Birmingham (United Kingdom), Have you tried to demonstrate? It's hard to escape on social media: the idea that you can make what you want come true through the power of faith. This could be financial success, romantic love, or sporting glory.
Singer Dua Lipa, who headlined the Glastonbury festival in June 2024, said performing Friday night at the festival was “on the board for her dreams.” “If you are manifesting, be specific, because it could happen!”
The rally quickly gained popularity during the pandemic. In 2021, the 3-6-9 manifestation method became famous. A TikTok viewed more than a million times, for example, explains this “foolproof manifestation technique.” You write what you want three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed and repeat until it comes true. Now, content creators are explaining countless methods to turn your dreams into reality. But the idea that if you want something bad enough, it will happen is not new. It emerged from the self-help movement. Some of the early popular books that promoted this idea include Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich from 1937 and Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life from 1984.
The trend really took off with The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, a book published in 2006 that claims you can achieve anything you want through the power of manifestation. It has sold more than 35 million copies and has many famous fans. Drawing on the “law of attraction,” Byrne proclaims, “Your entire life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go through your head.”
Manifesting as an intellectual viceBut manifestation has a dark side. Popular trends like the 3-6-9 manifestation method promote obsessive and compulsive patterns of behavior, and also encourage faulty habits of thinking and reasoning.
Manifesting is a form of wishful thinking, and wishful thinking leads to false conclusions, often through inaccurate weighing of evidence. The wishful thinker exaggerates his optimism about the probability of a preferred outcome. In philosophical terms, this type of thinking is called an “intellectual vice”: it blocks the acquisition of knowledge by a rational person.
Manifesting encourages people to dream big and imagine in detail everything they desire. This makes people's expectations abnormally high, setting them up for failure and disappointment. Arguably a form of toxic positivity. If you believe that your own thoughts have the power to create reality, you may end up downplaying or ignoring the practical actions and efforts of others. You could manifest yourself by saying: “I attract positive things to me.” But in doing so, you may fail to notice or credit the role of luck, chance, privilege, and circumstance in explaining why some things happen and others don't.
Logical errors
Manifesting leads to logical errors. Someone who practices manifestation – and who finds that something they manifested comes true – is likely to attribute these desired results to their previous hopes or desires. But this does not mean that hope was the cause of the result. Just because one came before the other does not mean it was the cause: correlation does not imply causation. If you believe that the power of desiring something makes what you desire come true, you will disproportionately attribute causal efficacy to your mental activity over other causes.
For example, if you study hard for an exam and get a good grade, you might end up attributing this result to the daily mantra or repeated affirmations you said before the exam, instead of crediting the effort you put into studying. For your next test, you may continue to demonstrate, but study less.
And when the expected outcome doesn't happen, you may have to explain it in positive or fatalistic terms: the universe has something better planned. The negative result becomes further evidence that you still need to think positively and therefore will not change your approach. While it may initially seem attractive, speaking out can also encourage victim blaming: that if someone had thought in a more positive, the result would have been different. It also fails to encourage people to make alternative plans, leaving them vulnerable to luck and circumstance.
Demonstrating involves a lot of selfishness. The desires of the protester are fundamental to their focus and use of their mental energy and time.
If you rely solely on mental power to achieve your desires, you will not succeed. Try to consider the various factors that support and resist your goals. Finally, remember that sometimes the thoughts we have are imaginative, fictitious, fanciful or fantastic. It is enriching and positive that in many cases our thoughts do not come true. (The conversation)NSA
NSA
Singer Dua Lipa, who headlined the Glastonbury festival in June 2024, said performing Friday night at the festival was “on the board for her dreams.” “If you are manifesting, be specific, because it could happen!”
The rally quickly gained popularity during the pandemic. In 2021, the 3-6-9 manifestation method became famous. A TikTok viewed more than a million times, for example, explains this “foolproof manifestation technique.” You write what you want three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon and nine times before bed and repeat until it comes true. Now, content creators are explaining countless methods to turn your dreams into reality. But the idea that if you want something bad enough, it will happen is not new. It emerged from the self-help movement. Some of the early popular books that promoted this idea include Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich from 1937 and Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life from 1984.
The trend really took off with The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, a book published in 2006 that claims you can achieve anything you want through the power of manifestation. It has sold more than 35 million copies and has many famous fans. Drawing on the “law of attraction,” Byrne proclaims, “Your entire life is a manifestation of the thoughts that go through your head.”
Manifesting as an intellectual viceBut manifestation has a dark side. Popular trends like the 3-6-9 manifestation method promote obsessive and compulsive patterns of behavior, and also encourage faulty habits of thinking and reasoning.
Manifesting is a form of wishful thinking, and wishful thinking leads to false conclusions, often through inaccurate weighing of evidence. The wishful thinker exaggerates his optimism about the probability of a preferred outcome. In philosophical terms, this type of thinking is called an “intellectual vice”: it blocks the acquisition of knowledge by a rational person.
Manifesting encourages people to dream big and imagine in detail everything they desire. This makes people's expectations abnormally high, setting them up for failure and disappointment. Arguably a form of toxic positivity. If you believe that your own thoughts have the power to create reality, you may end up downplaying or ignoring the practical actions and efforts of others. You could manifest yourself by saying: “I attract positive things to me.” But in doing so, you may fail to notice or credit the role of luck, chance, privilege, and circumstance in explaining why some things happen and others don't.
Logical errors
Manifesting leads to logical errors. Someone who practices manifestation – and who finds that something they manifested comes true – is likely to attribute these desired results to their previous hopes or desires. But this does not mean that hope was the cause of the result. Just because one came before the other does not mean it was the cause: correlation does not imply causation. If you believe that the power of desiring something makes what you desire come true, you will disproportionately attribute causal efficacy to your mental activity over other causes.
For example, if you study hard for an exam and get a good grade, you might end up attributing this result to the daily mantra or repeated affirmations you said before the exam, instead of crediting the effort you put into studying. For your next test, you may continue to demonstrate, but study less.
And when the expected outcome doesn't happen, you may have to explain it in positive or fatalistic terms: the universe has something better planned. The negative result becomes further evidence that you still need to think positively and therefore will not change your approach. While it may initially seem attractive, speaking out can also encourage victim blaming: that if someone had thought in a more positive, the result would have been different. It also fails to encourage people to make alternative plans, leaving them vulnerable to luck and circumstance.
Demonstrating involves a lot of selfishness. The desires of the protester are fundamental to their focus and use of their mental energy and time.
If you rely solely on mental power to achieve your desires, you will not succeed. Try to consider the various factors that support and resist your goals. Finally, remember that sometimes the thoughts we have are imaginative, fictitious, fanciful or fantastic. It is enriching and positive that in many cases our thoughts do not come true. (The conversation)NSA
NSA
