The Secret and the SHAM
The Toronto Star has a lengthy article about the phenomenon (fauxnomenon?) that is The Secret, a volume of affirmative platitudes that is close to breaking the 2-million sales mark in English alone, and, with dozens of translations pending, is poised to make the entire world feel vaguely better about itself.
The Secret’s secret? It swears by a simple core rule, “the law of attraction,” which states that nothing happens by accident: We attract everything into our lives simply by the energy we put forth – an idea summed up in its simple mantra: “Ask. Believe. Receive.”
The article also has some less positive things to say about the whole self-help book craze, which can be traced right back to the U.S.’s founding principle of the “pursuit of happiness.” The first problem is that, by definition, self-help books are only attractive to people who think they need help.
“That’s the most insidious part of self-help – the first thing you need to do before you cure people is convince them that they’re sick,” says Steve Salerno, the author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.”We’re so conditioned to take the pulse of our happiness from one moment to the next, and it’s self-help that’s encouraged this. And the reason it does this is to keep us convinced there’s something wrong with us, so they can sell the next book.”
This Secret stuff all sounds like bullshit to Quillblog, but then, we’re a bunch of self-loathing jerks who think “today is the first day of the rest of your life” sounds a lot like “this is the beginning of the end.”
All your cynicism is only going to attract more negativity into your life Nathan. Just relax and drink the kool-aid.
Has anyone noticed a disturbing correlation between the popularity of this self-involved tripe and the central conceit of Will Ferguson’s novel Happiness? Soon, the world will shut itself down, if Ferguson is right.
Sadly, the popularity of self-help books is neither a new nor a passing fad. Michael Korda’s “Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller, 1900-1999 ” shows how popular this genre has been. P.T. Barnum was right, and I need to start writing…
Nice one Nathan. Rather than have to sell the books mentioned in the Star article (I just saw it this morning) I’d almost welcome the beginning of the end.