It's this new-ish book, picked up by Oprah and Ellen Degeneres and who knows who-all else, based on The Law of Attraction that says if you're a positive person with positive thoughts, good things will come to you, but if you're a negative person with negative thoughts, bad things will. Basically, if you're poor and sick it's your own fault because you had the wrong thoughts. t /massive oversimplification

your own fault because you had the wrong thoughts.

To which I call bullshit because I think about being rich and thin ALL THE TIME.

Jesse - did we ever talk about how Marble did this whole thing on the Secrect because of Dr. Peale and The Pwr of Positive Thinking. I didn't it to the discussions, but the feelign I got was they wanted to distance themselves from that blame part of the book.

And...I'm off to a sexual harassment prevention class. Lucky me.

Must be that time of the year - I had to do that last week.

I hate forced socialization at work. I never go to the holiday party for that very reason. I see you fools every day of my life - off time is mine, motherfuckers!

DavidS,

Do you think I could stop by this weekend and pick up the dvds and laptop that I loaned SeanK?

Thanks.

Allyson, from what you've written before, your biggest issue was not only their beliefs, but also, as Strega noted, how this played into their actions. Faith is inherently a belief in something irrational and inexplicable. Given that does it bother you that they believe in astral projection or the power of positivity, or that they choose to do things like not take any action to move towards a goal other than to think positively?

Isn't there supposed to be a The Secret movie too? Or maybe I dreamed that too....

WEll, there's a Secret DVD that I've seen playing on a bookstore's TV.

Aimee, you can't doubt yourself though or think negatively. I like you can't think "I don't want to be fat" becaues the universe will get confused and make you fat. And you can't doubt, you have to have a firm belief that you will be thin and wealth will come your way.

Any slight negative thought and it just screws up the Secret.

At least that's the way it was explained to me.

One of the examples used in the book (or promotional info) is some guy that whited out all the amounts he owed on his bills and put in a positive number that he wanted to get and then BAM! checks started rolling in.

There are so MANY arenas of belief, though. I think everyone I meet is going to have different beliefs than I am. Even if someone shares my non-belief in God, they might have radically different beliefs about our place in the natural world and be a strict vegan, or maybe they believe exactly as I do in terms of ethics but also think they are reincarnated.

I was brought up by die-hard liberals, who use politics as a marker for everything else. My DH finds making that kind if distinction odd. He says, "Your mom is incredibly tolerant of every race, creed, religion and orientation, except for conservatism," and it's true. I am trying hard not to be that way and to accept people based on how they actually behave in the world, not in what they believe. It ain't easy, though.