I bought motivational tapes from Tony Robbins. It was through those tapes that I saw the foolishness of those ideas. Instead of teaching you to be strong they taught you to be weak and to rely on them for your backbone. Just stuff an envelope full of large bills and send it in and you can learn to be a real estate tycoon with women in each arm and spend all day in your swim trunks on your yacht.
The problem is that to some extent they are right. Much of what goes on in your life is a result of choices you made or of things you've done.
But there is fate and luck and people who want to fuck over you too.

swilton

(5,069 posts)

2. I also think

Reply to Koch Ebola (Original post)

Mon May 18, 2015, 02:57 PM

May 2015

it has its origins in the individualist/capitalist ideology - individuals - yes! socialists - no! (taboo)....and it directly relates to social Darwinism/capitalism = survival of the fittest - the best (i.e., hardest workers, most talented, favored by God as opposed to those who were born with a silver spoon in their moths) rise to the top....

While mass culture and the 70's cult influence are definitely contemporary extensions of that - Social Darwinism goes back to Locke, Puritanism, Calvinism etc.

Warpy

(111,124 posts)

3. I have to agree with him about the 70s, they sucked

Reply to Koch Ebola (Original post)

Mon May 18, 2015, 02:58 PM

May 2015

They had all the sex, drugs and rock & roll of the 60s without any of the idealism. People were largely drifting and looking for something to believe in since it was obvious the usual institutions had failed them miserably. Millennial fever was barely starting to ramp up, but there were plenty of hucksters to take advantage of unease among the masses.

Televangelists really started to build their empires in the 70s. A lot of people got sucked in to their cockeyed world view, one that agreed more with rich Republicans than with the bible they were waving around like some sort of talisman.

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