"The Secret" -- Liberal version of "Jesus Camp"?

[Pangloss]

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=secret+self-help&btnG=Search

 

Come on. Tell me again how it just makes SO much sense for scientists to be liberals. Do it.

 

This nonsense -- all about how you can cure your own cancer and lose weight just by THINKING it -- was apparently featured on Oprah TWICE over the last week.

 

Yeah. Liberals would NEVER do anything like Jesus Camp! Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

[Mokele]

How is that liberal? It's just another stupid self-help gimick, not a political ploy.

[Sisyphus]

Yeah, I'm not sure what's "liberal" about that crap.

[Pangloss]

IT isn't liberal, any more than Jesus was conservative. But it's being paraded around by very prominent and influential liberals, very much like the evangelist movement is identified with conservatives.

 

And if you don't think there are liberal people who vote Democrat and are "born again", think again. Jimmy Carter comes to mind. And he went to Georgia Tech, where he majored in Nuclear Physics (though he actually finished his B.S. at Anapolis).

 

I just saw Jesus Camp the other night, and was shocked just like anybody else. But one of the most shocking things about it is that some people think that sort of nonsense is limited to the unintelligent, the religious, and/or conservatives.

[Phi for All]

I think this is a real stretch. People do silly things whether they're liberal or conservative.

 

Maybe Oprah believes this stuff because she's black. Or because she's lost a lot of weight. Or because "The Secret" is on the bestseller's list and she has a talk show.

[Pangloss]

Ok... how is "the Secret" different from "Jesus Camp", exactly?

 

I mean, aside from the children aspect -- I'll grant you this isn't aimed specifically at and exclusively for kids.

[Mokele]

how is "the Secret" different from "Jesus Camp", exactly?

 

One's a stupid self-help gimick designed to do nothing more than separate the gullible from their money. The other is, essentially, brainwashing people to ensure they never leave the cult.

 

Mokele

[Phi for All]

One's a stupid self-help gimick designed to do nothing more than separate the gullible from their money. The other is, essentially, brainwashing people to ensure they never leave the cult.

 

Mokele

Umm, which one was the stupid gimmick again?

[Pangloss]

Oprah's support for "The Secret" was blasted in parody a few minutes ago on Saturday Night Live, by the way. Funny stuff. It'll probably show up on their web site.

[Pangloss]

One's a stupid self-help gimick designed to do nothing more than separate the gullible from their money. The other is, essentially, brainwashing people to ensure they never leave the cult.

 

Mokele

 

Is one better or preferable over the other? And if not, then how are liberals more aligned with science than religious conservatives with their "Jesus Camp"? Was it not liberals who gave us everything from "primal scream therapy" to the popularization of hallucinatory drugs?

 

In short, doesn't this suggest that having one ideology over another is no guarantee of immunity to these kinds of mental traps?

 

(But oh no, scientists just HAVE to be liberal, I'm told.... They couldn't POSSIBLY go any other way!)

[the tree]

As far as I can tell, Oprah is neither a politician nor a journalist. She's a talk show host and a critic, she really isn't obliged to give a fair account of anything. I know people, for whatever reason, take note of what she says but that doesn't make her any more responsible for them than a book critic writing in a small time magazine. If she buys into it, and wants to tell other people, then to be honest, that's fine by me and I really don't care.

Her political stance is even more irrelevant than her opinion, when it comes to the actual content of the product that she's endorsing.

[Pangloss]

Kinda like televangelists.

[the tree]

Well yes. They aren't doing anything particularly wrong (I'm not sure if America has rules about broadcasting keeping within the public interest) apart from being incredibly annoying... just like Oprah.

[Mokele]

Is one better or preferable over the other? And if not, then how are liberals more aligned with science than religious conservatives with their "Jesus Camp"? Was it not liberals who gave us everything from "primal scream therapy" to the popularization of hallucinatory drugs?In short, doesn't this suggest that having one ideology over another is no guarantee of immunity to these kinds of mental traps?(But oh no, scientists just HAVE to be liberal, I'm told.... They couldn't POSSIBLY go any other way!)

 

Fallacious arguement. Even if someone were arguing that scientists *must* be liberal (which nobody is), then this is still inapplicable. You're pointing out something that, you assert, mostly liberals fall for, and asserting this undermines that currently the liberal party attracts scientists, ignoring that it's unlikely that scientists themselves are falling for this, and they probably well know that both parties are filled with fools since, after all, they include the general populace, 90% of which are morons.

 

Mokele

[PhDP]

In short, doesn't this suggest that having one ideology over another is no guarantee of immunity to these kinds of mental traps?

 

Nobody is saying otherwise, but it would also be extreme to say that all sides, in all cases, are equal in everything. That's political correctness.

[Pangloss]

Nobody? You both just used the word "nobody", at yet two people in that thread WERE arguing exactly that. (I don't mean Mokele or Phil.) This underscores the point I made that you guys sweep your eyes right past posts like that without realizing what they're saying.

 

THAT's political correctness.

[Pangloss]

Fallacious argu-

 

Whatever. Do you or do you not agree that the left is just as susceptible to brainwashing as the right?

[the tree]

the left is just as susceptible to brainwashing as the right

This seems pretty obvious. So why did you start tying in politics in the first place?

[Mokele]

This underscores the point I made that you guys sweep your eyes right past posts like that without realizing what they're saying.

 

Actually, no, I just tend to ignore lucapsa.

 

Do you or do you not agree that the left is just as susceptible to brainwashing as the right?

 

Of course. Part of the trick of brainwashing is finding what appeals to people, and though the 'hook' will be different, the result will be the same. Kinda like how a used car salesman can scam a wide range of people by adjusting their pitch.

 

So why did you start tying in politics in the first place?

 

yeah, I'm wondering that too.

[Pangloss]

There are perhaps other subforums it could have been placed in. I'm afraid I've loaned the world's smallest violin to the world's only conservative scientist, though, so I'll probably never see it again.

[Tetrahedrite]

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&q=secret+self-help&btnG=Search

 

Come on. Tell me again how it just makes SO much sense for scientists to be liberals. Do it.

 

This nonsense -- all about how you can cure your own cancer and lose weight just by THINKING it -- was apparently featured on Oprah TWICE over the last week.

 

Yeah. Liberals would NEVER do anything like Jesus Camp! Riiiiiiiiiiiight.

 

Not quite sure how you are defining the term liberal. If you define everyone who is not a hardcore religious fanatic as liberal, then you probably have a point. Else, as others have noted, it really is a big leap to equate liberals with this nonsense.

[Pangloss]

I didn't, I just thought it was interesting that the people in question this time happen to BE liberals. This time it's liberals falling for Jesus Camp-like brainwashing.

 

Similarly, not all conservatives are christian fundamentalists.

[padren]

There are a lot of liberals in scientology I believe, and (personally) that group puts me off more than many christian faiths.

 

Then you have a rather sizeable "new age" subgroup within the liberal demographic, with healing crystals and chakra therapy, and merkaba [sic] fields spinning at 1/4 the speed of light. (btw, how do you "spin" in a measure of distance over time again?)

 

Liberals are just liable to be susceptible as conservatives to these things - its a human condition.

 

What I think you are reacting to, most likely, is that there is a general sense that there are more liberal rationalists than conservative rationalists, if not per capita then at least in terms of political influence. This is partly because the "religious right" has managed to portray itself as the modern face of conservative america fairly successfully (at least in liberal eyes) and partly because there really is (unless I am mistaken) a lot more strongly religious people in conservative circles than in liberal ones.

 

 

That said, there is no immunity in either group, and its easy to point out the "less than rational" subgroups in either camp.

[bascule]

I hadn't heard of this movie until today. I'm not in a position where I can really click on the link and watch this video.

 

However today I picked up some pamphlet from some crazy local psychic organization who charges $50 to send you a cassette tape to perform a remote psychic healing of yourself or your pet. Wow.

 

They're showing "The Secret"

 

I mean, I call myself a hippie, and I like lots of crazy hippie things, like long hair, poi, various herbal supplements, tea, etc.

 

But anything recommended to me by some psychic ripoff group gets a big thumbs down.

 

So, with nothing to go on but the recommendation of some psychics, am I right that this is a bunch of new ager crap?

[bascule]

Well, I just watched the trailer and read the Amazon page.

 

It's like a newager took a newage cannon and strapped it to my forehead and fired a load of sh*t directly into my brain.

 

I'm still yet to find a concise description of what "the Secret" actually is, but they claim Isaac Newton translated some emerald tablet of Hermes (messenger of the Gods) in order to figure out the universal law of gravitation.

 

Yeah, and something about how everything's made out of energy. Yeah, Einstein figured that one out. You can thank him, not some retarded new age tablet crap.

 

Living in a town full of retarded new agers, I can't help but hear about this sort of thing and getting very angry. So sorry if this post comes off as less than tactful.

 

Oh, and the whole thing seems to be tied into some other series of books called "The Law of Attraction".

 

Sounds like a big money making scheme to me.

 

Looking at the Amazon recommended books this definitely appears to cater to a new age crowd seeking self help.

 

People are confused. They turn to sh*t like this for answers.

 

Pangloss, not sure what you were getting at originally, but here's one leftie who definitely HATES this sort of thing.