Letters to the Editor
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How Race and Class Affect Winfrey's Decisions
It’s significant that when Peter Birkenhead mentions the women that the girls in Oprah Winfrey’s South African school should admire and try to emulate, he tends to mention white women—Sally Ride, Gertrude Stein, etc. Winfrey grew up poor, and as a woman who has been disadvantaged not only by gender but also by class and by race, perhaps she knows better than the writer how important money and resources are to one's intellectual development. And if we look honestly at history—at scholarly and creative geniuses such as Anna Julia Cooper and Zora Neale Hurston—then we can’t ignore this idea either.
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A Blessing
I would like to bless Mr. Birkenhead with a daily subscription to "A Message From the Universe". He deserves it!
Thoughts become things. Be careful what you think.
Joe
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There is nothing new under the sun.
Emile Coué and the Laws of Suggestion
Emile Coué (1857-1926), a French pharmacist, popularized the following laws of suggestion:
The Law of Concentrated Attention
Whenever attention is concentrated on an idea over and over again, it spontaneously tends to realize itself.
The Law of Reversed Effect
The harder one tries to do something, the less chance one has of success.
The Law of Dominant Effect
A strong emotion/suggestion tends to replace a weaker one.
Cut and paste to follow link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hypnosis#Emile_Cou.C3.A9_and_the_Laws_of_Suggestion
Davies makes reference to this in the first book of The Deptford Trilogy. As his narrator observes, it's a form of secular prayer--with an inherent contradiction. The Law of Concentrated Attention demands that you focus on what you want. The Law of Reversed Effect states that if you try to hard you will fail.
"Why doesn't it work for Leola? It works for me."
"I don't think it does work for you, Boy. You've got ingrained success."
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Coming around again
This reminded me of something, and this morning I got it.
When I worked in a bookstore at the beginning of the Reagan era, a bestseller among neo-Republicans was something called "Spend Yourself Rich," a self-proclaimed mystical tome with dollar signs like swastikas on the cover. It peddled the idea that by leading an outrageously materialistic, overconsuming lifestyle, money would be attracted to you, partly through the mysterious rules of like attracting like featured in "The Secret," and partly because rich people would be so impressed by your desire to emulate them that they would give you great jobs and, well, lots of money.
I'd call it a mental "Dress For Success," except the people buying the book, often half a dozen copies at a time, dressed in the colors of the book jacket, apparently on advice from the author: white, bright green and gold. With the necklaces and medallions. Worn by men. It was the 80s.
Not hard to figure out what the philosophy really attracted. Debt, and lots of it, very quickly. The book is out of print (surprisingly), but Amazon does have a few copies, and the author is still active. These days, she specializes in evangelical Christian self-help.
So there's the connection: materialism, "mysticism," fundamentalist religion, and a strong personality to do the hawking. Some things don't change, they only look different.
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As Oprah would say, "Yes! YEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!"
Every time I tell somebody I really don't care for Oprah
a) I'm a little afraid beforehand
and
b) Afterwards, I feel like I'm scrambling to defend myself against being labeled a horrible person who hates strong black women who do charitable work.
I don't know that much about The Secret, but I did catch some of Oprah After the Show that was recorded after one of the episodes you discuss in your article. And I was so horrified by it that I recorded it and rewatched it with my boyfriend.
Oprah and her panel were ganging up on a single woman in the audience, telling her she was putting desperation into the universe and she needed to thank the universe for being single. "I do! Right, I do?" she asked her friend who came with her.
My boyfriend summed up the whole scene in a lovely way: Here's Oprah surrounding herself with really simple know-it-alls who spew catchphrases and she is THRILLED to actually grasp what they're talking about and delighted to be sitting as part of their little panel.
It's disturbing: People convinced they have it all figured out telling other people how to live.
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Response to Tim Lukeman
Ye, I have noticed the condiscending tone of "Scret" believers, and I agree that it is indicative of an unwillingness to listen to truth. Random, unpredictanble, unavoidable things happen in life. Those who are TRULY happy can be called so because they accept this as reality and live the best and most valuable way that they can in spite of it.
The greatest source of human suffering is believing to be true that which is not. Wishing something were true is not enough, and in fact, is all the more reason why a reasonable amount of skepticism is always necessary. Skepticism is not the same as doubt or negativity. It's just good common sense.
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Hawk Away Oprah: No Sale but No Offence Taken Either
I don't buy ten dollar golf balls but I don't get offended at ads that suggest my game would improve hugely if I did, even if the ads feature a favourite pro golfer.
I'll pass on "The Secret" as well, but I find it hard to get upset about the hucksterism which forms the substance(?) of its appeal.
Anyone who is dumb enough to look to Oprah for guidance on anything other than how to pleasantly and vapidly converse with celebrities is going to get taken by someone. Better that it be by the purveyors of "The Secret" than by some UFO-related death cult. No bodies to bury, for one thing.
Marc Binavince
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Prah's autodidacticism becomes evident
Oprah means well, certainly. She believes that optimism and hope are necessary to success. Yes, they certainly are. But optimism and hope are not ALL that is necessary. Hard work is necessary. Luck (which I see as good timing/good geography or right place/right tim) is also necessary.
She no doubt profited from a happy confluence of all three.
She is also well read. However she did not finish university, and seems mostly self-taught. She suffers from what I see many many bright and self directed adult students attending higher education for the first time suffer from: a lack of critical thinking. That is, the ability to discern where a theory comes from, what its holes are, its relationship to reality.
At one time I think her ability to discern BS was more acute. She is not stupid. I have seen her (years and years ago) call out guests who were full of BS. She has or had a good instinct.
However her incredible wealth and the adulation of her fans have unfortunately dulled her inherent acuteness or critical ability, and instilled in her a "situational narcissism" that encourages the worst aspects of herself, and celebrates the wrong parts of her success (popularity and material consumption).
She is NOT the same Oprah I remember from her early days on Chicago TV. She seems like a different person to me--she has become the very person she used to seem appalled by.
Also she does not have a solid critical background, instilled by a good education, to fall back on. She lacks perspective and awareness of all the ways in which philosophy, history and science can be manipulated and abused to justify very specific, self-serving worldviews. She is not alone in this of course.
She seeks stories that confirm her limited view of the universe. That is why she fell for Frey. His story confirmed her uneducated theory of "success". This is why she is falling for the "secret" now. It simply confirms her vision of how the world works--a vision entirely based on her increasingly narcissistic engagement with the world (a world of serious $$$ and worshipful fans).
Any critical thinking about a system that has rewarded her could destroy her.
It is sad because as many other posters put it, she is talented and has a charisma that could accomplish so much more good that just a delux hotel with a little education for 300 of the world's poorest girls.
I find Oprah's new identity so sad. All that money and power, and yet so desperate to somehow recreate her ideal childhood and project upon children who are growing up in radically worse situations.