The Secret: shhhhh, pass it on.

I’m having another run-in with believers in the so-called ‘Law of Attraction’ at Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development for Smart People forum. Someone posted to share their unease about it, and I dared to venture the opinion that unease was wise.

 

The Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction, what is it? Basically, it’s the magical message that whatever you want you can have, you just need to believe in it enough. Your thoughts create, or deeply influence, reality. It was popularised in the 2006 film The Secret by Prime Time Productions.

Now, of course, within reason, that may be true. For a start, there is my internal, subjective reality, and my thoughts are a big feature in that landscape. Thinking positively, trying to look on the bright side of things, hoping, being optimistic, these things will help you to be happier, is that all it means?

Well, sometimes those interpretations are given, but some of the protagonists take it much more seriously, extending the influence of thought to the supernatural. Some take this to the extreme solipsism, in which objective reality is considered meaningless or not even real, a construct of the individual mind. And there are more complicated versions, in which human beings are creating various parallel realities according to the power of the ideas and the numbers projecting them.

Some of the other buzz words, then, are Intention Manifestation, since this is about manifesting exactly what you want, and Subjective Reality. The Law of Attraction is big business. If you google ‘the secret’ or ‘law of attraction’, most of the links you’ll find on the first page will invite you to sign up for instructions on how to get rich. Many of them vie for your interest by proclaiming they are the REAL Secret or Law, in a sick parody of the philosophy.

Steve Pavlina is one of the protagonists. I have discussed these views critically at Steve’s forum for some time, because I think they represent quite a significant risk to people’s psychological well-being, and perhaps their physical well-being.

Hello world!: (by) a useless article

Well, not exactly “Hello World!”, since I’ve been here for forty-seven years already.

I thought long and hard about this blog’s name and kept trying out different wordpress.com domains to see whether they’d been taken or not. I’m shocked there are so many hello worlds out there. Their authors must have been swept off in other directions after what was perhaps a highly enthusiastic setup.