Conservative Student News

Photo credit: anita.typepad.com

"Hey, come check this out!" was the enthusiastic greeting I received as I walked through my friend Libby's bedroom door. She motioned me over to her desk where she was sitting and pointed to her computer screen. On it I found a website playing a trailer for the hottest, "new" method of self-improvement.

The authors call it "The Secret" and say it was employed by some of the greatest thinkers in history: Plato, Newton, Carnegie, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein, the list goes on. For centuries only a select group of people "knew" this secret-until now! It gets better. For only $34.99 plus tax, you-yes YOU could be let in on this incredible, life-altering piece of information. It was promoted on Oprah, for heaven's sake! How much more convincing do you need?

You're totally writing the check right now, aren't you? Make it out to "Capitalization of Americans' Misery and Laziness," and make sure you sign it "I'm a Sucker." Hey, as a lazy and miserable American, I will admit I was tempted to see what all the fuss was about. Was it worth my time? Yes. Was it worth my forty bucks? Arguable.

Reviews of this documentary describe the premise of "The Secret" to be merely a recycled mixture of self-help ideologies from the past such as Norman Vincent Peale's 1952 book, The Power of Positive Thinking. The documentary posits the long-known theorem, "The Law of Attraction", but revamped, and repackaged with an intense, blockbuster-worthy soundtrack, captivating rhetoric, and a "feel good" message. In other words, as my mother always says: "You're paying for the packaging." The documentary's bottom line is that positive thinking is a heck of a lot better than negative thinking. No duh! May I have my forty bucks back?

Earning a degree in psychology at St. Thomas has taught me that the mind is a very powerful thing. Before I was so fortunate to be enlightened by "The Secret," I already knew that science has shown that positive thinking has an effect on your physical health, your emotional health, and to an extent, your physical capabilities. In an article from LiveScience.com, Robert Roy Britt writes, "people who described themselves as highly optimistic a decade ago had lower rates of death from cardiovascular disease and lower overall death rates than strong pessimists." The article also states that those with depression have a greater risk of heart complications. So there it is. Positive thinking can make a difference-and I found that information for the grand price of zilch on the internet.

A refresher course on the general advantages of positive thinking is useful; however, I have difficulty believing the extent to which the documentary proclaims your brain can control your universe. For example, one user of "The Secret" reported a perfect parking spot materializing 95% of the time. In addition to ideal parking spaces, "The Secret" promises to bring you your dream car, the perfect house, and a 100,000-dollar income, if you wish it so.

If you wish it so? No mention of hard work or intelligence? I'm sorry, but if I sit on my couch all day eating potato chips and watching T.V., yet thinking positively, I'm still not going to get a $100,000 paycheck-I'm going to get kicked out of my apartment! Couch potatoes are exactly the type of people this film is targeting, because it promises enormous results with little effort: It's easy.

The film suggests that these benefits are direct consequences of thinking a certain way, that you can control all other forces at play-which is a little unrealistic. The documentary claims that those who know of and practice "The Secret" have the key to unlocking "unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted." One commentator goes so far as to say that you can simply "think yourself younger." Um, hello, have you met gravity? To say each of sixty thousand thoughts you have a day are like "magnets" and attract every single thing that happens to you, gives your brain a little bit of a supernatural tendency.

At the risk of sounding too cynical of my fellow citizens, this supernatural guise may lead to Americans positively thinking their way into delusion. As aforementioned, this film lends the impression that positive thinking is almost synonymous with some form of magical ability, making viewers believe in a fantasy world where anything is possible if you only imagine it becoming so. That new Gucci purse? It's as good as yours, just think positively. That shiny, new bike? Simply cut the picture from the magazine and concentrate really hard. I still find it hard to believe that latter example was actually one used in the documentary!

By exercising "The Secret," you can control your own Universe-forcing this allusive "Creator of the Universe" (That would be God, remember Him?) to take His place in the unemployment line. Some of the commentators again flirt with blasphemy by distorting the definition of who God is. They say a person can understand God as being a talking Universe (who happens to have a British accent, you probably didn't know). Bet you also didn't know that God could be reduced to a scientific term such as energy, or that at times He can take the physical form of a twenty-foot tall, pointy-eared, iron-pumping Genie. The most irrational comparison perhaps is that you and I could be considered as actually equivalent to God.

Wow, I am God!? I should try that walking on water thing-that seems pretty cool! There is a greater power at work here, according to "The Secret" producers, you visualize it however you'd like but you need to work in harmony with it in order to be happy and fulfilled. ... I'll take New Age psychobabble for 200, Alex.

In the end, "The Secret" is just another way to capitalize off Americans' misery and laziness-sort of a "Happiness for Dummies," if you will. "Happiness" (whatever that means) is the goal of this entire escapade. The film ends with the narrator writing the words "FEEL GOOD" in the sand of a beautiful beach. Obviously that is what it's all about right? Feeling good. Ah, the meaning of life.