"The Secret"
polycounter lvl 18
I was reading my favorite money advice blog ( http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/) and there was a review about this new book called "The Secret":
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/05/06/there-is-no-secret-the-myth-of-the-law-of-attraction/
I didn't read it but read the synopsis from this guy's review, and it is something I have thought about before. Pretty much, the secret is if you think about something enough it will happen and become reality. There have been times when I think this has worked such as getting with a chick in class or at work, but that can just be the fact that if you try, sometimes you will succeed. I agree with the reviewer that it is ridiculous that people getting killed such as the holocaust happened because they willed it. Any thoughts on this subject? Pretty interesting... I think we had a thread before about the human mind making connections with things naturally.
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/05/06/there-is-no-secret-the-myth-of-the-law-of-attraction/
I didn't read it but read the synopsis from this guy's review, and it is something I have thought about before. Pretty much, the secret is if you think about something enough it will happen and become reality. There have been times when I think this has worked such as getting with a chick in class or at work, but that can just be the fact that if you try, sometimes you will succeed. I agree with the reviewer that it is ridiculous that people getting killed such as the holocaust happened because they willed it. Any thoughts on this subject? Pretty interesting... I think we had a thread before about the human mind making connections with things naturally.
Replies
The reason people buy into it is because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you can control the universe with your mind, then anything positive that happens to you is going to be attributed to that, which therefore must prove that you can control the universe with your mind. It's circular logic, and it kind of falls apart when you live in a third-world nation with no money and no food... yeah, I guess "the secret" only works if you live in a rich first-world nation with every opportunity available to you.
Any thoughts on this subject? Pretty interesting...
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I don't think it's that interesting, I think it's a well-marketed delusion.
I was in Connecticut last weekend visiting the girlfriends folks and I met a friend of hers that was recommending 'The Secret' to us. Nice enough guy, and he seemed fairly intelligent, but he'd swallowed this stuff hook, line and sinker. He admitted that was in debt to the tune of about 25 grand and had poor credit, but 'The Secret' had just convinced him that his financial problems somehow wouldn't be real if he simply didn't allow them to be, and he'd just gone out and bought a new car entirely on some exceptionally dodgy credit.
I wonder If you just will debt collectors and the IRS to not exist then eventually they just go away?
I'm all for positive thinking but if thoughts became reality some weird shit would be going on in the world from my mind alone.
I'd go so far as to say that I think it's potentially dangerous
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+1
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/59741
http://www.avclub.com/content/hater/the_secret_challenge_part_two
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For the uninitiated (read: normal), allow me to explain. The Secret is a wildly popular book and DVD that basically says the universe is ruled by the law of attraction. Therefore, if you think about good things, those things will be drawn to you like flies to a pile of manure (or a book and DVD filled with manure that Oprah will spend two hours talking about). There's also some stuff about vibrations and magnets and money.
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so yes, new age horseshit. potentially dangerous new age horseshit to boot.
"coincident is what you have left-over when you apply a bad theory"
the dominance of mind of matter is self evident
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What do you mean by this? Your mind controls your body, that's about it. In that sense, mind over matter works.
You can't make things entirely unconnected to you change just by thinking about it. I can't lift a rock in the Himalayas from my office chair any more than I can make the electricity company stop sending me bills for the electricity I'm using just by thinking about it.
What Justin Meisse said is entirely correct. Positive thinking can aid in certain endeavours related to your self, just as negative thinking can be harmful to steps you might want to take.
But just thinking really positively about wanting a new car or a girlfriend or something isn't going to magically make one appear, and if by some freak occurence it actually does happen, it wasn't because you were thinking about it hard. It might have happened anyway even if you weren't thinking about it, and you wouldn't have anything to ascribe it to.
This book is a load of nonsense.
there's religion, there's mysticism, there's positive thinking, all of which i subscribe to in varying degrees, and then there is this.
there's a great deal of profound mysticism and spiritual thought man has cultivated through most every major civilization from the birth of humanity, and then there is this.
this is a designed-to-sell-book and dvd. a half-baked amalgam of recycled truisms and self-help pabulum.
there may be kernels of truth buried somewhere in the horseshit, just as seeds pass through the digestive system of animals, but i'm still not going to eat it.
i understand that you're a person who rejects the reductive, scientistic thinking that is so prevalent these days, but this isn't in support of an opposing viewpoint. if anything, it's a insulting parody of mystical spirituality spawned by some awfully profit-minded self-help gurus of our delightfully capitalist western culture.
and please, don't invoke some romantic appraisal of "the far east" in defense of this. mysticism and enlightenment have always been hard work and always will be, whichever tradition you study.
a concentrated blast of thought-beams won't get you through mysteries and tragedies of life, and it won't get you that shiny new Nissan X-Terra, either.
if it was just up to thinking on it, the model database would be twice its original size, and we'd all still be playing Q1-Q3 every single day, all solely because of CheapAlert's thought-beams.
It's early, ok?
When I hear this concept, I think "No shit." If you want anything to happen except maybe breath, shit and sleep, you pretty much have to think about it. Thought precedes action for most of us who've made it past our teens. If I want dinner, I need to think about it, which prompts me to make it, which allows me to eat it. Big friggin revelation there.
But as others have stated, this only applies to aspects of your life that you have some control over. I can't sit there and will a meteorite to land in my backyard for entertainment's sake.
you'd be irritating what the Chinese have realized some 600 years ago. so if you wonna go argue with them, go ahead
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What is the thing that Chinese have realized 600 years ago that has anything to do with the Secret? I can't think of any... can you elaborate?
What I can say about Asian culture is that, we have bhudism thought in many of our believes. And the most important part is that "every karma has its cause", basicly, "you get what you do". Kinda opposite of The Secret actually. You want something, you work for it. You don't work, you get nothing.
And because that's the hard way of getting things... no doubt people choose to believe the easy way, like the Secret.
I have to agree with daz, I think that it could be potentially dangerous if people take it too seriously.. but it has very good ideas in there in general.. if more people thought positive we wouldn't be living with crazy people that do stupid shit to hurt others.. but theres always consequences and shit.
i think stu here sums it up pretty well. i think there's some truth in the secret but unfortunately there's lots of pre-rational bullshit that goes along with it.
If you get sick, it's kind of your fault for putting your negative thoughts out in the universe. The good news is that you can heal yourself with your thoughts too! Also, you can think an elephant into existencealthough there will be a time delay.
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Haha, nice links Gauss.
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you'd be irritating what the Chinese have realized some 600 years ago. so if you wonna go argue with them, go ahead
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What is the thing that Chinese have realized 600 years ago that has anything to do with the Secret? I can't think of any... can you elaborate?
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Hm...I could see a vague similarity to Taoism. The idea that there's a 'way' and if you can tune into it you can steer yourself down the river a little more skillfully than others--though you can never go against the current. BUT, that's a pretty vague connection to this 'Secret'.
The 'Secret' is just telling people what they want to hear: You don't have to work, you just have to want it...and if you don't get it, you didn't want it enough.
Personally, I prescribe to the 1%inspiration, 99% perspiration model.
Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Bill Hicks.
Einstein said E = MC2 Mass = Energy.
Does it make sense?
I'm trying to understand but I don't
Here are my questions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToLI7WHObhE
sound give form to energy? turning it into matter.
So thoughs are energy? but on a different frequency so it cannot manifest itself into a fysical mass.
If energy travels coming back is into fysical form would it be called Karma?
sound give form to energy? turning it into matter.
[/ QUOTE ]I'm no physicist, but that sounds completely wrong for a start. If my limited knowledge is accurate, sound is a form of energy thats on a wavelength that vibrates the eardrum in such a fashion as to be perceived as sound.
Einstein said E = MC^2 Mass = Energy.
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That's your problem right there. Mass does not equal energy. There is a relation, hence the equation E = MC^2. If mass equalled energy, the equation would be E = M, which doesn't make any sense at all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence
What I see in that video is that salt grains generate patterns with the changing frequency of the sound. Sound is energy, it can move(vibrate) particles by being absorbed by them. And there's always the possibility that they are not salt grains but metal particles which lie in a place where changing patterns of magnetic fields are present as no proper explanation is provided.
I have nothing to say about what Bill Hicks said other than that I know that people see and feel many untrue things while on drugs. I know this does not mean everything they experience is unreal but...
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Why do you only hear negative stories about drugs on the news? It's the same story everytime, we've all heard it: "A young man on LSD thought he could fly. He jumped off a building. What a tradgey." What a dick, fuck him. He's an idiot, if he thought he could fly, why didn't he take off from the ground first? You don't see ducks lining up in an elevator to migrate south for the winter... they take off from the ground you moron.
How about a positive LSD story for once, wouldn't that be newsworthy? "Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration; that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively; there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather"
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for another Hicks quote, "Remember folks, its not a war on drugs....its a war on personal freedom...lets keep that in mind at all times"
Basically they interviewed a doctor who specialized in drug addiction and side effects of drugs, to preach about how terrible various non-government regulated drugs are. But every time they hit him with a "Doesn't this drug fry your brain?" question he'd debunk what they said and hit them with facts (assuming he wasn't just making shit up). He even suggested that some of the drugs they were talking about were no more harmful than alcohol when taken in equal dosages (which is a pretty ballsy move on a show as politically correct and sanitised as Sunrise). The interview ended pretty quickly and the very next day they had another doctor on who completely went along with all their drug demonology.
I'm not saying non-government regulated drugs are all good or all bad. I just found it hilarious to hear this guy rip the hosts arguements to shreds and that they literally replaced him with someone who agreed with everything they suggested.
[Getting a bit off topic I know, but we all agree "The Secret" is horseshit now right?]
And even if none of this works, some things are still very good to get you in a great mental condition, for instance being gratefull for all the things you have in your life in stead of wining about all the stuff that is bothering you.
For myself I like using it to find good car parking spots. It always works when trying that :P
(ok now I can expect some harsh comments on what i'm saying here :P)