So-called Law Of Attraction
I try to draw a fine line between what I believe as reality and fiction. I can appreciate the symbolic and aesthetic value of things like divining meaning from the stars or from spirits, but I like it as fiction or a sort of poetry. I have no actual reason to believe that these things actually exist. I'm glad that others can find greater meaning in those things, but I do not.
The “Law of Attraction” (the idea that you can manifest a change in the universe by thinking about the change and believing that it has already happened) is interesting to me as a pseudoscience.
Usually I would say that things like this are generally fictitious, but harmless. As long as it’s not being used to grift or endanger people.
I feel different about the “Law of Attraction”. I see it as a distortion of the much simpler idea of… having a good mindset when going into things????
The ideas are the same: the way that you think about things can have a positive or negative effect on your life. At the simplest level, it’s the difference between optimism and pessimism. Everything does suck a bit more if you always expect it to suck and look for reasons why it sucks.
The main question I have is: Why can’t we just talk about mindsets and attitudes without evoking them as some sort of magic superpower that will always give you what you want as long as you want it hard enough?
The key difference is that being conscious about your mindset is not a magic cure-all. It’s simply one tool in your toolkit that you can use that might help you out in life sometimes.
Framing it as the “Law of Attraction” sets up this impossible expectation that it’s THE way get everything that you want. I think that it’s pretty unhealthy.
I’m thinking about the people who are truly desperate and feel that they have no other choice but to cling to the “Law of Attraction” as a last resort. They were led to think that it’s something that they can rely on, and will be devastated if it doesn’t work out. If things go wrong, then they can only blame themselves because the “Law of Attraction" is supposed to work guaranteed.
The magic of the “Law of Attraction” is the most appealing part about the idea, but all it does is lead people astray.