[Oe List ...] The Secret - Bill Alerding

[Tim Wegner]

My own opinion is one of the most common intellectual sins is to take 
a truth about life and generalize it to explain everything. The idea 
that we do (to a degree) attract to ourselves according to our 
thoughts and attitudes has a lot of truth to it. But making that the 
law of the universe is absurd.

The Secret impresses me as a way for the elite to justify their 
riches, which, apparently, they have earned by virtue of positive 
thinking compared to the negative-thinking, huddled masses.

There's a good article on "The Secret" in Michael Shermer's column in 
the June Scientific American.  See excerpt below - for full article 
get yourself a copy of Scientific American.

Tim

 Skeptic: The (Other) Secret; June 2007; Scientific American 
Magazine; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

An old yarn about a classic marketing con game on the secret of 
wealth instructs you to write a book about how to make a lot of money 
and sell it through the mail. When your marks receive the book, they 
discover the secret--write a book about how to make a lot of money 
and sell it through the mail.

A confidence scheme similar to this can be found in The Secret (Simon 
& Schuster, 2006), a book and DVD by Rhonda Byrne and a cadre of self-
help gurus that, thanks to Oprah Winfrey's endorsement, have now sold 
more than three million copies combined. The secret is the so-called 
law of attraction. Like attracts like. Positive thoughts sally forth 
from your body as magnetic energy, then return in the form of 
whatever it was you were thinking about. Such as money. "The only 
reason any person does not have enough money is because they are 
blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts," we are told. 
Damn those poor Kenyans. If only they weren't such pessimistic 
sourpusses. The film's promotional trailer is filled with such 
vainglorious money mantras as "Everything I touch turns to gold," "I 
am a money magnet," and, my favorite, "There is more money being 
printed for me right now." Where? Kinko's?