The production on the video is quite slick. Also: morally reprehensible. It's just "Positive Thinking" (or "like attracts like") repackaged, but it's just so...vile. All you have to do to get money, says The Secret, is think about it. "Every time you look at the check, STOP!!! BELIEVE and FEEL that you have the money NOW!", the website says of their printable check drawn on "the account of the Universe". And of course, there's a flipside: "Every time you look in the mail expecting to see a bill, guess what? It'll be there," says one person in the movie.

In other words, if bad things happen to someone, it's because they were thinking about that bad thing. A visual from the movie: a man double-locks his bicycle, clearly worried that will be stolen, and in the next shot, lo! it has been stolen. Ergo: poor people just think about being poor, and that makes them poor; people who get cancer must have done so because they attracted it to themselves by thinking about cancer...

It's just so vile.

Comments

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

This appears to be a variation of the Just World Hypothesis, which is nothing new. The JWH basically suggests that the world is just: the things that happen to you do so because of things that you do. It's comforting to those who have good things happen to them because they can claim credit. Interestingly, it can solace people who have bad things happen to them. If someone loses gets hit by a drunk driver, say, believing that the fault is their lack of attention allows them feel that they can prevent future accidents by being more attentive. Acknowledging that shit happens implies that shit can happen to you at any moment.

I gotta say, having only watched about 5 minutes before turning it off to stave off nausea, that my favorite bit is the parade of Dead White Guys who mastered the secret. While they all achieved fame, it's difficult to believe that these guys were really calling all the shots in their own lives. Of course, maybe Einstein pictured his son Eduardo's schizophrenia and his own inability to have healthy relationships with women; and perhaps Lincoln attracted that bullet to himself in the Ford Theater. I'm sure they had their reasons.

Of course, this lines up with the idea that the people with the secret are clearly the ones with all the wealth. But honestly, if rich people could really attract anything they wanted, don't you think Trump would try to attract a better hairpiece? And Gates would try to attract some respect?

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's certainly nothing that new. On the other hand, it's packaged in higher production values and endorsed by Oprah, which makes it that much more pernicious this time around.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

That's funny, it's not working for me. I never, never think about utility bills, but they keep arriving in my mailbox on schedule every month...

Gosh, that's a good point.

[prog.livejournal.com]

How does it work? Nobody knows. Just like nobody knows how electricity works. I don't, do you? Wowie zowie.

I'm tempted to ask why you care what idiots are reading, though. The moral of this book seems to be "Aw, don't feel bad, it's OK to be dumb! Lookit me! I'm dumb just like you and I'M RICH WHEE"

Re: Gosh, that's a good point.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Because I don't like something that's convincing millions of Americans "It's OK to be dumb!"

(Yeah, that "no one knows how electricity works" thing made me shudder. I realized over breakfast that it's part of the pseudoscience mystique though: "There's a scientific basis behind this! Er, no, I can't tell you what it is. But that just helps prove there is one!")

Re: Gosh, that's a good point.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I like to fantasize about a general strike by the scientifically literate. It'd have to last a while to really be effective, say a year. During that time, no one is to use any knowledge beyond what Bible literalists, New Age mystics, etc. feel is true and necessary. Civilization would collapse ("The banking computers have crashed! We must pray!"), but boy would the "I told you so" be sweet.

[nplloquacious.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And it's excruciating when you have something truly gruesomes happen to you and these chipper people say, "Just think positive thoughts and it will all be okay."

All I could think was, well, if I can think my way out of it, that means I thought my way into it, which is a horrible pressure to put on someone who is in the midst of a horrendous time of their life. Every slime-bucket EST, Lifespring, New Beginnings pyramid scheme out there pitches this exact same garbage.

Katrina, Iraq, Darfur, rape, terminal illness, anyone?

Grumpily yours,
Dunn

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I know, I know, it makes me ill. There's a certain brand of Christianity that works this way too: "Believe in Jesus, and he'll bring you material wealth and success in this world." (One such church advertises on the subway here.)

Caveat: I'm not Christian at all. But I loathe this idea, that believing in Christ would make you wealthy. Does that mean that poor people are poor because they're just not religious enough? Does that mean...I can't even go on. I just hate it.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

The "Jesus Makes You Rich" movement is new (at least the current upswelling of it is new) and generally abhorred by the majority of Christian churches. Hate it. Hate hate hate.

I hate Pagan Money Spells too.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 19:24.

So I guess you believe in Christ, he makes you wealthy, and then when you get to the Pearly Gates, St. Peter says, "Psych!!" and down you go.

So glad I'm a Jew.

[dtm]

A few weeks ago (last Sunday before Lent), our priest used the last few lines of the sequence hymn (The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod; but pray, brothers, for but one thing, the marvelous peace of God.) as a launching point for part of his sermon about how the "Gimme Gospel" is just plain wrong.

(Liturgical footnote: the sequence hymn is the hymn sung immediately before (and occasionally after) the reading of the Gospel, and so is the last hymn sung before the sermon)

[sensational.livejournal.com]

Oprah got all freaked about about James Frey telling a bunch of lies, and now she's endorsing THIS?

The book is stupid, there are a lot of books out there that are just as stupid, but the fact that Oprah is backing it is what's so insane, here.

[sensational.livejournal.com]

freaked out about, rather.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

It occured to me, earlier this afternoon, that the difference between Frey and this crap is that Frey was lying. Oprah hates lying. But this crap is bullshit, which is different from lying, and Oprah'll buy that if it matches her worldview (which apparently this does).

Eeeeeeeew!

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Vile. That would be the word for it.

I did like the addition of the Templars as the Keeper of the Secret. Because, of course, the Templars knew everything. Ew. Just...

The thing is, it wouldn't be quite so vile if there weren't a tiny sliver of truth in it. (Not about this being a Secret passed through time and hidden away from the masses; that part is completely bullshit.) Positive thinking is pretty damned important in getting what you want. If you want to achieve a goal, you really do need to sit down, think about it, and figure out what exactly you want out of life and that goal. If I actually wanted to be a millionaire, there are steps that I could take to get me there. I happen to be uninterested in taking those steps because they would involve doing things that I just don't feel are worth the result.

What really pisses me off is the notion that all you have to do is think Happy Thoughts and money (or health or love or whatever) will just come pouring in. Everyone single one of the people who spoke in that video didn't just sit back on their butt and think happy thoughts. They did work; they made a product; they exerted effort in some fashion to get where they are.

Arrrugh!

I'm going to go froth now.

Re: Eeeeeeeew!

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, exactly. My opinion of Oprah has really gone downhill. Not that I've thought about Oprah very often.

It's at heart a logical fallacy. I think the converse is mostly true - if you don't believe good things will happen to you, and don't think you'll succeed, then you probably will fail. This in no way implies that if you think you will succeed, then you will. It's a classic 'If not A, then not B' which does not imply 'If A, then B'.

The sad thing is that there are lots of desperate, unhappy people looking for a magic bullet to turn their lives around, and they're wasting their money on this. The secrets of life are much simpler. Want to make money? Work hard, and provide something other people want. Want to lose weight? Eat less, exercise more. You can try to shortcut these kinds of paths, but it'll rarely work.

Maybe if I think positively about Oprah debunking The Secret, she'll do it?

[drastic.livejournal.com]

"A visual from the movie: a man double-locks his bicycle, clearly worried that will be stolen, and in the next shot, lo! it has been stolen."

Actually, the man was thinking positively about his bike remaining unstolen. The problem was, the thief was thinking even MORE positively that today he was going to steal a bike. The trick is to train your mind to think with maximum positivity.

The next logical step in this kind of self-help program is to bundle in some sort of device that can objectively measure the power of your positive thinking. I'm going to call it the p-meter. It may also be helpful to theorize that positive thinking is blocked by grams of Negativity, or n-grams. I haven't fitted in where the aliens dropped and nuked in a volcano fit in yet, but I'm working on it, and thinking very positively while doing so.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Be sure to continue to think positively about earning lots of money! I'm sure that great things are on your way with this train of thought.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the logical fallacy with this "You can have anything you want if you just visualize it," shit. It fails to take into account differing goals and/or limited resources. If both boxers in the ring visualize winning, what happens? If three thousand men all visualize getting with Angelina Jolie, and Angelina herself visualizes actually being able to sit down in the future, what happens?

Thoughts. Become. Things.

[mildmannered.livejournal.com]

I really love this. It's like the ultimate crack. I hadn't even seen this video when I posted about it, just read reviews and excerpts from the book, so I watched with my mouth open.

I LOVE the white guy in the loincloth who is stealing The Secret (from the emerald tablet no less) in a pyramid in Egypt, with armies marching in on him? When the hell was that supposed to take place? And the addition of the Templars is like the cherry on the sundae.

I enjoy that the "quantum physicist" is the same nutter who wants to prevent missile attacks with transcendental meditation.

The best bit, however, is the confusion between things positive thinking CAN do with the things it CAN'T.

THey give the example of this gay stand-up comic guy who has really low self esteem and everyone picks on him, beats him up, his routines suck, etc.

Then he starts thinking positive, gets a better attitude, and suddenly he's not being zeroed in on by bullies and muggers, and his performances are better.

Well folks, that is the power of positive thought. We are social animals and we interact based on a lot of nonverbal cues. You tell people where you are in the social order by how you act, stand, speak, etc, and they react accordingly. Change the way you think about yourself, and you'll probably start to change your mannerisms, and the cues you give others will be different.

But that's about the limit of positive thought, because guess what? Tsunamis, geopolitical events and carcinogens DON'T READ BODY LANGUAGE.

The end.

[mildmannered.livejournal.com]

Also: there's a point where they talk about how only a sliver of the population has all the wealth. Why do you think that is? they ask. It's not an accident!

Well, no, it's not a bloody accident. It reminds me what Teresa Neilsen Hayden wrote about what she called "the underlying forms of fraud":

These scams take the forms they do because they’re parodies—no, a better way to put it: they’re cargo-cult effigies—of the deals the ruling class cut for themselves. If you’re an insider, if you have the secret, you can have a job where you make heaps of money for very little work. You can avoid paying your taxes. You can inherit a pile of money because an ancestor of yours left a moderate fortune that’s been appreciating ever since. You can be your own boss. You can have other people working for you, who have other people working for them, who all pay you a percentage of the take.

Of course people believe it. After all, they vaguely know this sort of thing happens. It just doesn’t happen to them. But why shouldn’t they be the lucky ones, this time around?

She was writing about more straightforward frauds - Ponzi schemes, Spanish prisoner cons - but her observation hits it right on the nail for The Secret, too.

[spenceraloysius.livejournal.com]

So, if a bunch of us think positively that Bush will announce that he's a baboon and that he's the worse president in U.S. history, then it will happen?

[redbeard.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think that's what disproves The Secret. Most of us have been thinking just that for years, and still no dice!

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

My goodness, you're correct. Well, about the Baboon part.. The part about him being the worst president in History is probably pretty true. Well, him or William Howard Taft.