I read The Secret, so you don’t have to

I admit it. Curiosity took me by the nose and all through this terrible book.

This book was one long upbeat infomercial about the power of the secret and I was strapped to my chair with those horrid eyeopeners. I knew I was supposed to feel hooked and excited by the power to change my own life. But this book is a soft blanket for rich people who think basic kindness and generosity is a secret superpower to get them what they want.

I mean it’s probably wasted on me, but the secret is the law of attraction (Woops, spoiled it!). Everything you think comes your way; you got cancer? Should have thought of rainbows and puppy dogs my friend! As you can see I am not a very good secret’er. I believe in kindness and hard work rather than images in my mind dictating my life. And they work with such a wonderful phrasing; of course! If I work really hard at something, it’s an image in my mind and I might just succeed.

And the book works from such a narrow view of success; like Shakespeare and Mozart whose “names have been immortalised” or such as the fact that the reason 1% of the world earns 96% of the income, it’s not because family money is inherited or because of corrupt bank investors or structural inequality in society…NO it’s because they know the secret! The Occupy Wallstreet movement could have been dispersed simply by handing out copies of this book. Whoopie!!!

And it tries to pretend that its all sciency.

“Quantum physicists tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought!”

Can I please get a [citation needed] Cause a citation is definitely needed! Oh wait no, read on about 100 pages more and you will see.

“I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them.”

Please Rhonda, you’re killing me here. This stupid shit is what leads to bullshit like this. This is not science:

“thoughts are magnetic and thoughts have frequency. Those thoughts are sent out into the universe and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency.”

So if I think really hard about a car, I send a magnetic car frequency out into space that somehow magnetically attracts the same thing (never mind that that’s not how magnets actually work) and it pulls a magic space car back to me, because the car vibrates in the same frequency? Did I get that right? How did this book make sense to anybody?

“The law began at the beginning of time. It has always been and will always be.”

I mean this book-movie-whatever hybrid has become a huge success while basically postulating that a car accident is your fault because someone else got drunk and crashed into you. They even insinuate that “events in history where masses of lives were lost” is due to “people believ[ing] they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, those thoughts of fear and separation and powerlessness if persistent can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Do I have to spell out how horrible and insensitive this is? Not to mention stupid.

If I’m being really nice, yes I can see how belief in oneself can help in gaining certain favorable outcomes, making you appear more confident in a jobinterview, making you work really hard at a project etc. But does this message really need to be wrapped up in 180 pages of pure drivel like an over enthusiastic yogi constantly flipping into handstands and incessantly talking about how the power of yoga frees her. Nobody likes to be around that person, and no one should want to read that in book form.

Urh. Why do I even bother with these kinds of books.