Have you seen that commercial in which a tram headed up the side of a mountain stalls temporarily? Some of the passengers start to panic until one of them extols the virtues of "thinking positively." Others calm down; one starts brushing her hair in a maniac attempt to "think positively" as well. Meanwhile, a quick-thinking passenger simply pushes the "emergency start" button. The tram starts up again. "See," says the "think positive" fellow. "It works." Right.
Michael Shermer addresses the shortcomings of the "think positive" approach in an article for Forbes.com, in which he reviews that current best-seller The Secret, and its spinoff products, and as usual, he hits the intellectual "emergency start" button quite nicely. Here's an excerpt.
The Secret is a self-help book in the tradition of Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and Anthony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within. But The Secret makes claims that go well beyond such prosaic self-help advice as writing down your goals, keeping a daily success journal and tackling your fears head-on. The Secret claims that science has discovered mysterious forces at work in the cosmos that when properly tapped can unleash unimaginable wealth, happiness and success.
That force is called the "law of attraction." Like attracts like. Positive thoughts sally forth from your body as magnetic energy, then return in the form of whatever it was you were thinking about. Like money. Byrne and her success sycophants think a lot about money. "The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts," we are told. The film's promotional trailer is filled with such vainglorious money mantras as: "Everything I touch turns to gold." "I am a money magnet." And my favorite: "There is more money being printed for me right now." Where? At the U.S. Mint?
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You don't need science to prove The Secret is codswallop--just a modicum of thinking. If wealth and poverty are the result of nothing more than our thoughts, should we blame those poor starving Zimbabweans for being just a bunch of pessimistic sourpusses? And what about the victims of Auschwitz? If the law of attraction is true, then every oppressed, enslaved or exterminated group in history had it coming. That idea is beyond wrongheaded--it's evil.
Is there anything we can do that works for success? That depends on what you mean by "work" and "success." I once attended a convention whose keynote speaker was Mark Victor Hansen, now well known as the co-author of the wildly popular Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. One of his more memorable lines from his inspirational speech was "This stuff works when you work it," by which he meant that the real secret to success was working hard toward success.
But...let's step back for a minute and consider--could an unhappy purchaser who relied to what she thought was her detriment on a self-help tome sue the author of such a volume if the advice given didn't lead to the reader's desired outcome? That is, could she sue if thinking positive didn't work? Well...this case isn't exactly analogous, but we'll look at it anyway.
Consider Gorran v. Atkins Nutritionals, 464 F. Supp. 2d 315 (2006). Mr. Gorran went on the Atkins diet, when his cholesterol level was fairly low. After a few months on the diet his cholesterol level went up and eventually he had to undergo an angioplasty. He sued for "products liability, negligent misrepresentation, and deceptive conduct under Florida law....After he stopped following the Diet, Gorran researched the Diet and learned that many respected health professionals have issued warnings about the Diet -- warnings defendants purportedly urged their followers to ignore." After dismissing the plaintiff's claims for products liability and negligent misrepresentation, the judge considered the First Amendment issue. Here is what he decided about that issue.
I hold that the Book is noncommercial speech entitled to full First Amendment protection, for it does more than merely propose commercial transactions. The Book is not an advertisement for defendants' products; rather, it is a guide to leading a controlled carbohydrate lifestyle. The Book discusses, among other things, how the Diet works, why weight loss occurs, general nutritional guidelines, and disease prevention. Much of this discussion is scientific in nature. The fact that the Book, within its several hundred pages, contains several references to defendants' products and services does not transform the Book into commercial speech. Furthermore, any financial gain that accrues to defendants from sales of the Book does not support the conclusion that the Book is commercial speech. It is well settled that the mere fact that there is an underlying economic motivation in one's activity does not turn that activity into commercial speech.... Plaintiff's negligent misrepresentation claim, to the extent it relies on the Book, is denied.
[The court also considered the plaintiff's claims with regard to the Atkins diet website, which I omit here].
The problem for the plaintiff is that the author here interposed warnings to the reader (advice contained on the copyright page "which states that the advice offered in the Book is not intended to be a substitute for the advice and counsel of the dieter's personal physician") as well as a great deal of additional, useful information that did not pertain solely to the Atkins diet. Mr. Gorran relied on the book's advice, rather than a physician's advice, despite signs that the diet wasn't helping him, and perhaps was detrimental to his health. In fact according to information in the opinion, he had clear signs that things weren't going well--he had rapid increase in his cholesterol but chose to stay on the diet. Within a few months he began experiencing severe chest pain.
Now, we aren't talking here about what is on the outside of the book--what constitutes, for example, an advertisement for the book, raising expectations or providing some kind of warranty as to the book as a product. That's an entirely different question. That was the question raised over James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces, when it was advertised and sold as a memoir rather than as fiction. The publisher, Random House, settled with purchasers, rather than litigate the matter. If the author presents his opinion with suitable disclaimers, then as the judge in Gorran determined, his writing is protected; it is "not an advertisement for defendants' products". And we also are not talking here about a hypothetical case in which injury might be traced to detrimental reliance on statements in a book that a self-help author makes without also making such disclaimers and including such neutral, informative content.
I would suggest that the judge in Gorran is pointing out, as Dr. Shermer is suggesting in his review for Forbes.com, that we should be doing some active thinking while we read. As we take in a self-help book, if we choose to do so, we should also be evaluating the claims, not swallowing them whole and uncritically. Dreaming of a magic outcome is understandable, but not advisable. As the Gorran judge said, `The Court notes that it has had success with its own, much simpler diet, which can be described in four words: "Run more, eat less.'" That is, after all, part of the "marketplace of ideas" theory underlying the First Amendment. Let's stroll through that marketplace and examine the goods, not dash to our favorite tienda and grab the first item on sale. If it doesn't suit, it's not really a bargain.
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