04 February 2007

What is the Secret?

I watched The Secret on TV a few moments ago, and I must say I am quite disappointed. They say that this secret was kept by all the great thinkers and philosphers like Newton and Einstein, that the Catholic Church knew the secret and it gave them greater power and that they tried to stop the secret from getting out to the people. I thought the secret was going to be something like "There is no morality," but the secret turns out to just be a simple rehash of positive psychology, i.e. think positive thoughts and conceive and you will believe. All that stuff. I've already read this in Neapolean Hill's Think and Grow Rich.

What I don't like was how they were going on about how simply thinking positive readiates some sort of energy that affects the whole university around you and the university responds to this. If you are happy and other people see this then they may be happy as well. That is true. But this program suggests that non-living objects like tables will respond to your positivity! As if!

Am I a positive thinker? Well, I am in that I do avoid looking at things I don't like. For example, if you see something horrendous like an heated argument among co-workers over political or religous issues, then I'd rather just ignore it. But otherwise I do not try to brush away negative things because negative things make up reality and negative things are often important. For example, if you were shopping for a used car and the salesman says to you, "There's nothing wrong with this car," then you have a choice betwen being negative or cynical and thinking, "Hmm, what if this guy is lying? I ought to check the car out" or being positive and thinking, "Yeah, I trust this used-car salesman." Simply trusting the used-car salesman is a case of positive thinking. You are ignoring the negative thoughts. But when shopping for a car it is damn important to think about negative things like whether the engine actually works!

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