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The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (view source)
Revision as of 16:31, 29 August 2020
, 16:31, 29 August 2020no edit summary
{{infoboxsortinfobox1
|title=The Secret
|sort=Secret
|reviewer=Magda Healey
|genre=Home and Family
|summary=Even the normal devotees of self-help and devourers of New Ageish pseudo-scientific, pseudo-spiritual advice should keep away from this one: it contains about 4 points of advice on positive thinking repeated in a sequence of tautologies ad nauseam and wrapped in an astonishingly stupid amount of utter balderdash. Calling it pseudo-scientific is an insult to pseudo-science. Most 'scientific -sounding' sentences there are not only not true, they don't even make sense. Keep away.
|rating=1
|buy=No
|borrow=No
|pages=160
|publisher=Simon & Schuster Ltd
|date=December 2006
|isbn=978-1847370297
|amazonukcover=<amazonuk>1847370292</amazonuk>|amazonusaznuk=1847370292|aznus=<amazonus>1582701709</amazonus>
}}
''The Secret'' has been on Amazon's list of top bestsellers for quite a while now. (It's no 12 at the time of writing). The description suggested a motivational self-help book of some kind and the synopsis referred to physicists, old oral traditions, religions, poetry and philosophy. Intrigued by the consistently high ranking, I included the book in my last order even though I am not normally in a market for this kinds of work.
Couching the idea in pseudo-scientific terms like '' emitting this frequency into the Universe'' doesn't make it any more viable. You cannot emit frequency, by the way and thoughts do not, generally, get emitted anywhere (unless we shout them out really loud or broadcast using machinery). Statements like ''The feeling of love is the highest frequency you could emit'' do not make sense at all as factual statements - however appealing they might be in a metaphorical sense. There is no such thing as ''vibrations of mental forces''. Modern physics' proposition that vibrations of so-called super strings is at the basis of all matter (or energy) DOES NOT translate into large-scale stuff like human bodies, brains or even (huge in comparison to strings) atoms. I doubt that my spirit is so big (or small, depending on how you look at it) that it fills the room, but I'm pretty sure that I am not an energy magnet or a transmission tower and I am very sure indeed that I do not electrically energize anything, thank you very much.
Quantum physicists empathically DO NOT tell us that the entire Universe emerged from thought. All diseases are NOT a result of stress. Healthy emotions do not guarantee a healthy body (though they might help recovery). Aging Ageing is not caused by thoughts, and even if you believe you can't catch something you still can if you are exposed to the infectious agent (as countless examples of babies, children and animals suffering from infectious diseases attest).
And the oil in Belize was not created by the belief of the team that discovered it.
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{{commenthead}}
|name=Jill
|verb=said
|comment= If I could stop laughing for long enough, I'd spit. I HATE this kind of claptrap.
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{{comment
|name=Sue Fairhead
|verb=said
|comment= I loathe this kind of thing too. And yet... how on EARTH could such rubbish have got to be a best-seller? Maybe the author just thought, positively, that it would be a phenominal success....
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{{comment
|name=Magda
|verb=said
|comment= The author had the machinery of a major TV station and the authority of Ophrah Winfrey behind her.
But to the main point: I don't deny the effects of attitude, positive thinking, confidence and behaving as if something was our birthright on being succesful. I am sure that it helps enormously! But there is a major qualitative leap between that and saying that if you believe you won't get infected with malaria you won't.
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{{comment
|name=Christine Hiles
|verb=said
|comment= a friend reccomended this book to me and she said it had changed her life. (I had not noticed the changes I have to say.) She described the contents of the book and I thought 'Nothing new there" but hey if it has changed her life I thought, I will buy it.
So I am writing this to thank you for saving me some money as I agree with your veiws that there is much to much hype about the world being so easily changed by airy fairy thoughts. It will certailnly take a lot of hard work and millions of workers to do it. It will be the things on the end of our arms that will change the world and not will o' the wisp thoughts.
Christine
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{{comment
|name=dave.g.moore
|verb=said
|comment= Well hey what can I say, I liked it. A lot of reputable people spoke through the dvd version of it. Our minds are very powerful tools if we learned to utilize them, then change is certain. I personally have not read the book but I did watch the dvd. I think differently now and incorporate positivity into my day to day life but I didn't need a book/dvd to teach me this... I just needed some guidance to get me to that state of thought.
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{{comment
|name=Joe
|verb=said
|comment= Great review. This book was one of the most infuriating pieces of idiocy I've ever read. Apparently humanity has become a race of borderline retards if this is so popular. Given the precarious state of things in the world, it's an especially sad comment that now is when something like this is taking off. Kind of fitting how Darwin is never mentioned as someone who knew about the Secret!!!
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{{comment
|name=Sairah Mirzah
|verb=said
|comment= Excellent review. Not normally the kind of book I would buy but a friend recommend the book and I was about to go out and buy it as going through some stressful/emotional in regards to a health issue. The review makes it clear that I would have wasted my money and been none the better. I hate self help books that don't actually help in any way. Thank you.
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|name=Richard Orebaugh
|verb=said
|comment= "The Secret" was given to me by a friend who I thought knew and understood the hell I've gone through. When I read this book, I thought "what was she thinking?"
This book is a sickening regurgitation of the mid to late 1980's self-help psychobabble. The law of attraction is really what upset me, to the point of tears. Yeah, I guess I must've had very negative feelings when I was 5 that constantly attracted my father's fist to my face. I must've been even more negative when 3 different men molested me-2 were in the family. This book is an ABSOLUTE SLAM to people who have suffered but survived and sometimes still just trying to get through each day without going crazy.
If Rhonda Byrne really truly believes what she has put together in this book, I can only imagine she has never dealt with any true tragedy in her life or is on a plane of "magical thinking". I think not only her "believers" are to be pitied, but Ms. Byrne as well. I would suggest she look into Buddhism where compassion, not money and material things, is the core of a good life.
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{{comment
|name=Magda
The "negative thinking brings negative fate" idea always made me think of the Holocaust.
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{{comment
|name=AK