By Jack Lee
Time to put on your tinfoil hat and set your crackpot alarm! Another new scam is sweeping the nation and also sweeping up millions of dollars. The latest buzz that has the gullible among us all agog is a video called, “The Secret“. Promoters claim they have sold 1.5 million CD’s and books worldwide and it’s sales are skyrocketing, a testiment to the brillance of your average consumer.
The Secret is nothing more than an old idea about the power of positive thinking couched as new age idea where you ask, you believe and you will receive!
All you have to do is buy the CD…power, love and riches to follow!
We’re told, positive thinking works like a magnet and thus positive things will be attracted to you, but if you think negatively, then negative things will happen to you or so says the video. It starts out by pumping you up with all the things you might need to complete your life, love, wealth, power, success, whatever it is that your little old heart desires you can have it, by merely thinking it will happen. Its all about this ancient secret supressed by un-named meanies for un-stated motivations who have existed throughout history just to make sure you didn’t learn the secret because they don’t want you to be happy…talk about a big conspiracy! lol
The secret is the “Law of Attraction“. So, where in the long history of science do we find such a law that works every single time like the law of inertia or gravity? The short answer, we don’t find it because it isn’t there, it exists only in the minds of the cons and their dupes that believe the quackery because unlike Newton’s Law where you can toss your own apple into the air and see it fall to the ground, there is no quantifiable way to prove the so-called Law of Attraction, except through testimonials and we all know what that’s worth.
Rhonda Byrne, is a jouranlist and the creator of the book “The Secret”, now out in CD form and she says thought is transformed into a cosmic power that will make things happen. Positive thoughts attract positive things, negative thoughts attract negative things.
Asking for good things to happen was once commonly called prayer, but this is new-age, and high tech advertising has repackaged this into a multimillion dollar business for Ms. Byrne, only she took the God part out….pass’ I suppose. The most remarkable part of this story is the grand hoaxtress thought it all up and had it out in book form in just 30 days! From idea to implementation in a month… NOW thats amazing.
Reality check: If Ms. Byrnes believed in her own theory, I wonder why she just didn’t wish for it to happen? Taking this a bit further, if by just thinking it why not think junk food that makes you fat will make you thin? According to Byrnes, it’s only you thinking it will make you fat that makes you fat…so just think it will make you thin and poof, the new thin you!
Even Opra fell for the wacky testimonials and suedo-science they use to promote the scam. As one internet blogger aptly reported, “Self help is a cookie-butter business. Its all about making customers feel good. Thus the positive reaction by many of the un-initiated to The Secret. Pump the audience up first and then sell them. The Secret is nothing more than a carefully crafted execution in marketing.”
The Big PS in this story is that there is still no substitute for a good plan in life backed up by hardwork and due dilligence. As Yoda would say, a positive attitude alone success it does not make!
For more information on this fraud please read the following:
http://skepdic.com/lawofattraction.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17314883/site/newsweek/
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-klein13feb13,0,3953992.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail