The Secret promotes pseudoscience and magical thinking, disregarding genuine medical treatments and societal factors.
The book blames individuals for their circumstances, ignoring the importance of societal structures, charity, and human kindness.
Deep dives
The Secret: A Book to Manifest Everything You Want
The Secret, a book by Rhonda Byrne released in 2006, claims to contain the secret to life and the law of attraction. It became a sensation, selling over 30 million copies. The book presents the idea that your thoughts and attitude attract everything into your life—wealth, success, health, and happiness. It emphasizes the power of positive thinking and visualizing your desires. The book is based on a documentary of the same name, adopting the format of alternating prose and quotations from various experts in the self-help industry.
Pseudoscience and Magical Thinking in The Secret
The Secret promotes pseudoscience and magical thinking, presenting distorted concepts and dubious claims. It asserts that thoughts have a frequency and you can attract ideas, events, and even money by focusing on positive thoughts. The book suggests that poverty is a result of thinking the wrong thoughts and that the wealthy use the secret, knowingly or unknowingly, to accumulate wealth. The secret is also applied to health, with the idea that diseases can be cured through positive thinking. However, the book lacks scientific explanations, often disregarding the role of societal factors and genuine medical treatments.
The Dark Side of The Secret
The Secret propagates a dangerous ideology that blames individuals for their own circumstances. It suggests that victims of abuse, poverty, and illness are responsible for their situations and that their negative thoughts attract their suffering. It promotes an individualistic approach to life and dismisses the importance of societal structures, charity, and human kindness. The book also fails to address the conflicting manifestations that might arise and does not provide any limits to what can be achieved through the law of attraction. Overall, The Secret presents a warped view of reality, ignoring critical thinking and genuine solutions to complex problems.
The Influence of The Secret and Oprah Winfrey
The Secret gained significant popularity, endorsed by influential figures like Oprah Winfrey. However, after a woman who followed The Secret's teachings forgo chemotherapy and ended up hospitalized, Oprah addressed the dangers of ignoring modern science. The book's success led to numerous sequels by Rhonda Byrne, reiterating the same ideas in different forms. The Secret's rise highlights the susceptibility of the self-help genre to pseudoscience and market-driven endeavors, ultimately disregarding genuine expertise and practical solutions to life's challenges.
Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" sold millions of copies based on a simple premise: All of science is fake and the only reason anything ever happens is because people manifest it by communicating with the universe.