Friday, 1 June 2007 - 6:47 PM BST
Name:
adam
I recently watched "The Secret," and I must admit that it was entertaining.
However, it seems extremely unscientific, unmeasurable, and contradictory.
For example, let's say that two guys are both using the law of attraction to attract the exact same woman into their life, with the intent of eventually marrying this woman. There is not a scenario in which they both get what they have been attracting. One of them ends up with the object of his attraction, while the other one is left heart-broken and wondering what's wrong with himself. Or, another very likely scenario is that neither of the guys ends up with the girl they've been attracting.
This might work on an individual basis, but I can't see how it could possibly make sense on a global community level. Not everyone can have what they want. With nearly 6,000,000,000 people on the planet, it is inevitable that 2 (at least!) of those people are going to want the exact same thing, whether it be a person, a piece of real estate, or a job. They are obviously not going to both get what they want.
To me, the whole process/idea sounds deeply selfish, and is making the assumption that everything we desire is good for us. In "The Secret," one of the female experts places all human emotion into 2 basic categories: good and bad. Basically, anything that does not feel good is bad. She includes guilt in the "bad" category. It sounds like a solid argument, until you plug it into real life. For example, what if I walk into a store to steal an iPod, completely conident that my positive thought output has invoked the law of attaction and attracted a certain 30g video iPod to my pocket. All the positive thinking in the world isn't going to erase my face from security camera footage, which results in me getting busted, and ending up in a very negative situation.
Or we could make it more interesting and say that I somehow managed to walk right into Wal-mart, crack open a locked case and walk out the front door with my beloved iPod. I get away with it, scott free. I'm flying high on so-called "good" emotions because I've gotten what I was attracting, an iPod. However, after a few short-lived hours of musical enjoyment, I quickly begin to feel guilty, knowing that I just did something completely wrong, which combined with the theft committed by thousands of other people every year at Wal-mart, will eventually drive up the prices of iPod's for everyone else who might have wanted to obtain one (legally). If I go with the expert on The Secret, I dismiss my guilt as a bad emotion and try to focus on the positive, knowing that I got what I wanted. If I go with common sense, I realize that my guilt is a very good emotion in this case, because I've done something wrong and need to confess and make amends for what I've done.
Like I said, if we were all living in our own individual worlds, completely devoid of contact with one another, this law of attraction might make sense to me. But we live in community with one another, and it would be impossible for everyone to have all their selfish desires fulfilled. It seems like there would need to be some kind of mediating being or force to determine which desires got fulfilled, and which ones got rejected.
Sorry if I sound harsh or attacking, I'm really just trying to lay out my thoughts. Let me know what you think, thanks!
- adam
