The Fucking Secret

[navkat]

Have any of you read this?


I'm sure you've at least heard of it. Let me sum up:
1. You have the power to magically attract all the things in life that you want.
2. You DESERVE all good things.
3. Bad things happen to you because you're attracting them with your negative thoughts.
4. Thinking about the bad things at all (ie: SEEING them) makes them worse and continues the cycle.

Okay, look: I have no problem with the so-called "power of positive thinking." I believe that if you're a positive person and you focus on the good shit in your life, you'll tend to behave in a fashion that begets more good shit. I also believe that you minimize the psychological pain for yourself by shelving your troubles. I also believe that by acting "as if," you can behave in ways that occasionally put you in a better position to achieve certain goals for yourself and reduce the chance of unintended self-sabotage.

I do not believe that we are cosmically entitled to certain outcomes, and that by attempting to will them towards ourselves, we will get them.

I do not believe that "maybe if we think really hard, we can stop this rain."

What I do believe is while possibly well-intentioned, this book has become fuel for the lazy, the selfish and the sociopathic. I have seen this in action and it's really insidious the way this "cosmic entitlement" thing is used to justify all kinds of evil bullshit.

This year, I moved to my hometown in NY to be "roomies" with a very close, old friend whom I once respected and trusted. The intent of the living situation was one of mutual benefit.

At some point, I watched that friend physically assault a person. Then, I witnessed my friend's relative living in the house who is a NYC police officer take his side and lie to the Suffolk County police when they were called on the scene. This caused a whole heap of problems for the victim who eventually ended up moving out, getting a divorce, etc.

What it also did was create a favorable situation for my friend and the relative who had both wanted to get rid of the victim...a situation they attributed to The Secret. And then, they rolled with that.

The friend went on to see this little stroke of "fortune" as a sign that things were going his way from now on. He went on to license himself to make a whole heap of poor, selfish and harmful decisions. He gave these decisions no true thought...no mature cognitive thought whatsoever, no consideration for consequences at all because to do so would be drawing negativity into the picture.

Any attempts to counsel said friend heaped a shitstorm of temper-tantrums and verbal abuse upon myself--by merely thinking about these things, I was causing them to happen. He accused me of (I shit you not) "fucking with his goodness." We had endless fights in which he basically threw shit, broke things, sabotaged other people's good times, stomped around and generally acted like an evil, cruel, fucking bastard because the rest of us in the house (by having any problems, feelings or objections whatsoever) were all fucking with his goodness.

At one point, he even tried to accuse me of attracting the freezing weather because I expressed concern over not letting my wines (which were temporarily stored in the garage) freeze and be ruined as Autumn turned to Winter.

The "roomie" situation ended in a very bad way...for me. The friendship is on its way out too: I'm slow to anger, but as time goes on and I reflect, I feel more and more violated...more and more embittered by L'Enfant Terribles and his spiritually affirming orgy of psychic pyromania.

The friend, of course, took my leaving as yet another "sign." One of liberation from my negativity that was wrecking his perfect fucking wave of happy in a perfect life of total, fucking goodness. He wanted me out, he willed the outcome and he got it. But honestly, after months of drowning in this particular pile of shit, the "goodness" is all mine. Trust.

I find this ambiguous, undisciplined brand of spiritualistic mind-fuckery to be more dangerous than Christianity (Christians will burn down your house in the name of jeebus, but at least they won't try to convince you that YOU burned down your house after it's done). Until my above personal experience, I considered it harmless. Others have tried to get me onboard by claiming it would "change my life." I politely poo-poo'd in favor of letting others have their own beliefs. "To each, his own" and all that.

I think next time someone offers me the book, I'll take it as a sign that I'm fated to rape their sticky, blathering mouf-hole with it...or maybe I'll just will them to fuck themselves.

I'm a nice girl, after all.

[Captain Utopia]

Preach it!  That's a pretty messed up story.  Blaming other people for your negativity is wonderful!  It's no surprise that the reactions get progressively worse as the individual gets more and more invested in the narrative about other people poisoning their innate goodness 

It gives me an idea though:

1) Figure out some feel-good shit people like to hear about themselves
2) Sell it
3) Profit

[Adios]

Shit like this makes me want to kill a motherfucker. For goodness sake.

[Salty]

There are times when it seems that whole industry's sole purpose is to alleviate the west's guilt for eating the rest of the world. "They WANT to be slaves to their debts without hope of escape or clean water." "Those kids CHOSE to make sneakers for a living, before they were even born just as I chose this cushy life." And then it rolls downhill from there.

When that book first came out I glanced through it and saw a hamfisted rehashing of what had been written in so much occult and new age literature I named it Chicken Soup for the New-Age Soul. Turns out one of the guys who put it together is Jack Canfield, editor of the Chicken Soup series. Ha. Ha. 

[The Johnny]

What im being taught (more or less so  ) is that the secret is... NARCISSISM

But so many people talk about "The Secret" and its such an important phenomenon that i might have to read it to really understand the dumbness that it sums up.

[navkat]

What im being taught (more or less so  ) is that the secret is... NARCISSISM

Yeah, man.

I've always thought prayer was a little narcissistic, actually. I mean, take the Jews during the Holocaust--hell, just take the Jewish mommies: I'm sure out of the millions or so women who had children, there were thousands and thousands of them who prayed "Please, oh please, God, don't let this nazi fuckhead hurt my baby." Out of THOSE, I'm sure there were a few thousand who said "Fuck it, I'll pray to any God that's listening...you know, just in case we're wrong about that whole Jesus thing or Allah thing." I'm certain of it.

Now cut to Wheel of Fortune. Focus in on some lady in an ugly, flowered dress praying that God-uh helps her win on a game show.

But so many people talk about "The Secret" and its such an important phenomenon that i might have to read it to really understand the dumbness that it sums up.

It's important to them because half of the message is that there are no mistakes--we are each a perfectly designed creature who deserves to have all our dreams come true. That there's no limit to the wealth and love and success we can attract using this method. That's excellent news if you have problems you don't want to face. Shitty news for the people left in your life who still haven't walked out the door yet.

Pardon me, but I much prefer the concept of Chaos Magic: It sounds like a lot more fun and people generally come to their senses and start thinking rationally after they pop a good one off. I fully endorse any practice that encourages masturbation as a vehicle.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Nasty story. Unfortunately I think variations on the theme are extremely common.

It's basically what psychologists call the Just World Phenomenon, but in this case it's dressed up in New Age clothes.

Here's an excellent analysis by the RSAnimate people and Barbara Ehrenreich that looks at this trend of delusional positivity, and how it relates to The Secret:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

[The Johnny]

Theres this radio show with some doctor, and one time he was relating a case he observed of a paranoid-schizophrenic patient... the patient always had delusions about how the Twin Towers would come to collapse... then 9/11 happened, and he was terrified of when the FBI would come to get him...

So yeah, this is an extreme case, but its important to point out the process that took place in his little head... first is the grandeur of "i have special powers to predict the future"... you add some coincidence to the situation and it jumps to attributting to himself the causality... "i didnt just predict it i CAUSED it"...

But thats just a kind of cultural teachings intrinsec to Western culture associated from the Renaissance... man has unlimited potential and capacity, its just up to his will and desire to mold and shape the world... nature and its environment is a thing to be submited to its power (add the industrial revolution)... and all this leads to every dipshit thinking that their environment doesnt affect them at all... notion that is very comftable to government and laissez faire capitalism... "you are poor because you are lazy, dumb or you want to be", not because theres unfair competition and we are ruled by vultures.

[Lenin McCarthy]

My brother got into that sort of shit for a while, and he's still recovering from it. He wasn't far from turning into an asshole. 

[navkat]

Here's an excellent analysis by the RSAnimate people and Barbara Ehrenreich that looks at this trend of delusional positivity, and how it relates to The Secret:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

This is rather brilliant. Thanks.

A funny aside: My sister thought the blame I got as The Bringer of The Christmas Blizzard was so funny, she bought me one of these as a joke:


I'm still getting ribbed for attracting the recent nation-wide snowstorm that just blew through.

[navkat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

I take it back, not only is this brilliant, it's soooooo validating right now and just what I needed.

The sad part about this whole situation is that it hurt a LOT more than I'm letting on here. The friend was actually a life-long childhood friend whom I love(d) very deeply. I was willing to stretch myself pretty far to accommodate him and help him deal with his shit--even keeping my own cautiously-athiest-agnosticism under wraps and "opening my mind" to his positive-thinking scene.

This just underscores why none of us should ever let ourselves get passively sucked into what we know in our hearts to be bullshit.

[Ob_Portu]

two words...psychokinesis.

no really

[Faust]

two words...psychokinesis.

no really

1)Brain sends signal to limb to move in a certain direction in order to achieve the end result of moving an object.
2)The signal is processed by the nerves in the limb and it behaves as an actuator, transferring kinetic energy to the object
3)The objects overall momentum is changed by this kinetic energy.

4) HOLY SHIT MAGIC IS REAL PYSCHOKINISESFTW

[Ob_Portu]

of course psychokinesis is a secret..

shhhhudup.

nayayer boogyman

[Cramulus]

fuck the secret

I'm (usually) an optimist. And this is because focusing on the good has brought a lot of good into my life.

But when you embark on something, you have to be prepared for the bad too. And you have to think about this and brace yourself for it and treat it as real. We must draw STRENGTH from adversity, instead of trying to blind ourselves to it.

When you embark on a journey, you have to accept that part of that journey involves TOTAL BULLSHIT. You can't get to point B without some pain along the way. Simply avoiding negative situations will truncate both your progress and growth.



Hey, btw, you still in NYC?