X-Message-Number: 29158 Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 06:04:42 -0800 (PST) From: un person <> Subject: analogizing the self-help movement and prosperity-protestanti... a thread on cold filter referenced the trendy self-help pop psychology movie, The Secret. see here: http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/ Response to Mutually Experienced Solipsism (sounds sexy doesn't it) my reply: Yes, and speaking to my earlier reference to prosperity christianity, preacher joel osteen's sermon this morning is about negative, self-defeating internal dialogs and how we can re-write them and reprogram ourselves and thus live better lives. this movie (THe Secret) deals with a common theme in the prosperity gospel -- re-programming our internal dialog. This morning, "word of faith" preacher joel osteen is talking about re-programming our internal dialog and how it can help us better ourselves. Same general idea as in The Secret. This is what I am talking about--this is a very strong movement in american christianity, and I think that it has much in common with the transhumanist-cryonicist-life extension movement. Both are tied into the self-improvement movement. This also speaks to the indoctrinability aspect of the evolved primate homo sapiens sapiens. One of our survival advantages was that our big brains are eveolved to be indoctrinable by those at the top of the social hierarchy, the better for us to fit into the tribe and be able to help the tribe accomplish its complex goals and survive. Our minds are evolved to be programmed by others in the tribe, particularly the leaders. However, we can take over this indoctrination function ourselves and modl ourselves, at least to some degree. for more on this, see the book Darwinism, Dominance and Democracy: The Biological Bases of Authoritarianism by Albert Somit --UnPerson ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=29158