Came across an old book - "The Magic of Believing" - that I'd blindly acquired in an old Ohio State Library book sale.
The OSU library book sales are the closest I've ever been to being a homesteader or a '49r, at least as seen in the move "Far & Away". In it, we see all these guys on horses and a gun goes off and they rush off to claim their land. This is sort of like when the gun goes off and all the mad bibliomaniacs rush off to claim our prizes. The mad dash is set off by the announcement of "buck a bag" time when you can fill up a brown grocery bag full of books for one U.S. dollar. This results, naturally, in not a lot of perusing and evalulation. It's the 2am-closing-time equivalent at the local bar; all the books look fine. And it seems one of those books was the heretofore not-read "The Magic of Believing".
"The Magic of Believing" was published 17 years ago, a generation. These ideas must be like cicadas, coming back with regularity due to an influx of people who either missed them the first time or younger folks coming of age in the interim. (They say liberal and conservative cycles last about 15 years, presumably because by then there are enough new voters who are ready for something new and who are blissfully unaware of the mistakes made under the last governance.)
Similarly "The Magic of Believing" sounds like "The Secret" in older clothes. An Amazon.com reviewer has the scoop:
This book also contains advice that could be dangerous: in Chapter 5, the author tells of a woman who took a long automobile trip against the advice of her mechanic who suggested that her tires were bald and should be replaced. Nevertheless, she took the trip anyway and, because she "believed", her car did not suffer a blowout...Elsewhere, Our Sunday Visitor helps expose the New Ageism of The Secret.
In another part of the book, the author talks about a great military leader who strongly believed he would triumph, but failed anyway. This is because the belief of the opposing side counteracted his own beliefs. So beliefs can be counteracted by opposite and opposing beliefs.
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