What bothers me most is thinking about the email I just got from a relative with cancer who's all upbeat about the fact that he might be able to eat real food again soon, and the fact that The Secret people would say he drew the cancer to him with negative thinking. Argh.

In Atlanta I saw a couple of police officers of Segways and I was wondering if Mormons could Segway instead of walk.

Also during the F2F at some point Wham!'s Careless Whisper came on and I revealed that was the first song I ever danced to with a boy and it was at a Mormon dance. My best friend during middle school was Mormon so I went to events at her church. They'd show movies and once it was Dreamscape --which so wasn't what they thought it was and there was a debate about letting us finish watch it and they finally did.

The thing about Mormons (and I lived with one) that drives me craxy is the white dress shirts! Shortsleeved white dress shirts, especially. Why must they be white!

Also, the spellcheck wanted to replace Mormons with morons.

What bothered me most in the argument with my neighbor was that she was trying to hammer successes in MY life into that concept.

HA! I can see it now, "No, I didn't just want a book deal badly enough. I stayed up late, stressed, wrote and edited my ass off, along with a bunch of other stuff that wasn't easy, and lo, book being published! Sigh You're right, it wasn't all the hard work. It was my positivivity that allowed me to actualize my words on a page."

What bothers me most is thinking about the email I just got from a relative with cancer who's all upbeat about the fact that he might be able to eat real food again soon, and the fact that The Secret people would say he drew the cancer to him with negative thinking. Argh.

I'm struggling to understand how someone could believe that.

There was this annoying pseudo-hippy I knew who believed stuff like that. I'd come up with all sorts of extreme examples, like, "What about a two-year-old who has terminal cancer?" and he'd say, "On some level, that kid wanted to get cancer."

I guess I'll just chalk it up to "Many people are stupid."

The Secret wouldn't bother me for the first principle-- even though it's effectiveness is probably marginal, there's no harm in thinking positively-- it's the corollary that's at best eyebrow-raising and at worst evil. The Secret does promote the idea that people deserve the things that happen to them, that people "thought" their way into bad things happening (like genocide, say), and you should avoid such people-- I'm not sure why, I guess their bad thoughts will rub off on you? It shows a shocking lack of perspective and morally suspect level of empathy to publish that and promote it like Oprah does.

The thing about Mormons (and I lived with one) that drives me craxy is the white dress shirts! Shortsleeved white dress shirts, especially.

They blend in better than the Nation of Islam proselytisers. I can't see a black man in the white shirt and black bowtie without wondering if it's a religious thing. Some wait staff become quite confusing.

The Secret wouldn't bother me for the first principle-- even though it's effectiveness is probably marginal, there's no harm in thinking positively-- it's the corollary that's at best eyebrow-raising and at worst evil.

Yeah, exactly. I kind of feel bad for people who think that thinking lovely thoughts is literally all they need to do, but it's fairly harmless.

"What about a two-year-old who has terminal cancer?" and he'd say, "On some level, that kid wanted to get cancer."

Thinking positive thoughts is a good thing in my book, it is the notion of attracting bad stuff that bothers me. I had a "therapist" insist something in me attracted and needed my husband to become terminally ill. Really, not. I'm certain that late DH didn't want to get sick and die either.

But generally speaking keeping a positive outlook and chasing away negative thoughts is a not so secret good plan.

I know I've hurt my neighbors' feelings talking about it. But we also had a religion argument in which I tried to go all Occam's Razor and the response was, "if there wasn't a god, we would already know everything." I wasn't trying to talk them out of religion, they were trying to talk me out of atheism. I said, "wait, if there wasn't a god, we'd know everything...why?"

"Because we'd know."

Then I tried to explain begging the question, which didn't go over well.

At that point, my head exploded and I understood how people end up mumbling to themselves while wheeling around a grocery cart full of cardboard and bits of string.