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Is the Law of Abundance something that everyone talks about superficially? What are the risks of this kind of advice and more or less well-founded precepts turned into a kind of commandment that seeks to guarantee prosperity, happiness, and “money in buckets“?
Debunking the Law of Abundance
There have always been coaches and spiritual gurus who, as in that scene from The Life of Brian, tried to seduce a handful of potential followers—now they would be clients—to subscribe to their more or less well-intentioned theories.
Until those speakers arrived who managed to transcend their time, even creating religions based on their supposed teachings; but, as we know, the latter has happened only a handful of times. Although, except for Brian, everyone seems to dream of being the new messiah to worship.
Thus, our time is no different from the previous one; the human being continues to have that urgent need to believe in something that is beyond himself to try to unravel the mysteries, overcome sadness, and face the tragedies of humanity. The only difference, probably, is that currently the teachings are not done from pulpits on the main street of a town, but by writing books that amplify their message thanks to the Internet and social networks.
And, in this context, thousands of proposals crowd the bookstores’ self-help and personal development section. It is a business that does not end because, like miracle diets, today they may “work”, but tomorrow will be another day. But don’t worry, because I’m writing a new book with more laws that will put an end to your tribulations and your overweight once and for all. This time, yes, I promise.
The main problem with these tips—which may have the best intentions in the world, although nothing happens if we become millionaires along the way—is trying to turn them into axioms, into laws.
The ‘Law’ of Abundance is Not a Law
The law of abundance dissociates itself from its own denomination. It is not a law. Here are the 12 main meanings of “law” according to the RAE. It is not a fixed rule to which a phenomenon of nature is subjected; it is not a precept issued by the competent authority; nor is it each of the existing relationships between the various elements that intervene in a phenomenon.
Because abundance is not “a phenomenon”, it is not an object of sense experience, as Kant would say, but a construct, a theoretical construction, to address a given problem. Theoretical, debatable, and relative because, for me, the same amount of money is not as abundant as it is for Amancio Ortega. And if we understand abundance as prosperity, for one person, it can mean having a lot of money, for another to be happy, and for another to be honest. A matter of perspectives, priorities, and interpretations
Thus, the problem with the Law of Abundance and a good part of the precepts of the self-help and personal development world is the same: trying to convert more or less well-intentioned disclosure into philosophy, using scientific jargon to cover up superficiality. In short, in giving a cat a poke. No more.
Abundance and the Law of Creation
One of the laws of abundance, according to Sergio Fernández, one of its Spanish defenders, says the following: “You get what you think about, whether you want it or not”, inspired by books such as Ask and it will be given to you or The law of attraction
The latter has already been widely criticized for probably exhibiting a confirmation bias—the tendency to favor, search for, interpret, and remember information that confirms one’s own beliefs or hypotheses, giving disproportionately less consideration to possible alternatives—and for the bias of choice—distortion of statistical analysis.
The Law of Cause and Effect
As we saw when talking about synchronicity, the cause-effect law is called into question from different philosophical and scientific approaches that we must assess before taking as “law” statements, such as those that determine the cause-effect law according to this theory. “Anything you experience in life is a result. In other words, any event in life is caused by something” or “we usually conclude that scarcity, whether economic or of any other kind, is present in our lives without us having done anything to make it appear or without being able to do anything about it. something to reverse that situation.”
Laws of Balance, order and Vibration
This trend continues with other laws such as vibration—everything that has a similar vibration ends up attracting—, balance—something like everything you contribute to the world will be returned to you—, and the law of order: be-do-have.
This last law hides the true objective of the book, because abundance is, in our opinion, a euphemism that these authors use to talk about money, pasta, and money. Being is only a means to an end when, according to the Law of Abundance, it should be an end in itself, whatever that “being” is, which we have been debating since the beginning of the history of philosophy without much success.
So, if you follow these tips that I tell you in my book, you will be rich; you will swim in abundance… material: it involves spiritual superficialism, which would make even the followers of Brian of Nazareth blush, the most depressing materialism. Because, in the end, this is all about money, about teaching poor people to be rich (in spirit) and then finding success.
To be Rich (in spirit) you have to Go Deep
The philosopher Joan-Carles Mèlich says that the world must also be careful when reading the classics. And it is not about reading the classics as dogmas of faith but as knowledge that can also be debated or even updated. But first, read it. Because the only way to know ourselves is by starting with the tradition that has underpinned our culture: from Plato to Borges, and from Kafka to Dostoevsky.
Now, where is the “discriminated” information? This question does not admit of a totally satisfactory answer because dissemination dressed as a revolution by fascicles can also offer the reader usable content, an introduction to more complex “phenomena” . And a book by Schopenhauer can—and indeed does—make terrible claims despite also containing incontrovertible teachings.
Thus, the only path to true “personal development” is to learn to discriminate against (abundant) information and to be aware of the problems and dangers of not delving into the superficiality of a large part of the messages (and laws) of “indiscriminate” information.
