Food beyond compare. Food beyond belief
I am sure you are acquainted with this gem, the Law of Attraction. Put simply it’s the idea that you get what you think about, or alternatively that you become what you believe.
It is absolutely pervasive in modern personal development literature and has even leaked into mainstream culture with films such as The Secret. The standard formula goes like this:
- Determine what you want and ask (your subconscious, the universe, some higher power, whatever) for it.
- Focus your thoughts intensely upon whatever it is you want.
- Feel and act as if you had already acquired it.
- Be open to receiving it.
As you might have guessed, the Law of Attraction has its roots in Eastern mysticism. It began to appear in Western circles about the mid 19th Century and emerged in the popular self-help books of the early 20th Century. Well known examples being Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World and Wallace D. Wattles The Science of Getting Rich.
The latter’s cute title was guaranteed to attract more than a few readers and provides a clear indicator of where all this stuff was heading, which I will get to in a moment. I’m damn certain it was intended to make the author, if no-one else, rich.
You can read the whole of this little book at the link above. It’s turgid in the extreme, but fortunately the author wrote a summary at the end which reads thus:
Mix it in a mincer and pretend its beef
There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought in this Substance produces the thing that is imaged by the thought. Man can form things in his thought, and by impressing his thought upon Formless Substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created. In order to do this, man must pass from the competitive to the creative mind; otherwise he cannot be in harmony with the Formless Intelligence, which is always creative and never competitive in spirit.
Man may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him. Gratitude unifies the mind of man with the intelligence of Substance, so that man’s thoughts are received by the Formless. Man can remain upon the creative plane only by uniting himself with the Formless Intelligence through a deep and continuous feeling of gratitude. Man must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become; and he must hold this mental image in his thoughts, while being deeply grateful to the Supreme that all his desires are granted to him. The man who wishes to get rich must spend his leisure hours in contemplating his Vision, and in earnest thanksgiving that the reality is being given to him. Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of frequent contemplation of the mental image, coupled with unwavering faith and devout gratitude. This is the process by which the impression is given to the Formless, and the creative forces set in motion.
The creative energy works through the established channels of natural growth, and of the industrial and social order. All that is included in his mental image will surely be brought to the man who follows the instructions given above, and whose faith does not waver. What he wants will come to him through the ways of established trade and commerce. In order to receive his own when it shall come to him, man must be active; and this activity can only consist in more than filling his present place. He must keep in mind the Purpose to get rich through the realization of his mental image. And he must do, every day, all that can be done that day, taking care to do each act in a successful manner. He must give to every man a use value in excess of the cash value he receives, so that each transaction makes for more life; and he must so hold the Advancing Thought that the impression of increase will be communicated to all with whom he comes in contact. The men and women who practice the foregoing instructions will certainly get rich; and the riches they receive will be in exact proportion to the definiteness of their vision, the fixity of their purpose, the steadiness of their faith, and the depth of their gratitude.
If you can summon the will to wade through the entire rambling quasi-religious treatise, the first thing that will likely strike you is that despite the title there is NO science to be found anywhere. An awful lot of portentous rhetoric with zero basis in fact; but no science.
He is clearly fond of unsubstantiated claims. The opening premise “There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made” sets the tone.
A bold assertion on a par with, for example, “The Bible is the word of God”. No it isn’t! It’s the collected scribblings of a clique of guys with long beards, closed minds and little discernible sense of humor. And likewise Wattles is making it up – there is not a thinking stuff from which all things are made.
Kidney of a horse, liver of a cat. Filling up the sausages with this and that.
Anyway, here’s how the rest of this earnest tripe maps to the modern variant:
Man must form a clear and definite mental image of the things he wishes to have, to do, or to become
Determine what you want and ask for it
The man who wishes to get rich must spend his leisure hours in contemplating his Vision
Focus your thoughts intensely upon whatever it is you want
He must so hold the Advancing Thought that the impression of increase will be communicated to all with whom he comes in contact
Feel and act as if you had already acquired it
Man may come into full harmony with the Formless Substance by entertaining a lively and sincere gratitude for the blessings it bestows upon him
Be open to receiving it
In a nutshell, Wattles laid the foundation for the modern preoccupation with the so-called Law of Attraction with this sentence:
All that is included in his mental image will surely be brought to the man who follows the instructions given above.
Actually when you decode the deliberately obtuse language there are some elements of basic common sense in there.
The suggestion that you should “give to every man a use value in excess of the cash value [you] receive” is sound business advice. People buy things precisely because the value they place on them exceeds that of the cash they exchange for them. They wouldn’t do it otherwise.
And he sneaks in the caveat “In order to receive his own when it shall come to him, man must be active; and this activity can only consist in more than filling his present place.”. In modern parlance, “get off your contemplative butt and take steps towards achieving your goal”. But for my money, maintaining that something is being “attracted” to you when you are in fact walking towards it is pushing things somewhat.
The land where the one-eyed man is king
Predictably the world seems to have latched fast onto the proposition that it is possible to summon up wealth by simply thinking hard about it. As a result, thick and luxuriant have grown the swamps of consultants, experts, shamans, con-artists and myriad hangers-on.
Bash “Law of Attraction” into Google and gaze in wonderment at the 6 million results. Admire the seried ranks of paid advertisements all shimmering like little glittering magnets just hoping to attract your money with promises that you too can attract wealth beyond reason using only the power of the universal law of attraction. The “beyond reason” bit is probably the only honest claim to be found there.
Its enough to bring a flush to the cheeks of the most unctuous purveyor of serpent lubricant.
Lets see what one of the big guns (according to the Law of Google) that isn’t blatantly trying to sell you his book / course / special report / counseling sessions has to offer… (as an aside, this doesn’t mean he isn’t out to sell you something, just that he is slightly more subtle about it, which we shall get to in a moment)
Steve Pavlina delivers a masterclass demonstration of cognitive dissonance with this really rather revealing explanation that wheels out a concept called Subjective Reality within which the problems obvious even to devotees of the Law of Attraction melt away and everything makes perfect sense.
To be fair, he does readily concede “there can be no proof whatsoever that this [subjective reality] is how reality actually works; it’s one giant unprovable assumption”. Though that itself is an interesting stance from one who once published this rant against religion, since he himself refers many times in several articles to Subjective Reality (and by implication the Law of Attraction) as a “belief system”.
What a fool believes he sees
As I understand it belief systems encompass not only New Thought concepts such as the Law of Attraction, but also religions, cults and anything else requiring faith on the part of the believer, so not the most congruent (a word he appears noticeably keen on) of posts that one.
Belief systems are sterile environments where no-one can either prove or disprove the existence of God, the Law of Attraction or the Tooth Fairy. Their adherents are thus free to develop ornate extensions and codify elaborate rules so long as these remain consistent within the system.
There are many problems with belief systems (other than the obvious reliance on faith rather than objective evidence) not the least being the insidious effects of cognitive dissonance, or what is sometimes termed True Believer Syndrome. Put simply, papering over obvious falsehoods or inconsistencies with more of the same.
Another is that believers tend to assert exclusivity to (or even hijack) ideas expressed by the system. Taking Christianity as an example, this carries with it not just belief in a deity but a set of rules governing ethical behavior (forbidding theft, adultery etc). Many Christians seem to have difficulty grasping the idea that you don’t necessarily have to be a Christian to abide by much the same moral code.
Still, if we are going to clamber into The Pit of Belief where Faith and Hope stumble about, blind and full of bile, I’d like to introduce the Fairies at the bottom of my garden.
It may seem bizarre to you but, if you care to think about it, the operation of the Fairy world perfectly explains all manner of everyday occurrences and plenty more besides. Certainly the Fairies work for me – when I can’t find things its ‘cos the Wicked Fairies have removed them and they only turn up again when the Good Fairies thoughtfully replace them where I might see them.
Consider also for a moment that the ancient “belief” that the Sun, Moon and Stars revolved around the Earth worked perfectly as an explanation for the universe and supported many practical applications. It was certainly sufficient for predicting astronomical events and for navigation.
It was a plausible explanation that meshed well with observation and how people wanted the world to be (at the center). Didn’t mean it was even close to being correct though. You get my point?
No wise man has the power to reason away
Sleaze Pavlova, who otherwise advocates selecting the simplest solution to any given problem, clearly doesn’t subscribe here to the principle of Occam’s Razor which essentially states that the explanation of any phenomenon should introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest entities
The simplest and most convincing explanation of the Law of Attraction is that it does not exist. That it is super-sized, ocean-going clap-trap of the first order whose lineage can be traced back through a third rate mystic on the make.
There is no doubt though that if you focus on a particular goal AND work very hard to achieve it, your chances of success improve enormously. Positive attitude and sustained effort do reliably get results. You see this formula all the time in sports, business, performing arts and all manner of other fields.
But this is if anything describing a law of pursuit rather than attraction, and even that is overstating it since it’s not really a law; merely an observation of probability.
If you pursue with every ounce of your being the Wimbledon Tennis Championship Title there is no “law” that will eventually deliver (or attract) it to you in the way that the Law of Gravity causes apples to fall to the ground . You will stand a significantly better chance than if you didn’t pursue your goal with focused determination, but that’s all and that’s really just plain old obvious common sense.
Focus on something and you will a) get better at it and b) notice more of it than the average Joe. How many red cars did you see today? You don’t know ‘cos you weren’t looking out for red cars, but make a note to focus on red cars tomorrow and you’ll be simply amazed how many you come across.
People who are looking for opportunities to make money will spot far more of them than people whose minds aren’t tuned to that setting. I’m sorry, but it really is no more complicated or elusive than that. Ya don’t need the Formless Substance, Mystic Meg, the Law of Attraction or any other half-baked theory.
The Grubby Truth
The secret behind the Law of Attraction is that there is no secret. How can there be? There is no such law.
The Law of Attraction is so shot full of holes it’s an enduring wonder that anyone continues to give it the time of day. Think about it. Wimbledon cannot be won by both players; surely no-one seriously suggests that the entire population of Southern Burma “attracted” a monstrous tidal surge; is there an age of consent for the Law of Attraction; what about mad people; it doesn’t always seem to work.
That last one is my favorite because the response is typically something along the lines of “you’re not doing it right, try again”. Brilliant! Applying the Law of Attraction I can flip a coin a hundred times, always “manifesting” heads – whenever it lands heads, the Law of Attraction attracted it, whenever heads fails to manifest itself (oddly, about half the time) then I wasn’t doing it right – insufficient focus or bad karma or something.
This is right out of the Dark Ages – when things aren’t happening its because the Gods are displeased and you must offer a sacrifice. Things should then improve, but if not your sacrifices are insufficient and you should redouble your efforts to appease the Gods. We’re back to cognitive dissonance again – anything to avoid confronting the unsettling possibility that maybe there are no Gods after all.
How many times and in how many ways does this have to be spelled out? If you base your personal development strategies on a prime example of flat-out fabrication you are seriously limiting your possibilities.
And yet this blatant nonsense sits at the heart of most contemporary Western self-help preaching. What can I say? Modern personal development can cause serious personal harm to all who fall for it, including ironically it’s own adherents. Steve Pavlina for example was last seen disappearing up his own fundament, to which I say good riddance.
The mark of a scumbag is often to be found in the business models they choose to adopt. There is very little money to be made targeting polyphasic sleep and Personal Bullshit for Smart People™ as Schpiel Paschmina breezily admits – “Google is my #1 referrer, but it accounts for less than 1.5% of my total traffic. The vast majority of it comes from links on thousands of other web sites.” Excuse me? With “thousands” of backlinks and 1.5% Google traffic, either Steve doesn’t understand the concept of targeted backlinks or, as already noted, he is targeting stuff that no-one really searches for.
This leaves him only one option to monetize his very sizable traffic – sleazy affiliate products like Site Build It!. Only he somehow can’t bring himself to admit this. Here’s Steve again from the same source as above (note that I do understand how to create valuable backlinks which is why he isn’t getting one – nofollow and crappy anchor text): “I don’t need to play stupid marketing and sales games with you. There’s nothing for you to buy here. Even if I add some products in the future, I’m not going to try to manipulate you into buying something you don’t need with a slew of false promises.”
Then at the end of this pious post we get: “Please check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.” – a nauseatingly obsequious review, complete with affiliate links (so definitely something for you to buy there), of Site Dip Shit! – an overpriced product that actually no one needs since everything that anyone needs to make money online is freely available.
So many words, so little space for an epitaph. Steve Pavlina, twit, charlatan, poltroon and hypocrite. RIP OFF ARTIST.
Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand. Remember the ancients who believed the earth was at the center of the universe? Oh sure they could pencil the next lunar eclipse into the old papyrus planner, or sail a boat to distant lands and find their way back. But they were never going to understand how and why the seasons change or walk on our moon or send probes to circle the moons of Jupiter.
The world we take so easily for granted with electronic communications buzzing constantly between geo-stationary satellites was way beyond their capabilities because it was beyond the limits of their understanding and imagination. They stunted their possibilities through a beguiling but bogus belief – that everything revolved around them.
Wake up and smell the unmistakable stench of rotting superstition that hangs in the air wherever the so-called Universal Law of Attraction is to be found. Find out how to use the law of attraction for manifesting abundance and learn the hidden steps that can take you beyond the secret to develop prosperity consciousness. Does that really, really, really make sense to you? Or do you think it might instead be a not very subtle hint that, actually, this whole topic is complete hocum?
But all is not lost. Still searching for a higher power to guide you? I’m with Bill. You’re born with one, ‘cos its all about soul.
