Thursday, December 18, 2008

How to reposition your boner (and other forbidden secrets)

“Zig Ziglar may be the master motivator, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the master story tellers; Anthony Robbins may be the guru of personal development, but Bob Proctor is the master thinker. When it comes to systemizing life, no one can touch him.”
~ Attributed (by Bob Proctor) to Doug Wead, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States


I've known for a long time that Scientist Bob Proctor is a deep thinker, but reading the above quotation from author, philanthropist and former Diamond-level Amway salesman Doug Wead just confirms it. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, is Wead really a reliable source?" you may be asking. To which I can only respond, "If you can't trust a person who betrayed the trust of a future President of the US by secretly recording conversations and then publishing them, whom can you trust?"

But this isn't about Doug Wead. It's about Scientist Bob, noted quantum physics expert, philosopher and (as you'll see in a moment) also an economist and even apparently an expert on human sexuality.

The first thing you need to know is that Scientist Bob recently dropped a really big bombshell. I hope you're sitting down.

Are you ready?

It turns out that The Secret was just fluff. Listen to what Scientist Bob, who is of course one of the stars of The Secret (and whom The Secret arguably propelled to new levels of fame) has to say:

The Movie Based on the Law Of Attraction is Pop Culture Fluff!

And we have the entire industry to blame for this.

Being true to their sensational nature, they take an amazing truth and they just amplify the “sexy”, less vital bits and leave out all the rest.

As a result, the Law of Attraction brand that you get today is a really watered down version of the real thing.

Needless to say, when you use the Law of Attraction in reduced media-friendly form, you only scrap [sic] the tiniest tip of the iceberg when it comes to its immense potential.

Now, I know some of you might be saying, "Why, Cosmic Connie, that sounds amazingly close to some of the things you have been saying on this very blog regarding the New-Wage/selfish-help industry! At least the headline and the first paragraph sound like you! The rest, not so much!"

So what does Scientist Bob have against The Secret? Simply this: it only touched on one Universal Law, the Law Of Attraction, and it didn't even do such a hot job of that. In fact, it may have made things worse, or at least failed to make them better, as Bob points out:

Barely 3 Years After The Revolutionary Film "The Secret", America & The World Faces Its [sic] Worst Financial Crisis in Decades

Is the Law of Attraction Just Hype?

Why – if the Law of Attraction is being used by millions – did America just face its worst job crisis since 1974, with 602,000 people losing their jobs?
Some of you might be under the mistaken impression that the economic crisis is a result of a whole clusterf--k of economic, social and political factors, but Scientist Bob, aka Economist Bob, knows better. Turns out the LOA just won't work properly unless you pay Bob to teach you about eleven other forgotten Laws.

Here are some of the astounding things that Bob will reveal to you if you fork over $97 (a $200 savings over the regular price of $297!):

  • 1,000 year-old ancient Talmud secret that can steer you clear of materialism and set you on the path to true riches. (Find it in the Law of Thinking)
  • Read the newspapers and DIE. A fatal way to mess up your dreams—and how to avoid it. (The Law of Attraction)
  • Get the Golden Touch—by making bone-headed mistakes? Directions for repositioning boners and transforming them into bounty. (learn in the Law of Receiving)
  • “His sight was getting poor, but his vision has never been better”. The step-by-step blueprint to set crystal-clear goals and achieve them. (Go to the Law of Thinking)
  • A simple yet powerful method to create effectual employees and agreeable colleagues. (Grab it from the Law of Increase)
  • The magic golden key to realizing all the dreams you ever had. PLUS: It also works to boost self-esteem, emotional freedom, and spiritual fufillment [sic], (The Law of Compensation teach you that!)
  • Is guilt corroding your insides like acid? Here’s a mental substance that acts like alkali and washes you clean. (Law of Forgiveness)*
  • And much more!
Naturally, my little cadre of email pen pals and I were most interested in that bit about "repositioning boners." I confess that we snarked about it quite a bit. But then I began to wonder if perhaps we were being too hard on Scientist Bob. After all, he is Canadian, and it's possible that "boner" doesn't have the same meaning in Canadian as it currently does in American. While it's true that the word was used in the past as a slang term for "mistake," that is emphatically not its most common usage these days. So maybe Canada didn't get the memo, eh?

Judging by some of the comments on a recent thread on the Powerful Intentions forum, it seems that at least some Secret fans are a little uncomfortable about Scientist Bob having thrown one of his major fame tickets under the bus. But hey, let's face it: Bob was on the New-Wage scene decades before The Secret was a gleam in Rhonda Byrne's imitation third eye. And he's far from the only "star" of the world's most famous New-Wage moviemercial to use it as stepping stone to further fame and riches.

So let's all cut the guy some slack, okay? And if your boner needs repositioning, or your insides are too acidic and those Tums just aren't working, or you would just like to increase your spiritual "fufillment," hop on over to Master Thinker Bob's new site and avail yourself of his timeless wisdom.

Or at least take a gander at that ad copy. Surely there are lessons to be learned in that alone.


PS added Dec. 22: In the interests of fairness and presenting "the other side," I want to share the remarks of a person commenting on a September 2007 blog post in which I snarked about Scientist Bob. (The comment just came in very recently.) This person, who uses the handle "Navs South Africa," says he owes all of his astounding success to The Secret and to Bob Proctor and his team. He also says, "Skepticism is the deadly enemy of progress & self development." Here's the link to his comment and my response, and then his response to me.

PPS added on 19 April, 2009: While Googling something else, I came across an April 2007 interview in which Scientist Bob praised The Secret up, down and sideways.

Here's the relevant part, in which the interviewer is asking Proctor about the filming of The Secret. It leads into his comments about his reaction when he first watched the stunning final product:

PR.com: Did they shoot you all at one time, and they just cut it up?

Bob Proctor: Yes. The amazing part of this… no one had a script… no one! It was a little hotel room that they were shooting in. Of course there's camera equipment everywhere and lights, shadowing for lights and you had to watch or you'd trip over something in the room, it was so small. They asked a couple of questions and I would answer them as if they weren't questions; just stating things. I talked to them for a couple hours, just explaining everything about the mind, the world that we live in and our relationship with why things happen the way they do. That was it, and I left. She said, "You'll hear from us." That was in June [of 2005] and then the following February of 2006, I got a DVD of The Secret, by Fed Ex. I didn't even put it on right away. Finally, I said to my wife, "Let's see what this is." Well, I just about fell off the sofa, I couldn't believe it!

PR.com: Because you were so moved by it?

Bob Proctor: I really was! I've been in this business and studying this since 1961, and I worked for five years with Nightingale-Conant in Chicago. Nightingale-Conant is the leader in personal development programs and products. I spent 5 years with them in the sixties and early seventies when this industry was really just in its rompers, and I'd never seen anything like [The Secret]. It is without question, the best production, and it gets the idea across better than anything I've ever seen.

Of course, that was two years ago. I guess he changed his mind after The Secret hysteria died down a bit and he had to scramble to find another cash cow.

* Apparently Scientist Bob is not only a quantum physics expert, but is also a chemist. Who knew?

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Connie, thats an interesting piece on Scientist Bob. What I have major problems with is that the secret was exposed as being the be all and end all of self development. It was so materialistic it was impossible and down right dangerous in my view. I don't think that is what Bob's material is about at all in fact I think it is about learning about yourself not necessary dreaming of what you can get for yourself come hell or high water and no matter who you knock over. Yes Scientist Bob has probably made a killing but its a lifes work and the rewards should come if the stuff he teaches works. He certainly lives by it because he discards every unwanted piece of crap hanging on for a piece of the pie if their intentions are not right. I bet he's made a few errors in his time too but he's got the brains not to talk about it or blame anyone else for it. Ah but it still doesn't make me want to race out and grab his stuff. Some of the other parasites in the secret really destroyed that for the few who might be genuine. Think I enjoy harry potter more, at least it makes me really dream.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that pretty much the same ad copy Vitale uses to promote his--what? three? four? I've lost count--exciting new post-Secret "the Secret didn't give you the whole story like I'm about to sell you right now" product lines? At least from the examples you've blogged about in our current, post-Secret age of enlightenment.

Proctor's dragging in the fearmongering of the economic downturn is a nice touch. Although I get this weird undercurrent--it sounds ALMOST like Bob is actually sort of slyly suggesting that the Secretrons are not only doing it wrong, but they might have inadvertently caused this whole financial crisis in the first place by misusing the LOA as described in the Secret.

Thanks a bunch, guys! Really appreciate it, when people who apparently don't know what they're doing in the first place are actively encouraged to meddle with the godlike powers of Universal Laws for their own gain. Yes! Rah! Ooops.

Cosmic Connie said...

Anon, I agree that Bob Proctor has pretty much spent a lifetime doing what he does, and as I noted, he was around decades before The Secret. And to give credit where it's due, he certainly was wise enough to shed himself of David Schirmer.

But I'm with you re Harry Potter; at least the Harry Potter franchise is marketed as fiction and entertainment. :-)

Cosmic Connie said...

Mojo, you're right, of course, about Scientist Bob's latest shtick being just one of countless "secrets beyond The Secret." A couple of things made this one stand out for me, though:
(1) Proctor's blatant dissing of his fame ticket was somewhat surprising to me. Most of The Secret "teachers" and others who are pushing their own "beyond The Secret" shticks (while trying to capitalize on The Secret at the same time) at least soften the blow. They'll say something along the lines of, "Yes, The Secret was wonderful, blah-blah-blah, but there was no way that one movie-length feature could possibly cover EVERYTHING you need to know about the Law Of Attraction (or other universal laws). Fortunately, I have the book/DVD/workshop series that takes up where The Secret left off." OTOH, Scientist Bob just comes out and says The Secret was fluff, and he goes so far as to take The Secret and the entire self-help industry to task for emphasizing the shallow, "sexy" stuff instead of the truth.
(2) The general suckiness of the ad copy just put Scientist Bob's latest scam over the top, as far as I'm concerned. At least Joe Vitale's copy, hype-y as it may be (and as careless as he often is with details), reads as if it were written by a professional copywriter.

I agree with you that Scientist Bob seems to be implying that The Secret and/or incompetent Secretrons are to blame for the current financial mess. OTOH, at least he acknowledges that there *is* a financial mess, unlike Vitale and gang, who are now basically telling themselves and each other that the economic crisis is almost solely the creation of the negative mainstream media. That's why they've now formed a new online community as a counter to the negativity. For a mere $37 a month they can focus on positive things like helping Joe pay for his Rolls and his new mansion...I mean...attracting miracles for themselves and each other.

So I wonder what all of those universal-law manipulators and powerful intenders and miracle attractors can do about those power outages y'all keep having in your neck of the woods, Mojo. I think they ought to get on it right now, because apparently your snoring meditations are not doing the trick.

Anonymous said...

Maybe, just maybe, the economic crisis was caused by the secret? Everyone madly rushing out jumping over the top of one another to get to their big dream goal lamborghini, multimillion dollar mansions, etc. and the banks said great we'll have a piece of this pie too. Could that be more like the REAL reason the crisis was triggered?

I believe the secret should NOT be about the chasing of material possessions but it should be about THINKING in ways that benefit your future and create opportunities for you to support the life that you choose to live which should not involve any other person other than YOU. YOU fund YOUR dreams.

Some of the secret teachers seem to have a totally delusional opinion about getting what they want in whatever way they can dream up. It seems the Aussie guy dreamed up grabbing money off other people to fund his life dreams but oops those people wanted it back for themselves. Can't blame them. I don't think that guy thought far enough ahead. When things get that delusional it IS serious. These people ARE seriously affecting other peoples lives in a very dangerous and detrimental way.

Bob Proctor is being a creative business person and if he is caught screwing with peoples lives at a time when they can least afford to be screwed around with, then he WILL the price. That is the law.... just ask him!

What you live by you are judged by.

Anonymous said...

Mojo,
I too picked up that insinuation that the economic meltdown might have been down to too many people doing LOA wrongly.
Scientist Bob has been at this too long for that to have been a slip--one of the best sales pitches is to identify a scapegoat/hate figure and orchestrate the revenge--it worked for Hitler, it'll work for Bob (for the nth time).
Buddha Joe reminds us that there's one born every second.

So what is the other meaning of boner?

Anonymous said...

I should point out in all fairness that I was pleasantly surprised, when I clicked on the "Powerful Intentions" link, that the PI crowd--at least judging by this one thread--seems to have become more open to the self-preservative idea of not blindly throwing money at the latest hand-trembling announcement. Some of the earlier links to PI you've posted seemed to be full of doe-eyed "Here! TAKE my money!" but at least this one thread seems to have a healthier, intelligent skepticism--not an absolute dismissal of the idea, just an aversion to being asked to shell out money for something they've already heard before.

Yeah, Proctor really seems kind of angry and biting-the-hand with this one. I idly wonder what sort of hit he may have taken, either from the Schirmer saga or from the recent financial downturn. Of course right now EVERYONE is saying "The Secret was great, and my stuff BUILDS on it and takes you FURTHER!!" so maybe his shocking "The Secret's a CROCK!" opening might be just a way to set his product apart from the crowd. It DID get him noticed.

I'll pass on the whole boner discussion. There are some things I REALLY don't want to associate with the Secret crowd. My mother's half of the family comes from Canada, but I never once heard my 90-year-old great aunt use the term. But she was a seriously patrician snob, sweet darling little thing that she was, and no doubt there was lots of modern slang she did not use.

And speaking as someone who knows at least the rudiments of chemistry, I gotta say I would no more wish to wash with alkali than I would with acid. Unless you're trying to clean your oven or open drains. Which--while I intend that purely in the literal sense of a chemical oven cleaner/drain opener, a little alkali doohickey also known as "LYE"--as far as I know I might be using more of that dirty-sounding Canadian slang, so I'll stop right there.

And for the record, we've only had ONE power outage recently, no doubt thanks to my eternal, snoring vigilance. It was just a really, really LONG one. Eight days--a new personal record!--with the added fun of sub-freezing temperatures, so if I went anywhere I had to dash back every few hours to feed the wood stove.

I don't need extra miracle attractors, thanks. They'd just take vital attention away from my OWN awesome ability to attract miracles, since if there's one thing I've learned from this stuff it's that it's All About Me. Me me me me me. A good example of one of my quiet, non-showy yet truly awe-inspiring miracles: our neighbor got the wires to our house hooked back up by convincing the power guys to just "go over there and look at it". (Ask!) He then blocked their truck with his car in our driveway and announced he wasn't going anywhere and they might as well fix it while they're there. (Believe!) He then called me at my work to say "Oh, by the way, some guys came by and fixed your house." (Receive!)

It took a while of me fishing before I could drag the real story out of him, because he's THAT sort of guy. I tells ya, I'll take a good neighbor like that over a fancy car any day. (Of course the sucker was thinking about OTHER PEOPLE instead of himself and his OWN deserved happiness, the fool. I'll have to give him a copy of The Secret to set him straight and show him the road to REAL success .... or have him cause the financial ruination of the whole world .... uuummmm, which is it again?)

Anonymous said...

[Colorful expletives deleted...]

Also, Mary Morrisey who's on his site, has a husband who is doing time in prison after $10 million "disappeared" from their church (and somehow got mixed into their private slush fund). She was allowed to go free in a plea bargain, in order to earn the money to pay it back. She's even worse than Schirmer.

[NB If you post this, feel free to edit it in any way you see fit for your site. I'm not as eloquent as you. I can't express it any other way.]

Anonymous said...

You need a caption competition for that pic.

Cosmic Connie said...

Mojo, I too was surprised about the PI crowd. I think that even some of those who were originally most idealistic are getting a bit burned out on the mercenary stuff. Come to think of it, though, some of them were even squawking a bit when Scientist Bob first announced his Three Amigos scheme with Michael Beckwith and Jack Canfield (nearly two years ago). That was the SGR (Science of Getting Rich) scam that cost nearly two thousand dollars to join, and in return you got a cheap briefcase, some motivational materials and the right to sell the same load of crap to other suckers.

Even Oprah complained about that scheme, and The Secret producers actually made an announcement that SGR was not affiliated at all with TS Productions (Rhonda Byrne's company). And some of the Secretrons were a bit put off by the obvious money-grubbing of the whole thing. But that obviously hasn't stopped Scientist Bob. He's baaaaack....

And re your points about the acid/alkali thing... LOL. Bob really needs to hire himself a better copywriter.

It does sound like you have a great neighbor. I'm glad for you, and I have to say that I am grateful to live in a place where we don't have to worry about real winters. Sure, we have those little things called hurricanes, but we get a huge break in winter, comparatively speaking.

Cosmic Connie said...

Yakaru, I appreciate your comments, expletives and all. But I did edit a bit. :-)

Yes, Mary Morrissey is a topic unto herself. I did mention her and her legal troubles in my September 2, 2007 blog post about Bob's Science of Getting Rich cruise.

http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2007/09/ship-of-fools.html

I was under the impression that Mary's husband was released from prison some time in 2007, but I do know that he has served time, and that there were suspicions about what Mary knew. I imagine there's more to her story than we're being told.

All I can say is, "Birds of a feather..."

Anonymous said...

You will find this blog about Bob's new program very interesting:

http://www.al6400.com/blog/2009/01/15/sgr-affiliate-warning-about-lanny-morton-and-sixminutestosuccesscom/

Salty Droid said...

Funny how by the end they ALL kind of turned to this "The Secret was a sham" type sales pitch.

I'll bet you two boners and a cup of fake science that that was the plan from the start.

Cosmic Connie said...

Thanks, SD! For some of the hustledorks, it may very well have been a plan for a long time, but I tend to think that most of these jokers take things one day at a time. There's an obvious flaw in a systematic plan to tout The Secret and then come out and say it was a sham. How does a hustledork explain that s/he was lying (or was deceived) in the first place?

I think the success of The Secret was a big surprise to most of those involved with it. As soon as it revealed itself to be such a New-Wage phenom, the 'dorks were off and running with Secret spin-offs as well as "anti-Secret" gimmicks. I'm not so sure there was a logical plan in place with some of these folks. In any case most of them just don't seem to care about the inconsistency, and they figure their marks won't either.

Cosmic Connie said...

It occurs to me that my previous comment in response to Salty Droid may have been somewhat incoherent, or that I may have made a point and then countered my own point... but I am concentrating on some other stuff right now and not thinking clearly. Anyway, I hope I made *some* sense.

dis. said...

'How does a hustledork explain that s/he was lying (or was deceived) in the first place?'

This one is easy if you remember the first detergent ads (that incidentally brought us the never-ending soap operas)--- whenever sales dipped for the detergent of choice, hyped as the absolute epitome of cleaning power, a new secret ingredient was 'found' by an actor in a white coat to take the absolute epitome of purity and cleanliness to a new dimension.

wash, rinse, repeat.

Which reminds me of another fave ad story, of the hero who managed to double shampoo sales overnight when market saturatrion point had already been reached, by conning hairdressers and subsequently the hair-washing public-at-large on the absolute necessity of washing the hair twice--all ensuing profit gained without expending a dime on R & D for another new secret ingredient and no advertising spend at all on the new improved version.

Genius!

Cosmic Connie said...

Good point, Dis. In fact, many of the hustledorks do employ some variation of a "work-in-progress" excuse (either as a more or less constant sub-text, or retroactively after they come up with some new scam). This strategy leaves the possibility open for new and ever more revolutionary "discoveries."

On the one hand, it CAN be a form of honesty to admit that one doesn't know everything and that one's views are subject to change. The problem, as I see it, with the h-dorks is that even those who say they're still in the process of discovery also aggressively tout each and every one of their new craptastic products as "the ultimate" discovery or breakthrough. They are trying to have it both ways, and are banking on the probability that their potential customers won't see the contradiction, or simply won't care.

Telpo Lendolotoproj said...

this whole post and comment thread is a prize winner!