did The Secret cause the Recession?

http://www.getrichslowly.org/2007/06/11/get-rich-quack-david-schirmer-of-the-secret/


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January 2018

The title of this post was one of my proudest moments writing this blog.  I remember when i came up with the premise, and it's the reason that i continue to punch keys on this little corner of inter-obsolescence. 

It's a tweet, before there was twitter.  (was there Twitter in 2010?  anyway, i didn't know about it if there was).  A forum to posit incomplete thoughts and premises, and pass them off as modern wisdom. 

This thought was the underlying absurdity of American Capitalism and our (sadly not unique) taste for mumbo jumbo. 

The Secret was a dumb book that was massively popular for a time, particularly when i was a Barnes & Noble bookseller.  The premise was essentially that if you believed in the Secret, you could use its powers to magically make whatever you want to have happen happen.  This is called manifesting.  It's dumb, but kinda fun to think about.

The Secret at its core is a concept about selfishness.  We like to pretend (in magic, but also in capitalism) that we can win, but that there is no one losing on the other end of our win.  Capitalism (again, like magic!), is very good at making things invisible.  In particular the lines that connect things.  You win in capitalism when you find a cheap cool sweater (or a $1 hamburger), and it's easy to pretend that the worker who made that sweater or our entire ecological system aren't losing in that deal.

American capitalism - American oligarchs - are at their core about that same selfishness.  Oligarchs pretend they have magically manifested something that no one else could have, and they are therefore owed what they have taken.  In reality, the world is more McLuhanistic (or Benjaministic?), and most things that are would have been eventually anyway... probably, but in a new way.

Work to Live

The last couple of weeks have been busy ones, full of much work (all of it, as yet, sadly, unpaid), some play & many plans. Yesterday i poked my head in at my beloved ex-company OfficeTeam to see if i could get some temporary work to tide me over for a while. Unfortunately, the OT team was far too professional for me & couldn't be bothered to meet with me immediately, rather setting up an appointment for tomorrow morning.

In addition to my search for temp work, i've also been pounding the pavement in search of actual work & non-work, in contacting two other former "employers," Metro & Harris Labs... Both of which i've tried to get in at, and am waiting to hear back.

But at least i'm not bored waiting for the phone to ring. I've plenty of TV-DVDs to watch and have also been working on a new dining room table (for the dining room) as well as keeping a few academic irons in the fire. I now have two conference papers to write (one wholly new, the other a pieced together work from some of my UChicago stuff) and a Berkeley conference to get into. I'm trying to piece together application materials for this coming fall and constantly still working to make my zombie thesis better (in hopes of it getting into the zombie anthology that i submitted it to).

All in all i have plenty to take my mind off the fact that i have, at present, no incoming income whatsoever (though i did, just moments ago mail off a $3 mail-in rebate for Seagrams gin), including my newly purchased & nearly finished book The Ruins, by Scott Smith (an excellent read, go get it, right now).

But fear not for me, dear friends, i'll likey be ok (though if you want to donate to me via paypal, i won't say no... just a couple cents... come onnnnnnn...)