The Law of Being Punched in the Bowdlerization

I'm doing some research on pseudoscience for an article I'm writing, and I stumbled across this review (from "Reel News", hehehehe, at the American Chemical Society) of What the Bleep Do We Know!?.

There's this notion among certain pseudoscientist types that our experiences are entirely the result of our own thoughts. That is, if you have a negative outlook, the things that you anticipate happening will actually happen. This is roughly formulated--well, actually, it's not, since there's no consensual definition--as the Law of Attraction, which was in part made popular by a film just as awful as Bleep, called The Secret.

I have my own thoughts on this, but first I'd like to present a brief quotation from the ACS review:

What’s most odious about “What the Bleep,” though, is its message of profound self-absorption: The universe is all about you, and everything in your life is a product of your mind. Try selling that idea to tsunami survivors in Southeast Asia.

Elizabeth Wilson, the writer of the review, touches upon the thing that makes me so incredibly angry at such ideas.

I'm not upset by the pseudoscience; every adult who watches such films is already inclined to believe in some nifty novel idea. It's kind of like the argument for not getting rid of the Bad Guy: "He'll just be replaced by someone worse." On the other hand, children who watch such films are more likely to go explore quantum physics and discover something that interests them. How nice to even have quantum physics in a semi-mainstream film!

What upsets me is the notion that Bad Things won't happen to us if we don't think about them. Let's examine the consequences of such an idea:

• The belief that Max was murdered because she was thinking about school shootings all the time. (In fact, I know with some certainty that she wasn't. Perhaps it could be argued that she was thinking of Taylor, her friend who was kidnapped and murdered. But then, of what was Taylor thinking? And what of the other people who were killed?)


• The belief that people deserve--or are at least responsible for--the bad things that happen to them.


• Practicing compassion becomes hazardous. What does this say about such people as Mother Theresa? Ultimately, we must all look inward and revel in our fortune rather than wonder about those who are less fortunate.

I don't really recommend that you tell me that you believe in the Law of Attraction. As I half-joked to racingpenguins, anyone who says such a thing to me is liable to be, in order:

1. punched in the face.
2. asked if they were thinking a lot about broken noses.