In a very recent past life, I worked for a number of years at a used bookstore in a charming (and blessedly literate) suburb of Minneapolis. For the most part, my job consisted of about five hours of shelving and selling books per day, plus one hour for lunch, and another two hours manning the "buy counter," where I was charged with the frequently terrifying duty of telling people exactly how much those four-hundred-fifty Harlequin Romance paperbacks they brought in were worth ($2). One of the more enjoyable parts of the work was tracking which books sold most briskly, and to what kinds of people (my, how we love to stereotype!). This I mostly did in my head, but my co-workers and I loved to construct elaborate systems of prediction as to which style of flannel shirt predicts the purchase of a Louis L'Amour novel, and which predicts an armful of Dave Eggers, for instance. Every once in a while, though, a trend would pop up that would blow all our carefully-crafted schematics all to hell, and a certain book would seemingly appeal to EVERYONE. Usually, these books were Young-Adult Fantasy novels or memoirs of horrific sex or drug addictions. One book, however, confounded us like no other, and its enduring popularity continues to haunt my very nightmares.
That book is "The Secret." A "documentary" film has been made out of it, and the trailer can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/asecretagent?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/34/san61qTwWsU
Okay, so the trailer ends with "this is the great secret of life." I hear you asking, "okay, well, just what the hell IS this "Secret" anyway?" Its proponents and adherents call it "the Law of Attraction," and they claim that--among many others, Newton, Einstein, Machiavelli, Jesus, and yes, even good ol' Rene Descartes himself were privy to it. What's this law? Apparently, the best way to describe it is to claim that, in all of nature, "the positive attracts the positive." They justify this with some kind of weird mumbo-jumbo about quantum physics and gravity, and presto-change-o, they go on to conclude that it pertains to human desires and fates as well. To wit: if you want something--anything, be it wealth, health, power, a girlfriend/boyfriend/hermfriend, etc.--all you need to do is visualize it hard enough, and it will come to pass! Neat-o! They're essentially telling us to use the placebo effect consciously, and instead of limiting its effects to our own bodies and minds, to change the world around us by thinking real hard.
Any amount of reflection on this idea sends the ethics scholar's mind reeling: what, for example do we make of the millions of homeless Haitians upon whom the rainy season is preparing to descend? They just didn't want to NOT be shaken into unimaginable suffering and soul-wrenching destitution badly enough? Or that, if they acknowledge their prior lack of "proactive visualization" as a mistake and resolve to think harder about relief, that their ravaged nation will fix itself? Philosophically, it's kind of the theory of karma, but turned inside-out and upside-down. It allows someone to feel utterly justified in their self-obsessed covetousness, while simultaneously allowing him to blame those less fortunate than himself for their own conditions, thereby absolving him of any ethical responsibility to lend a helping hand.
Even the science is almost cartoonishly off-base. "The positive attracts the positive?" Really? Anyone who's ever had any experience with magnets can tell you that, in nature, the positive actually tends to attract the negative, but that's still missing the general point: the fact that the word "positive" has several distinct meanings.
This whole thing is rooted in a kind of weird confusion of Cartesian thinking. The mind is elevated to a place above the body, but also above the external laws of the universe--like chance, conservation of energy (after all, if everyone thought really hard about having all the money in the world, where would that get us?), and the fact that, sometimes, when you want something, you have to work really hard to get it.
I'd go on, but the deadline's here, and I'll just pop more stuff in in the coming days. In the meantime, feast your eyes on the future of solipsism. Behold, THE SECRET TO TEEN POWER!
http://www.youtube.com/user/asecretagent?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/0/O7ASvr7bF-I
Sleep tight.
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I love this. You do realize that Oprah promoted the Secret and that is why EVERYONE was reading it?
ReplyDeleteI was unfortunate enough to have a close friend become obsessed with it and one day she pressed the burned cd's of the audiobook into my hand and said, "You HAVE to listen to this. It is AMAZING." And so, oddly, I felt obligated to go through with the tedious task. (The same thing happened to me years earlier when the woman I babysat for gave me her copy of the Celestine Prophecy...)
One of the things I liked to joke about the most from The Secret is that it says that the Universe doesn't hear the word "No" or versions of it. So if you think
"I hate all these stupid idiots I work with and I wish I didn't have to deal with them ever again"
the Secret says the Universe hears:
"I want more and more idiots to come my way"
---so by complaining you are really just bringing more of what you don't want your way.
The idea of encouraging people not to complain is actually sort of nice. The idea of getting them to think about what they do want instead of always lamenting what they don't like about their life, not so bad either. The writing yourself imaginary checks for 1,000,000 for months until one arrives in the mail to you, well....I guess that is a good way to fill time.
Maybe this sort of thinking is what that political cartoon Robin and Ben were so offended by was getting at--you ask a higher power to help you do or get things you feel you can't do or get alone..and then you sit back.... Appealing to the Secret is like appealing to god--you are tapping your thoughts into some wavelength that makes things happen.
Just to play devil's advocate, though, who are we to argue with Oprah that the secret doesn't work. She obviously knows something we don't know. ;)
And if you want to watch something similarly nauseating, but perhaps even more creepy in that brainwashy-here-are-some-scientists-we-don't-really-identify sort of way...have you seen What the Bleep? .......
Its funny that you bring up The Secret because it is sitting on my shelf by my bed side. I try and try to read it to the very end but I just haven't made it there yet. I keep thinking that it just cannot be true. I think the idea is headed in the right direction, but I definitely do NOT think that its totally true. If you think about being extremely wealthy and are consumed by it, it will happen. But heres the kicker. It will happen because you yourself will work hard for it to happen. It won't just magically appear, unless of course, you win the lottery. The Secret does however parallel Cartesian thought. Like Julie said, "you are tapping your thoughts into some wavelength that makes things happen," and in order for this to occur you would have to separate your mind from your body, admitting that they are two separate entities. I wonder if many people have read The Secret. It would be interesting to find out!
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