The Secret

This little movie has three parts. Two are suicide-inducingly depressing.

But before we get to that, there's always at the beginning the adjustment; you have to know what you are entering.

I'm particularly fond of Christian movies. The very idea of them is so intriguing, quite apart from the fact that they are dreadful movies and full of repellent ideas. What makes them so seductive is that they usually depict some fight with the devil, and they are made with the intent of fighting the devil. Its my favorite narrative fold. Entering it is entering an adventure on perhaps the wrong side.

Documentaries are boring in this regard: they present, you receive. I like to stay away from them because a large part of the experience for me is the engagement with the weaver of the narrative. Fiction is where it is at. So there's a sort of intrigue with this because it is in a sense an engagement of wills, where they try to convince you that convincing isn't the way of the world.

The three threads of this are:

— Some business about "attraction" as the way the world works and how you can use it. More about this spread in future comments. Its a good notion if you ignore how it is presented.

— Some significantly worse, even smarmy business where they try to make this sound scientific. Its such a depressing enterprise. Its not just that they get the science all wrong, so twisted and goofy. Or that the peddlers of this are so soft you want to cry. But why? Why should it be important to take something that if it works, it works outside of the logical tools we have. Its a bit like explaining with a lawnmower why a house feels good. Quantum mechanics is the current bucket that hacks like to carry their notions in. And its so entirely inappropriate it makes one cry. Why? Why, try this?

— But the third part is perhaps the most discouraging. I think it is possible to build a notion that works; you'll have to do it by weaving in and around the knuckleheads of various stripes. Its fairly easy to filter out the pseudoscience. But then they pile on a conspiracy theory. You see: not only is there a simple law, and not only is it manifest science, but it has been known for thousands of years by a select few and kept secret!

Never mind that we've been told it isn't a zero sum game and people have to lose for others to win. And that selfishness fights the law. And that good results cannot be bounded. There is only one reason to have this notion here, and that is to create a more intriguing story, to make us more likely to buy the "law." But if the law works, they wouldn't need such tricks. Would they?

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

My personal favourite piece of self-help/New Age literature is that trusty old warhorse from the late 60s/early 70s called "Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance". The main theme that I found so inspirational in "Zen..." is the idea that goodness derives from the equal combination of romantic, surface quality and classical, underlying quality. In other words, the best things in life are those that are nice on the surface but also have real depth and substance.

It strikes me that "The Secret" scores adequately (if you like that sort of syrupy aesthetic) on the romantic, surface side of things...but falls to pieces totally if you scratch beneath the surface and analyse its underlying substance, or lack of.

I first heard of "The Secret" while having a chat with someone who said I was the most positive person they had ever met, and I MUST have studied "The Secret" to make my attitude so positive. I sheepishly told them I hadn't, in fact I had never heard of "The Secret". So, with my ego suitably inflated, I thought I'd check out this inspirational movie to see whether its philosophy indeed matched my own.

No, it doesn't. Yes, positive visualisation is a good way of starting a venture. In fact, it's a fundamental of all business strategies - ask yourself what your aims are, imagine your desired outcomes and then find a means of achieving them. But it's the finding a means of achieving them that is the stumbling block, missed out entirely by "The Secret", and the cause of the eventual fallout between me and my former admirer! You see, the person who told me how positive I was totally missed the point that real positivity comes from balancing "the secret" of visualising good things with a much more pragmatic approach to analysing the underlying nature of things. You need faith in order to be able to believe you can solve a problem, agreed. But you also need knowledge and logic. The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

"The Secret" is tailor-made for those type of people who don't like to analyse or think logically about solving problems. It encourages people to believe that success is entirely down to thinking good thoughts (does this remind anyone else of "The Twilight Zone" episode "It's A Good Life"?).

The point was brought home to me when my former admirer told me how "The Secret" gave her the idea that one can drive all the way across America in the fog with no headlights, just by the power of positive thought. That may, feasibly, be true, assuming you don't drive off a cliff or headlong into an oncoming truck. But why would you want to? And surely, even though you MIGHT be able to drive around in the dark, surely it'd be a quicker, more enjoyable and safer journey if you spent some time fixing your headlights first! That in a nutshell is the problem with "The Secret". It encourages people not to bother with science, critical thinking, rationality, understanding underlying substance, or the real nature of logical reality. To be fair, any video which was overly atheistic and cynical would be equally narrow-minded in my opinion eg some of the Richard Dawkins stuff.

If they could update "Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" for the new millennium - in my line of work it is Zen & The Art of Desktop I.T. Support, lol - then that would be a far superior movie and message to "The Secret". Yes it's good to have faith and positivity, but without underlying logic and reason, then it is worthless.

A couple of final notes...in the I.T. industry, disaster recovery and business continuity are essential, ie visualising worst case scenarios and finding preventative solutions. Likewise for the police, the medical profession, firemen and anyone else who has to be prepared for bad things happening in order to act rapidly and minimise harm during a crisis. Visualising the worst thing you can imagine happening is often an effective way of putting a system in place to ensure it never does happen for real. This is the exact opposite to "The Secret"!

But the worst thing of all about "The Secret" is that, of all the philosophies and religions of the world, the one it seems to have most in common with is Satanism.

At the beginning of this movie, one person says that we know, "like, attracts like." One person mentions magnets as a paradigm. The other man says it's a law of attraction. But we all know that with magnets, we are given the universal belief that it's opposites that attract. So, right away, I was a skeptic. And whenever I see pyramids in a film like this, I'm even more skeptical.

You'll have to watch this to see if it "attracts" you.

I am so glad to know that all those soldiers returning home from Iraq are going to be able to regrow their limbs and reverse their post-traumatic stress syndromes just by thinking positively! Yay!

Starving child in Africa? Hey kiddo, turn that frown upside down and it's Manna from Heaven time!

Hey Katrina victims - those must have been some pretty dark thoughts you were putting out. That's how hurricanes form, you know, from the whirlwinds of negative-thinking energy!

New Age rhymes with Sewage for a reason.

This is basically "What the bleep do we know" redux. I was always astonished to see the book version of this film in the #1 spot at Amazon for so many weeks. But the popularity of such crap helps mitigate my astonishment at the fact that Bush won a re-election (He must be the world's mostest positivey thinker!) and that people believe that creationism can be taught as science.

Thank you japonaliya and GreySphinx. I love your reviews but I do not have the patience to deal critically with pure crap and the people who eat it. I hope the Mothership comes and takes all these "believers" away soon.

I've watched the whole documentary and these are my impressions divided into positive (+), neutral (±) and negative (-) remarks.

(+) To those who experience negative thoughts throughout every day this is a great opportunity to change their way of thinking. This documentary encourages people to change their lives in a positive way.

(+) The theory is explained in a way that's easy to comprehend. To those who are already familiar with this theory (resembling Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) it may seem repetitive, but to newcomers this might be necessary.

(±) In my opinion, there are claims being made during the documentary that aren't backed up with solid proof. They do tell some remarkable stories, but it doesn't really convince me for some reason.

(±) Several times the interviewees give certain numbers and facts as proof of a statement they're making, but the methods of researching those facts aren't being explained. You just have to believe that what they say is true.

(-) At start The Secret gives the impression that you're going to watch a movie about a woman who will discover "The Secret", how and why it has been kept as a secret for so long, exposing a conspiracy and in the end revealing the secret to the viewer... But it's none of that. It's basically just a documentary.

(-) It's overdone. It feels like I'm watching Tel Sell, and the talking just goes on and on... (But again, to newcomers and people who need a periodical pep talk this might be just the right thing.)

(-) At a certain point, the documentary talks about a "constant state of joy" (at least twice)! The makers of this movie fail to mention that there is nothing wrong with grief and such feelings. If a family member or a good friend of yours dies, then why should you force yourself into a constant state of joy? It's alright to cry, be angry or whatever, as long as you don't exaggerate it, stay in control of yourself and act wisely. But the movie lacks in mentioning this.

(-) The documentary does seem to emphasize on money, welfare and "thus" happiness. I miss the element of growth. If you'd live life the way they recommend you to it feels so superficial to me... As if at the end of your life you only seemed to care about your own well-being.