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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/22/2008 7:39:04 AM |
said that I ATTRACTED conflict, due to my attitude that I expected that I would encounter conflict from some people
That's not what I meant by 'bad things'. The 'law of attraction' says that if your house burns down or a car hits you or you get cancer, it's because of your thinking - and you can't necessarily avoid such events even if you change your conscious thought because it's what's in your subconscious that 'attracts' events to you.
You don't need to argue that having a positive outlook is likely to bring you more success in every way than having a negative one - again, that's psych 101. It's hanging a perfectly good psych theory on a bogus 'law' that is the mistake.
If you really want to argue that the 'law of attraction' is valid, then explain how a two-year-old 'attracts' a brain tumor to herself. Provide scientific proof. And good luck with that. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/22/2008 9:40:51 AM | If my house were to burn down, it would be because I was negligent to protect it from fire in some way. Houses do not spontaneously combust. If I were to be hit by a car, it would be because I put myself in its path. If I got cancer it would be because I didn’t look after my health.
Now children whom fall victim to disease may be a tough one for many to accept, but there are some of us who believe that at the end of each life cycle we take some time to evaluate our spiritual growth, and choose our next experience based on our desired next lesson. Maybe sometimes there is a desire to contribute to the world in general by inspiring others to be compassionate. We may choose to come back as a victim.
The use of terms like “stupid” and “useless” shows that a person’s attitude is still leaning toward the negative.
For those who prefer a scientific approach to nurture verses nature and the power of perception (attitude), I suggest giving Dr Bruce Lipton’s approach some consideration.
Although “The Secret” may not be an approach that works for everyone, I believe it is one that has worked for some. The result is that there are more people in the world today with a positive attitude, and a perception that they have choices, rather than a perception of helplessness.
Even those with a strong Christian background must have been exposed to the idea that God gave us “free will” and inspired us to “turn the other cheek”.
We are a generation whom has grown up being taught that success is defined in terms of money and things. Many people here on POF believe that it is defined by the acceptance of others. It is my belief that happiness is defined by our ability and willingness to accept ourselves.
So, do people know what truly makes them happy? Yes some of us do. And some of us are happy without a mansion, yacht, or that perfect relationship. Because I have a positive outlook, I have “attracted” some wonderful people, and strange as it may seem to some, negative people are “not attracted” to me.
Smiles everyone | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/23/2008 3:53:22 AM | RE msg 26 by Merrylass:
That's not what I meant by 'bad things'. The 'law of attraction' says that if your house burns down or a car hits you or you get cancer, it's because of your thinking - and you can't necessarily avoid such events even if you change your conscious thought because it's what's in your subconscious that 'attracts' events to you.
You don't need to argue that having a positive outlook is likely to bring you more success in every way than having a negative one - again, that's psych 101. It's hanging a perfectly good psych theory on a bogus 'law' that is the mistake.
If you really want to argue that the 'law of attraction' is valid, then explain how a two-year-old 'attracts' a brain tumor to herself. Provide scientific proof. And good luck with that. The Law of Attraction goes way beyond the idea that events completely beyond your control are affected by your way of thinking. The Law of Attraction is that everything is affected by your way of thinking, whether it is beyond your control or not. As most things in our lives are down to our choices, it only stands to reason that a lot of the Law of Attraction is to do with our choices. Our choices are affected by our subconscious far more than we realise. What the Law of Attraction points out is that our subconscious is affected by our way of thinking, and that in itself changes our choices, and that changes our lives.
But there is also a subtler component. Many people believe that we are in a Holistic Universe, that everything is connected in some way or another, and what we do has chain reactions, the "Butterfly Effect", that our choices and actions have far-reaching unforseen consequences. What the Law of Attraction also points out is that just like the things under our control are affected by what we do, the things that seem to be out of our control are ALSO affected by what we do, through the indirect effects due to the Butterfly Effect. So the Law of Attraction says that those chaotic consequences that we deem out of our control, that are really in our control, are also affected by our choices, which is affected substantially by our subconscious, which is affected by our way of thinking.
According to Wikipedia, people with low self-efficacy show several factors:
1) They don't take on new and challenging tasks, so they won't learn new skills. If they lose their job, and cannot find another similar one, they will be less likely to re-train.
2) Low motivation. They just don't make the effort.
3) Sluggish and pessimistic thought patterns and responses. The think tasks are harder than they are. This often results in increased stress, and poor planning.
4) Belief in destiny. People with low self-efficacy tend to attribute what happens in their lives to an unseen force that is beyond their control. This isn't necessarily G-d. This is the idea that you cannot change your life, for better or for worse. It's pre-destined.
I think what you are referring to is what Bundera would call low self-efficacy. To someone with high self-efficacy, everything is under our control, and is down to what we choose in life. To such a person, even an action such as burning down the house is also under our control. If our house burned down because a careless guest left a cigarette burning, then we chose to let that person stay in our house, knowing the character of that person, that such a person smokes, smokes in our house, and is not careful to make sure that their cigarettes are extinguished. We could have made sure not to invite that person, or to keep an eye on that person, and ensure that their cigarettes were always extinguished. If our house burned down because we left the gas on, we could have made sure that we check the gas is off every time we leave the house, or every time we finish using it. So we CHOSE to put ourselves in the situation where the house was likely to be burned down. That was our choice. We had a choice of making the extra effort to be careful, or to take the risk of great loss. It may not be something we want to admit to ourselves, that we are the cause of most of our problems. But it is generally true. A person with high self-efficacy relishes this knowledge, because if he chose to not be careful and let his house burn down, then he has the power to choose to be careful. Then his house will be far less likely to burn down than other people's houses. He has the power to increase his enjoyment of life far more than normal, because he acknowledges he has the ability to affect what happens in his life far more than most people tend to believe.
Someone with low self-efficacy is someone who believes that whether or not her house burns down is completely out of her control. She won't think if her guests are likely to do something like leave a cigarette burning. She will consider that she just doesn't have the time to watch that person.
If her friend has high self-efficacy, she believes she CAN. She will rather invite friends who don't smoke, or who are careful. Even when she does have a careless smoker to stay, she will make sure that the guest leaves in the morning with her when she goes to work, and will arrange to meet her guest in the evening rather than let the guest have his/her own key and come and go as he/she pleases. It might seem an inconvenience and the guest might feel a little uncomfortable, but it's a lot better than coming home to find everything you own has burned down and your guest feels unbelievably guilty for destroying everything she has.
In the case of tumours, it's been known for a long time that tumours are vastly increased in anyone who is extremely unhealthy. So if you are serious that you can have an effect on cancer, you'll look after your health: you'll eat lots of fresh fruit and veggies, particularly ones with lots of vitamins and minerals, like carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, and pumpkin, brightly coloured vegetables. You'll get plenty of exercise. You won't generally overeat, because overheating regularly will lead to obesity. You will get enough sleep, the time when your body repairs itself, heals, and fights infections and harm such as the beginnings of tumours. You won't let yourself get stressed about anything, because you know that weakens your immune system a LOT.
Scientists have known for several years that certain towns and certain families get an extremely low level of cancers, and most members live far beyond the norm in extremely good health. Recently, scientists have been studying those towns and families to better understand what causes cancer. One such place is Okinawa. The Okinawans have shown almost none of the cancers so prevalent in our society, almost no heart disease, no Alzheimers, no Parkinsons, have mostly lived to over 100, and mostly worked happily into their 90s. What they found was that Okinawans do a few things:
1) They eat lots of brightly-coloured fruits and vegetables
2) They eat until they are 80% full. They never overeat.
3) They avoid worrying about anything.
Despite that they routinely get 2/3 of the calories recommended by Western doctors, they put in a full days work, even into what we call old age. They don't get tumours in anywhere near the level we do.
So it is very clear that if you want to avoid tumours, you'll do something about it.
If you just eat garbage, you are attracting tumours to you.
Perhaps the Law of Attraction ought to be re-named the Law of Repulsion, because our bodies and our minds naturally know what to do, and we screw them up.
So why do so many kids get tumours? Well, we're back to Bundera again. Bundera said that people's actions are the result of habits learned by copying others. That would reasonably happen in childhood. So it's natural to suppose that children will copy the patterns of extremely unhealthy parents by eating extremely unhealthy foods, and generally extremely unhealthy living. So they are likely to develop the same tumours as the adults. What is even more of a problem, is that the adults have had a childhood brought up in a healthy environment, so their immune systems were strengthened by such healthy living, and so their immune systems are on the way down. These children started out with no such immune system. Their immune system hasn't had a chance to built itself up. It goes from zero downwards. So their immune systems are already in a very damaged state, and that puts them in the same state as an adult in their 60s, who ate healthy for 20 years of childhood and had 20 years to build up their immune system, then ate unhealthy for another 20 years and reduced the immune system until the effects of their healthy childhood were cancelled out, which puts them in the same situation as these children as babies, and then eat unhealthy for another 20 years, until their immune system is equally damaged. In reality, it takes even more years to cancel out the advantages of an immune system with experience, so in reality, a 10-year-old who has grown up eating unhealthy is pretty likely to be living with an immune system that is in a similar state of disrepair of your average 60-70 year-old in the West.
A 10-year-old typically has young skin, so because the package is new, it looks like a car that just came out of a showroom. Also, a 10-year-old runs about a lot, so again, it seems like a car that sounds like it has a new engine. If you buy the car from a registered dealer who looks after all his cars, then the car is going to be in good quality. But then, so will any used car. But if the car comes from a dealer who doesn't care about his cars, then the car may be brand new. But it can still be in bad shape.
People don't get manufactured with quality control, and a 10-year-old is already 10 years old. A car that age is considered old, because of the way we treat cars. But there are people who look after their cars, and they have cars that are 30 years old that they drive regularly. It's all a question of good maintenance.
So in reality, a 10-year-old who lives unhealthy can be very likely to get a tumour, if their parents don't bring them up to lead healthy lives.
Does that mean that 10-year-olds who eat healthy will never get tumours? That is like saying if you look after your car that your car will run forever, for a million years and more. Obviously defects occur, and we cannot guarantee to eliminate every defect, even in our time. Doctors eliminated most dangerous diseases many years ago. TB was eliminated. But it does occur every now and then. It's making a rise recently, particularly amongst the homeless, who are generally exposed to the cold, the rain, and generally don't look after their health. Rabies is extremely rare. But every few years, there is a case in the UK. You cannot expect to stop 100% of tumours. Even if you found a medical cure for all tumours, tomorrow a new type of tumour might occur, that never occured before, that isn't cured by the treatment.
But one thing is clear: if you live healthy, the chances of you getting a tumour go down drastically. That's why doctors keep recommending giving up smoking. It lowers your chances of getting a tumour in the respiratory system significantly.
However, I DO know a lot of people who don't eat healthy at all, and the diseases they have are directly linked to their diet. But they keep telling me that their diseases are out of their control. The lack self-efficacy in their ability to prevent disease. So they don't have the motivation, they don't think about it properly, and as a result, they just don't do the things that would make these illnesses a lot easier on them.
This all comes from Bundera. It was you who put me onto him. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/23/2008 8:14:40 AM |
Obviously defects occur
Oh no! The 'LAW' says that EVERYTHING that happens is something your brain attracted to you. There aren't exceptions to the LAW of gravity, Scorpio. It's a law or it's not. If the six-month-old who can't possibly have eaten badly enough to 'deserve' a tumour gets one, how did that kid's subconscious 'attract' that? You can't conveniently come up with reasons that there can/should be exceptions. Tell me how your 'LAW' arranges for hundreds of people to be injured when a long-dormant volcano erupts? When a 9 earthquake causes a tsunami and wipes out a hundred thousand people? Did they all have it in their subconscious to 'attract' this? C'mon, Scorpio. Give it up. Yes, good attitude will help you succeed. You don't need to stretch that perfectly good idea to ludicrous extremes. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/23/2008 9:43:56 AM | I'm going to try and jump into the conversation... the Law of Attraction is something that comes up a lot in our spiritual group. I kind of agree with you lass and Scorpio...
What I believe covers over the law of attraction is the contract or plan for our lives that we come into physicality with....believing that everything that happens to us, we, have already written into our life before we were born. So if we have written in that we will be good at 'attraction' and that this is something that we want to experience here on earth then, yes, we will be really good at it.
The other observation is that when people, and this is a process that I witness people going through all of the time, are stressed, confused, hate their job, life and themselves etc. They are not following their contract or are not consciously aware of it, at all.
Once they start focusing in on what it is they've planned to experience in this lifetime... things change for them so quickly. It's like everything starts falling into their lap. Whatever they need, they get and so using the concept, at this time, works very well for them. They can literally manifest anything they need... but the catch is that they're closely following their contract.
The question of a newborn with illness. You have to remember that the baby is with it's mother for well these days 3 to 9 months? It absorbs the feelings, energies and reacts to the thought patterns of those around the Mother. What happens when you hold a baby who is sickly? What do you think? it's just natural...poor thing, it's so ill... etc. We actually physically hold it differently. .. more gently, fragily.
The baby who comes in as a sponge to learn and experience takes all of this in and thinks Wow! I'm sick, I might die... and then expresses that outwardly, physically. As all of our thoughts, feelings, stresses manifest outwardly, even as adults.
The other issue to look at is the baby's own sacred contract... if it is born with an illness then that was it's contract to experience. Contracts are sacred and it's not up to us to judge another's contract. Even if they are an unborn soul.
I expect that to some this is going to make sens and others will think I've 'lost it' lol anyway these are the things that I have come to know and others I have always known:)
...just living my contract :)
namaste | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/23/2008 5:59:39 PM | RE msg 29 by Merrylass:
Oh no! The 'LAW' says that EVERYTHING that happens is something your brain attracted to you. There aren't exceptions to the LAW of gravity, Scorpio. It's a law or it's not. Sorry to break it to you, but there ARE exceptions to the Law of Gravity. Newton knew it in his day. This was reasonable, as in Newton's day, all laws had exceptions. The original laws might have said that you couldn't murder someone else. But it was up to the judge to decide if there were extenuating circumstances, such as if you were protecting yourself or someone else from being killed or worse.
For thousands of years, science was just trying to understand the natural world. It's pretty obvious that most of it goes according to a repeatable pattern, and that although that pattern is there, most of us don't have the memory and the recall to arrange such patterns easily. So some people sat down and tried to gather that information and to arrange it into patterns, to see what patterns existed. Those things that followed such patterns could then help us to understand what different ways an event could have happened in the past, and what we could do to effect outcomes to our favour in the future. But people didn't assume that such patterns would always explain everything. That would be hubris.
After all, you might be a brilliant chess-grandmaster. You might have played millions of people and beaten them all. You might imagine that no-one will ever beat you. All it takes is a 6-year-old to pull a move that you've never seen before, to surprise you, and you've lost. No-one human is perfect. No human idea is perfect.
However, at SOME point in the last few hundred years, science became political. It stopped being about the search to learn, and many people stopped saying that science COULD explain everything, and those people started saying that science WOULD explain everything. I am not entirely sure when this change of consciousness occurred, but it seems to me that it occured somewhere between the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution. When you look at what some French academics wrote about the Catholic Church, that they claimed that the Earth was flat, when Stephen Jay Gould says such an idea never existed among Christian scholars, and in fact that it was lifted from a novel by Washington Irving, the author of the legend of Sleepy Hollow, and that this was written by an academic who was very anti-religious, it becomes very clear that a lot of scientific notions were used as a weapon, not to dispel false ideas, but to make false ideas, that would discredit certain groups, religious groups among them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology
Remember, this idea had massive ramifications. There is a Flat Earth Society that has been given scientific credence, because people believe that at one stage, Christian scientists supported the idea of a Flat Earth. It's ludicrous, because any sailor will tell you different. Whether you travel North to South, or East to West, eventually, you will reach the point you started at. So whichever way you travel, you'll find that the Earth is spherical, just not perfectly spherical, more ovate like an egg.
Now, why would an academic want to start false rumours about science, just to discredit religion? Well, it was only 35 after the French Revolution, and Antoine-Jean Letronne was French. The French Revolution was amazingly bloody. They didn't just kill the king, like in England, when we had a revolution. They didn't just kill the royal family, to prevent anyone claiming the monarchy. They killed everyone who was an aristocrat, from the upper classes. Even if you were from the working classes, but you were an illegitimate child of the aristocracy, or anyone who supported them, you'd be killed. If Americans took the same attitude to terrorism, all Muslims would be killed, and so would any child of a Muslim. You could have been killed just for being friendly with an aristocrat. It didn't matter who that person was. They could have been the nicest person in the world, and they still would have been killed. Why were they so bloody?
There were a number of factors:
1) The people were treated abominably. Most of the people were the lower classes. They were paid almost nothing by the upper classes, and were forced to eke out a living, and a lot of their food came from finding scraps. Malnutrition was extremely common. Illness and disease were rampant. There was no sanitation, and no police. Life expectancy was very low, and the infant mortality rate was unbelievably high. In comparison, war-torn Iraq was a haven by comparison.
2) The aristocracy behaved stupidly, ignoring the plight of the lower classes. They squandered the resources of the land. They were often stupid due to inbreeding. They were often cruel. Rape of the lower classes was very common. So was murder. For many, many years, if a carriage of upper-class people was travelling and a working-class child was in the road, the driver was ordered to ride on, over the child. Often the aristocracy was kept unaware of the way the lower classes lived by their managers, the middle classes, and did nothing to help the people, because they had no idea what was going on. So there was much resentment against the aristocracy.
3) The middle classes harboured much envy of the aristocracy and ambitions of grandeur, to become aristocrats themselves and to live the life of leisure and luxury that their employers enjoyed. Up until the Renaissance, the middle classes were just the more intelligent of the lower classes, plucked to be foreman and managers over the rest. As a result, they took the best that was left to the lower classes. Often, they learned much of their job, and so passed that knowledge and their job to their children, so that they too could enjoy a better life. However, for most of the time, the country was in disarray. So the middle classes had little power. However, they did have one power: they were the bridge between the aristocracy and the lower classes. The lower classes were told what to do by the middle classes, and the aristocracy were informed by the middle classes of what the lower classes did. The middle classes did a very good job of separating the two. So the aristocracy had little or no knowledge of what was happening to the lower classes except by what the middle classes told them, and the lower classes had no idea of how the aristocracy lived, except by they were told by the middle classes. The middle classes were the media of the day, and with no other form of information, everyone believed them. They told the aristocracy that the lower classes were lazy, indolent, and violent, and little more than animals. They told the lower classes that the aristocracy were lazy, indolent, debauched, and cruel, that they were not much more than powerful monsters. They even forbad any of the lower classes to ever speak to the aristocracy without a member of the middle classes telling them what to say and do, so the communication was completely controlled by the middle classes.
The middle classes saw how the aristocracy lived, and wanted it for themselves. The lower classes didn't, because they hardly ever saw it. All they knew was what they were told by the middle classes. The aristocracy were prevented from making social change, because the middle classes kept telling them it would just make matters worse.
When the Renaissance came about, the European world changed. Suddenly, all the developments made a business economy possible. It finally became possible for someone who didn't have money to gain substantial money through business, without having to be born into it. The middle classes saw their chance. They realised that if they could remove the aristocracy, there would be nothing in their way to stardom, and to the life of leisure and luxury that they so envied.
A lot of pressures built in France, and in England, until things exploded. But in England, things had already exploded centuries earlier, with the Magna Carta, and the monarchy had been making social reforms more and more. So England had been progressing towards a constitutional democracy. So when things exploded between the people and the king, in the English Civil War, things had already progressed to such a point that not much change was needed. The English Civil War was NOT between the king and the people. It was between the king and Parliament. So government as we know it, and much of what we know, was already there.
However, France was still pretty much a total monarchy. Although it had its own system of government, it had not had the same level of progressive social reform that England had. That left things very bad for the lower classes. So the middle classes (bourgeouisie) fed the lower classes (proletariat) propaganda about the aristocracy, and the way things should be, until they exploded.
At that point, the people rebelled and they took over. However, they needed people to govern them, and they didn't have the education. So they turned to their leaders and the most educated people they talked to, the middle classes.
The middle classes didn't want any possibility of a return to the old system, and nor did the lower classes. The middle classes decided the best way to accomplish that was to remove the aristocracy entirely through genocide. It was genocide, because the aristocracy married within their own group, and so they were a truly separate ethnic group within French society.
But why did the French turn against religion?
For that, you have to look at Christianity. Christianity started out for the people. But then in was in the Roman Empire, and the Early Christians were killed and tortured. During that time, they were a tiny minority. A few hundred years on, the Roman Emperor Constantine legalised Christianity. Then the Roman Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. From then on, most members of the Roman Empire quickly became Christians. So Christianity only became popular in Europe once it gained the favour of the aristocracy of Europe. So the Church learned a valuable lesson, that Europe was run by ruthless dictators, the Emperors, the kings, the nobility, and the powerful, and if the Church tried to help the people against the wishes of the aristocracy, they would be burned at the stake or worse. So the only way to help the people was to become pally with the aristocracy, and to try and get the aristocracy to agree to let the Church help the people. In addition, the Church would try and give words of consolation to the people, to help them accept a system that they had no way of fighting, because for most of the Middle Ages, Europe was a Feudal Economy, ruled by aristocrats who were backed up by paid mercenaries. Speak out against the local lord, and your head would go on a pike. If the local priest spoke out against the local lord, his head might end up on a pike. Even if it didn't, he would be ignored entirely at best. So the local priest was in a bind. So the Church tried to help these people to find some way to have hope that their life was not a complete living hell.
Obviously, this wasn't a perfect system. Many people decided to become celibate priests, because this got them to meet with the aristocracy, and thus to gain power. But it was the only way for the Church to function effectively.
As a result, by the time of the French Revolution, the Church had become synonymous with the aristocracy. The middle classes saw that the Church had tried to console the people and that the people had accepted such consolation. So if the Church was allowed to continue, then the Church could convince the people to accept the aristocracy, but with a Bill of Rights like England. Plus the people listened to them, and with the aristocracy out of the way, the people listened to the middle classes, and would whatever they told them to. Willing slaves. So they were a direct threat to the absolute power the middle classes wielded.
So the middle classes did whatever they could to destroy any possibility that the people might listen to the Church.
They fabricated unbelievable rumours about the Church, that the Church were full of paedophiles. When you look at the reality, you find that in England, the local Squire of the Manor, used to rape lots of the pretty young girls. These squires were lesser nobles, often who were children and grandchildren of managers and other members of the middle classes who had been ceded land and a title by some grateful Lords and Earls, for some special service that was done.
I've heard lots of stories about priests. It does happen. But I've heard real stories, from real people, and they are mostly about abuse from family friends, uncles, and similar. By far, most of the abuse is not from priests, and there is far more abuse from someone in the lower classes than priests. So it was just a case that these abuses were happening everywhere, and the priests were not totally immune.
One of the other things that the middle classes claimed about religion was that it suppressed science. This wasn't true at all, as few people in the middle ages had the situation to keep science alive, and one of these groups were the priests. Lists of European scientists during this era include lots of priests.
However, this left a power vacuum, and one that the middle classes simply could not fill. The aristocracy told the people what to do. But the priests told them WHY they should do it. They needed another group to tell the people why they should do what the government told them to. Science was the answer. Science would answer the same questions as religion, and the scientists would fulfil the basic roles that priests used to.
You can see this in the universities. The older universities in England have some very strange rules, rules that were kept until the last few decades:
1) They all meet for dinner in a massive hall, like the monks used to do in monasteries.
2) They all had to wear a special garb. The gear that people wear on graduation is actually clothing that scientists used to wear all the time, especially for formal occasions. However, if you look at the garb of the Italian nobility during the Renaissance, it is striking how the garb is eerily similar, especially the hats, which are the most distinctive.
3) The lining on the university clothes that you wear for graduation is made of fur or silk. Until recently, only the very, very rich could afford it.
4) Until the last century, members of the university faculty weren't allowed to have sex. It was known that women weren't allowed on campus. But faculty members weren't allowed to have women in their private quarters. Neither were they allowed to disparage the reputation of the university by carrying on a sexual liaison outside marriage. But they weren't allowed to get married either. So they were expected to be celibate as long as they remained part of the university. Just like monks.
5) They were given their own manservants to look after them. Just like the aristocracy.
You can start to see the picture. The scientists habits were set up deliberately in ways that matched both the aristocracy and the priests. In reality, the universities and the scientific community all had very close connections with the aristocracy. But with one exception: the lower classes didn't know who scientists were.
Scientists had been employed by the aristocracy. Either they were in universities which taught the sons of the aristocracy, like the academies of Ancient Greece, or they were paid an income by a King, Duke, or an Earl, to work on their ideas to benefit their employer, and because the aristocracy liked to be seen as a patron of the arts. When they published books, those books cost money. The lower classes spent their money on food. So the aristocracy and the middle classes bought books by scientists, but not the lower classes. They didn't have the money.
So in reality, the people knew the priests, they even knew the architects, because they went to the buildings that carried the name of the man who built them. They even knew doctors. But they never knew who scientist were.
So when the French Revolution came about, it was relatively easy to sell the idea that there was this special group of people who could give the people the answers that they previously sought from the priests. They had already been told that the priests were evil, so they wanted someone else to believe in, and this filled the gap.
However, there was ONE big problem. The Church had previously declared that the Pope was infallible. So all decisions that came down from the Pope HAD to be true. If they contradicted what the people knew, then the people were wrong. This gave the people an incredible sense of security in accepting the word of a priest. You didn't know if what you knew was always right. But you could rely on your priest, because his orders came from the Pope, so you could trust him.
However, these new scientists had no such authority. So it would have made people question them, and if they questioned the scientists, they might question the government that told the people about them, especially considering that the government stated that its laws were supported by what the scientists said. Remember, the middle classes wanted to enjoy the power and luxury that the aristocracy enjoyed. So they had to be obeyed equally as unilaterally. As the government was staffed by the middle classes, the middle classes wanted to have the government's orders, which we call laws, to be obeyed unilaterally as well.
That is where the term "law and order" comes from. They are the "laws and orders" of the government.
The government had based its support on its laws and orders on the scientists' statements on what to believe, so to achieve unilateral obedience, the scientists had to have unilateral acceptance. We call that infallibility.
So for the middle classes to succeed in their mission to become the new aristocracy, they had to tell the people that the scientists were always going to tell the people the truth. So Science had to become infallible.
As science was about finding patterns in the natural world, those patterns had to become infallible with them. So the Laws of Science became immutable, things which would always be true, in all situations. There couldn't be an exception, because then they wouldn't be infallible, and that could lead to the people questioning first if the scientists were always right, then the government.
But if you consider the concept of discovery itself, there is no necessity for any rule of science to be true in all situations. It could be true in most situations and still be reliable, and then if it wasn't always right, it wouldn't be a disaster, because you always allowed for that option. But if you stated that any rule of science was true in all situations, then you would always bank on science, and you'd never leave an option for if it was wrong. But science as we know it, is only the knowledge that we have, and that would have mistakes, and gaps in information. So it was impossible right from the very start for science to be always right, even if science was always right. But everyone stressed that scientists talked about science, and no-one drew a distinction between science itself and our knowledge of science, which was always going to be flawed. So this attitude made people bank on science, and you'd never leave an option for if it was wrong, even though it was inevitable that it was going to be wrong at some point. That led to some very major disasters.
Science was assumed that it was always right, when it just wasn't possible, and when that would lead you to disaster, even though that disaster could be avoided just by believing that science was sometimes wrong.
However, that attitude, as practical and sensible as it was, just would threaten the hegemony of the rule of the middle classes. So it was deliberately quashed. Science became a tool of propaganda.
What I am stating here, is not clear-cut. It is not like anyone wrote down exactly when this all happened, primarily because we are still living in countries ruled by governments that still adhere to the same philosophy.
by the way, the proper term that I was taught for the middle classes that took over from the aristocracy, was the "nouveau riche", French for the "new rich", and the aristocracy was called "old money". So we went from "old money" to the "new rich". It was money to money, rich to rich, the class structure remained the same. The only change was the people at the top.
That is why after the French Revolution, the people were still starving, and countries like France invaded and conquered Africa and made slaves of people like Africans, and later turned them into poorly-paid labourers. A real revolution that abandoned the class structure would have made everyone roughyl equal in a matter of a few years, in all ways. This didn't happen. The only reason it didn't, was that the new people at the top, the middle classes, didn't want it to. Things only really changed when people from the lower classes, like Nye Beaven from a Welsh mining town, fought for change, and things like the Jarrow March. But what really changed things was that eventually, technology became so advanced, that we didn't need to work very hard at all. Had the revolution changed everyone to be equal, we would have had that 200 years ago, and now, we would all be living like kings.
That is why so many countries in Africa are military dictatorships. They weren't 300 years ago. They were invaded by Europe, and Europeans deliberately put corrupt, vicious military dictators in charge, who would help the Europeans rape the land and use the people, and would viciously maim, kill and torture anyone who stood in their way.
Why am I explaining all this? So that you understand that science is NOT infallible, that the laws of science are basically rules of thumb, and that the whole notion for believing that laws of science must be true in all situations, was a propaganda message designed to make you a willing slave of your government, run by people who just wanted to overthrow their employers and take everything they have, leaving you just as unhappy.
So before you start going on about how science must be always true, check into your history. You'll find it was a lie. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 7/23/2008 6:26:56 PM | Energy,
Loved your post. I like people who can think both inside and outside 0f the b0x. I think you will fulfill your contract.  | |
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Posted: 8/22/2008 8:54:06 PM | Ty! Lynaudio,
I'm certainly having fun living my contract:)
I visited your profile and you look like your having fun too lol
Do you have any of your music up on the net? It would be neat to hear. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 8/25/2008 4:55:17 PM | I dunno - I think there is a grain of truth to it but it doesn't work all the time, or most of the time. For example I've been "positively thinking" myself a skinny girl my whole damn life - it hasn't happend yet  | |
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Posted: 8/25/2008 6:35:59 PM |
For example I've been "positively thinking" myself a skinny girl my whole damn life - it hasn't happend yet
How do you know? Think what you'd look like if you weren't thinking that! | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 8/27/2008 9:04:28 PM | | Power in the positive. Definitely. Of course, no one can write their life in stone. Who would want to anyway. How boring is that? Yet, this is common sense stuff really. Laws of attraction may be easier for some than others depending on your background but there are choices. | |
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Posted: 9/1/2008 12:37:04 PM | | To disagree with your quote 'people dont know what will make them stronger or happy'..... I do. I have enough self awareness to understand what i need out of life to bring about these qualities/skills and emotions. To comment upon your perception of my thinking being arrogant - Arrogance is assuming everyone thinks the same as yourself......... | |
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Posted: 9/1/2008 3:07:18 PM | Without reading any of the above, I think the idea of the "law of attraction" is on the spectrum of spiritual forces opposed to Love.
I was once asked to "test" such if even such a thing exists. Immediately I think of Ghostbusters, and what Ray did when he reminisced about the campfire stories around lake winnatonka, he thought of the marshmellow man.
So if there are any natural disasters in Maryland caused by a 10-story tall stay puff at least everyone here will know who to blame. | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 9/2/2008 6:40:47 AM | There is something to be said for the power of positive thinking!
I like to play disc golf, and play at a park with Par 3 on each basket. Starting in June, I finally developed a semi-consistant drive and usually wind up 30-40 feet from the basket after 2 drives. I kept missing these putts and got in the habit of scoring a 4 each time. But then, I started saying "One of these days, I WILL make a 3 putt!" Each time, before and after throwing (and missing) my third disc, I'd say it- usually our loud.
Saturday, I 3- putted three baskets!
I don't know if I "attracted the energy" to do this, or if it was my practicing that was the underlying factor. But I do know that the "positive thinking" kept me trying.
Now for the birdie..... | |
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| law of attraction
Posted: 9/2/2008 10:10:28 AM | I think we have to remember that the "Secret" and the "Law of Attraction" are really the views/theory of the producers and Bryne. I did not think of it as Science.
That said, I think that the Law of Attraction can work - just as Scorpio has stated. We also have to remember that all the other Laws come into play. The Law of Gravity, the Law of Inertia, etc. When you consider the "Miracle Man" from the movie - the law of gravity wins over the law of attraction, however the law of intertia coupled with the law of attraction did work for him. Science or Faith?
For our children, when they are small and innocent - We have to hold ourselves and the larger population accountable. If we live in a city where our air and water is polluted, told by food manufactures that a pop-tart is breakfast, it's ok to pump our animals full of antibiotic and growth hormones - then we can be sure that the theory of "You are what you eat," comes into play.
I had a co-worker who's son had leukemia at 10. He went for his traditional treatments
and she had him do visualization. Little tiny blood cells like army soldiers, coursing through his veins, into his bones, fighting, making him healthy...- He is a grown man now - fine and healthy. Science or faith?
Lastly, with the abuse of our children, again this is society's problem. Everyone is accountable. I think we have to have work towards enforcing laws, have some kind of mental health system, and truely let the punishment fit the crime. Turning a blind eye and feeling helpless is not the solution.
As we get older, having survived our abuses it is then our responsibility to end the cycle. If we move towards that end, knowing we are responsible for our actions and as adults are 'creating our reality' we can acheive great things. And that means something different to everyone. | |
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