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The Secret is: the Secret is stupid.
Mar. 8th, 2007 03:22 amI 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.
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.