Saturday, September 27, 2008

Secrets of the Universe (and other nonsense)

Secret #1
Evidently much of the financial meltdown has been brought about by believers that for a mere $20,000 investment, they can have revealed the secrets to making millions in real estate. Dave Ramsey frequently rails against the late night television hucksters selling tape sets on how to do this and the family FBI agent tells me that it is rampant. It is very hard for me to understand how someone could really believe that with no money, bad credit, and no real possibility of paying off loans, there is a “secret” way that they can buy a home or several rental houses and make millions of dollars. I guess it takes more belief/gullibility/stupidity than I have.

Secret #2
One of my co-workers tells me that there is a secret society that really runs the Federal Reserve and actually extends its reach to run the world economy. Much past this and I tell him that I have too much work to do to listen to his conspiracy theories.

Secret #3
The book The Secret and many others like it tell us that the secret is to believe and it will happen. The universe smiles on those who believe. But what if different people believe opposite things—does the universe get confused??

Secret #4
When I was a child, the church said that if I believed, my legs would be made strong. Obviously I didn’t believe enough to cure my genetic CMT. The good thing about this was that I learned early to be skeptical about the powers of belief.

Now I am all for having a generally positive attitude but reality really needs to be given some consideration. The old saying that "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't." is still sound advice.

Thought for the day:
Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of." ~ A. Allen

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