HASH V1:CH6 The Secret

In this installment of Hardcastle's Adventures in Self Help, I dive into Chapter 6 of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Each chapter of The Secret contains "Secret Summaries" at the end which I've . . . edited . . . to better reflect reality. Enjoy!

Chapter 6: The Secret to Relationships

This chapter is actually reasonable, if simplistic. I'll type the Secret Summaries as they are in the book, without the smartassery:

Secret Summaries:

When you want to attract a relationship, make sure your thoughts, words, actions, and surroundings don't contradict your desires.

Your job is you. Unless you fill yourself up first, you have nothing to give anybody.

Treat yourself with love and respect, and you will attract people who show you love and respect.

When you feel bad about yourself, you block love and instead you attract more people and situations that will continue to make you feel bad about you.

Focus on the qualities you love about yourself and the law of attraction will show you more great things about you.

To make a relationship work, focus on what you appreciate about the other person, and not your complaints. When you focus on the strengths, you will get more of them.

Replace the law of attraction magic with the idea that self-esteem and self-efficacy are crucial factors in a happy life, and all of this is true. However, Byrne has demonstrated that she doesn't know jack shit about psychology and its applications in the real world. People aren't really disputing that happy people tend to be positive thinkers and vice versa. Unfortunately, that doesn't really sell books.

Furthermore, she doesn't actually present any solutions for dealing with a negative self-image. The problem with a negative self-image is that, when you have one, treating yourself with love and respect doesn't come naturally. It's true that until you know, love, and respect yourself, you might encounter difficulties in developing happy, nurturing relationships. But these aren't things that you just do. For all but a lucky few of us, it is a lifelong process of learning and often involves loving relationships that are established before we know how to love ourselves.

Do children that are born into homes without love “attract” this? I can't take credit for my stable home and loving parents, but if I had been born to absentee or abusive parents, would that be credited to my “thought frequency” in the womb? It's worthy of notice that Rhonda Byrne has yet to mention how this law plays out with children. Did an infant that was abandoned at birth attract her crackhead parents who had no love for her? Developmental psychology tells us that the infant isn't yet aware of the concept of her “self" enough to apply the law as Byrne intends. So how could she have loved herself enough to attract parents that would have loved her instead of the ones who abandoned her?

I don't doubt that Rhonda Byrne thought about the way this law of hers applies to children—and I also don't doubt that there's a reason it's never mentioned. But she did mention that her law is universal, impartial, and operates regardless of time, which means children aren't exempt. Their misfortunes, by the terms of her own law, are a result of their frequencies--not their parents' frequencies. If the Universe doesn't care about time, it doesn't care about age, and if it's impartial, it doesn't care about cognitive development either. 

By her logic, infants, who have not developed the capacity for concepts as basic as positive and negative, should never suffer illness, death, hunger, being born into poverty, being born to parents who don't love them, et cetera. She can insist all she wants that victims of tragedies brought on their bad experiences (and I can insist she's an asshole), but the idea that an infant somehow repels its parents by having a bad concept of itself is idiotic on an entirely different level. Has she ever met a real baby?

Like I said, I do think this kind of thing has occurred to her on some level, but due to the nature of her mystical woo-woo moonbat personality, I'd guess she chalks it up to doubt in herself and negative thought and shoves it conveniently out of her mind because despite her claim that it is the answer to everything there is about life, The Secret has no good fucking answer to this question.

I would speculate that--beyond the fluffy feel good superficiality, beyond the narcissism and superiority, beyond the simplistic and exclusive Key that Only Special People Have concept--that sort of cognition is why this resonates with so many people. Contemplating the seemingly chaotic nature of the ugliness in life is unpleasant. This method allows--and requires--people to ignore the ugliness because doing so would amount to negative thinking and negative thinking means it won't work for you. So when good things happen, it's the Universe, and when bad things happen, you need to re-read The Secret and possibly attend a seminar because You Aren't Doing It Right. 

I know that some might take issue with the way that I extend Rhonda Byrne's book into tragic situations, but I am using the terms of her own law and taking them to their logical conclusion. It's why I include quotes and reference the chapters and point out inconsistencies -- because it's all shit that Rhonda Byrne herself said in her own goddamn book. And if anyone takes issue with the way I am applying her law of attraction, or thinks that I am taking it to extremes, I suggest you re-read the book and take a good look at her phrasing. I then challenge you to find anything that proves my conclusions wrong.