The Law of Attraction
And The Law of Thrownness
Or how to balance your intentions against your family
history
Some weeks ago I saw this statement on Twitter:
"You create your own world!"
I remember
being struck by the power and certainty of this claim. And the sense that this is a statement that has to be investigated.
It is emotionally appealing, but what are it's merits? As it stands it is not 'an argument' in the critical thinking
sense of a conclusion supported by evidential premises. It is merely an assertion! Indeed,
on Twitter, there is not enough space for an argument, in just 140 characters.
Anyway I have been very busy, and have
not had much time to even think about that statement, about how we might 'create our own world'. I did write that assertion
in my notebook, with a reminder to do some work on it. But other priorities kept intervening.
Today,
I am tempted to try to write some reflective thoughts on this assertion. The reason this came up today is that I found
a new comment on Twittter, by Brandon Gilbert, to the effect that 'The Law of Attraction is a Lie'. I checked out his
video clip, and found he was not saying it is a lie, but that it is not enough to 'intend' to become wealthy
and/or successful. Rather, we must take new kinds of actions to make those intentions and goals into
realities.
Combining the original assertion and Brandon Gilbert's claim, we get the claim that: 'We create our own world
by our thoughts and actions'. This is a new assertion; again not an argument, in that it does not contain any evidential
premises for the bald conclusion.
My main argument against this assertion is this (where P = premise, and C = conclusion):
P1) We are born into a specific family,
with a specific class/wealth/education status; at a particular point in the history of a particular society.
P2) We are
'colonized' immediately by our mothers; and it then takes about six months to get beyond the 'symbiotic phase' (birth to six
months, approx) in which we do not distinguish between our 'self' and our 'mother', which probably seem to us to be a big,
combined entity. P3) We learn from our families 'what to think' long before we get a chance in our schools to learn 'how to think'.
P4) We
seem to be a physical entity that stores its cumulative, interpretative experiences, including representations of good and
bad aspects of our significant others (e.g. mum and dad, etc), and our good and bad adaptations towards them, and our good
and bad reactions against them, in long term memory, in the form of electro chemical traces in the brain which can be described
as scripts, stories, narratives, schemas, and frames; and all of this is below the level of conscious awareness, and PERMANENTLY
beyond direct conscious inspection.
P5) We are then subjected to the mass media of our culture, and reinforcement from neighbours,
schools and peers, and this further shapes our non-conscious beliefs, stories, scripts and narratives, from which
our actions in the world are derived and driven.
P6) At least 95% of everything we do is
driven by automatic, non-conscious processes, which we do not even notice to be the case. We are 'growbots' that naively
believe we are 'pulling our own strings', when in fact they are pulled by non-conscious cognitive-emotive wirings in the basement
of our minds.
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C) Therefore, we are products of our biological interaction with the world, in which culture
inevitably wins out against innate biological urges (more often than not)
This argument seems to show conclusively
that 'we do not create our own world'! We seem to be a creation of our biological-birth-wiring and
its interactions with the social milieu into which it is thrown at the point of birth.
Does that mean we cannot learn
to create our own universe? Well I want to look at that in two parts: 1. We almost certainly can set goals to change aspects of our lives, and those goals can move
us from one kind of home or community to another; and we can also change our mental states so that we live lives that are
different from our childhood lives. But this is not easy, and requires an enormous amount of intention, commitment,
action, staying power, persistence, stubbornness, and self-belief. In this sense, we can change our
world, and make it more and more like would ideally like it to be. However:
2.
Our thoughts cannot change the nature of a bull that is running towards us. Our thoughts about the crummy building that we
live in today cannot turn that same building into a palace, today! My weak muscles cannot be changed into strong muscles
today, by visualizing myself going to the gym and pumping iron. If I have a roman nose, I cannot get rid of it by intending
to have a snub nose, today (and, in the absence of a budge for surgery, ever)! There is an external reality, outside
of our minds. In this sense, we do not create our own world. And our external
reality has a 'concreteness' that often proves to be highly intractable.
That is my argument. I can supply sources in the psychological literature for my premises
above. If anybody wants to argue the opposite, then they have to be at least as systematic in their thoughts as I have
been, and present them in a non-emotive way, as I have done.
What I have demonstrated here is the power of critical thinking
to save us from being gulled by emotive exaggerators who make claims that sound emotively appealing but which, when examined
closely, prove to be much more complex than they at first seemed. If a self-development product/service is simple and
easy, and cheap, it is probably not what it seems. To learn how to realistically pursue your goals with me could cost
you ten times what a copy of 'The Secret' costs. And you would have to commit yourself to work your rear end off to make the
changes you want. The Law of Attraction has to fight a huge uphill battle against the Law of Thrownness. You are
what you are because of your history. To become what you would prefer to be, you have to fight a huge, psychological
uphill battle, which (honestly) takes years!
If you want to respond to this post, please go here: Jim Byrne's Blogger Blogs.
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That's all for now.
Sincerely,
Jim
Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services
Email: jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com
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