The Secret - Page 2

By the way - this thread? Hilarious. Over the course of the day, whenever I've needed a pick-me-up, I've just been going back and re-reading Diva's Tiffany bubble wand story, followed by Horrid's bear trap post.

EDIT: I googled Tiffany Bubble Wand, and the useless, self-indulgent thing exists!

http://www.tiffany.com/Shopping/item...-l+-h+-c+-r+-x

Well, she did launch her own reality a couple months ago.

Oprah's most commendable endorsement was of Andrew Vachss, although that was years before her book club. Too bad she repeatedly mispronounced his name and made sure the interview was all about her.

I heard that some type of famous person might have jumped on her couch once.

But sometimes fat wimmins gots the biggest titties.

But, er, he will see himself flying instead?

Dude, I think I just lost whatever vestige of sanity I had left.

which morrison?

Seriously, that's the kind of thing that comedy writers look at and go "why couldn't I come up with something that supremely silly?"

Jim.

And now, one of the celebrity spokespeople for... The Secret:



"If enough of you just believe..."

*smack*

Toni Morrison, botch.

That Oprah episode with Tom Cruise would make one hell of a Twilight Zone episode.

All the time you were thinking Cruise was the crazy one but IT WAS OPRAH ALL ALONG!

Apparently their first choice wanted too much money and has become notoriously unreliable to work with.

An ice adiction is a terrible thing...

Well, I tentatively tried to start a debate about The Secret with my friend and she immediately got really mad and said I was being disrespectful of her beliefs. (She's also very Pagan and new agey, so me being a hardcore atheist we really don't have a lot of common ground to stand on anyway)

Can I get some ideas for what to say that won't sound too bitchy or mean or like I think she's an idiot but will still prove her wrong without a shadow of a doubt? I know how I'd approach this if she was some random newbie on CHUD but telling her she's a fucking delusional idiot is not an option here, I'd like to keep this person as a friend.

Ask her if she believes in free will. And ask her if she's a retard.

Hmm...it's all about wishing for something to come true? So why not find out what she wishes for and either deny it from her or, if she gets it, destroy it and then ask her, 'Where is your god now?!? Huh? Huh? Maybe you should've wished fucking harder!'

Beyond that...ummm...I got nothing that doesn't devolve into fisticuffs. Try to reinforce the idea that if you want something, you work for it? A novel concept, I know, but hey! it works.

Well, it's likely your friend is either off or suffered something traumatic that would make her cling to such BS. If you want to keep her as a friend, you better hope for trauma.

Take her out to lunch. Then, just as she's beginning to tuck into her meal, grab her plate, a fork, and start horking her lunch down. Then, as she stares at you with stunned disbelief, say, "Don't you wish I didn't eat that?"

Tomorrow I'm going to punch my neighbor in the face. If he asks why, I'll say someone must have really wished I'd do that.

If your itent is honestly to keep her as a friend, as opposed to keeping her as a friend AND subtly proving to her that she's an idiot, I wouldn't do anything. My best friend started believing in some truly wacked out shit freshman year of college. I played along, smiled and nodded. Looking back now, he laughs his ass off, and things he might have inadvertantly become a member of a cult for a short time.

If she's constantly trying to shove The Secret and Paganism(is that a word?) down your throat, then I'm not sure why you'd want to keep her as a friend anyway. If she's more "live and let live", then why bother?

Tell her to wish for billions of dollars in her bank account. Tell her to wish as hard as possible. Then tomorrow, when she's not billions of dollars richer, tell her, "Huh. Guess that only works for Oprah."

That's a really good point, she DOES try to shove Paganism (yeah, it's a word) and other spiritual gobbledy gook down my throat all the time, and every time I disagree with her she accuses me of being religiously intolerant.

It's just complicated because she's a really old friend from high school, and when I first met her she was a Pink Floyd loving, pot smoking hippie novelist, it's only over the past few years that she's started delving into all this really weird bullshit, and I'm still very attached to her so I don't want to just cut her out of my life completely. I also can't nod and smile anymore though, so something needs to be done.

Here's the conversation we're having so far, any tips on where I should go from there would be appreciated.

Her:
"I deleted the comment I put after review of where I was coming from on it, cuz it sounded pretty pissed off

But hey if you're going to make fun of something I believe in, don't put my name in initially because it sounds like a direct attack, which I don't want and I'm pretty sure you didn't mean. Although this email sounds pretty pissy too, it's not meant to be - I just don't want this shit in my life. Seriously, make fun of stuff I believe in, because that is your right, but don't a) wave it in my face intentionally or b) put my name in as a direct comparison. In all honesty, even if I did do anti-Atheist and anti-drug videos, although I wouldn't because I strongly feel it is wrong to make fun of what others are into, I wouldn't say, "Sorry, Nat. See? You're brain is gonna fry."

So, again, this isn't meant to be pissy, and I apologize if it starts your day off bad, however, I need to set my boundaries, if for nothing else than to make sure I don't just get pissed off and say something stupid.

Have a good day, and I mean that "


Me: "
"Well, that certainly does sound pissy but okay.

I was actually hoping to start a debate of some sort more than anything. I feel like there's this big heavy cloud of silence hovering over our friendship, at least on my end, and I don't like it.

It feels like I'm constantly biting my tongue to keep from offending you, but you can talk about Reiki, spirits, guides, chakras and other stuff all you want and I have to be super tolerant of it. But whenever I mention a viewpoint that opposes yours you get all mad, like this email here for example. Or when I commented on the lens flare on those pictures that you thought had supernatural causes and you deleted the comments and sent me another little email saying I should be tolerant of your beliefs. Just how tolerant am I supposed to be here? So tolerant that I can't speak I can only listen?

Why can't we have open discussions about stuff and compare data and try to come to a shared conclusion? If not that then at least be fully aware of where the other person stands and agree to disagree. That's how you learn and grow, by discussing things and comparing facts. If you really strongly believe what you believe then you shouldn't have a problem with debating it. I'm open to being proven wrong, and if you have a lot of strong evidence and arguments to back yourself up you may even change my mind and teach me something new.

So basically, if you want to put up anti-Atheist and anti-drug videos please go ahead. And put my name all over them if you want to. I'll jump in there and debate, I have some well thought out reasons for doing what I do, and I can provide links to the information that's lead me to my conclusions about life. If you disagree then you can post your reasons why and then we'll really be getting somewhere.

So, the point is that I don't want to tip toe around anymore. If you feel that makes me intolerant then fine, if I have to sacrifice my freedom to speak openly for the sake of tolerance then that doesn't seem like a very good system. I wasn't making fun of you, although the video was really funny, and I wasn't trying to attack you, just trying to fully 'come out of the closet' so to speak and make my views known.

And there you have it. I'd totally love to debate The Secret with you."

I'm totally lost as to where to go from there.

Like I said, if these beliefs are held because she's dealing with something horrible, it all makes sense. No belief worth holding can't be defended.

She isn't, she went through a very depressed phase in early high school but that's about it, and it was many years ago. I'm not really sure what's causing her to latch onto this new age healing stuff so strongly...

Your comment to "agree to disagree" makes the most sense in my opinion. I've been friends with guys that have many varying degrees of spiritual and religious beliefs. Those that can discuss and debate them in a civil manner, do. Those that can't, well, we steer away from the topic because we don't feel like putting up with the inevitable amount of BS that will be attached. In those situations, we talk about other stuff. If she can't hold a normal conversation with you resorting to Auras, Chakras, Jesus, Buddha, or the Easter Bunny, I would seriously consider moving her to your secondary tier of friends.
*Please note, this may seem contrary to a comment I've made in the gigantor Devin doesn't believe in God thread. I'm not advocating intolerance. I'm not saying you should get up in her face and tell her she's an idiot for believing what she believes. What I'm saying is, you in turn shouldn't have to put up with her getting in your face either, just for the sake of being friends.

In response to this, I can tell you I remember a lot of people I knew who smoked a ton of weed in high school and early college started thinking that Wiccanism and Paganism were absolute truths. There was much lighting of candles and the wearing of patchouli. As dumb as I thought it was (and still do), I never said anything despairaging about it (to their faces).

Personally, if I'm not free to speak my mind in a relationship, the relationship is not worth having.

I have to agree with this, I've been in this position, and sometimes it's the only thing to do.

A friend of mine from high school became "born again", and in the couple of weeks before my brother died, she sent me all sorts of religious emails, including the dealbreaker, which was an email asking me if my brother had been "saved." I quickly moved her to the bottom rung of my friend-ladder, mostly in an effort to not reach through the monitor and choke the living shit out of her. My point is, mainly from this...
... is that sometimes you just can't keep a friendship chugging along because of what it used to be like. If the two of you truly just can't talk anymore, it might be time to move her to the back-burner.

Well, I sent my friend this article.

It basically says everything I wanted to say, but better and more eloquently. There was also a lot of back and forth about our friendship and how she feels I'm attacking her beliefs and I feel she's forcing hers on me and blah blah blah, but that isn't important. I also wrote a big long thing in my own words about why I feel The Secret is bullshit. We'll see how she replies... if she agrees with me there might be hope, if she disagrees and tries to argue that her brain waves are molding and shaping the universe around her then well... we'll see.

Bumping this thread to find out whatever happened with WG and her new agey friend.

I've got to read this now. Should be some fun comedy here.

"Lose weight by stop looking at fat people"... Hey! Why didn't I think of that?

I watched the DVD last year with my then-girlfriend. It's fuckin hilarious.

If I remember correctly, at one point one of the experts says "How does the Secret work? I don't know... Nobody knows how electricity works either. It just does!"

Woah, blast from the past!

She's getting married this fall, and we still keep in touch but we definitely don't talk as much anymore. We basically agreed to disagree I guess, I keep meeting people who are totally into The Secret and it always makes me twitch a little but there isn't a lot I can say to them it seems like.

In all my conversations with my friend whenever I found something specific that was provably wrong she would just say she didn't believe that part literally and it was meant to be a metaphor and it was all still real.

I've noticed in talking to people with all kinds of superstitions and beliefs over the years that the one thing they have in common is the ability to rationalize and explain away things that challenge their world view. I've been talking to a lot of Creationists lately as well (thread HERE) and they all have the same tendency to do incredible mental gymnastics in order to maintain their beliefs.

My best friend has got the book.* My sister just bought the book.

I'm in despair. I emailed my sis Werewolf Girl's link, let's wait and see her response.


*I got him the Tao Te Jing (best translation!) for his birthday, my counter-attack.

But this isn't specific to superstitions and beliefs (with a capital B). It goes for everything in all of us from the most ridiculous things to the most mundane. Blah blah blah, it's nothing to do with the truth but about how emotionally connected/dependent one is with a certain point of view.

As Kirk Cameron says, to change someone's mind you need to cirsumvrenerate their intellect, and presumably go for the gut/heart/emotion behind it. Wise man, that Cameron...

And should that fail, you beat up their computer monitor with a baseball bat!

Well, how ELSE are you supposed to cirsumvrent the evils of technology!? It has no heart!

Cool, so this stuff showed up again in my life thanks to a colleague who has a friend who's really into it. Unbelievable.

Yeah, my brother is really into this shit and Tolle. The reactions that he has when he's blabbering about this to my parents and I say that this world works in no way like the one this book presents are hilarious.