RSAnimate talks about The Secret, and I continue my rant.

For those of you who can't watch, Barbara Ehrenreich talks about how "mandatory optimism" isn't such a good thing.

Her two issues with positive thinking:

1. Delusion is a mistake
2. It's cruel to tell people who are having great difficulties in their lives that it's all in their heads.

She mentions The Secret at 5:30 and refers to its "moral callousness" in regard to the tsunami of 2006. Her "very radical suggestion" is REALISM. Changing the world by examining the problems in a rational way and then zeroing in on solutions through trial and error. I know she was being somewhat ironic when she said it was radical, but the especially sad bit is that people who ascribe to these beliefs think they are the realists. After all, they have the Super-Secret Key to Life, don't they?

This may seem a bit like evoking Godwin's Law, but when friends of mine speak of The Secret's truth I bring up the shocking and heartbreaking rape statistics in The Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am not trying to exploit rape as drama--these stories strike a nerve with me and it's an issue I consider very personal.

Oh, okay then.  Your "Like" circlejerk proves your point.

No one has given me a straight answer. None of Rhonda Byrne's acolytes have the cajones to come out and tell me that yes, the victims of rape did attract it. If they even acknowledge that I asked the question, they tell me I am taking the law out of context, taking it to extremes, taking it too seriously, misunderstanding how it works.

I've already touched on the moral callousness in my last post on The Secret. I could probably go on about it some more, because it's just such a goddamn stupid concept that only a privileged moonbat white lady could come up with, but I'd like to expand on what Barbara Ehrenreich says toward the end of her video.

 By examining the ugliness that lies in the DRC's rape problem, we can see the roots and catalysts with very little effort. The superficiality of mandatory positive thinking (I just love the way she put that and hope she doesn't mind that I use it) dictates that its adherents must not examine the ugliness. They must simply, if they want to reduce the statistics in the Congo, just think about it in positive terms (e.g. "I want these women to feel secure in their bodies and be safe"). It's the very definition of shallow. You aren't required to do any research on the conditions that enabled this terrible culture. You aren't required to take any real action.

So the efforts of those who do examine the roots are undermined. The strength of the Congolese women who have had enough, who will not live with their fear and trauma forever, is ignored. And when (not if, because I too can put positive thinking in action) their hard work succeeds and Congolese people no longer live in fear that their bodies will be violated and they will have no justice, those who sat around and did nothing but practice their mandatory optimism will pat themselves on the backs.

As a non-Christian, were I an oncologist, you can believe I would give my patients an earful if their cancer went into remission and they had the audacity to thank God but say nothing of the treatment they received. Believing in the power of prayer or the law of attraction, if that's your thing, is your business. But its nature often means that its adherents utterly disregard or misattribute the sources of positive change. Funnily enough, Rhonda Byrne's book uses the placebo effect as an example, but certainly not in a way I would call self-aware.

This is dangerous. Very dangerous. It's bad enough that so many people do not understand the mechanisms of social change, or don't think social change is worthwhile, but this? This is an excuse for apathy that won't even acknowledge itself.

Rhonda Byrne's book, thus far, has not addressed utilizing the law of attraction for social change in any meaningful sort of way. This is telling, to me, of Rhonda Byrne's selfishness. Here's The True And Real Secret of Making Everything The Way You Want It Using Quantum Something-or-other, and there's really no mention of how to turn the world around you into a goddamn utopia with the power of your mind?

Many of her acolytes state that social change, theoretically, is effected when people apply the law of attraction because their positivity uplifts those around them. All right, then, let's do some math real quick.

Wikipedia says the book has sold over 21 million copies. Let's round it down to 21, and leave out copies of the movie for simplicity's sake. We'll also leave out those who have not read The Secret but still apply the law of attraction. We'll also leave out those who borrowed the book from the library or from a friend. This will, in other words, be an EXTREMELY conservative estimate.

Let's assume 10% of these purchased copies did not get read--either they were a gift for someone who did not want it, or bought by someone who never got around to it. From that number, we take another 25% for people who read it and thought it was crap. Let's say that, out of those remaining purchases, 35% of people read the book but for whatever reason, did not or could not apply the law of attraction in their lives.

That leaves us with just over 9.2 million, out of the original 21, who read the book and took it to heart. We'll round down again to 9.

So if 9 million individuals read the book, and each individual is able to interact with 3 people in their lives in a meaningful way, their positivity will be multiplied by that much. 3 people isn't much--most of us have at least that many close friends or family members (and those who don't can blame it on their "frequencies," I guess).

That means The Positive Squad is adding 27 million to its ranks. That's more people than originally bought copies of the book. So, let's style this like a pyramid scheme--each of these 36 million people then pass their happy thought-energy onto three totally separate people. That means 108 million more people are now utilizing the power of the law of attraction. If this happens just 3 more times, it's finally reached nearly all 7 billion people on the planet. (Feel free to correct my math if I did this wrong, but as far as I know these numbers should be accurate.)

It's stated in the book that what you want--and here, we're looking for a perfectly happy utopia--will take no time because time is meaningless and the Universe has already granted it if you can think it. Even if only one person takes on this idea, the theory that they can uplift others around them still applies and ends up with the same result. So where the fuck is my utopia, Rhonda?!


The more I read this, and the more I explore the idea, the angrier I get. The more conversations I have with personal friends who won't come right out and say it, but believe in a law that would blame victims of rape for attracting their rapes, the angrier I get. The more I think that some stupid blonde lady is getting rich off of people's need to believe in shallow, toxic shit like this, the angrier I get. I don't take kindly to pseudoscience, and I don't take kindly to false meritocracies. Fuck The Secret, and fuck Rhonda Byrne.