A Short List of Stupid Things People Believe In, #2: The Secret and Other Modern Mythologies

Important Subtitle: “Stupid” Given current evidence (a good skeptic is always ready and willing to change their mind if reliable evidence is brought to light)

2: “The Secret” and Other Modern Mythologies

If you haven’t heard of this, count yourself lucky. Basically, the claim made in The Secret, and other such works, is that the world can be shaped and manipulated to your whim if you just think happy thoughts and will it to be so. In other words, it’s magic, plain and simple. It’s also hopelessly banal, as the authors suggest using this awesome power to get that promotion you’ve been angling for, or to win the state lottery. If that’s the best you can come up with when given the ability to literally rewrite reality, you don’t deserve it. And let’s just look at what this says about people in general. Dying from cancer? Lose your leg in battle? Clinically depressed? Homeless? Blind? Left handed? Orphaned? Well, obviously you’re not thinking positively enough! Get over it, heal yourself (if you can re-write reality, growing back that leg, or some new parents, shouldn’t be a problem, right?), and then go get that middle management position you’ve always dreamed of!

There are also, of course, the massive logical problems with this idea. For one thing, if we all exist within a reality of our own making, how is it that we interact with others who are apparently experiencing the same reality that we are? And once you master this power, how is it our now divergent realities can coexist? Seriously, if I go flying down the street in my reality (in which I can fly, of course), and you can waltzing up the street in your reality (in which all people have become large, super intelligent slugs… hey, anything is possible with positive thinking, right?), what happens when we meet? Why, for that matter, has no one ever mastered the ability to fly, or to melt things with lasers from their eyes? The only way I can see this working is if none of you are real. In that scenario everything makes sense, since the world is exactly as I envision it, including being stuffed with six billion fake people, many of whom have been rude or even violent towards me, and who do things that I wish they wouldn’t do. Yeah, that makes tons of sense. Either that, or you’re the only real person, and the only reason I exist in your world is to call you an idiot. Hmm…

Here’s a little test I’d like to put to anyone who claims to have mastered “The Secret”: Allow me to strap you down (so you can’t do something sneaky and non-magical like ducking), and then use your powers of positive thinking to prevent me from punching you in the face. Several times. Or, we could put you in a car with no breaks and send you rolling down a cliff. Or, to be really fair, we could simply ask you to get a great job without actually going out and looking for one (the instruction given always includes actively working towards your goals, which is how these things happen in the real world, no magic needed!).

As was pointed out in a recent article on Cracked.com, the authors of this book obviously want you to buy this book. Since they are presumably masters of this magical thinking thing, we should be easily bent to their will. Not buying the book therefore proves, decisively, that it is bullshit.

So why am I so vehemently against this sort of thing? Not simply because I don’t believe in it, I can deal with that. No, it’s the fact that when people start believing in magic, when they believe that some greater force is going to save them from the world, they stop trying to make the world a better place. Worse, they start to look down on people who are having a hard time. The fact is that we all have to make our own way in this world, and some people have a harder time of it than others, whether because of certain flaws in their person, or simply circumstances. It’s a lot easier to believe that these people are simply lazy or willfully ignorant than to get down off your high horse and lend a hand.