03.05.07
The Secret
Or: I keep saying Oprah is evil.
Oprah, the you-too-can-be-a-winner symbol of our cultural descent into madness, is hawking a new book that is even more vacuous than the standard hyper-materialsitic palliatives that she pushes to middle-aged women across America.
The Secret is a New-Agey, phony self-help system that makes you believe it’s All Your Fault: you are poor not because of a combination of your birth circumstances, education, work ethic, pay rate, and high heating costs, but because you are “blocking the money from coming to you” with your bad thoughts. Thinking about weight gain causes weight gain, according to The Secret. It’s one of the least veiled examples of the culture that America lives in now, one of easy, institution-supplied answers, where we no longer search for the meaning in our lives, but receive it prepackaged from American Jesus and Dr. Phil. It’s what Peter Birkenhead calls “Oprah Culture.”
The Salon article makes me want to cry out in despair. I know these people. They’re all around me, buying ‘books’ instead of books and trying so, so hard to believe their lives into goodness. They’re living their Best Life Now.
Kate said,
March 8, 2007 at 8:57 pm
My roommate and I saw the Oprah when she was hawking the book. It was crazy. Then we changed our facebooks to say that we are both “Teachers of The Secret”, not that its a secret anymore if Oprah keeps talking about it. Silly Oprah.