In a series of episodes aired on her show in 2007, Oprah Winfrey talked about the then-new sensational New Age phenomenon known as The Secret, a movie by Australian film producer Rhonda Byrne, who later wrote a book of the same title that, due to Winfrey’s enthusiastic endorsement, became an international bestseller. The Secret maintains that by merely thinking about losing weight, making more money, and falling in love, you can become thin, wealthy, and happily married. In one episode, Rhonda Byrne is joined by four “teachers”—well known self-help gurus who had chosen to disseminate the idea, much like the disciples of a prophet— in a speciously scientific discussion of the law of attraction, magnetic power, energy, frequency of mind vibration, and the vibration of the universe. All these buzzwords are the overture to the selling point of the conversation in which the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul proclaims, “If you go to quantum physics, we realize everything is energy” (see video at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qwZMVe2WVY).
Marianne Wiliamson
Marianne Williamson, former Democratic presidential candidate, designates “quantum realm of possibilities” as the source of “the good, the true, and the beautiful” and a solution to slavery, disenfranchisement of women, and segregation (Williamson 2019). She resorts to quantum physics to assert that “as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes” (Williamson 1996) and that to change the world all we have to do is change our mind about the world. With this premise, would-be president Williamson’s solution to all world problems is only a meditation away, and she has quantum physics to back her up! This is not a far-fetched, farcically concocted claim. When Hurricane Dorian was dashing toward Florida, Williamson advised her followers to stop it with their minds (Levin 2019).