The Secret or Yes, the Universe Really Does Revolve Around You NOTE: I had this file sitting in my directory for about nine months 95% completed. And because I'm immeasurably lazy, I only got around to finishing it and linking to it now. So I just returned to my local video store a DVD called "The Secret." When I made my rental I assured the two clerks that my purpose for renting it was purely for mocking purposes. I'm not sure they particularly cared about some bespectacled doofus whose rental history covers the full range from dreck to schlock. I mean the store has an adult section so I'm sure they have plenty of stories about Joe Schmoe from Beachwood who last week limited his rentals to "Hot Sexy Amputee Party" parts II, III, and V because part IV was already checked out. So what is "The Secret"? It's the latest positive-thinking, self-actualization, logic-non-using program to help you obtain wealth, health, love and so forth that the Oprah crowd just eats up. In fact, the Opster herself recommends it, and the book spent many a month in the *cough* non-fiction bestseller lists. (In fact, it's been around for a few years and is still number one on the New York Times bestseller list for advice books.) There's a website and there's this DVD, assumedly for people who can't be bothered to read anything that doesn't feature stories explaining how Debra Messing managed to lose 10 pounds in a week. I'll try to describe the movie chronologically and with as much detail as I can muster: We begin with the wax seal logo and some whispers about the secret. It starts with a woman explaining the various people who have either withheld or sought the Secret. We go from a Centurion, to an Egyptian kid, to a cardinal (Roman Catholic type, not Stan Musial type), to soldiers in the French Revolution, to a bunch of old white guys. The woman voices over, "I couldn't believe all the people who knew this." Wouldn't that make it the worst kept secret ever? She starts typing saying she wants to find more people on the internet who know about The Secret (a.k.a. "teh 53cr3t!!!111"). And it's here, at about two minutes and forty seconds in, that we give up on the women's quest to find out who knows The Secret and we're introduced to some of the fine and assuredly non-deluded people who explain to us the intricacies of this amazing metaphysical power. First up is Bob Proctor, philosopher. He tells us we can have health and wealth. Next is Dr. Joe Vitale MSC.D., metaphysician. He says we can be anything. Then we have John Assaraf, entrepeneur , who tells us something fairly unimportant as evidenced by the fact that I haven't written it down in my notes. And here we have Marie Diamond, Feng Shui consultant. Ooh boy. That's like Charles Manson being your expert witness at your sanity hearing. Finally we have Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith D.D., "visionary". I'm not sure what takes more guts, calling yourself a "visionary" or being in your forties and trying to bring back Terence Trent D'Arby's hairstyle. Bob the philosopher says that we are all working with "one power, one law, attraction". One talking head tells us that the law of attraction is like a magnet. Another talking head, Bob Doyle, says immediately afterwards that like attracts like. Oh, I'm sorry. You are not smarter than a fifth grader. As both any kid who has taken a science class and DJ Scat Cat will tell you: Opposites attract. Magnets of like polarity repel each other while those of opposite polarity attract each other. I highly recommend Mickey's Magnet to help explain this concept. Just shy of six minutes and we're told we need to hold ideas in our head, get images in our head, and that invokes the law of attraction. You become what you think about most but you also attract what you think about most. A writer, Mike Dooley, pops up to explain that, "Thoughts become things." John Assaraf, the entrepeneur, gives us a science lesson and says thoughts give out frequencies. To explain this, they show a guy looking into a mirror with waves of energy eminating from his head and the image in the mirror is him wearing a suit. We are told, "It always works. It works everytime with every person. The problem is that people keep thinking about what they don't want and it keeps showing up over and over again." We see a guy pulling up a parking ticket from his car. One of the talking heads explains that the reason people stay in debt is because they're worrying about their debt, attracting more debt. I'm going to hold off on sinking my teeth in that nugget of mathematical wisdom for the time being. There's a woman window shopping and sees a necklace she wants. She sents out a pulse and then next thing is there's some guy handing it to her. Mental note: You don't even have to do shit to have this work. As an added bonus we're told "The law of attraction is always working. You don't press pause or stop." Now this is probably the worst place to start applying logic but what have we learned so far? 1) Thoughts become things. 2) The law of attraction is always working. 3) Ergo, since dreams are thoughts, dreams become things. I know I've had some pretty screwed-up dreams before. When I was about 7 my older brother had a Snoopy lamp in our room, and for at least a year straight I'd have the same dream where it would come to life and chase me down the hallway where it would then electrocute me. I am here to tell you that in all my 34 years I have not once in real life been chased or electrocuted by a possessed 2-foot tall plastic Snoopy lamp... yet. A therapist talking head tells the story about a gay man he assisted who got bullied at work, bullied on every street corner, and got heckled at being a stand-up comedian. He listend to a tape with The Secret and "within the next 6 to 8 weeks" (rush delivery is available) at work everyone who was harrassing him either transferred, quit the company, or left him alone. Everyone stop bullying him on the street. Supposedly he became an awesome comedian, but I'm guessing he became Andy Dick. It's at this point that I pause the DVD and look to see how much time has elapsed and how long we have to go. We've still got 80 minutes. I always joked about "Running Magazine" wondering what they would do for a second issue. There's only so much that can be discussed on some topics and we've been given The Secret with plenty of time to spare. "Your life is a physical manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your head." Next we see Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D. (alleged) quantum physicist. He only shows up for this one part of the DVD and only for about 10 seconds but he's quite a character. And by character I mean hilariously laughable doofus. It's hard to describe his manner of speaking. If you've ever asked a 13-year old kid a question and the response is made up of English words but the true context underneath is, "Uh, DUUUHHHH!"... well it's a bit like that. He says, "I'm not talking to you from the point of **wishful thinkiiiinng** or imaguhnerry [beat] cuhrehzineeeess. I'm talking to you from a deeper basic understanding. Quantum physics really begins to point to this discovery. It says you can't have a universe without mind entering into it, The mind is shaping the very thing that is being perceived." Once again let's leave out the idea of a higher power or creator and focus solely on the human mind. Depending on who you ask, you'll likely be told that humans have been around for 200,000 years. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years (give or take a Thursday or two). That means that 99.996% of the time that Earth is said to have existed, it didn't because there was no mind to guide it. And that's just the Earth, the universe is currently estimated to be about 13.7 billion years old of which humans have been around for esssentially none of it. Bob: "Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean you should reject it. You probably don't understand electricity. First of all, no one even knows what electricity is; and yet you enjoy the benefits of it. Do you know how it works? I don't know how it works, but I do know this: You can cook a man's dinner with electricity. And you can also cook the man." Wow. The self-proclaimed visionary explains, "People when they hear about The Secret become frightened of all the negative thoughts that they have. It has proven scientifically that a positive thought is a hundred times more powerful than a negative thought." I'd have to figure this wasn't determined in a double-blind controlled experiment measuring brainwaves so much as a fancy way to say "it takes less muscles to smile than to frown." Lisa Nichols, author, reassures us, "Thank God there's a time delay, that your good thoughts don't all come true instantaneously." There's a guy sorting through his mail and sees an elephant on a postcard and then all of a sudden there's an elephant in the room. Hee-larious! Maybe that's why when I wish someone dead it takes them over 20 years to do it. Dr. Joe Vitale tells us, "Everything that surrounds you in your life including the things that you've complained about you've attracted." In short, he's saying that there's no such thing as unfortunate circumstance. A guy driving drunk and plowing into an old woman's car is her own damn fault. At about 18:25 in we see where the fear of tying up your bike to a pole will send out waves that will cause the bike to be stolen. Wait, I thought there was a delay from when you think a thought to when the universe adjust its everythingometer to reward/punish you. If my bike gets stolen from a bike rack on Saturday was it due to some nervous guy who was there on Tuesday? They give a quote from Winston Churchill: "You create your own universe as you go along" Are we going to start blaming The Blitz on Churchill being a negative nelly? We're now at the point where the DVD teaches us how to use the Secret. See, you can't just wish for things you have to wish in a certain way... I guess. Here are the three steps, with the example of a kid wishing for a bike. Step one is to ask. They say to let the universe know what you want. It will then respond because it's "like a big life catalog". Step two is to believe. Philosopher Bob Proctor explains, "If you do just a little research it is going to become evident to you that anyone that ever accomplished anything did not know how they were going to do it. They only knew they were going to do it." "You don't need to know how it's going to come about. You don't need to know how the universe is going to arrange itself." I heard that's how Jonas Salk worked on the polio vaccine, he just threw some chemicals together and let the universe sort it out. Step three is to receive by feeling the way it will feel when it arrives. In order to generate the feelings of getting a nice car, one is asked to drive around in one. I'm going to get the feelings of being incredibly strong by lifting heavy things and hope the universe doesn't give me a hernia. Next, there's this guy rambling on about his ability to find an open car space 95% of the time. The other 5% he just has to wait a minute or two. Now I know these folks tells us that we shouldn't concern ourselves with how the universe would accomplish such a strange yet mundane task, but I'm curious. Does the universe tell people not to park in great parking spaces? Does it set people's houses on fire so they have to leave JC Penny's and rush home? Does it take a random parked Mazda Miata and hurl it into a pocket dimension before The Grand Parking Wizard shows up? Dr. Joe Vitale (Dr?) "Whatever your current circumstances, that is only your current reality." Lisa Nichols "Every day you open your mail expecting to see a bill. Guess what, it'll be there." Instead, expect a check! Everytime I opened the front door this week I expected to see Kate Beckinsale in a bikini holding a plate of Ruby Tuesday hamburgers. Nothing yet. Talking head Mike Dooley says, "The HOWS are in the domain of the universe." He also says that the universe finds the quickest and best way to make something for you. That brings up an interesting point. Do the believers of The Secret think "the universe", as they keep calling it, has concience. From what we've seen the universe doles out negative results more often than positive ones. In fact, without stepping too deeply into a discussion on moral relativism, a positive effect for one person could be the result of a negative effect for another. I already talked about "Parking Space Guy" and how his mastery of all things parking space could be due to the universe incinerating those vehicles parked too close to the Orange Julius. Is "the universe" a conscious thing? Is it like Santa Claus or Uatu the Watcher looking down on us waiting to give us that new bike or Ultimate Nullifier, respectively? I'd say no, as all of the talking heads have shied away from a higher religious-type power and stressed the scientific nature of The Secret, albeit without any actual science to back it up. As someone who deals with computers all day and often deals with people who are not familiar with computers, I always have to stress to customers that computers have no intuition. If you accidentally movie a file to some remote sub-directory, the computer doesn't consider where your other files are stored. It just does as it is told. When you download an mp3 by Arcade Fire, it doesn't look at your existing musical collection and warn you that Arcade Fire is pretty awful and completely overrated. It just does what you asked it to do and lets you learn the hard way. If the universe has that same lack of intuition, who knows what it will do to bridge the gap between thought and reality? A desire for money can cause you to lose your fingers in a tragic Tilt-a-Whirl accident which leads you to winning a huge cash settlement. At this point the fast forward button is a beautiful thing. I skip past the chapter on wealth since we've already been told that all we need to do is to think about random checks appearing in the mailbox. I skip past the chapter on love since the idea of the universe possibly being your own personal John Hinkley is a bit creepy. The next chapter is about health. One of the talking heads rambles on about placebos and how the mind is the most powerful medicine available. I worry that this DVD has affected my cognitive abilites because I think they just made sense. Luckily my fears are swept away by this nugget of medicinal wisdom: All bad health comes from stress. I'm curious what the hell kind of ultra-competitive playdates a kid has to attend to get lukemia. We then see Cathy Goodman, breast cancer survivor (as she is so labeled on the screen). Her secret to beating cancer was to keep saying, "Thank you for my healing," continually imagining herself without cancer, and watching funny movies. She claims that from the time of diagnosis to the time she was healed was three months and that's without radiation or chemotherapy. I'm curious if that would work with any ailment. Imagine if you could cure malaria with back-to-back episodes of "How I Met Your Mother." To cap it all off, "Disease can not live in a body that's in a healthy emotional state." So you've got cancer? It's your fault for worrying about the economy. Brain tumor? You hate your job. Acne? Your pick for American Idol lost. Jack Canfield, "The anti-war movement creates more war. Because we're focusing on what we don't want. Instead of being anti-war be pro-peace. If you're anti-hunger be pro-everyone having enough to eat." I didn't realize the universe was such a stickler for semantics. Maybe instead of wanting these talking heads to be anti-making-no-sense I can instead make them pro-shut-the-fuck-up. Beckwith, "Are they any limits to this? Absolutely not." If there were no limits on what could be wished for I'd think there would be more trillionaires and people with the ability to fly. And with that we come to the end. So what have we learned? Well first things first, it seems most people mistake the term "quantum physics" for "universal wishing well". In real life quantum physics has as much to do with dreams and the brain as college basketball has to do with academic success. Also we learned that the power of positive thinking is a marketable idea, but if you combine it with sitting on your fat ass you've got a gold mine on your hands. But where does the new age sucker market go from here? When people stop buying all The Secret paraphenalia because wishing for stuff is too hard, what even easier kind of bullshit will be out there waiting to lure in the gullible masses?