"The Secret"
The secret to "The Secret" is that it gives you something to put your faith into when faith in yourself has curled up into a ball and begun whimpering. Its a divine solution to the modern western person who has found our prior philosophy of humanism to be inherently flawed or who has found prayers in a deity have gone unanswered.
Before we knew how big the universe really is it suited our imaginations to believe that we could rely upon hard work and perseverance to overcome obstacles in life. In an affluent society like ours the humanist attitude was always going to be generally successful. However when humanism fails it brings us to our knees because the responsibility for our failure lies completely with ourselves.
And so it was only a matter of time before "The Secret" was born as our New Millennium saviour. The philosophy is simply that the universe wants to give you what you want. In fact, if you simply expect to get what you want, believe you will get what you want and prepare to receive what you want then sooner or later the universe will deliver. This might support the expanding universe theory - with a burgeoning population who want more and more out of life the universe can't expand quick enough. This philosophy also neatly answers the question of why the universe is so ridiculously large. All those swirling galaxies, dwarf stars, swirling nebulae and black holes are there to facilitate our requests to lose weight, gain wealth and solve Sodoku puzzles.
It also neatly accommodates the troubling source of supernatural phenomena, religious belief of every genre and our unsettling sense of 'something is out there'. It doesn't even offend anyone in the process. No-one can argue with the existence of the universe. And if the universe is granting everybody's wish then bad things happen to good people because bad people want them too. What troubles me though is that the philosophy would not work so well outside affluent societies like our own. You can't say to a girl scraping food out of a tin can in a rubbish heap that the reason she can't eat a regular meal is because she isn't wishing for one hard enough. Nor can you tell a mother dying of AIDS that the universe will make her well again.
So like all new philosophies "The Secret" tells us what we want to know - I'm still waiting for anyone with "The Truth".
Before we knew how big the universe really is it suited our imaginations to believe that we could rely upon hard work and perseverance to overcome obstacles in life. In an affluent society like ours the humanist attitude was always going to be generally successful. However when humanism fails it brings us to our knees because the responsibility for our failure lies completely with ourselves.
And so it was only a matter of time before "The Secret" was born as our New Millennium saviour. The philosophy is simply that the universe wants to give you what you want. In fact, if you simply expect to get what you want, believe you will get what you want and prepare to receive what you want then sooner or later the universe will deliver. This might support the expanding universe theory - with a burgeoning population who want more and more out of life the universe can't expand quick enough. This philosophy also neatly answers the question of why the universe is so ridiculously large. All those swirling galaxies, dwarf stars, swirling nebulae and black holes are there to facilitate our requests to lose weight, gain wealth and solve Sodoku puzzles.
It also neatly accommodates the troubling source of supernatural phenomena, religious belief of every genre and our unsettling sense of 'something is out there'. It doesn't even offend anyone in the process. No-one can argue with the existence of the universe. And if the universe is granting everybody's wish then bad things happen to good people because bad people want them too. What troubles me though is that the philosophy would not work so well outside affluent societies like our own. You can't say to a girl scraping food out of a tin can in a rubbish heap that the reason she can't eat a regular meal is because she isn't wishing for one hard enough. Nor can you tell a mother dying of AIDS that the universe will make her well again.
So like all new philosophies "The Secret" tells us what we want to know - I'm still waiting for anyone with "The Truth".
Kalikapsychosis
I already believed in 'The Universe' and a philosophy that bad things happen to good people because even bad people get what they pray for.....It just wasnt much of a secret to me.
But you make good points there.....The secret has thrown out ideas of universal balance...But the western world just LOVES that concept doesnt it?