Yeah, now that it’s really gaining in popularity, the Secret is the butt of about half of the office in-jokes at my work (a bookstore). It’s getting to the point where it’s hard to keep my composure when customers ask for it and other customers jump in to tell them where it is.
My roommate bought the movie and the book. I’m trying to disown him.
So now that the fun-poking has begun, will its popularity fade? People don’t like having their lifestyles ridiculed.
I noticed it in a couple of places on TV last week. Bill Maher had a few words to say. I can’t remember who else. Craig Ferguson, maybe?
But do people who buy into The Secret watch Maher and read The Onion?
If it’s fading, it’s doing so slowly. The Wall Street Journal runs a bestseller list with a relative ranking, comparing book sales (book fiction and nonfiction) to the median number of copies of the number one bestselling fiction books of 2006. So if the average fiction bestseller last year sold 100,000 copies a week that would index at 100.
You never see numbers much higher than 100, maybe 200 for the first week of a really hot new title. The first time I noticed The Secret it was at 568. It’s still in the 300s after several weeks. A normal title would be down under 50. That’s phenomenal sales. Possibly unprecedented.
What Oprah’s doing is despicable, but perfectly understandable. She’s never ever going to tell her audience what they don’t already want to hear. She’s a panderer, not a leader.
I haven’t read The Secret, but I generally believe in creative, positive visualization and the general metaphysics of this rather old idea, but I’m not sure I would agree with this modern day couching, from what I’ve heard.
However, I did very recently read a short story by V.S. Pritchett called The Saint and it provided a rather interesting existentialist proof to this very subject in skeptical terms. It was a very enjoyable short read and quiite profound and relevant to this very subject nd thread. I recommend it highly.
The folks on Lost have their own version of the Secret, but they call it The Magic Box.
:dubious:
Does it mean that someday we can stop pretending Toni Morrison is good literature?
I have a friend like that. Rather than display empathy, sympathy, sorrow or just plain understanding that someone had an awful arbitrary thing happen and really doesn’t need any more shit right now, she immediately spouts off that (insert really bad thing here) happened because we “needed to learn that lesson” so the “universe” gave us what we “needed”, and that we should be “grateful” for this chance the “universe” has given us to “grow”.
I look forward to the day when she gets a great big STFU “lesson” from the “universe” since telling her that she is being mindlessly cruel with her words does not seem to have an effect.
I imagine that people who like her but don’t read much would be more likely to read the books she picks. I’m sure she hasn’t made a significant impact on people who already read a lot. We already know what we like.
For some reason, *The Secret *reminds me of the book I read yesterday, How To Become A Professional Con Artist.
When Oprah promoted The Secret on her show, she (again) made the claim that The Law of Attraction is science, proved by quantum physics. That bugs me to no end.
My 14-year-old son’s father, step-dragon, and his best friend’s mother are all teaching my son the tenets of The Secret. He’s a little frightened by it, especially the implications of some of the creepy images on the video.
What worries me most is that he will “learn” that it’s my own fault that I got breast cancer, and will lose respect for me, even as I’m going through chemo, etc. His father would never think to negate that idea, and my son believes this Secret crap.
Does our society really need to learn how to focus better on “getting”? It just seems like such greediness.
Is it even imaginable that we might have a bestseller about how best to focus on giving?