There’s a bestselling book out called “The Secret” which has millions of devotees and is, by all meaningful standards, a rip roaring success of the publishing world. You probably have heard of it, or seen it on the bookstore shelves.

Its message is hardly unique. Those of us who remember the seventies would know its concepts as “The Power Of Positive Thinking”, and the exact same ideas, phrased differently, have appeared since time immemorial.

Having just watched the first half hour of a rather breathlessly earnest documentary presentation of its ideas (it repeats itself a lot, so I feel comfortable assuming I got the gist), I feel I can present, examine, dissect, and thus glean the worth from what might superficially seem a rather, well, superficial philosophy.

The core idea is simple : the “law of attraction” states that you will “attract” to yourself whatever you think about the most. If you are always thinking about negative things, like how depressed you are, how broke you are, how hard your life is, and so on, you will attract things which reinforce that mood. If you instead think about how lucky you are, how things are going to improve for you really soon, and if (most importantly) you powerfully visualize the things that you want to happen, visualize them so powerfully that it is almost as if, in your mind, they are already happening, then the universe will bring you that very thing.

Like I said, not exactly a groundbreaking new idea. I suspect, however, that is one that has such a strong appeal that it can be sold at least once a generation as thought it was brand new, and the success of this particular incarnation, assuming the book matches the movie, is due to a strong combination of accessible and appealing language, very thorough multi-angle explanations, and the aforementioned breathless earnestness and credulity in selling this as “The Secret” of the ages, which all great people have known, and so forth.

At first glance, it seems like nothing more than the usual lightweight New Age claptrap which sounds good at first but which, to someone with a negative personality at least, seems to clearly be an endorsement of the old moral dodge of the victim-blaming “just world” error that assures people that everyone always gets what they deserve so they shouldn’t worry about bad things happening to other people.

After all, they are only doing it to themselves, right? They deserve it!

And clearly, a great deal of this sort of thinking is clearly just the usual New Age bullwash, demonstrating people’s tendency to mistake metaphorical subjective truth for literal objective truth. Our thoughts do not “attract” anything in any literal sense, your mind cannot somehow realign the entire universe for good or for ill, our brains, as amazing at they are, do now have the power to somehow negate the randomness of life simply by radiating their fantastic thought waves. That’s complete cattle excrement and should be disposed of in the appropriate sanitary fashion.

However, there is a way that such a philosophy could work to improve one’s life and create a lot of the same effects being ascribed to it without the need for any kind of vague and completely illogical and unscientific mid powers being postulated.

It has to do not with the Universe at large, but the world of human relations, the web of social reality in which every human being operates. And it has to do with positive and negative thoughts, but not on any cosmic scale, just how we interact with other humans via empathy.

If you are thinking and feeling negative things, your fellow human beings will feel the same things via empathy. And because empathy is so poorly understood, deep down, this will seem like an attack to them. This person came into the room, and I started feeling bad, and I am pretty sure it’s coming from that person. Why would that do that to me? I have to attack them back to defend myself, and if possible, make them go away.

And so, tragically and immorally but understandably, people react to people in negative mood and mind states with their own negative reactions, which of course makes their target feel even worse, and a very destructive and unpleasant cycle is put into motion.

Furthermore, negative people leave others with a negative impression of them, an unpleasant memory that recurs every time someone thinks of them… and so, naturally, people try not to think about them at all. Consequently, their are not in people’s minds when those people encounter opportunities which may benefit them.

But conversely, people in a happy and positive mindset make other people feel good just by being around. Instead of being shunned or attacked, their presence is actively sought. People respond to this person who is givng them positive emotions by radiating their own positive response, thus reinforcing the positive mood and making the positive person’s world seem quite positive indeed.

They also create a positive association in people’s minds, and thus make it pleasant to remember them. Hence, they stay in people’s minds and, because reciprocity is a basic human response pattern, said people will want to reward them for the good feelings they got from said positive person, will be naturally inclined to help them in any way they can. And when the positive person responds with joy and gratitude to the gifts and opportunities given, that further reinforces the potential for positive interactions in the givers’ mind.

It all makes sense, and none of it requires any dubious cosmic forces or a breathtakingly naive and ill thought out solipsistic worldview. Positive people make others happy and make good impressions on people, and so people like them, feed their positivity, and help them out. Negative people make others unhappy, leave negative impressions that make people avoid thinking about them, and cause others to shun them or attack them.

Whether or not it is possible to turn oneself from negative to positive is another matter entirely.