The Secret: What a scam.

In the last two days, I have read two articles on The Secret. The articles are:

• Oprah’s Ugly Secret on Salon
• Reader Inspired Topic #2 on Dancing Down the Moon.

I highly recommend reading both articles, but what they boil down to is this: The Secret is no secret at all; it is an insultingly simpleminded interpretation of the Law of Attraction. Basically, it posits that all the bad things in your life are your own fault (wow, so all those Jews made the Holocaust happen? Everyone who has died of AIDS willed themselves to get it? It’s the Africans’ own fault slavery happened?), including weight gain (apparently food doesn’t cause weight gain, thinking fat thoughts does) and poverty. I am disappointed but not shocked that Oprah is espousing this tripe – as a black woman who has pulled herself up by her own bootstraps she should be ashamed. I’m not shocked because Oprah is all about feel-good populist stuff, and this is nothing if not feel-good and populist. Apparently the book claims that you can make your life everything you want just by wishing it to be so – you don’t have to work for it or anything! Just tell the universe you want it!
Good grief. What bullshit.
Sure, our thoughts shape our realities, but only to a certain extent, and claiming otherwise makes you a selfish bastard. Oh, I don’t need to feel bad for or help out people in need – it’s their own damn fault they’re poor/hungry/homeless/whatever. AIDS? That would disappear if all those poor morons would just believe they won’t catch it. Why should I fund research into a cure? Ditto cancer, STDs, and other dangerous things.
Come on. If believing you won’t catch something really worked, no ignorant teenager would get an STD or pregnant, and all those guys in Africa who think having sex with an infant will cure their HIV would be cured.
This kind of thing makes me want to beat my head against a wall. Willful ignorance is the one thing I loathe most about humankind.