New at Reason

March 15, 2007

Greg Beato wonders if the secrets of the universe can be contained in a handy rental from Netflix.

Comments

|3.15.07 @ 7:18AM|#

Ideally, people can take control of their lives without the scam, but humans are humans. If an infomercial gives people confidence and that confidence lets them achieve more, is it true? As far as I can see, this is how some college degrees work. I would recommend not getting 'The Secrete', but compaired to a 100K degree in a field with no practical application, this is small change.

|3.15.07 @ 7:32AM|#

I'm going to guess your degree was in ... engineering. (And please, for all that is holy, let this not be the start of another tussle between engineers/lawyers/doctors/economists & liberal arts types over the relative usefulness of their degrees. Those come up off enough on their own - every posting on education, just about.)

|3.15.07 @ 7:56AM|#

Lawyers usually are liberal arts types, at least in my experience.

|3.15.07 @ 8:04AM|#

"If an infomercial gives people confidence and that confidence lets them achieve more, is it true?"

If this load of crap has any positive influence at all, that statement is all there is to it. It motivates some dolt that is sitting around waiting for life to hit him in the face to go out and exert some effort. Then when he actually achieves something, it was the "Secret" DVD that did it!

|3.15.07 @ 8:50AM|#

Ugh. Some people just aren't that bright, I suppose.

If there's anything our current bleak era needs, it's a little irrational exuberance.

Huh? Did you completely miss the irrational exuberance of the housing bubble? I believe the pain of the bubble deflating will be far worse than the end of the tech (stock) boom. The government is already talking about bailing out people. This is going to be very expensive. I fear for the economy.

I don't know what's more stupid, The Secret or the fact that so many fools thought property values would increase 10-20% per year forever. I think the RE industry may be even bigger liars than the politicians.

ed|3.15.07 @ 8:58AM|#

I'm pretty sure one can download the entire Bible for free, and get the same results. Ask any Baptist.

Tom Accuosti|3.15.07 @ 9:09AM|#

I've been waiting for this one to come online. I've been discussing it with people elsewhere. Frankly, I had no idea that this video had been out for so long; I thought it was recent.

Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) in his book talks about affirmations and writing down one's goals as a method for getting things. I guess my assumption has always been that one needs to be a little more pro-active than just doodling on a notebook.

Tom Accuosti
The Tao of Masonry

Guy Montag|3.15.07 @ 9:12AM|#

Lawyers usually are liberal arts types, at least in my experience.

I share your experience and will add that I have never hired one who could do simple math.

I'm pretty sure one can download the entire Bible for free, and get the same results. Ask any Baptist.

I am a Baptist* and I disagree.

*libertarian Baptist

|3.15.07 @ 9:14AM|#

You mean a memeplex that doesn't even mention gods can have the same effect as a religion!

ron|3.15.07 @ 9:15AM|#

salon has a good take on this (centered around oprah's support for it): here

|3.15.07 @ 9:25AM|#

I'm pretty sure one can download the entire Bible for free, and get the same results.

But if you download it, you don't get those extra blank pages in the front and back, that you can use as rolling papers.

|3.15.07 @ 9:36AM|#

This sounds very similar to that awful "What the bleep Do We Know Anyway?" cult movie that my mother in law was talking up last Thanksgiving.

In that one, quantum mechanics proves that you create your own reality (like the Salma and GOOG vision Beato describes here). They keep showing 'experts', but it is never clear who they are. At the end of the day, it is a who's who of wackaloonery.

My favorite was this blond with an absurd fake accent who turns out to be the Channel for Ramtha, the 7,000 year old warrior spirit from Atlantis. Well, not really Atlantis. A neighboring ancient mystical city state. One reviewer suggests that we should think of it as Jersey.

If I'd been drunk that holiday would have been awesome.

|3.15.07 @ 9:38AM|#

I'm pretty sure one can download the entire Bible for free, and get the same results.

The bible itself has really very little in the way of irrational exuberance. You could go to a fundie church, though. Or, you know, the bit with the rolling papers :) either way's about the same

dhex|3.15.07 @ 9:39AM|#

"I guess my assumption has always been that one needs to be a little more pro-active than just doodling on a notebook."

[insert joke about beating off on sigils here]

jason, ramtha's more like 40k years old or something like that. though what's her name (knight?) has been doing this routine for 20 something years now.

daniel pinchbeck oughtta get a load of her; a future of being someone else's medium could be quite ugly.

Dan T.|3.15.07 @ 9:43AM|#

Sounds like this DVD is popular because it perpetuates two popular American myths:

1) You can get something for nothing
2) You are (or can be) "in control" of your life.

|3.15.07 @ 9:45AM|#

Bummer that I messed up ramtha's birthday. His channel doesn't look a day over 7,000. It looks like these guys are banding together in Superfriends like units to maximize their fleecing power.

"Form of - a 40k year old warrior spirit!"

"Shape of - a harmonic resonance spouting former presidential candidate!"

|3.15.07 @ 9:51AM|#

Dan- If you can't get something for nothing, but you're not in control your life (in other words, you can't get something by working for it), the big question is:

How does one get something?

You must have some new theory that I am not familiar with. Maybe you should produce your own DVD.

Dan T.|3.15.07 @ 9:58AM|#

JLM - by saying you're not in control of your life I didn't mean to imply that you have no impact on it, only that the circumstances that are beyond our control shape our life more than what we tend to recognize.

You can gain things by working, but the desire, opportunity and ability to work in exchange for money are largely dependent on outside variables.

Guy Montag|3.15.07 @ 10:08AM|#

In that one, quantum mechanics proves that you create your own reality

Ah, then that makes it easier to fill the tool box! Now that I have leaped that hurdle . . .

|3.15.07 @ 10:21AM|#

If you haven't seen these things or talked to their adherents, you may be cutting these guys more slack than they deserve.

There is a lot to the '7 Habits' mentality of identifying goals, spending time on the right things, being proactive, and all that.

That is not what is being suggested here. This is booga booga, meditate on good things and literally only good things happen. You can influence the craps table with your positive energy. You create your own reality because of your priveliged position as a quantum observer. At the end of the day, this stuff encourages exactly the opposite of actual self help. It is like praying especially hard to win the lottery instead of saving for retirement.

|3.15.07 @ 10:42AM|#

You can gain things by working, but the desire, opportunity and ability to work in exchange for money are largely dependent on outside variables.

Desire and ability are not monolithic characteristics...thus, describing them as largely outside variables is meaningless...the simplest way to gain things is by doing things for other people who have no desire to do the thing you are willing and able...it does, however, take work. So unless you are suggesting that chronic laziness is a genetic issue, then I don;t see your point.

|3.15.07 @ 10:44AM|#

Mmmm - rolling around with Salma Hayek...

Um, anyway; I'm a lawyer and my undergrad background is macro-economics. Is that a liberal arts degree?

|3.15.07 @ 10:54AM|#

"There is a lot to the '7 Habits' mentality of identifying goals, spending time on the right things, being proactive, and all that."

I'd much rather stick with Lanny Basham's book With Winning in Mind. It's about positive thinking, and yes, he believes you should doodle goals on notecards and hang them on your bathroom mirror.

But his technique and style is delightfully free of all of the fuzzy-headed stylism that most of these kinds of people peddle.

M|3.15.07 @ 10:56AM|#

the circumstances that are beyond our control shape our life more than what we tend to recognize

So do the circumstances within our control, which is why these programs sell. People are buying alarm clocks, packaged with varying degress of voodoo.

LarryA|3.15.07 @ 10:59AM|#

Not to worry. One day real soon the folks who did The Secret will meet the right librarian, teach a whole bunch of kids to play musical instruments, and become productive citizens.

|3.15.07 @ 11:20AM|#

Not to worry. One day real soon the folks who did The Secret will meet the right librarian, teach a whole bunch of kids to play musical instruments, and become productive citizens.

There's that town in Georgia that banned pool and karaoke - they're ripe for the pickin'

Then again, it's Georgia, so they probably don't even have a library.

|3.15.07 @ 11:36AM|#

ron,

That Salon article was good. The author's right; people who buy into this kind of crap are petty, materialistic, and horribly misguided, among other things.

quote: Will they be told to not even look at fat people, as "The Secret" advises?


Don't look at fat people or you'll catch teh fat!

I wasn't aware that people had to be told not to look at fat people.

|3.15.07 @ 11:37AM|#

Obligatory link to The Onion:

Infographic for "The Secret"

Windypundit|3.15.07 @ 12:03PM|#

Dan T: "the circumstances that are beyond our control shape our life more than what we tend to recognize"

M: "So do the circumstances within our control"

Right. There are some things you can control and some you can't and part of the trick of life is to figure out which is which and react accordingly. Or to put it a little more elegantly:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

T|3.15.07 @ 12:04PM|#

smacky,

I dunno where you live, but here in Houston you'd have to become a cloistered recluse to get through the day without looking at fat people.

Besides, I've been trying this affirmation bs for years and I'm still no closer to being supreme dictator of the universe. Maybe the universe doesn't want me to have the job.

|3.15.07 @ 12:05PM|#

T-

The trick is to write a snappy cover-letter to submit with your resumé.

|3.15.07 @ 12:13PM|#

T,

I live in Cleveland...enough said. :)

But lest I not overkill the topic: You virtually need a machete and a bulldozer to clear a path through the fat people here.

tros|3.15.07 @ 12:59PM|#

See: What The BLEEP Do We Know:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/usercomments

I was not surprised to see many of the comments here about this film calling into question everything about it's premise. While reviewing this film for my newspaper (Cedar Rapids Gazette) I knew immediately that the concepts would be controversial and hard for the conditioned American mind to wrap itself around.

Having said that, it seems that many people view a movie like this as an all or nothing proposition -- if one theory or belief seems flawed, then it all must be called into question. What I think too many polemicists are forgetting is that this picture is a smorgasbord of different theories presented, as Rod Serling might say, for you approval -- or not.

But what many are missing is what makes this film revolutionary -- that filmmakers were able to present these concepts in the medium of film in a way that was at least entertaining and most, thought provoking. You don't have to buy off 100 percent on what is here, but the presentation, in and of itself, was stunning in its bombardment of the viewer with multi sensory imagery.

That this film was even made at all is a mini-miracle, especially in our current intellectual and cultural climate. Its sad to me to see such judgmental reviews. I knew conventional Christians would simply dismiss this as "new age" fluff and I mentioned that in my review. But I would have hoped that lovers of film and higher order thinking would be more tolerant of some of the excesses.

In short, this is a film that needs to be seen not just for its quasi-cinematic, quasi-documentary methodology but for a presentation of theories and beliefs that are rarely discussed in the ossified American mainstream. For that alone, I thank the filmmakers.

In the director's cut, the one thing the person behind the camera says, the ONE question he asks, he asks while they are talking about how the brain makes its own chemicals similar to opiates and THC. The one questions he asks:

"Do you think our brains could somehow make their own LSD?"

|3.15.07 @ 1:02PM|#

Love the line:

"the advent of the infomercial helped liberate the charlatans from the tyranny of print"

|3.15.07 @ 1:03PM|#

tros

I think it's actually DMT that your brain makes on its own, which is stronger.

|3.15.07 @ 2:23PM|#

"In short, this is a film that needs to be seen not just for its quasi-cinematic, quasi-documentary methodology but for a presentation of theories and beliefs that are rarely discussed in the ossified American mainstream. For that alone, I thank the filmmakers."

Yeah. Lets have more discussion about theories and beliefs that can break through the ossification that fact checking and scientific rigor impose on the sheeple. It is of capital importance to flat out lie about quantum theory, because quantum misdirection is your key to the kingdom of pseudo scientific credibility and all of the wallets therein.

dhex|3.15.07 @ 3:56PM|#

"I think it's actually DMT that your brain makes on its own, which is stronger."

DMT is in a lot of things, including bermuda grass.

i confess to not having been able to get through what the bleep do we know, and i am generally easily entertained by stupidity.

Mike Laursen|3.15.07 @ 5:58PM|#

There's a two-minute or so sample on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2MqciSMOmk

|3.15.07 @ 6:29PM|#

All the hokey self-help religions like these are basically Christian/Buddhist/Sufi/Hindu mysticism, maybe even Golden Dawn mysticism, with God (omnipresent, omnipotent, transcendental and imminent God) taken out of the equation. That's why they suck so much; all the philosophies they steal from focus on becoming an instrument of God's will, and make a great to-do about not focusing on the petty worldly consequences of their devotions. Christian mystics were advised by St. John of the Cross not to get caught up in the "supernatural" gifts that crop up in those who practice self-mortification/self-naughting. Hindus call the heretics that focus on this stuff Siddhi, and are not big fans of them. "The Secret" and its ilk are real roadblocks to actual spiritual development

|3.15.07 @ 7:15PM|#

Well, writing something on a notecard every day is likely to make you focus on that thing a lot more than you would otherwise. Now, if the thing you write down is something that you can't influence the likelihood of, like sleeping with your favorite movie star or winning the lottery, I don't see how this strategy would help at all. But if you want to do something difficult but something which depends largely on your own efforts, like becoming a veterinarian, I can see how something that makes you focus on that goal might actually help bring it about.

|3.15.07 @ 7:17PM|#

In that one, quantum mechanics proves that you create your own reality (like the Salma and GOOG vision Beato describes here).

Quantum mechanics does prove that you can create your own reality -- as long as you're an electron or a neutrino.

*|3.15.07 @ 10:03PM|#

Um, anyway; I'm a lawyer and my undergrad background is macro-economics. Is that a liberal arts degree?

Not if the moniker thrust on economics by virulent anti-abolitionists is to be believed.

Clicking my heels together thr|3.15.07 @ 10:31PM|#

I apologize for saying so, but this is the most enjoyable thread at H&R I've read so far. Perhaps it's time someone curses someone else out to restore the default level of intolerance and incivility - Hey, why not curse me out?

|3.16.07 @ 6:22PM|#

Curse you, Clicking my heels together three times and saying!

M|3.17.07 @ 7:12AM|#

P.T. Barnum
Said "Darn 'em
If they can't find the female egret;
They can pay me for The Secret."