The one group of people who could fix all the world’s problems, but, do they?

Noooooooooo.

How dare they hoard their knowledge and mastery over the world in exchange for the selfish act of earning a living and supporting their families?

Look, I like being able to pay the rent as much as the next guy/gal, but if I could cure all the world’s ills with a couple of simple day trips, I’d sacrifice my livelihood in exchange for utopia. Wouldn’t you?

Of course you would.

But once again, as I go to my tap for a glass of water, I’m reminded of the callous arrogance of the community of practitioners of Samuel Hahnemann’s art.

Because, if it were me, and I were a homeopath, and I knew homeopathic treatments became stronger the more you diluted them, I would take my entire arsenal of homeopathic medicines, get in my car, drive to the city’s reservoir, and dump them all in!

Then, I’d whip around the rez in my speedboat to make sure that 1 milliliter of already hyper-diluted substance imprints the entire body of water with its energetic memory (clearly more powerful than the imprint of the gas from my motor), so that everyone who partakes in a sip of municipal H2O would receive the healing powers.

“Hold on!,” some of you might complain, “The homeopath picks JUST THE RIGHT medicine for your specific condition! You can’t go dumping everything in at once?!”

Okay, I’ll grant you a flaw in my original plan.

But that will merely highlight the level of my altruism and the greediness of my homeopathic peers (if, I were a homeopath and, therefore, had peers, that is).

See, I’d be willing to start with only one remedy, and let the people who have that matching illness recover, as if by magic. And then I’d go out to the reservoir every month, or every week, or every day, until I had exhausted my collection of treatments and my entire stash of medicines was exhausted.

And, when the mainstream medical community was out of work (other than for things like setting broken bones), I’d spearhead the movement for homeopaths around the world to do the same for their communities, bringing true healing of the root causes, and ending the oppressive conspiracy of Western medicine once and for all.

Finally…

Oh, wait…

I just realized the fatal error in my thinking, and perhaps now understand the psychic pain that homeopaths must endure every day of their live, knowing that they could cure all beings by following my subversive method, were it not for this:

By diluting the treatments THAT much, so that the odds of finding even one molecule of the original substance in the entire reservoir is absolutely zero, the treatments would become too powerful for all but denizens of Krypton to tolerate.

If positive thinking is supposed to be so powerful that it can bend the molecules of the universe to its will, magnetize money, eradicate disease, overpower anyone else who wants the same thing you do, and otherwise exert more control over the external world than all other forces combined…

Then why is it such a wimp in the face of “negativity?”

Why is saying to a positive thinker, “You’re a delusional narcissist” kryptonite to positivity’s Superman?

If being positive is so uplifting that it gets you a better job, improves all your relationships, and alters your physiology to make you impervious to anything shy of a nuclear bomb suppository, then why do you need to protect it like the Bubble Boy in a Swine Flu farm by running away from anyone who might brush up against your rosy attitude?

Positivity, it seems, is the 98-pound weakling at the beach.

Well, no more!

Now you can get my new positivity training program, Positively Positive, a Charles Atlas-like course for positive thinking wimps.

No longer will the Negativity Bully kick sand in your face and embarrass you and your scrawny, sunken-chested positivity!

In just 2.3 seconds a day, in the comfort of your home, you’ll use Dynamic at-Tension and build negativity armor arms, positively powerful pecs, LOA legs, and back that looks like a giant V for visualization!

You’ll go back to the beach and punch that bully in the face (metaphorically, since you’ll use Non-Violent Communication), and prove to your Indigo Child girlfriend that you really are on the Hero’s Journey!

It’s guaranteed!

If, in just 30 days, you’re not radiating so many positive vibes that the Dalai Lama calls and asks you to tone it down, you’ll get all your money back, plus all the money AIG got in the government bailout.

Order today by calling the phone number on the next line (which can only be seen if you’re not too full of negativity to render useless even this Quantum Physics proven program):

Here’s my prediction about that upcoming non-event.

Unless the upcoming movie 2012 is a documentary made in the future and sent back through a wormhole (or put in the mailbox shared by Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves), 12/21/2012 will be so uneventful that it’ll make Y2K look like the Harmonic Convergence.

But when the “planetary alignment” occurs, without the warned-about mayhem, here’s how the 12-ers will spin it:

“YOU DID IT, HUMANITY! You made the shift in consciousness that we needed to avert disaster and have ushered in a new era in global connection and enlightenment.”

This announcement will be followed on 12/22/2012 by a dramatic continuation of the status-quo with the only enlightenment coming from the burning of 2012 books (stock up on ingredients for s’mores!).

Once again, you heard it here first (because, I, too, have come back in time through a wormhole — or through the ham radio transmissions of Dennis Quaid, I can’t tell).

I have a flyer that I got 25 years ago. It was for some transformational workshop. I can’t tell you what it was for because “have” means that it’s packed away in a box with other stuff I’ve been moving from place to place for the better part of 3 decades.

But the content of the workshop isn’t the important part. What is important is the content of the presenter’s curriculum vitae (which is Latin for “you done what? when?”).

His claim to fame, his demonstration of mastery, the shingle he hung to prove his value as a presenter of psychological power tools and transformational whatnots was… drumroll please…

An 11 year history of alien abduction.

The reason I kept his flyer was as a reminder that PT Barnum was underestimating humanity when it comes to the birthrate of suckers.

Not only did this guy think his now-35+ year history of playing with the Pleadians was worthy of veneration, but, more importantly, people who agreed would shell out money to hear what information he received through the repeated application of the anal probe.

So, what got me on this rant?

An email I received from a “transformational” teacher who will remain nameless so as not to give him any money-making publicity, but which I’ll be saving along with alien-boy’s workshop info.

This email used demonstrated the oft-overused technique of misrepresenting science to support ludicrous mumbo-jumbo theories that, once believed by the critically-unthinking, result in a transfer of dollars from  the wallets of those who so desperately want more money, to the bank accounts of those who claim they have transcended the desire for it.

Here’s just a sample (it’ll be hard for me to comment on it, it’s so absurd):

You may have even seen a “blown up” image of a DNA chromosome in Scientific America or in a science book. It consists of two intertwined strands known as “The Double Helix.”

“Scientific AmeriCA” a favorit magazin of min.

And what’s with the quotes around The Double Helix? Or around blown up for that matter?

We’re just getting started. Let’s continue:

However, what most people do not know is in addition to the two strands – there are an additional 10 etheric strands of DNA – known as “junk DNA” — available to each human which are thought to have been dormant since the beginning of mankind.

Let the screaming begin.

“Junk DNA” is just a label for the parts of the genome for which we don’t currently know the purpose. Yesterday’s “Junk” is tomorrow’s “Oh, this is the part that makes you think Family Circus is funny.”

Junk DNA has nothing to do with… did you catch it… etheric DNA. Which, of course, most people don’t  know about it because… THERE’S NO SUCH THING!

At least the author (and I hate to use that word for the creator of the email I’m dissecting, when it’s been used for creators of better works, like Holocost denial pamphlets) concedes:

I know this sounds far-fetched…

Except he’s mistaken. It doesn’t sound far-fetched. It sound cah-ray-zee!

Okay, the fun is just beginning. Because next we discover:

As Humans We Currently Only Using Less Than 20% Of Our Available DNA.

16.6% to be exact.

No wonder I can never remember where I left my car keys!

When I read this, I wondered,  “Why didn’t you just say 16.6% to begin with?” Well, the answer is that, in the next paragraph, we learn:

It gets worse. Because what “cutting-edge” scientists have recently discovered is we only use a paltry 3% of our active two strand DNA.

Make up your damn mind! Is it <20%, 16.6% or 3%?!

You know, of course, that “cutting-edge” means on the edge of being certified a “cuckoo-cuckoo” whack job and escorted to a rubber room.

“But wait,” you say, “3% of our two-strand DNA. What about when we include the invisible, never-before-seen, ETHERIC DNA from the fictional land of Fictitia?”

I’m glad you ask. And, better, the answer is waiting in the next sentence:

So on a percentage basis, we are really only using 0.5% of our total DNA.

This is my favorite part. Because it’s the only one that makes sense. Oh, not because it’s true, but because the math is correct.

our 2-strand DNA is 1/6th of the total DNA (2 strands + the 10 strands from Unicornville), and “0.5%” is 1/6th of 3%. Phew, at least this proves the email’s writer (and I hate to use that word when it’s used for the generators of better prose, like fetish porn), isn’t prone to silly non-sequiturs, like:

And this means most everyone struggles through life – never living enjoying the abundance they rightfully deserve.

Holy Leaps of Logic, Batman!

Uhh… the connection between the meaningless DNA usage rates and struggling is, ummm… what, again?

And, “deserve”? Don’t even get me started on that (oh, no need, I already ranted about it )

Anyway… let’s take in in for the wallet-clearing landing:

When you use [[Magical Technique Name Withheld]] – you “reactive” your dormant DNA.  And when you reactivate your DNA… you begin “magnetizing” yourself to the abundance… and… you can easily manifest.

I can only hope that what you start magnetizing is an abundance of common sense, critical thinking skills, and the Sharper Image Bullcrap Detector.

If you do, you’ll recognize the screamingly obvious points that:

1. Since there is no such thing as etheric DNA, you can’t “reactive” it (I’ll let the typo slide)
2. REactivated? You mean it used to be active and now is dormant? What happened?
3. There’s no way to demonstrate that said DNA, if it existed, were “reactivated”
4. The only “proof” they could possibly give is the famous “post hoc ergo propter hoc” (a.k.a. There’s a big pile o poo in my front yard, which means there MUST be a pony underneath!”)
5. In this context, “magnetize” “abundance” and “manifest” are meaningless words that, sadly, tap into our innate desire to control our environment in order to ensure our happiness and survival and, therefore, are used by naive (at best) people whose means of “manifesting” is by selling you the “magic manifestation method.”

Perhaps I’m being too hard on the guy… after all, 10 years ago I bought his course (that’s why I got the email), and clearly my etheric DNA has been reactivated. Otherwise, how can you explain my ability to attract stupid emails that inspire blog posts?

Actually, I’m writing this post just so I have the ammunition later to say, “I told you so.”

I was thinking about how proponents of Intelligent Design (a.k.a. creationism, a.k.a. religious fiction), like to look down their nose and say, “Nobody has ever shown that you can create LIVING things from non-living chemicals.”

Ignoring that non-living chemicals are required for living things to survive (salt, iron, ascorbic acid to name a few, anyone?), and ignoring that any parent of a teen-aged boy sees life emerge from non-life every morning, all that’s probably going to change soon.

Craig Venter is getting pretty close to building an organism from scratch (I think by following an unpublished Julia Child recipe for flan).

Get that? He’s going to take some non-living chemicals, put them together and, Mary Shelley, This Is Your Life… he’s going to turn ‘em into something living.

Okay, now here’s where I predict the future:

The boneheads creationists will use Venter’s accomplishment — the one that debunks their arguments with a 360-degree spinning slam dunk — as proof for their theory.

Can you guess how (gold stars if you do)?

BAAAAP! Time’s up.

It’s simple.

They’ll dust off the “blind watchmaker theory,” give it a new coat of crap-colored paint and say:

See! It took an intelligent designer to create life! We win. Nanny-nanny boo-boo!

May I reserve the space now to, in the future, scream, “Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhh!”

Oh, they may whip out another classic from the anti-rational archives:

Yeah, but he made a little one-celled organism. That doesn’t prove anything.

I’m sure it’ll be lost on anyone who would make that argument that even if there were an Adam and Eve, the guy who was intelligent enough to be the designer of that one-celled organism EVOLVED from them. After all, A&E never brewed up a batch of biologically activity in the garden (thanks to my wife for pointing that one out).

So bookmark this page, once Venter (and, admittedly, the equally brainy bunch he works with and competes against) succeed, we’re in for a bumpy ride as we careen through the intellectual vacuum.

Every now and then, I’ll get an idea about something to write and then realize, “I’ve already made that post.”

I don’t feel an urge to beat the same dead horse just for the sake of having content… so, I’m not saying a whole lot lately.

Now, that said, I’ve probably already talked about the subject of this post, but I was overtaken by the urge to scream and, instead, turned here…

I just got an email advertising Tony Robbins’ ‘Creating Unstoppable Confidence” course.

If ever there were an idea that needs to be taken in the back and flogged, it’s the notion that you need to be confident in order to succeed.

Come on, think about it.

Is it possible to have REAL confidence about something you’ve never done before you do it?

No, that’s called bravado, or naivete, or arrogance, or… oh, what’s the Latin word?… right, STUPIDITY.

Like all these ideas about “what leads to success” if you just look at your own life, you can find innumerable examples that disprove the theory.

Confident you could learn to ride a bike? Nope. Not until the AHA! moment where you understood what balance felt like. And even then it took more time until you were able to hop on and start riding without a bit of anxiety.

Confidence is not something you get in ADVANCE, it’s what you get with EXPERIENCE. And, even then, it’s iffy and, probably unnecessary.

I was remembering how, back in 1976, when I learned to do a standing back flip, I would spend 5 minutes psyching myself up before I gave it everything I had, with the hopes I wouldn’t screw up and land on my head. Now, 200,000 back flips and 33 years later, I know I can spin around with the best of ‘em. AND, if I haven’t done one in a couple of months (you might be surprised at how infrequently one needs to do a standing back flip in real life), I’m still a bit anxious as I throw myself in the air.

It’s only when I land, preferably on my feet, that my confidence comes back, and then I’m more than happy to play circus monkey and do another one or two for the kids (not mine; whichever kids were around).

And think of the number of things you’ve attempted because you were confident you could do them, and then, well, reality had a different opinion. Orthopedic surgeons pay for their Porsches with the confidence of weekend warriors who are SURE they’ll be fine if they go chasing a Frisbee like they remember doing 20 years earlier.

Of course, you don’t need to rely on your own experience to debunk the “Confidence leads to success” theory.

Ever heard of a politician who DIDN’T believe, with utter confidence, that s/he would win?

I met one of Walter Mondale’s kids back in 1974… by then Walter had already spent 2 decades getting ready to become president. I’m sure he’s just waiting in the wings for his comeback.

I keep a collection of videos of interviews with people who are thought of as successful (not saying they aren’t, but yesterday’s success may become tomorrow’s bankrupt jailbird).  My two favorites are Lance Armstrong and Larry David (co-creator of Seinfeld) when each of them was interviewed by Charlie Rose.

In each, Charlie tries to get his guests to admit they had confidence about their successes.

But in each, neither one concedes that point. Lance keeps saying, “Anything can happen in a race. You never know.” And Larry talks about how, every time the network asked him for more shows, he was 100% confident… that he couldn’t deliver!

Does that remind you of the stories you’ve read about actors and athletes who have to puke before each performance because they’re so anxious about bombing?

See? It doesn’t take much to debunk the theory.

I’m sure that, were I in a different mood, I could posit some clever idea from evolutionary psychology to say why, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we still hold onto this lie that confidence and success have any correlation… in fact, I have unstoppable confidence that I could.

I’d like to hear a Homeopathic doctor on the witness stand for malpractice:

“What do you expect?! I did as little as I could do!”

I just saw an ad for a Law of Attraction workshop, and all I could think was:

If the LOA REALLY worked, then why would the guy need to advertise?

If he REALLY believed in it, why didn’t he just book the room, believe it would fill up, and watch it happen for real?

It’s like when a psychic asks you your name… come on, you tell me you’re about to talk to the dead, but you can’t intuit the name of the live person standing in front you? Hmmm.

But before I could do that, I need to know the terrain I’m leaving.

After all, if I want to get out of the game, I need to know where the edge of the game board is so I can make sure that once I step off, I’m off.

That said, I’m inspired to ask these 2 questions:

What is spirituality?

What constitutes personal development?

These words are used so casually, so flippantly, as if everyone knows what they mean.

But, seriously, what do they mean? What’s spiritual and what’s not? What is the evidence of a more developed person?

I’ve got a few ideas and thoughts, but let’s get the ball rolling with your notions (or what you think people are referring to when they use these concepts).

And… beeee-gin!

Been a while since I posted… lately, I’ve been feeling that I’ve said everything I really want to say, that to post more would be getting a job at the Department of Redundancy Department.

And, more interesting (to me) is how affected I was by something said by the physicist Steven Weinberg when he was interviewed by Richard Dawkins. Weinberg’s comment was, “Most of my physicist friends are so disinterested in religion that they don’t even qualify as atheists.”

While I often enjoy examining, and cross-examining, New Age and religious thinking, and the errors within them, I’d rather be the New Age version of one of Weinberg’s friends — someone so disinterested in the “law” of attraction, manifestation, enlightenment, personal development and all the rest, that I don’t even qualify as a critic.

Frankly, I’m not sure what new social circle I’d need to cultivate to stay insulated from the veritable tsunami of self-help (remember 25-30 years ago when there was NO self-help section in the bookstores but, instead, there was a tiny psychology section?). Maybe Weinberg’s friends, if they’d have me. But that’s no guarantee… the collection of crap-slinging physicists on the New Age circuit proves there’s no amount of smarts that permanently protects you from being stupid (seriously, dudes, just because the math suggests the wave function has no limit, doesn’t mean that “quantum physics says we’re all one!”).

Anyway… with that preface, onto a bit of repetition, followed by some 3rd party validation:

Of all the possible workshop themes in the New Age, from clearing imagined “blocks to success,” to channeling information from disembodied beings living light years away who have a remarkable grasp of Earth’s current events (but still can’t pick lottery numbers worth a damn), to how to dress your dog in colors that match your aura, the workshops that mystify me the most are the “life purpose” ones.

Ignoring the sheer arrogance of the idea that you’re here for some important mission — okay, wait, let’s not ignore it. Let’s take a look:

How many people from history can you remember?

Out of the ONE HUNDRED TWENTY BILLION people who have ever been alive, how many can you recall?

Not many. And, some that you can recall will be forgotten soon enough.

So, seriously, folks, can we drop the “I’m here to change the world” crap finally?

“But Steven,” I hear some say (because I’m psychic and can do remote viewing in the future), “my purpose isn’t about changing the world, it’s just doing what I was put on the planet to do at the highest level I can do it.”

Hmmm… boy you got me there… until I start thinking. For example:

What’s a lemur’s life purpose? Or a virus? Or a gorilla?

Seems like it’s simply to be a lemur, or a virus, or a gorilla. As far as I can tell, they can’t do it wrong.

So how’d we get so special that it’s possible to not be/do what humans are/do? As far as I can tell, if you’re a human — no matter what the circumstance — you’re living your purpose. No way you can’t.

Also, this “doing what I was put here for” idea still has an air (make that, stench) of self-importance. I mean, have you ever heard of anyone going to a “life purpose” workshop and dancing out the door singing, “My purpose is to be a mediocre temp worker who gets mostly word processing jobs at medium sized ambulance-chaser law firms!”

Here’s another thing to ponder. What’s a baby’s life purpose?

Don’t know, it’s just a baby… hard to tell. What if the baby dies of some genetic disease, or illness, or accident?

“Well, then,” the LP gang would say, “the baby’s purpose must be to teach us about _______ (fill in the blank with something saccharine).”

Hold on, sparky, you can’t just add the story that suits you in order to keep the “we have a purpose” theory alive. If the baby didn’t have a definable purpose the moment before it “transitioned to the other side” (why can’t we just say “died”? Really?), then it doesn’t the next moment either.

We almost always assign this purpose thing AFTER THE FACT… and that doesn’t count because it’s just a narrative laid on top of a cherry-picked selection of history.

But I digress (believe it or not)… my whole inspiration for writing this post, is the confluence of two events (oh, no, wait, it was synchronicity!): my pondering the absurdity of this whole purpose-thing for the umpteenth time, and a great TED talk by Mike Rowe of the TV show, Dirty Jobs.

Mike starts with a great story about one of his shows, and at the 11-ish minute mark, launches into what he’s discovered about “life purpose,” “following your bliss,” “doing what you love and having money follow,” and more. And, Mike also gets to show off the fact that hiding behind his cheeky TV host persona, is a really smart guy. Check it out at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html

BTW, a quick story about the “Do what you love and the money will follow” idea:

First of all, most people don’t know that this concept was made popular by a book with that title.

Secondly, most people who know of the book have never read it.

Third, most people who own the book haven’t either!

Fourth, most people who HAVE read the book have forgotten that the majority of the book is about what to do when the money ISN’T FOLLOWING!

Fifth, most who remember that don’t remember that the book doesn’t say that the money will come as payment for doing what you love (If you love doing underwater yodeling, that might not bring in the big bucks).

I have a friend who is a literary agent who was asked to represent this book… she said, “Only if you can give me an absolute YES to the following question: In this lifetime?” The silence that followed made her decide not to represent the book… and collect the cash from what became a perennial best-seller; I love a woman with integrity.

Clearly, I’m not at the so-disinterested-I-don’t-qualify-as-a-critic stage in my life. But, the day is still young and Spring has sprung.