CULTURAL CRITIQUE

The perverse privilege of the “Law of Attraction”

Your quest for “abundance” vs. a mother’s plea for peace

“A mother from Aleppo crying and inquiring why her children were killed in the bombing of the city, March 9th, 2014.” [source]

A popular New Age myth claims that humans can “manifest reality” through “intentions” and “visualizing.” The related “Law of Attraction” states that humans bring negative outcomes on themselves with negative thoughts, and positive results with positive thoughts. The goal is often “abundance,” which means “money.” The philosophy, if we can call it that, basically boils down to “make a wish and it’ll come true.” If you don’t get what you want, you didn’t visualize hard enough or you still had negative thoughts. It’s an individualistic worldview that ignores systemic factors and the importance of community. It’s “every man — and their intentions — for themselves.”

In my mind, the clearest proof that this is all BS is that mothers in warzones lose their children to bombs and bullets. Surely, if anyone has strong positive wishes, it’s a mother for her children, isn’t it? Don’t mothers in war zones pray every night that their babies will be spared from the death raining down from the air? Don’t they wish every every day for relief from the violence? So why aren’t they delivered? Because their thoughts aren’t positive enough? Their intentions aren’t pure enough? Their visualizing isn’t clear enough? WTF?!