BIG IDEAS

If The Secret really wanted to wake people up, it would have something to say about the social construction of reality, a la The Matrix. There is also remarkably little said about love – except in the narcissistic sense – and nothing about compassion. Much of the film is beautifully done and the ending is undeniably uplifting. It resonates with people spiritually because it offers a twisted version of the truth inside them: a vision of connection rather than alienation. But it all turns out to be a bait and switch game, a promise of perennial wisdom that turns out to be a cult-like sales job for personal power.”
– from Beyond The Secret

“One advantage of locating good times in the remote past, rather than seeking them in a collective future, is that reality testing can’t get in the way. Prophecies have a best before date; they usually go bad. But the past worlds of Eden, Lemuria, Mu and Atlantis are not subject to any such limits. Pushed back far enough into the past, a Golden Age sits outside the realm of historical proof. It becomes a loose benchmark against which we can measure all later decline. Perhaps the archetype of the Golden Age is drawn from the time in the womb and the great peace that precedes entry into a loud, blindingly bright world. Did the mythmakers draw upon deeply buried, intrauterine memories of floating undisturbed in the amniotic fluid, like tiny sea divers?”
– from The Golden Age That Never Was

“In the science-fiction film THX-1138 by George Lucas, the greatest crime was to fall in love, an offence punishable by death. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Winston Smith’s downfall begins with his romance with another prole. It’s the same throughout world literature, art and mythology: love and power are eternally at odds. There’s good reason for that.”
-from The Heresy of Compassion