About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Immorality of The Secret

If you've paid any attention to the always bewildering world of pseudoscience and general nonsense lately, you must have come across the buzz about “The Secret,” a book and movie by one Rhonda Byrne, being trumpeted as the ultimate (and, obviously, no longer secret) solution to every one of your problems. And I mean every single one of them. To quote from the dvd: “You get exactly what you are feeling ... What you think and what you feel and what actually manifests is always a match – no exception.” If this sounds too good to be true, it is.

The Secret is apparently a “theory” of channeling, the idea that by feeling something (positive or, more disturbingly, negatively) you somehow get the universe to “vibrate” in a way that will make your feelings determine physical reality. No need to worry about how this exactly (or even approximately) works: “Our job is not to worry about the 'how.' The 'how' will show up out of the commitment and belief in the 'what'.” Wow, Francis Bacon said that knowledge is power, thereby ushering in the era of modern science, but this is even better, here ignorance is power! Which perhaps explains why The Secret has been so prominently featured on Oprah Winfrey and the Larry King show.

Writing in eSkeptic, Ingrid Hansen Smythe pointed out that The Secret sounds like a version of cognitive behavioral therapy run amok. CBT is the idea, as one prominent book in that area puts it, that the mind can overcome moods, i.e. that rethinking why we feel in certain ways we may be able to redirect our energy in more positive and productive directions. CBT, in turn, is attractive to rationalists because it is a modern incarnation of Aristotle's view that practice makes virtue, i.e. that acting well doesn't come natural to most of us, but can be helped by working on it. The Secret, however, perverts all of this and suggests to people that their feelings can affect matter because, you know, “we are mass energy. Everything is energy. Everything.” (Again as pointed out by Smythe, this is a caricature of Einstein's famous equation: E=mc^2 only says that matter and energy are equivalent, not that they are the same thing, just think of the equivalence, as opposed to identity, between water and ice to get the point.)

All right, one might say, but why get so worked up about it, even to the point of raising the charge of immorality for followers of The Secret? It's not just that believing nonsense can't be good for your (mental, and sometimes even physical) health. It's that a “philosophy” like the one espoused in The Secret immediately falls prey to the same fundamental issue plaguing much of Christian-Muslim theology: the problem of evil. If everything that happens to you is because of your feelings (or because an all-good god decreed it), then also whatever evil befalls you has the same source (unless you use the convenient escape clause of inventing a Devil). Sure enough, the author of The Secret has been saying that if only the children of Darfur had a little more positive attitude about their predicament... This is so outrageously immoral that the media and the public should be up in arms denouncing it, instead of rushing to buy copies of The Secret and inviting its author on national television. To put it as Smythe did in eSkeptic: “Imagine looking each of those six million Jews in the eye and telling every one of them that due to the negative feeling-states they were each projecting, they were all, in effect, asking for it.” Or, which is the same, tell them that they went to crematoria because of past accumulated bad karma, or because god has some obscure but really good plan in store for them.

This is why believing nonsense is dangerous, and sometimes immoral. You are not only fooling yourself (which is bad enough), you may also more readily excuse human injustice and not act against it because, you know, the universe has a reason for it. Here is something you can do to help inject some sanity into the world: instead of buying The Secret, donate the equivalent sum to the campaign to save Darfur, or to the International Rescue Committee. And tell your friends to do the same, while you're at it.

16 comments:

  1. Before I had even heard of this book "The Secret" I saw a skit lampooning it on Saturday Night Live. It was a take on the author's appearance on Oprah. One of the guests was a crazed and jilted woman who thought she could get her cheating ex-husband back by following the advice of "The Secret". She actually ends up getting arrested for stalking. Then they actually go to a live feed from Darfur and ask a guy about how "The Secret" is helping them. It of course isn't. SNL actually did a great job of humorously showing what nonsense this stuff is.

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  2. Very, very well said...

    I love your idea of donating money to the campaign to save Darfur, or to the International Rescue Committee in lieu of purchasing The Secret.

    The Secret IS the philosophy of Mein Kampf repackaged for the modern world. It is exclusionary in that it teaches one to ignore others who are not up to ones own ideals or beliefs.

    The Secret tells us (among other things) to ignore poor people if we want to be wealthy, ignore fat people if we desire to be thin, and to look away from anyone who isn't a perfect reflection of who we'd like to be.

    The more I write about The Secret, the more ludicrous it becomes.

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  3. This Secret thing does sound unhelpful. However, can I stir the pot by asking exactly what we mean by 'immoral' and 'evil'? Isn't morality like religion - it's impossible to demonstrate one's god is real and someone else's god isn't just like it's impossible to demonstrate that one's view of 'good' is correct and someone else's view of good is incorrect. (unless one wants to use majority vote..) Morality isn't like temperature - it cannot be objectively measured.

    We can decide whether we like or dislike behaviors of people, usually based on how selfish those behaviors are percieved to be (helping the actor while hurting others).

    But recall, every act of 'supreme evil' from burning witches to the concentration camps to 9/11 was performed by people who thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were doing 'good'.

    Every war was started by people who wanted to improve things, albeit for themselves at the cost of others.

    The problem I have is in the language. If we use the terms good and evil there is no escaping the use of these terms by people who define them in a totally different manner.

    There is a big difference between these two statements although they seem trivially different:

    1. Those people are evil.

    2. I don't like what those people are doing.

    One is undeniably true while the other leads to endless and pointless debate (and the other also, just like faith, allows people to justify their actions because they can refer to an external definition of 'good/evil' that they claim no responsibility for - as if it was written in some god-given guide to morality).

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  4. Me:

    "If truth is optional, error is justifiable."

    (C.H. Spurgeon, Sermons, Vol. 3, p. 34).

    http://pathsofold.blogspot.com/2007/02/
    some-quotes-from-spurgeon.html
    cal

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  5. Essentially The Secret is just more of the "they asked for it" defense against seeing bad things happen to others. It doesn't help anyone and actively damages many - just like saying we shouldn't help children dying because "their souls chose to learn that lesson" and we interfere, they'll just have to do it over again. A cheap excuse for selfishness and callousness: you can be rich if you just want it enough, so you don't need my help.

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  6. "But recall, every act of 'supreme evil' from burning witches to the concentration camps to 9/11 was performed by people who thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were doing 'good'."

    Me,
    So why does the fact that people who thought they were doing good, but actually were doing bad, undermine your confidence in moral judgement?

    Can we not establish a common baseline of what is objectively wrong? Such as to do harm, or take anothers life is objectively wrong.

    I agree that terms such as "evil" can over simplify things. It is an ambigous term, but can clearly be applied to things like the holocaust, or intentional killing of non-combatants.

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  7. Me,
    So why does the fact that people who thought they were doing good, but actually were doing bad, undermine your confidence in moral judgement?


    My confidence in moral judgement isn't the problem. The problem is the language and the consequences of its use. Why can't we talk about people's behavior violating the rules of conduct rather than morality? The former is clear-cut while the later is as subjective and ambiguous as someone's personal knowledge of the mind of 'the creator.'

    Can we not establish a common baseline of what is objectively wrong? Such as to do harm, or take anothers life is objectively wrong.

    Sure, but why call it 'wrong' when you can call it a violation of the rules - again, it's the language that bothers me. I make this mistake with my children all the time. I say "Leaving your coat on the floor is just wrong." rather than say "It bothers me when you leave your coat on the floor - it violates the rules of the house." Again the difference between these two statements may seem minor... With the former statement I'm evoking some 'universal' truths to justify my displeasure (this is the same process that allows people to burn witches - they feel justified) whereas the latter is an honest statement that brings the whole situation down to earth and teaches the children not to defer their 'morality' to some 'higher power'.

    I agree that terms such as "evil" can over simplify things. It is an ambigous term, but can clearly be applied to things like the holocaust, or intentional killing of non-combatants.

    I happpen to disagree (and think our culture is rife with perpetuation of this nonsense). Calling someone evil enforces HATRED and is exactly what a group does to encourage hatred of others & get a mob angry enough to kill. All those who you would call evil would probably call you evil. I say that people are people and some do some awful things in my opinion, but no one and nothing is evil. It's a conceptual category that perpetuates violence.

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  8. Despite Massimo's suggestion :) I was seeing the Secret's DVD , what a lot of garbage!!!

    What was the most irritating for me was saw "scientists" giving credit of the garbage.

    Yes, I agree is inmoral Massimo and "me" the moral rules need to be dialectical for human beings, from this point of view call moral o inmoral an action is obviously justifiable from various angles but is the discussion among these angles that determine finally the rule. Our world need a lot of discussion!!! and I suspect you don't mark as different the concepts of moral and ethic.

    I completely agree with this too: "...you may also more readily excuse human injustice and not act against it because, you know, the universe has a reason for it"

    and you may belive that the route to the enlightenment is something like "Buddhist approach" and your actions can "come back" to help/hurt you :) and thus the moral actions are a sort of Karma, therefore one should behave in some way because fear or empathy with others.

    Beliieve in nonsense is the root of all evil.

    I need to put more attention to wise tips Massimo and the next month I will for save Dafur!.

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  9. Me,

    Although I do agree with the basic spirit of most of what you said, I think you're actually chasing your own tail there and have no way out.

    "It bothers me when you leave your coat on the floor - it violates the rules of the house."

    So, bothering you and violating the rules of the house are, er... wrong? You come back full circle anyway. I understand you're bothered by the language and its consequences (did I get it right?), but in the end, we can't escape the hardwired feelings of right and wrong our social primate evolution ended up "giving" us, so it's pretty much Sisyphus' work here...

    J

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  10. "Why can't we talk about people's behavior violating the rules of conduct rather than morality? The former is clear-cut while the later is as subjective and ambiguous as someone's personal knowledge of the mind of 'the creator.'"

    Me,
    But isn't the term "morality" just a shortened form of "the rules of conduct"? I fail to understand your argument here.

    "I say "Leaving your coat on the floor is just wrong." rather than say "It bothers me when you leave your coat on the floor - it violates the rules of the house.""

    I don't see how the second sentence is neccessarily better than the first. The "rules of the house" might just be some arbitrary command like keeping the sabbath. What your kids might be looking for is a reason why "it is just wrong" or "why it bothers you". Something like "your coat gets dirty on the floor, and I might trip on it and injure myself".

    "Calling someone evil enforces HATRED and is exactly what a group does to encourage hatred of others & get a mob angry enough to kill."

    But wait, I didn't say anything about calling someone evil, I applied the concept of evil to events and actions, the holocaust and killing non-combatants.

    I agree that saying that somebody or some group is intrinsically evil is not helpful.

    In fact I will give you an example that has been troubling me for some time. There is a conservative talk show host by the name of Dennis Prager. He criticizes people who cannot reach the conclusion that the people "we" are fighting in Iraq are "evil".

    My counter argument would be that although a specific action, like killing innocents, is evil, the actor may actually have motivations that cannot be dismissed so easily as evil. So I agree with you on that point in that labeling people as evil, as if it is some intrinsic property of those persons is pretty useless, and at worst harmful.

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  11. Sheldon, J & Icaro - thanks for the feedback. I rarely discuss these thoughts so hearing others' opinions on them is helpful. & A Big Thanks to Massimo for his awesome blog & continually stimulating posts!

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  12. Massimo,

    Crazy physicist and New Ager, John Hagelin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin), is in this. If you recall he was also in "What the Bleep Do We Know?"

    Massimo...what the hell is wrong with these people?

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  13. oh and by the way, that crazy ass is coming to my school this month!!!

    What should i ask him, Massimo? Besides how he sleeps at night, or how he got a doctorate.

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  14. Mark,

    I would ask him what the bleep does he know... :)

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  15. When a scientist is unable to explain a phenomena, he label it as pseudoscience. Certain natural laws cannot be proved in any existing scientific way especially when its related to human brain.

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  16. I am not a fan of the movie the secret. I thought it was a lame and commercialized presentation of an actual universal law. That law has been recently called "Law Of Attraction". The term Law of Attraction was coined by an author about one hundred years ago and is as good as any other three word description for describing this law. Here is my take on Ingrid Hansen Smythe's take.
    "THE HOLOCAUST AND LOA"
    This topic is used by people who don't believe in Law of Attraction to try to prove their case. They say "if Law of Attraction is real, did 6,000,000 Jews attract their own death in the holocaust?"

    It sounds like a great argument. All LOA gurus don't like to deal with this argument. Even my own favorite author who is a recognized leader in the LOA movement has responded to this question at her seminars by saying to the questioner who asked about the Holocaust..."why do you choose to ask questions about such negative scenarios which in turn, keeps you focused on resistance in relation to your vibration?". Now I am paraphrasing what she said but I have definitely caught the flavor of her response and IT IS NOT AN ANSWER.

    So where to start to give even a glimpse of a proper answer. I must lay some foundational ground rule assumptions. This all can be looked at as no more than my opinion. I 'am not saying that this some written in stone answer. It can also be looked at as perspectives of "being'. However, I assure you it is not contrived.

    Do adversaries of LOA believe that a human being is just a higher animal form destined to die into nothingness? Do they believe that the "being" that is human has any special powers or is omniscient and omnipotent? In order to understand my explanation, one would have to first believe in this foundational assumption... that "beings" who are human ARE endowed with powers that are omniscient and omnipotent. That foundational belief can be quite a stretch for those who argue against LOA.

    O.K. so now, assuming, we have a very "Godlike" being existing in a physical body. We of course must assume that the "being" has NO LIMITATIONS while the physical body IS LIMITED to physical laws.

    More questions...Do you believe that you, as a human "being", can manifest any circumstances at all in your own life? Elsewhere, your life has been represented as your "canvas". How others view your life is what they are seeing and surmising from the canvas that you have created and are demonstrating.

    Now we must entertain areas that become even more questionable to many and those are areas such as mass manifestations, the mass mind, the sub conscious, the super conscious and the choices to which any "being" has access. The choices a being has, are infinite. A human "being" is by no means a simple creature.

    A person's life can be looked at as that individuals "demonstration" or as stated ...his or her canvas. The final stroke upon that canvas is the individuals type of departure or "death OF the physical". There is no death for the "being".

    We have expressions like "the good die young" to quell our sadness when we see young people die in a car accident or in battle or die in some atrocious way. We question the meaning of seemingly senseless deaths, senseless murders, senseless illnesses, senseless disabilities or deformities that babies carry at birth. It is all not senseless. These ARE demonstrations. Could "beings" choose these horrific demonstrations you ask?

    Some believe these conditions are inflicted upon the individuals by fate, luck, destiny or God. To believe that is to believe that your life is controlled by outside forces. To understand my answer to this question you would have to believe in manifestation, mass manifestation, freewill, and the omnipotent power of a "being" that is human. You would need an understanding of the subconscious, super conscious, and the mystical magic of this powerful being's choices of demonstration.

    Again this sounds like quite a stretch for the average "human being". Can your imagination make these "stretches?" The opinion of one's own self can be high or low or anywhere in between. I, simply, choose ...extremely high.

    For some individual being to make the choice that his personal demonstration will contain such horrific or atrocious "qualities" is unfathomable for most people. They "believe" that no individual being would choose such a seemingly ugly demonstration of life and death.

    Let's face it, most people don't believe we choose our type of death or control the time of our death because they do not understand the "being". They have no connection with their super consciousness and they look at life from quite different perspectives than those that are mentioned here.

    Even if you are going along with me purely for the sake of your momentary entertainment, I realize your mind may be spinning and flooded with questions and counter arguments. You might ask and state simultaneously, "this is absurd, no one would choose such horrible demonstrations even if they could". My response to that is...Who are you to say what the perspectives of an individual omnipotent being would be and what reasons that being might have for making choices that you as a "human" can not fathom. Now we are coming to the point.

    There is a difference between the physical human and the all knowing "being". That understanding can take humans many lifetimes of physical experience to achieve. That understanding is contained by the "being" before and after its physical birth and death. It is an awareness quest that the "human" embarks upon. It has been called enlightenment.

    As humans, many of us see death as a tumultuous event. As beings we see death as no big deal. As beings we see death as being no more tumultuous than going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. To the being it is not only some simple, matter of fact, transition, but it is a welcome transition because the being knows that it returns to what has been called source or the non physical. That place is adored by the being and feared by the human. I am speaking of most humans and all beings.

    So now, with all this foundational belief information....I say these mass manifestations in situations like the Holocaust do not put the "victims" at fault. Other evil players, like Hitler, certainly played their part in creating and bringing these events to fruition. Some people with a distorted view of karmic retribution might say that the evil players will reincarnate for eternal lifetimes as a fly in stool. I am not going to get into explanations of karmic lifetimes but I will say that justice does prevail especially in the alternate realms. That justice has been described elsewhere as self inflicted...the most appropriate of all justice.

    To the beings who participated, their choices were holy, dignified and superior choices. They are, many times, the choices that only the greatest beings and spirits could make and they often appear as victimization.

    These demonstrations are a way of going to war against atrocity and teaching by example for generations to come. These demonstrations expose the perpetrators and defeat them in a way that no war could ever do. And mostly these demonstrations are chosen on a super conscious level totally unbeknown to the human personality. Only the being knows the growth and expansion that it creates through these scenarios. Only the being knows why it chose to be the one to participate, possibly for reasons relating to its own character and journey.

    Step outside the "human" box for a few seconds and sense your own omnipotence. At that moment you may sense the magnificence of other beings that have gone before you, are here now and are yet to come.

    Any one who has gone into battle in war could have chosen not to do so. There are a multitude of options available to not experience that. Any one who, as they say, fought the hard fight or took the higher road was definitely not taking the easy way or path of least resistance. These questions addressed here are a factor of perceptions. You must look deep to find answers that strictly relate to the "being" and not the human. When you look deep, you will be amazed at the deceptions that the human creates. You will be amazed at how the being operates in these seemingly mystical and omnipotent ways even while in a physical body.

    I want to say to my favorite author and LOA expert, that you can not brush these historical incidents under the rug. You can not tell people "oh don't ask that question and don't think such negative and resistant thoughts". You are not giving answers that way. You are just avoiding the question. At times you too prefer the path of least resistance. You worry sometimes that addressing certain issues will be bad press for you. I say practice what you mostly preach.

    Seth Manne, the author of this article is also the inspired author of a newly published book entitled "Manifesting The Ultimate: Perfect Health, Massive Wealth, True Love and Infinite Happiness" available at MillionaireInternet.com The book will give you the real story on these answers as they relate to knowledge of SELF.

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