 | The Law of Attraction -- Subjectivist Style
The self-help and actualization movement (SHAM) in America today offers two polar opposites of empowerment and victimization. The former argues that anyone can accomplish anything with enough force of will while the latter claims that everyone ultimately has no control and that someone or something else warrants blame for any misfortune one experiences. Admirers of Ayn Rand would likely much prefer to spend time with empowerment types than victimization types due to the former's optimistic sense of life. Nevertheless, the empowerment movement has so enamored itself with New Age "primacy of consciousness" metaphysics as to drive away even the most open minded Ayn Rand fans living by her realist philosophy, Objectivism. Given the amazing feats that people can accomplish with reason as their guide, this makes the empowerment movement especially tragic.
If anyone wants to grasp in one concentrated place the best and worst aspects of the empowerment movement, The Secret offers such an experience. In a single 92 minute rapidly paced video documentary filled with impressive visual effects, a moving score and a parade of impressively credentialed and influential speakers and authors widely respected within the empowerment movement, the viewer gets a feast of all that the movement has to offer. Sadly, that feast comes laced with a poison of profound, misleading, mystical errors and evasions that can literally lead multitudes of gullible viewers off the cliff of reason into the abyss of self-delusion.
The Web site for The Secret tantalizes viewers with trailers reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code claiming that "the secret" has remained the private information of select elites throughout history. With this information, the teasers claim, these elites have risen to power, earned fortunes, and kept the masses at bay in the toil of fields and factories. The creators of the movie assert that they have become the first in history to make "the secret" available to common people across the globe.
The video opens with a woman in dire straits attempting to get her life on track. She learns of "the secret" after researching the successes of great men and women throughout history. After more staged theatrics, the movie finally gets down to business.
What exactly constitutes "the secret"? Talking head after talking head explains it as the "Law of Attraction." The entire video argues that the universe responds to thoughts and manifests whatever a person habitually thinks. With dazzling special effects, the film shows various actors "reenacting" different situations, "broadcasting their thoughts" into the world and then experiencing externally the content of their internal, repeated, focused thoughts.
So, the argument goes, if you focus on the rotten nature of your job, your marriage, your social life and so forth, you will continue to manifest those awful experiences. Conversely, if you change your habitual thoughts to how great you want those parts of your life to become, then eventually the universe will respond like the genie from Aladdin's lamp: "Your wish is my command." Under this alleged natural law, anyone who couples enough emotion and sincere belief with repeated affirmations and habitual thoughts will eventually coax the universe into delivering the goods to his doorstep.
To abuse further the key term "natural law," Dr. John Hagelin, a Transcendental Meditation champion and former Natural Law Party presidential candidate, figures prominently in this documentary. As do his many fellow gurus, he excitedly talks about how wonderfully well the "Law of Attraction" works for all who sincerely apply it. Testimonial after testimonial gush forth from true believers. They claim that because they wished, affirmed, felt and visualized with enough "power of intention," they encountered abundance in all areas of life.
Naïve persons unfamiliar with the basic axioms of Objectivism -- existence, identity, consciousness -- and seeking a better life while avoiding the victimization route will find much appealing here. Unlike the morally arrested, subjectivist dupes of The Secret, however, Objectivists grasp that to act with genuine purpose requires knowing exactly what one wants, why one validly wants it, and then employing reason to achieve it. In that regard, then, "visualizing" exactly how one wants to experience the future can guide a person into experiencing that future provided he acts rationally and productively toward that purpose. If The Secret admitted to this limit then Objectivists would have little quibble with it.
However, this movie goes well beyond those objective limits. It asserts, in effect, that one does not need reason at all but can simply focus on "visualizing" and "experiencing" the future using "affirmations" in order to "attract" what they want from a universe that becomes as obedient to human will as Aladdin's genie: "Your wish is my command." Objectivists know better: A is A, and existence possesses primacy over consciousness.
Can an Objectivist employ a variant of the Law of Attraction that maintains sane metaphysics? Yes!
The Law of Attraction -- Objectivist Style
In the Objectivist metaphysics, the root of volition consists of the choice to focus. A person can focus his mind to bring reality into cognitive clarity, defocus it to turn his cognition into a fog, or even focus it away from reality to a fabricated world of evasions. In addition, the "crow epistemology" captures the finite nature of human consciousness. A person can only hold so many units of focus in his conscious attention at any one moment before his mind turns into a fog of "too many units."
Because a rational person needs to act with a clear sense of purpose, he needs to choose a life affirming purpose consciously and then maintain that purpose at the center of his focus so he can act productively toward it. His purpose gives his subconscious "standing orders" to begin working on the challenge of achieving it. Through reason, he can evaluate all concretes he encounters as beneficial, irrelevant or detrimental to his purpose. Because he keeps his productive purpose "in front of himself" cognitively, resources he might not otherwise notice begin to grab his attention. They existed already, but he never noticed them until he focused on his purpose and his need for those resources. His consciously chosen purpose thus "attracts" his focus toward the resources he needs to achieve that purpose. This sequence of explanations preserves the sane "primacy of existence" of Objectivist metaphysics and offers a fully grounded version of the "Law of Attraction." It stands in stark contrast against the insane "primacy of consciousness" subjectivist metaphysics of the "your wish is my command" crowd in The Secret.
Learning to focus on a manageable number of productive purposes and to achieve them through rational action offers the real formula for earned success in any endeavor. But the people behind The Secret want to keep that fact a secret. Otherwise, they would have to pack their bags, return to the primitive swamps of their Witch Doctor ancestors, and wallow in the mud in which they would have to live without the assistance of the authentic producers -- those who proudly apply reason to accomplish life affirming, consciously chosen, productive purposes. |
