I just keep wondering why so many people are susceptible to things like The Secret, or The Rules, or any sort of self-helpery that demands Captain Logic and First Mate Reason leave the building.

Captain Logic and First Mate Reason have been known to frighten people from time to time....

Well, it's pretty tempting to have something like a manual. Y'know, "If you just follow these rules everything will be fine, and if it's not it's because you didn't follow these rules." It's unpleasant to think that shit just happens and sometimes you can't do anything about it and there's no one right way to be and we're all just blind and groping.

Doesn't really bother me all that much.

A friend's sister keeps preaching The Secret at me via email. I want to send her to this whole conversation. Except then she'd be here and I am very protective of the b.org.

It's unpleasant to think that shit just happens and sometimes you can't do anything about it and there's no one right way to be and we're all just blind and groping.

Yeah, sometimes the propeller shaft breaks for no reason and the tugboat goes over the waterfalls and smashes on the rocks, despite the best efforts of Captain Logic, First Mate Reason and the rest of the gallant crew.

Well, it's pretty tempting to have something like a manual. Y'know, "If you just follow these rules everything will be fine, and if it's not it's because you didn't follow these rules." It's unpleasant to think that shit just happens and sometimes you can't do anything about it and there's no one right way to be and we're all just blind and groping.

This strikes me as the basis for most philosophies and religions. All to the good unless misused.

The notion of moving forward with nothing to cling to for reassurance and no reason to try moving forward (i.e. faith that doing so will make a difference) is how a lot of people end up on my couch. Or in bad straits.

I get the argument about logic and reason...and while I don't see anyone rejecting the benefits of optimism and motivation...I'm afraid one without the other is a flawed equation.

I may lalala too much for some, but if I did not employ some of the ideas that are so easily rejected because they can't necessarily be scientifically proven...and forgive the drama here...but I'd have ended up murdered by my violent alcoholic pedophile father...married to someone just like him...dead from drugs or something other.

I see value in focusing on what one would prefer to see in one's life...and putting the practical muscle of work and responsibility behind it...much more so than the 'it all sucks so why bother' rejection of possibilities I can't readily explain.

and the fact that The Secret people would say he drew the cancer to him with negative thinking.

That's why Susan Sontag had to write Illness as Metaphor. People kept pulling that shit on her when she got cancer back in the 70s.

She makes a very good case for not treating illness as a metaphor for anything - that it's very counterproductive.

But it's an interesting read, particularly in the long stretch on how TB was treated in literature, and of course, years later she addressed the issue of treating AIDS as a metaphor for god's wrath on degenerates.

In sum: illness isn't a metaphor. It's illness.

It's unpleasant to think that shit just happens and sometimes you can't do anything about it and there's no one right way to be and we're all just blind and groping.

See, and this outlook seems not only so much more sensical to me, but more rewarding. The things we do get right become lessons hard fought and well earned, and so much more ours on both a collective and individual level.

Back when I was a kid, I thought one of the coolest things about getting into heaven is that then you'd know everything.

Hah! Me too! I was really excited to learn about what had happened to Amelia Earhart.

(but not excited enough to wish that I'd get cancer and die)

I was really excited to learn about what had happened to Amelia Earhart.

This really brought a smile to my face. Yay for Amelia, she gets to know everything. I would so like to think that is true.

My neighborhood appears to be on fire.

Must be because I was just thinking negative thoughts.

Of course, I'm always thinking negative thoughts.

Really, according to The Secret, I should be buried up to my neck and getting stoned to death in some sort of honor killing, for all eternity.