The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Rswinters
()
Date: May 15, 2007 08:28AM
[board.culteducation.com]
If this link doesn't work? I hope a moderator will do it correctly for people to use link to go to page.
Thanks.
If this link doesn't work? I hope a moderator will do it correctly for people to use link to go to page.
Thanks.
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Harleygal
()
Date: May 16, 2007 02:11AM
Rswinters: When you go into the message board, under discussion topics, click on "Multi Level Marketing & Commercial Schemes" and you will then locate "Abraham-Hicks".
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Reality 2 by 4
()
Date: May 17, 2007 01:51AM
Quote
spewey
Thanks to Landmark Forum and The Secret my girlfriend and I are no longer together. Because I wouldn't do Landmark and because I didn't embrace The Secret as part of my daily life (as in, "If you want a Ferrari, think about it. If you don't get one then you never really believed you could) her view of me changed dramatically.
Whereas for many months of our relationship she told me I was the best man shed ever known and she's thankful for my presence in her life every day, by the time I told her I didn't think we could afford a supremely expensive house on our meager budget and that I wasn't interested in The Forum, I was a done deal.
Ultimately I know it wasn't a good match. But the frustrating part is that I saw real potential for us which, without the external pressures set in motion by Landmark, then manifested via The Secret, coul have esily lead to marriage.
I'm really sorry to hear that. My boyfriend and I had a wonderful relationship for almost two years until this crap changed him. So I can relate.
Don't the people who perpetuate this stuff even care how many lives they might screw up and how many people might be hurt as a result of their marketing ploys disguised as "self-help" advice? :evil:
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Jack Oskar Larm
()
Date: May 17, 2007 11:02AM
Quote
Reality 2 by 4
Don't the people who perpetuate this stuff even care how many lives they might screw up and how many people might be hurt as a result of their marketing ploys disguised as "self-help" advice?
The overwhelming statistics would suggest the answer to that is 'NO!'
Further evidence would suggest that an awful lot of people attracted to this kind of stuff (a very broad category here) are obsessively self-interested...the kinds of people who would likely start their own cults (if given half a chance) to prey on the needy/stupid/cashed-up!
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Madshus
()
Date: May 23, 2007 09:03PM
Quote
spewey
Thanks to Landmark Forum and The Secret my girlfriend and I are no longer together. Because I wouldn't do Landmark and because I didn't embrace The Secret as part of my daily life (as in, "If you want a Ferrari, think about it. If you don't get one then you never really believed you could) her view of me changed dramatically.
spewey... you are not alone! I've had the same experience, where it always came back to my former girlfriend saying I had to do the training in order for us to communicate and move forward. I tired of her condescending attitude, and although it has been difficult, have worked on moving on.
One way to 'combat' it in a way is to turn the table, and let her know she is not as advanced as you are... lol. By this I mean that you still have your ability to think critically, and therefore are more aware and complete, which is really true. I can tell by the tone of your post that you on solid ground.
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Madshus
()
Date: May 23, 2007 09:08PM
Quote
Reality 2 by 4
I cannot understand how some people are willing to throw away personal relationships and totally change their views on life in order to follow some new fad self-help book. Why are they so malleable? Do they not have any real personal convictions or sense of self?
Yeah!! More rational thought and views about all this ridiculous crap. ;-) I totally agree with your sentiment, and have wondered the exact same things... the answer seems apparent though, and you gave it in your post - MANY people do not have any real convictions, and are malleable, and in my opinion, desperate.
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Hope
()
Date: May 26, 2007 04:36AM
Love this, culled from slate.com
Think Negative!Oprah, it's time to come clean about The Secret.
By John Gravois
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 2:17 PM ET
Dear Oprah,
Not too long ago, one of your viewers—a woman named Kim—wrote you to announce that she had decided to halt her breast-cancer treatments and heal herself with her mind. Kim had just seen your two shows dedicated to The Secret, the self-help phenomenon that says we shape the world with our thoughts, and she was inspired to bet her life on it.
You're an optimistic lady, Oprah, but this gave even you the willies. So you went on the air to "clarify your thoughts" about the Law of Attraction, The Secret's underlying theory that mind conjures matter. You implored Kim to go back to her treatments. And you told your audience that the Law of Attraction "is not the answer to everything. It is not the answer to atrocities or every tragedy."
You saw the craziness in that logic, and good for you. But frankly, Oprah, I don't think you've done quite enough to make up for turning the Law of Attraction into the biggest thing since TomKat. Since you gave it your endorsement, The Secret has become one of the fastest-selling books and probably the most successful infomercial in history. The gaggle of gurus who peddle The Secret's message all over the world are still out there, arguing that it is the answer to every atrocity and tragedy. One went so far as to blame the suffering in Darfur on stinkin' thinkin'.
That's a lot to answer for. But don't worry, Oprah. You still have the power to turn this entire misguided craze into a "teachable moment." And I know how you can do it. Just have your people pick up the phone right now and invite Karen Cerulo on to your show.
Karen Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a book last year called Never Saw It Coming. In it, she argues that we are individually, institutionally, and societally hellbent on wishful thinking. The Secret tells us to visualize best-case scenarios and banish negative ones from our minds. Never Saw It Coming says that's what we've been doing all along—and we get blindsided by even the most foreseeable disasters because of it.
In her research, Cerulo found that when most of us look out at the world and plan for our future, we fuzz out our vision of any failure, fluke, disease, or disaster on the horizon. Instead, we focus on an ideal future, we burnish our best memories, and, well, we watch a lot of your show. Meanwhile, we're inarticulate about worst-case scenarios. Just thinking about them makes us nervous and uncomfortable.
A glance at a few statistics shows that most of us see just what we want. In a national survey of parents by the Public Agenda organization, a hefty majority said their child never stays out too late, never uses bad language, never wears sloppy or revealing clothes, and never does poorly in school. Only a third of American sunbathers use sunscreen, and Californians are almost twice as likely to play the lottery as they are to buy earthquake insurance. When the American Association of Retired Persons asked a sample of adults what they expected from old age, most said they figured they would always have enough money and good health to do what they wanted. And only 30 percent of Americans have written their wills.
How is this working out for us? Think of all the times you've heard the refrain, "I never thought it would happen to me." The American Academy of Dermatology projects that one in five Americans will contract skin cancer sometime in their lives. According to the author of the AARP study, elderly Americans have a "high probability" of eventually falling into poverty, and the surveyed adults had "unrealistic expectations about their physical abilities as they grow older." (Most said they did not have a plan for old age.) And death—the event that really knocks the wind out of The Secret—still has a 100 percent chance of happening to all of us, no matter what we think.
Your viewers ate up The Secret's advice about their personal lives. But I wonder whether they would be as enthusiastic if someone proposed running the government according to the Law of Attraction. As it happens, Cerulo spends a lot of time in her book documenting how even the public agencies designed to prevent disasters often fall victim to blindly positive thinking.
Take NASA, for example, which ignored repeated warnings from its engineers in advance of the Challenger explosion because it was so busy envisioning a perfect blastoff. Or the FBI, which turned a blind eye to a memo from its Phoenix office in the summer of 2001—a memo suggesting that al-Qaida was using local flight schools to infiltrate the civil aviation system. Or the Bush administration, which has been roundly condemned for planning the Iraq war around a set of best-case scenarios. (What do you think The Secret folks would say about Iraq? "We will be greeted as liberators" was good, but "Mission Accomplished" was even better. Visualize, guys, visualize!) A little negative thinking might have gone a long way in all those situations.
But unfortunately, we go to great lengths to make people who think negatively feel unwelcome—something Cerulo would probably point out if you invited her on to your show.
Just think of all the pejorative and even pathological terms we have for doomsayers. Like, for instance, doomsayer. Also alarmist, naysayer, paranoiac, complainer, defeatist, downer, and killjoy. Rack your brain: It is hard to think of a laudatory term for contemplating the worst-case scenario. So maybe The Secret appeals because its batty metaphysics help to keep us in the positive-thinking fold. In a culture that stigmatizes negative thinking and imbues it with fear and loathing, a rationalized escape from worry is its own reward.
But that's not the liberation we should be after. Instead, Cerulo argues we have a lot to learn from two groups of people who have emancipated themselves from the pressure to think positively. She points out that medical workers and computer technicians—the professional troubleshooters of the world—keep our bodies and mainframes running by being paragons of pessimism. When doctors and IT workers take up a case, they begin by dispassionately assuming the worst and then move up from there. Their protocols demand precise and evolving definitions of the most severe maladies and malfunctions, while they tend to have fuzzy and almost absentminded definitions of health, well-being, and normal function. That's the opposite of The Secret. While this may sometimes make doctors and techies a drag, it also helped them avert worldwide disasters like the SARS outbreak and the Y2K bug.
Everybody respects a good attitude, but no amount of magical thinking will make the universe obey our wishes. Your audience has gotten extremely good at visualizing what it wants. But now it needs your help envisioning the risks, goof-ups, and unintended consequences that accompany life on earth.
Think Negative!Oprah, it's time to come clean about The Secret.
By John Gravois
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 2:17 PM ET
Dear Oprah,
Not too long ago, one of your viewers—a woman named Kim—wrote you to announce that she had decided to halt her breast-cancer treatments and heal herself with her mind. Kim had just seen your two shows dedicated to The Secret, the self-help phenomenon that says we shape the world with our thoughts, and she was inspired to bet her life on it.
You're an optimistic lady, Oprah, but this gave even you the willies. So you went on the air to "clarify your thoughts" about the Law of Attraction, The Secret's underlying theory that mind conjures matter. You implored Kim to go back to her treatments. And you told your audience that the Law of Attraction "is not the answer to everything. It is not the answer to atrocities or every tragedy."
You saw the craziness in that logic, and good for you. But frankly, Oprah, I don't think you've done quite enough to make up for turning the Law of Attraction into the biggest thing since TomKat. Since you gave it your endorsement, The Secret has become one of the fastest-selling books and probably the most successful infomercial in history. The gaggle of gurus who peddle The Secret's message all over the world are still out there, arguing that it is the answer to every atrocity and tragedy. One went so far as to blame the suffering in Darfur on stinkin' thinkin'.
That's a lot to answer for. But don't worry, Oprah. You still have the power to turn this entire misguided craze into a "teachable moment." And I know how you can do it. Just have your people pick up the phone right now and invite Karen Cerulo on to your show.
Karen Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University, wrote a book last year called Never Saw It Coming. In it, she argues that we are individually, institutionally, and societally hellbent on wishful thinking. The Secret tells us to visualize best-case scenarios and banish negative ones from our minds. Never Saw It Coming says that's what we've been doing all along—and we get blindsided by even the most foreseeable disasters because of it.
In her research, Cerulo found that when most of us look out at the world and plan for our future, we fuzz out our vision of any failure, fluke, disease, or disaster on the horizon. Instead, we focus on an ideal future, we burnish our best memories, and, well, we watch a lot of your show. Meanwhile, we're inarticulate about worst-case scenarios. Just thinking about them makes us nervous and uncomfortable.
A glance at a few statistics shows that most of us see just what we want. In a national survey of parents by the Public Agenda organization, a hefty majority said their child never stays out too late, never uses bad language, never wears sloppy or revealing clothes, and never does poorly in school. Only a third of American sunbathers use sunscreen, and Californians are almost twice as likely to play the lottery as they are to buy earthquake insurance. When the American Association of Retired Persons asked a sample of adults what they expected from old age, most said they figured they would always have enough money and good health to do what they wanted. And only 30 percent of Americans have written their wills.
How is this working out for us? Think of all the times you've heard the refrain, "I never thought it would happen to me." The American Academy of Dermatology projects that one in five Americans will contract skin cancer sometime in their lives. According to the author of the AARP study, elderly Americans have a "high probability" of eventually falling into poverty, and the surveyed adults had "unrealistic expectations about their physical abilities as they grow older." (Most said they did not have a plan for old age.) And death—the event that really knocks the wind out of The Secret—still has a 100 percent chance of happening to all of us, no matter what we think.
Your viewers ate up The Secret's advice about their personal lives. But I wonder whether they would be as enthusiastic if someone proposed running the government according to the Law of Attraction. As it happens, Cerulo spends a lot of time in her book documenting how even the public agencies designed to prevent disasters often fall victim to blindly positive thinking.
Take NASA, for example, which ignored repeated warnings from its engineers in advance of the Challenger explosion because it was so busy envisioning a perfect blastoff. Or the FBI, which turned a blind eye to a memo from its Phoenix office in the summer of 2001—a memo suggesting that al-Qaida was using local flight schools to infiltrate the civil aviation system. Or the Bush administration, which has been roundly condemned for planning the Iraq war around a set of best-case scenarios. (What do you think The Secret folks would say about Iraq? "We will be greeted as liberators" was good, but "Mission Accomplished" was even better. Visualize, guys, visualize!) A little negative thinking might have gone a long way in all those situations.
But unfortunately, we go to great lengths to make people who think negatively feel unwelcome—something Cerulo would probably point out if you invited her on to your show.
Just think of all the pejorative and even pathological terms we have for doomsayers. Like, for instance, doomsayer. Also alarmist, naysayer, paranoiac, complainer, defeatist, downer, and killjoy. Rack your brain: It is hard to think of a laudatory term for contemplating the worst-case scenario. So maybe The Secret appeals because its batty metaphysics help to keep us in the positive-thinking fold. In a culture that stigmatizes negative thinking and imbues it with fear and loathing, a rationalized escape from worry is its own reward.
But that's not the liberation we should be after. Instead, Cerulo argues we have a lot to learn from two groups of people who have emancipated themselves from the pressure to think positively. She points out that medical workers and computer technicians—the professional troubleshooters of the world—keep our bodies and mainframes running by being paragons of pessimism. When doctors and IT workers take up a case, they begin by dispassionately assuming the worst and then move up from there. Their protocols demand precise and evolving definitions of the most severe maladies and malfunctions, while they tend to have fuzzy and almost absentminded definitions of health, well-being, and normal function. That's the opposite of The Secret. While this may sometimes make doctors and techies a drag, it also helped them avert worldwide disasters like the SARS outbreak and the Y2K bug.
Everybody respects a good attitude, but no amount of magical thinking will make the universe obey our wishes. Your audience has gotten extremely good at visualizing what it wants. But now it needs your help envisioning the risks, goof-ups, and unintended consequences that accompany life on earth.
The Secret (a movie)
Posted by:
Fishbulb
()
Date: June 13, 2007 04:30AM
... then when you're finished watching the link from question lady (above) you should watch the follow up, here:
[www.youtube.com]
This link and the one from question lady are about David Schirmer. For those of you who are fortunate to be unfamiliar with The Secret, Schirmer was the one who claimed all you had to do was to quit "seeing" bills in your mail and instead start "seeing" them as cheques. When you do get a bill thank the "universe" for this wonderful cheque. He claimed that he did this, and now he gets tons of cheques and hardly any bills.
According to these links, this is probably because he simply quit paying people he owed.
These videos are worth watching. He squirms quite a bit before turning on the "victim" act.
Where's Oprah now?
[www.youtube.com]
This link and the one from question lady are about David Schirmer. For those of you who are fortunate to be unfamiliar with The Secret, Schirmer was the one who claimed all you had to do was to quit "seeing" bills in your mail and instead start "seeing" them as cheques. When you do get a bill thank the "universe" for this wonderful cheque. He claimed that he did this, and now he gets tons of cheques and hardly any bills.
According to these links, this is probably because he simply quit paying people he owed.
These videos are worth watching. He squirms quite a bit before turning on the "victim" act.
Where's Oprah now?
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