reviews

Every few years, a new book or movie captures the New Age Heart of the World (or at least middle class America). These bestsellers promise of everything from enlightenment and powers of levitation to riches and world peace, and are hawked with all the sincerity, appeal and effectiveness of a celebrity diet fad.

This season’s run-away hit is called The Secret. It’s a book, it’s a DVD, it’s a down-loadable video file. It slices, it dices, it steams the wrinkles out of your laundry while you sleep.

It also manages to misrepresent science, history, and philosophy. It belittles the hard work and exceptional achievements of individuals like Einstein, Shakespeare and da Vinci (all of whom are pictured in the introduction of the DVD, and are presumed successful because they knew The Secret) Ito promotes a philosophy of narcissism which blames victims for their own circumstances. All of this for the purchase price of 19.95 (or just $4.95 pay per view, online)

But never mind all that… quit focusing on the negatives! Because that is, in fact, the big Secret: Think Positive. That’s it. If you learn The Secret you can get rich, and healthy, successful, popular, famous and oh yeah, did we mention RICH? (and did we mention 4.95, pay per view?)

The Secret isolates the popular notion of positive-visualization, cranks it into hyperdrive, and applies it to to the Self and personal desire. Then it slaps on a label of The Law of Attraction, and pretends that the whole thing is a revelation backed by both modern science and thousands of years of wisdom.

The oogity factor is unbelievable here. I’d really fall in love with this, in a B-movie kind of way, it if it weren’t so spiritually, philosophically, historically, scientifically and religiously bankrupt.

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