"In this book it is spoken of the sephiroth & the paths, of spirits & conjurations, of gods,
spheres, & planes & many other things which may or may not exist.
It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things, certain results follow;
students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical
validity to any of them." -Alistair Crawley, taken from Pop Magic
One of my big habits is pseudoscience. I like reading books that persuade me to think about things in a different way, even if a lot of the time that means they're both blindly optimistic and naive. I've read Dianetics, The Power of Positive Thinking, Think and Grow Rich, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Zen and the Art of Writing, Bruce Lee's Artist of Life, and many others. Some authors would turn the average guy off due to their religious affiliations (Norman Vincent Peale, Eckhart Tolle) and others due to their cult status (The Secret, Dianetics), but I support none of these ideologies. I'm just looking for results mainly, and the nature of persuasive writing is to call a reader to action.So this is my experiment. I'm going to read each one of these books again and practice what they preach. I'll dedicate a series of blog posts to the "teachings" of each tomb, and discuss in the most scientific way I can muster what merits they have.
So I'm starting with Yes Man. Not the shitty Jim Carrey movie (sorry Jim), a book by Danny Wallace.
He's a British freelance radio producer that's life changes mostly for the better one day when a bearded asian man on a bus tells him to say yes more. The idea appeals to him for whatever reason, and he accepts it as a life philosophy. As far as pseudoscience goes, he's basically just naively saying yes to every offer and abiding by the rule that no idea is a bad idea. It's easily taken into practice, just today I've counted 6 opportunities to say Yes. And the more you pay attention to these opportunities, the more that seem to spring up.
A general observation about pseudoscience books is that they emphasize living in the now. The Power of Now treats that subject a little more on the nose. It's always a confirmation bias, they give you a new way to think about things and then you can't help but see possibilities.
If you apply the Yes philosophy to email, next thing you know you've got propecia, viagra, and a penis patch (Danny does). Ordering these things generates more junk emails of this nature. Just checking my email now, I'm not seeing a lot of random offers that ask any yes or no questions. I don't think I have to do it unless it's framed that way.
So my next blog will be about what I've said yes to. I want to do Dianetics again next. Must think of rubrics to compare all of these books to each other, although the best way to do that might just be to document my successes and failures while reading each.
