Toxic Positivity- "One Book Destroyed Western Civilization"

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I agree that it's a "luxury belief" in the sense of being a belief used by privileged people to justify their privilege. However, Rob Henderson's use of the term "luxury belief" is very different.

Can you explain what on earth you mean by that?

I've watched him interviewed at least half a dozen times and they describe luxury beliefs as a set of beliefs that are a kind of nonsense that only a rich person could shoulder the costs (incur the penalties) of believing, thus signaling fitness, and if any person who was poorer believe those things it would ruin their lives - like spending all of your money after being told by an LoA or 'new thought' guru that you have to believe you're rich and act in the world like you're rich for LoA to take effect and if you hold anything back in reservation LoA won't work.

You either didn't understand what luxury beliefs are or you didn't understand the side of LoA that I just described.

These ideas have also been in loads of books, and in loads of New Agey retreats/seminars, long before The Secret was published. (See my message here for one example.)

Thank you for telling me things I already knew - after studying Hermeticism and new thought for over a decade.

Are you saying that a defunct, dated, or broken belief from the past can't be a repurposed and used as a luxury belief because it was initially created with Victorian era intentions? If so show me where Rob said that.

To me, there's a huge difference between somebody wanting to talk about something that's personally distressing them and somebody trying to indoctrinate you into a political cause. This read to me like the latter. They're equating the person not wanting to talk about Climate Change in that particular conversation with the Law of Attraction, which is what they claim is destroying Western Society.

Even if it's the former, I think it depends on what your relationship to the person is. If it's a close friend and you're trying to talk about something important to you and they keep changing the subject, I can see where that could be hurtful. But if it's an acquaintance or a random stranger, they may not be comfortable discussing a heavy topic with you. I've sometimes gotten conversational whiplash from strangers who are talking about the weather one second and a personal tragedy the next.

The article makes a couple of reasonable points, but overall, I feel like articles of this type are written in an insular manner that would only appeal to people who already agree before they started reading. At least with the article, I chose to read it. If the author decided to spring the topic of Climate Change on me in live, in person conversation, I'd definitely try to change the subject. If they talk the way they write, they're unlikely to convince me of anything. They'd just be waiting both our time. I'm not even a Climate Change denier, but I consider it to be one of the preachiest topics around. It may be a fact, but it's certainly been politicized. I'm an atheist, but given the choice between discussing Climate Change with an Environmentalist or the Bible with a Fundamentalist Christian, I think I'd actually pick the Christian.

I don't tend to have a passionate reaction to anything outside of my special interests, which are all to do with art and entertainment. If they're expecting a sincere passionate reaction out of me on a topic like Climate Change, they aren't going to get one.

I agree that LoA is indeed a "luxury belief" in the above sense.

However, Rob Henderson alleges a bunch of things to be "luxury beliefs" that are NOT in fact "luxury beliefs" in the sense he claims. Details in this separate thread.


I think you mistook my agreement with you on this particular point, regarding LoA, as a disagreement.

What I disagree with you on is the relevance of Rob Henderson's claims. The beliefs he labels "luxury beliefs" aren't really "luxury beliefs," in my opinion.

BTW - apologies on this earlier, reading / multitasking glitch.

Oh right. I think Brits are way behind Americans on this sort of thing i.e. positive thinking. We're generally a pretty negative bunch

If you want some really entertaining stories about occultism in the 1880's and 1890's London look up Hermetic Golden Dawn Isis-Urania Temple (Mathers running around with Crowley then in lawsuits, the various actors and poets including WB Yeats, WW Westcott's Cypher Manuscript, etc.).

Sounds horrendous. Some funny people around in those days.

A lot of it's accidentally hilarious. I really think someone could make a great dry comedy of it, sort of like What We Do in the Shadows but ceremonial magicians in a magic lodge rather than washed-up vampires (I'm pretty sure Nick Farrell, the author not the actor, could help them with all the ins, outs, and jokes).

As I am sure you are aware, occultism involves self-hypnosis and altered states of consciousness, not just "positive thinking." It's not the same thing as LoA, although there is some overlap.

Can you tell me where I made the claim that occultism is positive thinking?

You appeared to imply such a claim here, by bringing up British occultism in response to KitLily agreeing with me that "positive thinking" isn't nearly as popular in the U.K. as it is in the U.S.A.

Although this probably wasn't your intent, bringing up British occultism in that context (without any explanation as to why you were bringing it up) came across as equating British occultism with "positive thinking." You gave no clue at all as to any other possible reason why you were bringing it up in that context.

What WAS your intent in bringing it up in that context?

This is what I thought was happening, ie. I think I tripped over an AS/ASD frame.

I was raised by NT's or at least slightly-neurospicy but not AS, so this might be part of why what I'm doing seems strange. In conversations you're allowed to bring up relevant side-tangents (such as in a thread or around a table if there's multiple conversations and you aren't completely hijacking it) and by 'relevant' it doesn't need to have 100% Venn diagram overlap with the original topic to be appropriate - it just needs something significantly greater than 0% overlap (40-50% is probably fine), nor does only going for partial overlap on a side tangent mean that you're implying the remainder of overlap (to 100%) simply by bringing it up. For example - if I said something in this thread about NLP and someone had been talking about a new thought leader who was close with someone who'd been deeply influential in the creation of NLP - if I think it's useful information in that information cloud then it's fair to bring up.

She was talking about Britain in terms of new thought, new thought and Hermeticism aren't the same but they have category overlaps and many Golden Dawn diaspora orders such as Builders of the Adytum (which I was active in for over five years) contain both Golden Dawn Kabbalistic study, alchemy, tarot, etc. but also (see 'Seven Steps') have a lot of new thought mixed in by way of Paul Foster Case. The obvious thing I know is that Golden Dawn grades, initiations, etc. are symbolic ordeals meant to interact with certain archetypes, stories, and deities on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life related to both the sephirah and the other 22 Hebrew alphabet paths.

I brought up the Golden Dawn because it's an interesting side-tangent, it came before most new thought, and it's quintessentially British, really fascinating both for the historical context and the members, and from those items I felt like it was on topic enough to bring up.

It's like homeopathic nonsense - a micro-truth blown way out of proportion.
I recovered from MS in part due to eliminating deep depression.
I also started taking Vitamin D.
But no, positive thinking will not bring peace in the Middle East and stop global warming.