Hampton Roads Publishing Company Blog

The Secret - and Politics

I woke up thinking about the movie “The Secret,” which I saw a couple of nights ago.

It is no secret that “The Secret” is about the law of attraction. That is to say, what you focus on is what you get. This sent several hares scurrying in various directions in that untended field that I call my mind.

For one thing, it struck me how divided the Western mind is. The laws that science recognizes are not those recognized by metaphysics, or religion, or politics. Since each of these various belief systems responds to the world from its own set of presumed rules about “the way the world works,” it is no surprise that the thinking of society — and of each of us individually — is confused, self-contradictory, and fearful.

I do not mean to point a finger in any direction. This is not a situation in which it is someone’s “fault.” It is, rather, a fix that we are all in together.

* The scientist who believes that the world is only material and that any reference to spiritual, metaphysical, energetic “realities” is mere wishful thinking, is following the accepted beliefs of the subset of society to which he belongs.

* The politician who attacks problems by attacking others, who are the supposed cause of the problems, only follows the rules that have been laid down in practice, if not in theory, as the laws of politics.

* The clergyman who refers every moral dilemma, every potential choice, to the rules that he deduces have been set down by God, is only following the rules of his subset of society, his church.

* And, finally, the metaphysically inclined, often called New Agers, who divorce public affairs from questions of personal morality or personal growth, again are following the rules implicitly laid down for their subset of society.

It is nobody’s fault. But it is not a comfortable situation either. It is, I think, a transitional state. Just as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, so the remnants of what we used to call the modern age are giving way to whatever it is that will follow. It should be no surprise that we, in the midst of the transition, are confused, divided, and either leaderless or being led by leaders who don’t know where to go.

So what are we to do about it, either individually or as a society?

Well, that is one of the things that watching The Secret illuminated for me. I knew about the law of attraction. I knew by personal experience that this is true. I knew from personal experience that the world can be trusted, that, as The Guys Upstairs have told me many times, “all is well, all is always well.” Yet, when it comes to watching the train wreck that is our economy, our politics, and many aspects of our self-destructing materialist society, I have found it hard to remember that all is well, when it appears so self-evident that all is not well. I am not in favor of replacing the American republic with an American empire. I do not wish us to spend the rest of our lives creating enemies and killing them. I do not live in fear, and see no reason for us as a society to live in fear. Like you, I wish every one’s children to live in peace and prosperity. Like you, I do not wish to be one of a protected elite amid squalor.

So the question becomes, how do we deal with social problems without first focusing upon them, without concentrating more energy in them, in the way that, for instance, an antiwar rally will focus energy not on peace but on war? Perhaps the example provides the way forward. The movie quoted Mother Teresa as saying that she would never attend an antiwar rally but would attend a pro-peace rally.

Class, here’s the exercise: Reframe everything we worry about. Replace every negative with its implied positive. Moving out of the villains-and-victims mind set, look again for the underlying causes of the world’s problems.

If everything can’t be blamed on the Republicans, or the Democrats, on the Conservatives, or the Liberals — if it can’t be blamed on right wing Christians or left wing ideologues — if it isn’t the fault of the communists or the capitalists or the Socialists (or the monarchists, for that matter) — if what we see around us is ultimately caused by forces more profound than conscious conspiracies of individuals and groups (regardless of whether such conspiracies exist or not) –

Then what are the real forces operating?

How does the world really look?

What are we as individuals here to do?

Perhaps I’ll give you my answers next class. Or perhaps not. Sometimes questions are more productive than answers.