Mar. 7, 2007
A new potion of snake oil is sweeping the United States. How many times can people fall for the same irrational ideas?
The Secret, a book and movie by Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television producer, contains no new "secret." The "secret" is the "law of attraction" -- like attracts like and your thoughts create your reality. Going beyond the espousal of self-fulfilling prophecies, The Secret claims you can manipulate the material world -- the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of others, world events -- through your thoughts and feelings. Did you get a promotion? You must have been thinking positive thoughts about your job prospects! Do you have cancer? You must have been thinking negative thoughts about your health. I guess someone who really didn't like Rwandans thought up the genocide.
Does this appalling belief in the power of thought sound familiar, albeit a bit extreme? It should. The supernatural belief that the mind can control the physical world goes back to at least the late 19th century United States, when Phineas Parkhurst Quimby developed a set of religious ideas he called New Thought. The movement spawned from these ideas placed great emphasis on positive thinking, affirmations, meditation and prayer. New Thought churches sprang up which varied in their associations with Christianity and other major religions.
From this movement emerged several religious denominations that still exist today, including Divine Science, Religious Science (quite an oxymoron!), the Unity Church and the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church. The Unity Church is the largest of these denominations, boasting over two million members worldwide. Humanist Network News readers may be familiar with the Unity Church from mailings that promise prayers on one's behalf for a donation to the church (apparently it hasn't learned the lessons that the Catholic Church did from its sale of indulgences in the 16th century).
Although Emma Curtis Hopkins, one of the founders of Christian Science -- which espouses the view that your state of mind affects your bodily health and rejects modern medicine -- was influential among several key New Thought leaders, Christian Science developed in a different direction and is not considered a New Thought denomination.
What's the problem with a bit of wishful thinking and self deception? If it prevents you from going to the doctor to treat a life-threatening condition (after all, it's all in your mind), there could be some consequences.
Byrne states that a book written by a New Thought acolyte, Wallace D. Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich, initiated her interest in "The Secret." Another book, William Walker Atkinson's 1906 Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, is the basis for much of The Secret.
To understand the "Creative Process" called "Ask-Believe-Receive" behind The Secret, take a look at the process for losing weight.
…the condition of being overweight was created through your thoughts…. To put it in the most basic terms, if someone is overweight, it came from thinking "fat thoughts," whether that person was aware of it or not. A person cannot think "thin thoughts" and be fat. It completely defies the law of attraction. Whether people have been told they have a slow thyroid, a slow metabolism, or their body size is hereditary, these are all disguises for thinking "fat thoughts…."To me, the excerpt above appears to contain a lot of nonsense followed by Wattles' piece of common sense that may actually help people lose weight -- a type of "bait and switch." Perhaps embedding a sensible idea within a lot of nonsense causes people to think it's the "Creative Process" that caused them to lose weight when it was actually the good idea (of course, placed at the end of the exercise for prominence) of eating your food slowly that worked.
The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain…Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight…Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight…
To attract your perfect weight and body using the Creative Process, follow these steps:
Step 1: Ask
Get clear on the weight you want to be. Have a picture in your mind of what you will look like when you have become that perfect weight. Get pictures of yourself at your perfect weight, if you have them, and look at them often. If not, get pictures of the body you would like to have and look at those often.
Step 2: Believe
You must believe you will receive and that the perfect weight is yours already…Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies. Seek them out and as you admire them and feel the feelings of that -- you are summoning it to you. If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it…
Step 3: Receive
As you think perfect thoughts, as you feel good about You, you are on the frequency of your perfect weight, and you are summoning perfection.
Wallace Wattles shares a wonderful tip about eating in one of his books. He recommends that when you eat, make sure you are entirely focused on the experience of chewing the food. Keep your mind present and experience the sensation of eating food, and do not allow your mind to drift to other things. Be present in your body and enjoy all the sensations of chewing the food in your mouth and swallowing it….
Well, what's the harm in this, apart from the fact you may have to shun fat people for a while? As can be seen in the excerpt, the "Creative Process" denies reality; what if a person really had a thyroid problem, but didn't go to her doctor in the belief that her thoughts caused her weight problem? The other problem is that it blames the victim; if bad things happen to you, even things that appear totally out of your control -- getting hit by a drunk driver, getting robbed -- you brought it on yourself through your thoughts.
Such nonsense may have fallen by the wayside -- as it appears to have done in Australia, where Byrne resides -- had it not been for the way it was cleverly marketed to appeal to American readers. Even Oprah Winfrey, the beacon of American pop culture, featured The Secret on two of her shows, possibly leading to the two million books and a million and half DVDs sold.
As the "Creative Process" for losing weight shows, The Secret is marketed to appeal to Americans' love of the quick fix: simply think it and it happens! It also appeals to our hyper-materialism. Just take a look at the Web site, where rolls of money turn on a press to the tune of spiritual music. Just like evangelical mega-churches, the video combines Americans' love of money and religion. The movie version shows images of people wishing for jewelry and getting it, not images of them wishing for world peace.
Finally, it appeals in a twisted way to the American belief in a meritocracy. While believing that you deserve what you work for is admirable, believing you deserve what you think is another story.
Are people so easily deceived by those with a bit of psychology under their belt? Or do they understand how they are deceived but choose to ignore reason? Perhaps it's just part of being human.
Elaine Friedman is the editor of Humanist Network News, the weekly e-zine of the Institute for Humanist Studies.
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