I think we're hard-wired to grasp at straws. It may be the flip-side of our "evolved" brains or some survival instinct gone awry.

It is disheartening to count the generations of con-men who have made fortunes using these formulae. Also, the loss of whatever legitimate content that gets tossed with the rest of the "New Age/New Thought" malarkey. I think there are some cultures that are relatively immune to these types of scams -- certain traditions that teach the more complex and variable nature of existence, of initiative, of will and perseverance, of natural talent, learned skill, persuasiveness, enthusiasm, and influence. And these include, by definition, a full accounting of the vagaries of fortune, the acceptance of limitations, of tragedy, hardship, disaster, and of plain old bad luck. I see all these "programs" containing vast errors of judgment in the assignment of proportion of the elements that factor into all existence, these being in relative flux at any one time. I think of the "sick child" test when I ponder on the silliness of these programs. The assertion that all things are possible with "XYZ" thinking, practice, technique, processing, prayer, choice, alternate reality construction, or ~technology~ is a cruel hoax on any parent of a sick child.


Ellen

...Which also brings to mind the regressive nature of these groups. The fact is that they cultivate a type of childishness with the attendant grandiosity, dependence, impulsivity, and emotional immaturity. They reduce people. They make people foolish. Recall the book Joan Didion wrote about her descent into insanity when both her husband and her child were struck by fatal and serious illness at the same time?

"I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome" (Joan Didion).

She titled it "The Year of Magical Thinking." I think she'd probably rip the current "Secret" nonsense to shreds.


Ellen

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...Which also brings to mind the regressive nature of these groups. The fact is that they cultivate a type of childishness with the attendant grandiosity, dependence, impulsivity, and emotional immaturity. They reduce people. They make people foolish. Recall the book Joan Didion wrote about her descent into insanity when both her husband and her child were struck by fatal and serious illness at the same time?

"I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome" (Joan Didion).

She titled it "The Year of Magical Thinking." I think she'd probably rip the current "Secret" nonsense to shreds.


Ellen

great & intriguing insight, and so true about how these groups reduce people and make people foolish. Without that ability to reduce and demean, there'd be no suckers born or created and I wonder if that ability exists only because we as a species find growth and maturity so difficult to achieve and master that it is just easier to get 'reduced'. I don't believe in evolution much myself but for those that do, this behavior would seem counter-evolutionary for humankind.
I know for me sometimes, depending on the difficulty of a task at hand, I'd rather just fail at it than work hard and overcome the difficulty. Maybe the 'magical thinking' is just an extreme sort of avoiding responsibility and hoping against hope to turn the cold hard truth into an 'Alice in wonderland' experience. If a person believes in 'the secret', Alice in wonderland is only a thought away... :wink:
Is there a connection to this tendency and the dopaminergic (reward) pathways in our brains?
'I think 'The secret' survives only in the shadows of lazy human tendency for denial, but denial wears thin the longer it remains an [i:e27e07e713]only[/i:e27e07e713] comfort and refuge.

[/quote]Without that ability to reduce and demean, there'd be no suckers born or created and I wonder if that ability exists only because we as a species find growth and maturity so difficult to achieve and master that it is just easier to get 'reduced'. I don't believe in evolution much myself but for those that do, this behavior would seem counter-evolutionary for humankind.[\quote]

This kind of behavior is not "counter-evolutionary" because it does not prevent humans from adapting physically to their environment and successfully reproducing. Evolution is a series of tiny physical changes over vast periods of time that make a species better adapted to surviving in the environment in which they live. Those that adapt, live to reproduce. And reproduction,staying alive long enough to send life forward int othe future is the purpose of evolution.

Re magical thinking and it's epidemic proportions, I think it's one sign that an awful lot of people simply don't grow up, they don't mature psychologically. Magical/omnipotent thinking is a child's way and is a child's way of coping with difficulty. Are psychologically mature adults attracted to that kind of stuff, as a system for either living or for coping with problems?

skeptic

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This kind of behavior is not "counter-evolutionary" because it does not prevent humans from adapting physically to their environment and successfully reproducing.

I see what you mean but it doesn't seem like anyone wants to adapt physically to the environment but to manipulate its entire appearance instead.
If our present day society isn't careful with choices to create and chase fantasy and magic, there may be a future generation of humans evolved into full fledged pixies and frail winged fairies dancing on air, shrouded by glittery dust particles, hovering in repetitve circular motion, on the most beautifully colored rainbows, never once caring at all that they are merely yesterday's dreamings....hey, doesn't sound like a bad idea! 8) I think some beings just like this existed in the sixties.... :) Ok, I'm just being bitter and exaggerating somewhat...

Doesn't human kind adapt in circumstances that are most favorable (as in the path of least resistance)? It seems that magical thinking, fantastical living and shooting for the far away stars is deemed as most favorable living in the last few hundred years. This can't be good for human evolution....I wonder what neanderthals were trying to avoid or deny to have created a society of beings like there is today...I wonder what they 'attracted' back in their milleniums.... smaller and lighter clubs, less cumbersome hair and brain mass? Which brings me my next disturbing thought, like which particular dysfunctioning family of Australopithecines werner may have evolved from... :x

I'm going to watch tv or something...I'm getting sillier by the second...

Perhaps it's just difficult for many people to deal with the unknown and uncontrollable. Life's chaos and chance causes so much insecurity, that a "solution" or means of control is like a lifeline, even if they are only fooling themselves. It makes them feel secure enough to keep going, in the (false) belief that there is a way to control what happens, whether it's via appeal to a supernatural power, studying the position of the planets, or unleashing a hidden force in their brains.
This is nothing new. Humans have been appeasing the gods, trying to contact the dead, consulting oracles and psychics for thousands of years. The newest ways just reflect the times we live in.

"I see what you mean but it doesn't seem like anyone wants to adapt physically to the environment but to manipulate its entire appearance instead."

Evolution is not a choice made by an individual or society. It doesn't matter whether anyone "wants" to adapt physically or not. It's a matter of natural selection, with those best able to survive due to a small genetic change, passing that change onto their offspring.


"If our present day society isn't careful with choices to create and chase fantasy and magic, there may be a future generation of humans evolved into full fledged pixies and frail winged fairies dancing on air, shrouded by glittery dust particles, hovering in repetitve circular motion, on the most beautifully colored rainbows, never once caring at all that they are merely yesterday's dreamings....hey, doesn't sound like a bad idea! 8) I think some beings just like this existed in the sixties.... :) Ok, I'm just being bitter and exaggerating somewhat..."

Au contraire, humans were MORE inclined to magical thinking and belief in the fantastic and supernatural in the PAST, when they didn't know any better. And, once again, evolution has nothing to do with what individuals believe.



"Doesn't human kind adapt in circumstances that are most favorable (as in the path of least resistance)?"

It's not the path of least resistence, it's the physical feature that helps a species (any species) adapt to the environment BETTER than the ones without the feature. If magical thinking helped one group of humans work together for a more successful hunt or to dominate another group, then fewer of them will die and that tendency will be passed on to their children. The ones without magical thinking, if that leads to isolation and lack of cooperation (and I'm not saying it does) will be killed off by the more successful cohesive group and have no offspring to be like them.



"It seems that magical thinking, fantastical living and shooting for the far away stars is deemed as most favorable living in the last few hundred years."

Magical thinking is nothing new.

"This can't be good for human evolution....I wonder what neanderthals were trying to avoid or deny to have created a society of beings like there is today..."

Anthropologists now believe the neandethals were an evolutionary dead end, and that modern homo sapiens are NOT descended from neanderthal.
But whatever ancient humans believed about the way the universe operates was more an attempt to explain, not avoid or deny.

]

A good deal of the attraction to LGATs is the simplifying fable... often this fable is packaged as a philosophy or a cosmic insight... it still functions on the emotional level as a fable.

Landmark's teaching or "body of knowledge" is base on two contradictory, mutually negating fables, which may explain the confusions reported by some who attent these types of seminars.

1. There is something that is "what really is", apparantly an eternal ground of truth, sort of a modernized Platonic realm of the Ideal... which may be more true, in a ralative way, for bricks than thoughts... but Landmark's "really real" world doesn't make any distinctions... a brick is a thought is a possibility... they're all equally real.. which leads us to a kind of weird materialism... and I think that weird materialism is what is so fundamentally screwed up about Werner Rosenhard's thought processes.. the belief that there is a fixed "what's so" hiding in the barn, and all we need do is flush it out...

2. However, nothing really is and nothing can be really known because everything is "story"... there is nothing BUT interpretation... this is known to philosophy as Perspectivalism... there is no truth, only perspective... thus everything is a function of "how you see it"... this is also part of the [b:3192b9d11b]Being[/b:3192b9d11b] theory of existence

IMHO... this split thinking... that there is a hard truth lurking behind everyhting, a truth that is obscured by rackets, and in gross contradcition to that belief... that everything is a function of intention, perspective, and ultimately the will. One wills the world into existence by intention. EST and Landmark attempt to show how one's commitments (beliefs, attitudes, worldviews, theories, behaviors) are constantly "bringing the world into being"... this is part of the [b:3192b9d11b]Becoming [/b:3192b9d11b] theory of existence...

The [b:3192b9d11b]Being/Becoming [/b:3192b9d11b]tension has been with philosophy for a long and represents two fairly distinct ways of thought... and somehow, somewhere, Werner Rosenberg latched onto pieces of both, and apparantly attempted to fuse the two ideas into a grand synthesis that would transcend the [b:3192b9d11b]being/becoming [/b:3192b9d11b] tension...

IMO... instead of a successful synthesis he got only halfway there with a pastiche of half digested ideas, megalomania, and the modest belief that they were in possession of Enlightenment... so who is to argue with that ?

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Au contraire, humans were MORE inclined to magical thinking and belief in the fantastic and supernatural in the PAST, when they didn't know any better. And, once again, evolution has nothing to do with what individuals believe.

Good point but It doesn't seem as though the magical thinking has been completely abandoned for the more scientific explanations of how life works though.
If evolution is purely about genes and natural selection, someone better lock up the magical thinkers before they infest too much of the rest of the gene pool. If depression is heritable so is magical thinking.