Oh no, she’s right. It’s philosophy is becoming pretty pervasive. It reminds me of On the Origin of Species.
Somebody read Darwin’s book and erroneously applied the evolutionary concept of survival of the fittest to a business model. The business became cutthroat. Financially, they did well, at least for a time. Others followed.
Then some economist applied his incorrect understanding of survival of the fittest to broader economics and investing. It was not long before capitalism itself started to become predatory. Today, the business atmosphere as a whole is divorcing itself from survival of the fittest but it’s a slow process.
The people who are trying to maintain the status quo do not realize they are advocating an inappropriately applied principle that is only one facet of evolution as a whole because the language has changed (you hear the phrase ‘survival of the fittest' less)and it’s so pervasive it’s just accepted as the way it’s always been. Many have only a vague sense of who Darwin was from schooling but have never read his work. Yet still, the concept persists in application because of it’s wide pervasiveness even though it’s proven to be incredibly destructive because it’s so unbalanced.
With the Secret, you hear lots of people living or trying to live this philosophy because the broad concepts are already everywhere. They’ve never read the book. Some have never heard of the book.
It’s not what could be called a seminal work. It’s a hodgepodge mashing of philosophies that have been been around for centuries—predominantly in religion that has been shallacked into pretty packaging. This may help explain it’s broad appeal and ready acceptance. It’s already familiar so it rings as an enlightening truth.
I’ve been hilariously surprised by the number of people who will tell you that the Secret is stupid, new age woowoo, demonic, witchcraft, Scientology, etc. But then they swear by and live by the philosophy. So they seem to know there’s something wrong headed there and that it’s toxic, but they readily adopt it’s precepts anyway.
Like with Darwin’s work, the Secret takes part of a concept and makes it a whole 'new' philosophy that ultimately is damaging and corrupt because it’s out of balance with reality, or it completely ignores the other side of the equation. Which would be work. Good old fashioned work. Somebody has to work to pay for that new car being manifested into existence. Maybe that’s the person doing the manifesting, or maybe it’s someone else who’s being co-opted into 'helping' with the big dream. But you can be assured of two things: that new car is going to cost someone somewhere $30k regardless of how much a manifestor thinks the universe is giving them a lollipop and over exploitation ruins environments. Any and every environment. The equation must balance.
