General Interest > Feed Your Head
"What the Bleep?" and "The Secret"
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---
--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---
--- Quote from: "DannyB II" ---You do understand the average price was $9000.00, not chicken feed. The people who attended were your above average income earners, white collar executives. Supposed to be smart, level-headed folks yet without much common sense.
Who pays $9000.00 for a weekend, folks who have cash and don't care how they spend it.
So no, they are not weak and gullible, they are folks with to much money and no common sense.
--- End quote ---
According to the update in this article, the price for the Spiritual Warrior experience was $9,695. As many as 68 people were allegedly crammed into that sweat box.
Within two hours, it became necessary to place a 911 call regarding two folk who had no pulse. By the time emergency help arrived, 19 additional folk also had to be transported to a variety of local hospitals, several even helicoptered off of the retreat site.
This would be a roughly 31% "mishap" rate, presuming an accurate head count. Not due to an act of God; no thunderbolts struck the sweat lodge, no tornadoes carted anyone away. So who was responsible for this, eh? Are ya gonna blame the whole thing on the participants who signed up for this, the "folks with to[o] much money and no common sense?"
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Well if I was to take your train of thought, I would just blame James. I can't do that Ursus, why because their is a level of expectation that these participants have some common sense. They are above average wage earners so they must have some smarts.
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I see. So... the more money you have or earn, the smarter you are? If I was to follow that train of thought, that kinda implies that ... the poorer you are, the dumber you must be. Maybe not.
Disregarding the disposable income issue for the moment, just what ARE you implying here? That it is totally okay for any huckster to come up with any newage "spiritual" experience they want, regardless of any consequences or common sense safety issues, and regardless of whether or not they know what the heck they are doing, and that it is completely up to the participants to protect themselves?
You state that there is "a level of expectation that these participants have some common sense." Isn't there also a level of expectation that the facilitators of these experiential exercises have common sense, if not more so, given that they claim to be the "professional experts," are paid handsomely for that expertise, and are the ones in charge of the whole affair?
Why do you fault the participants for not having enough common sense, yet not the facilitators or owners of these LGATs?
--- End quote ---
Bumpity bump.
psy:
--- Quote from: "Froderik" ---So essentially what sort of bullshit does it attempt to convey?
--- End quote ---
Human potential, same as LifeSpring / Est / Resource Realizations / Premier Seminars / LifeSteps / Propheets... Basically the idea that everything that's happened to you in your life is your fault (not just your actions which is reasonable, but also what is done to you). Of course that means that if you can become "enlightened" into the viewpoint of the group you can do anything or go anywhere in life with sheer willpower. The "Secret" teaches that if you're fat, all you have to do to become thin is to hang around exclusively with thin people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
Ursus:
--- Quote from: "psy" ---
--- Quote from: "Froderik" ---So essentially what sort of bullshit does it attempt to convey?
--- End quote ---
Human potential, same as LifeSpring / Est / Resource Realizations / Premier Seminars / LifeSteps / Propheets... Basically the idea that everything that's happened to you in your life is your fault (not just your actions which is reasonable, but also what is done to you). Of course that means that if you can become "enlightened" into the viewpoint of the group you can do anything or go anywhere in life with sheer willpower. The "Secret" teaches that if you're fat, all you have to do to become thin is to hang around exclusively with thin people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
--- End quote ---
Corrected LINK...
Ursus:
The Huffington Post
Barbara Ehrenreich · New York Times bestselling author
Posted: February 27, 2007 01:22 PM
The Secret of Mass Delusion
The leaders of Delta Zeta - the sorority which just made national news by expelling all overweight and nonwhite members from its Depauw University chapter - must have read The Secret. In this runaway self-help bestseller, author Rhonda Byrne advises that you can keep your weight down by avoiding the sight of fat people. "If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it." Don't worry about calories, just get rid of that 150-pound sorority sister down the hall.
Here's The Secret, in case you missed it: You can have anything you want simply by visualizing it intensely enough. I don't have to write this blog, I can simply visualize it already written - or could, if I'd bothered to read the whole book and finish the DVD. To be fair to Byrne, she does not suggest avoiding nonwhite people; in fact one of the teachers of "the secret" she cites is the African-American motivational speaker Lisa Nichols. The Delta Zeta leaders probably just thought: Why take a chance?
Can you really get anything you want through some mysterious "Law of Attraction"? It may not be as easy as it seems. Take the case of Esther Hicks, spirit-channeler, motivational speaker, and co-author of a book entitled The Law of Attraction. Byrne had told Hicks she would have a starring role in the DVD of The Secret, but her face was never shown in the film's first cut (although her voice, channeling a group of spirits called "Abraham" was used throughout.) Hicks was furious and demanded that her voice, or Abraham's, also be excised from the DVD, which has now sold about 1.5 million copies.
Possibly Hicks was just too fat for the film, or at least too dowdy. It's hard to judge her weight from a photo in the New York Times, which shows Hicks seated - eyes closed in channeling mode - inside her $1.4 million bus. But just underneath is a photo of a sylph-like Byrnes frolicking on a beach in a fur-trimmed jacket. From a Delta Zeta perspective, who would you rather look at?
Hicks says she is not going to sue, and why should she? She could just use the Law of Attraction to reinsert herself back into the DVD. Or to deflect Byrne's profits into her own bank account. Or to take off 15 pounds and have them padded onto Byrne's tiny waist.
If a leading proponent of the Law of Attraction cannot control a little thing like a DVD with her thoughts, then why are millions of Americans spending good money to find out how to use that Law to control the entire universe? The scary thing is that the subscribers to the Law aren't just a bunch of wistful, isolated, misfits. Read the reviews of the DVD of The Secret and you find that companies are beginning to impose it on their employees. An N.Van Buskirk writes that:
I was presented this DVD at work and I found it disturbing. A gimmick to say the least, but the real issue is that I felt like I was being indoctrinated into a cult -- I had to leave about half-way through.
And Steven E. Cramer, an employer, reports that "I had my sales staff watch 'The Secret,' and saw an immediate jump in morale, goals and production."
Or check out the credentials of the "teachers" enlisted in The Secret. Most are well-known motivational speakers who claim to instruct such business heavy-weights as financial advisors, developers and a "master marketer." One of The Secret's teachers, Denis Waitley, includes on his website testimonials from Merrill Lynch, WorldCom, 3M, Dell Computers and IBM, among many others.
Well, here's a little secret I'd like to share, channeled to me by Einstein, Newton and thousands of enlightenment thinkers: When the leaders of a major economy lapse into mysticism and come to believe they can accomplish things through their mental vibrations, without lifting a finger - then it's time to start thinking about going into subsistence farming on a remote compound in Idaho. I'll have the DVD out in no time.
Copyright © 2010 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
DannyB II:
--- Quote from: "psy" ---
--- Quote from: "Froderik" ---So essentially what sort of bullshit does it attempt to convey?
--- End quote ---
Human potential, same as LifeSpring / Est / Resource Realizations / Premier Seminars / LifeSteps / Propheets... Basically the idea that everything that's happened to you in your life is your fault (not just your actions which is reasonable, but also what is done to you). Of course that means that if you can become "enlightened" into the viewpoint of the group you can do anything or go anywhere in life with sheer willpower. The "Secret" teaches that if you're fat, all you have to do to become thin is to hang around exclusively with thin people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
--- End quote ---
OK so now this has to be the 18th explanation you have given on how you do life. When your talking about AA, it is pull yourself together, you are stronger then alcohol, God is not going to help you. When your talking about James Ray who works with adults you pretty much put the Adults on the same level as children in treatment centers. It is all there fault.
Which is in essence your whole premise for being here Psy, first it was mommy and Daddy (they kicked you out of the house), then it was the Treatment Center, then it was I forgive my parents (they let you back in the house) and it remained I hate the Treatment Center. Now I hate AA, James Ray, Warrior Workshops ect.....
Does this pretty much wrap it up in laymen terms.
It's common sense Psy, your pissed off and anything resembling (whether it is accurate or not) Benchmark will be labeled, oppressive.
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