Letters to the Editor
-
The weakness of the believers
I just have to add that it's telling how so many of the "laws of attraction" defenders on here have to post with Anonymous or No Name Given. Sure shows the conviction of their faith, and how eager they are to be associated with it. Or perhaps they realise that their own lives, if exposed, would provide a clear and obvious counterexample of the tenets they espouse.
-
Peter Birkenhead's niche on Salon - bitterness
Peter Birkenhead has definitely found a niche for his bitterness on Salon. As with his previous essay on being a mid-list actor, he pours an impressive amount of bile into rage against others who choose to keep going toward their dreams no matter what.
Between Birkenhead and Camille Paglia, Salon seems to be forging the left's answer to Ann Coulter.
It's not pretty.
-
Ann Coulter
If "The Secret" is really true, how do you explain Ann Coulter?
-
Answer me this:
If the power of positive thinking is so good, why aren't we winning in Iraq?
They visualized the world being better off without Saddam Hussein. They visualized the Iraqis greeting us as liberators and throwing flowers at us. They visualized democracy and freedom blooming in the region. They visualized that we wouldn't need too many troops and that they would all be home by now. Cheney visualized the insurgency being in its last throes. Why hasn't it worked?
If you think it hasn't worked because the media and the liberals were 'too negative' on the war, and didn't report enough stories of school paintings, then you've just joined the American right wing, lock, stock and barrel.
The fact is, probably the greatest exponent of positive thinking in history was Adolph Hitler. He certainly did not allow anything less than maximally positive thoughts about the German nation and the Ayran race. He exhorted the German people on to ever more ludicrious and dubious goals. He visualized a thousand year reich and dreamed of world domination. He put his critics in jail and killed many of them. None of it turned out too well and he died by his own hand in a bunker. So much for the power of positive thinking.
-
Mystery Schools meet Consumerism
For those that argue that "The Secret" is simply another form of some older philosophies (which indeed it is), there is a huge component missing from this latest form..... monetary wealth creation was discouraged.
-
The Secret is great.
Okay, true confessions. I have a gold-plated educational resume: I graduated with honors from one of the top three small liberal arts schools in the country. I have a law degree from one of the top ten law schools. I will put my critical, intellectual and analytic chops up against anyone's, ever. Including Mr. Birkenhead.
And it took me the better part of a decade to UNLEARN a lot of the bias and crap that came along with that fine education. I would suggest Mr. Birkenhead do the same.
His entire article is an exercise in intellectual snobbery and cultural self-aggrandizement. If it doesn't come from the right university, if it's not supported by a thick pile of "data" and if it's not endorsed by the right intellectuals, it's not valid. This is a crock of shit, but the entire educational and cultural establishment is lined up to protect it. I read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which Mr. Birkenhead would presumably approve of. It's completely, utterly useless. I mean, absolutely. It's not intellectually engaging. It's just weird, complex, difficult junk. Meaning and beauty can be found in it, but it requires immense amounts of effort and time.
People see movies like The Secret, and buy millions of audio programs by people like Tony Robbins because they are searching for answers, and help, and Mr. Birkenhead's culture has completely failed them. A million people have bought The Secret. Are they all sheep? Are they all helpless puppets, who marketing has swindled? THAT is offensive.
The point of a lot of these programs, which I have found immensely helpful, is that all of us, every single one of us, has a whole matrix of assumptions and beliefs, especially about our capabilities, that have a huge impact on our performance, and ultimately, our results. The biggest impediment to the people you described in the Cabrini Green project is not money, or poverty. It's a set of societally-imparted limiting beliefs about what they can accomplish.
This doesn't mean that they can lift the Empire State Building with one hand, or win the Boston Marathon. What it does mean is that if you can learn to stop thinking of yourself as a helpless victim, if you can truly believe your goals are attainable, you really can attain them. It won't happen overnight, and it won't be easy, but it will happen. Consistency of purpose is the single most incredible force for change and hope there ever was. All the diplomas in the world don't come close.
The truly sickening thing about snotty essays like Birkenhead's is that in the end, he's feeding off the very people he claims to care about. To defend his position in the cultural heirarchy, he needs an underclass. People are human, and simple "education" -- cramming them full of "facts" and dogmatic belief systems that, not coincidentally, have the educational system at the center -- does not address many of the things that make them what they are. The Secret, and books like it, do.
I am sick to death of the ridiculous, mantra-like assertion that simply getting an education -- again, which is defined and delivered by the education industry, and defended by people like Birkenhead -- will make everything okay. It won't. The Secret illustrates a basic concept of human interaction. Hooray for Oprah.
-
Oprah's doing just fine.
Mr. Birkenhead gives us a perfect example of how the ego is threatened by our spirit.
-
Oprah Reduces Herself One Way or Another
When Oprah first began rising in talk-show prominence, I was impressed with her story of hard work and determination to overcome obstacles at birth that would have appeared impossible. I found it sad when she allowed herself to become defined by her efforts at weight reduction and then to reduce herself to the symbol of the unmarried, middle-aged career woman and eventually to diminish her credibility by becoming a sycophantic fangirl.
That she has faded to an intellectual anorexic, who dismisses her own impressive intelligence and hard work to hone and develop her skills, to promote an ethos combining karma, manifest destiny and wish fulfillment is not entirely surprising. Ms. Winfrey not only wants to be liked, she needs to be liked in order to maintain her position. Intelligence, thoughtfulness, and obvious hard work are not liked in our culture. Pretty women (and men) who make us feel we're special, appealing and powerful are rewarded in our culture. (The movie "Pretty Women" was not so much prophetic, but reflective of the underlying lesson that prostituting ourselves into successful arm ornaments and mantlepiece trophies is the secret to happily ever after.)
In chaotic times and places, we all wish desperately to feel that events aren't random. We need to believe that there is something we can do to affect our outcome. Preferably something comforting and easily doable. Hence the appeal of religious ritual and "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can" Little-Engine-That-Could philosophies. Unfortunately, if history is any predicator, it will take a social upheaval on the order of a World War, pandemic or climatic shift to push us out of our mental lethargy.
After all, as Voltaire pointed out, we live in the best of all possible worlds.