The Ethic of Getting Rich

BY MITCH HOROWITZ

There is a conflict in New Thought culture today. Some seekers want a New Thought that emphasizes personal attainment and ambition. Others believe that New Thought’s focus should be on social justice – they regard the think-and-grow-rich approach as gauche, unspiritual, or selfish.

The 1910 classic The Science of Getting Rich by mind-power pioneer and social reformer Wallace D. Wattles points the way out of this conflict. I recently condensed the book in a new audio and digital edition, and rediscovered the relevance of Wattles’s message for a current New Thought culture that is divided between social justice and personal achievement. Wattles shows how those two priorities are actually one and the same.

A socialist, a Quaker, and an early theorist of mind-positive metaphysics, the Indiana seeker believed that the true aim of enrichment is not the accumulation of personal resources alone, but the establishment of a more equitable world: a world of shared abundance and possibility for all people. Wattles believed that combining mind-power mechanics with an ardent dedication to self-improvement and personal prosperity, while rejecting a narrowly competitive work ethos, makes you part of an interlinking chain that leads to a more dynamic, prosperous world for all.

His slender guidebook The Science of Getting Rich remained obscure in mainstream culture until about ten years ago. In 2007, word spread that The Science of Getting Rich was a source behind Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. The Science of Getting Rich began to hit bestseller lists, nearly than a century after the author’s death in 1911. I published a paperback edition myself that reached number-one on the Businessweek bestseller list. My new audio condensation hit number-two on iTunes.

What many of Wattles’s enthusiastic new readers miss, however, is his dedication to the ethic of cooperative advancement and creativity above animal competition; and his belief that competition itself is an outmoded idea, soon to be supplanted by the creative capacities found within the mind. Once unlocked, he taught, these higher capacities will grant working people the keys to a life of prosperity for themselves and others. Wattles expressed his ideals both in inner and outer life. A onetime a Methodist minister, Wattles was booted from his pulpit when he refused collection basket offerings from congregants who ran sweatshops.  He twice ran for office on the ticket of Eugene V. Debs’ Socialist Party.

Was Wattles’s vision of New Thought and social reform really so utopian? We live in an age of remarkable new discoveries of the mind’s power: physicians have performed successful placebo surgeries, and demonstrated the placebo response in weight loss and in instances where placebos are transparently administered; in the field called neuroplasticity brain scans show that the brain’s neural pathways are actually “rewired” by thought patterns – a biological act of mind over matter; quantum physics experiments pose extraordinary questions about causality between thought and object; and serious ESP experiments repeatedly demonstrate the nonphysical conveyance of data in laboratory settings. Wattles’s mission, now more than a century old, was simply to ask whether these extraordinary abilities, which were only hinted at in the science labs of his day, can be applied and experimented with on the material and social scales of life.

Wattles did not live long enough to see the influence of his book. He died of tuberculosis less than a year after it appeared. But his calm certainty and profoundly confident yet gentle tone suggest that he understood the portent of what he was writing.

Like every great thinker, Wattles left us not with a doctrine, but rather with articles of experimentation. The finest thing you can do to honor the memory of this good man – and to advance your own place in life – is to heed his advice: Go and experiment with the capacities of your mind. Go and try. And if you experience results, as I think you will, do what he did: Tell the people.

A New Vision of Mind Power

We are facing a propitious moment to reexamine Wattles, who I write about more extensively in my Occult America and One Simple Idea. As noted, the New Thought movement is currently conflicted between urges to “change the world” or “be top of the world” – and this tension may be the chrysalis from which a new vision emerges.

Here is a starting point: In her recent piece Why The Self-Help Industry is not Changing the World, spiritual writer Andrea Anae makes some excellent observations about how poorly the current self-help culture approaches social questions. Like Andrea, I have had the experience of witnessing a tragedy in the world and then logging onto social media to find the usual population of motivational gurus prattling on like nothing has happened. (Or maybe showing an image of a cake with a candle blown out, or some similarly cloying gesture.) Also like her, I’ve never felt that New Thought and self-help movements should stand aloof from human events. I’ve recently written for this blog on a New Thought perspective on war, and New Thought’s polarization between achievement and social action.

But none of this fully addresses Andrea’s core point, which is that many of the problems people bring to her as a spiritual counselor are actually symptoms of an unjust world; it feels to her like she’s avoiding the point if she treats only the symptom and not the larger cause.

I come at things somewhat differently. Human nature, in its complexities, is twisted into knots, some of them resulting from outer circumstances, and some from within ourselves. I believe that will always be the case. I do not want to see an overly politicized New Thought in the twenty-first century. Nor do I want a New Thought that is closed off to people who are suspicious of “social action,” which can quickly devolve into posturing and inertia. What’s more, a social-justice orientation can deemphasize the pursuit of individual attainment, which is vital to New Thought culture.

Rather, I want to strike at the childish tone that pervades some sectors of New Thought. Within New Thought churches, meetings, and discussion groups, people who talk about current events, or think about serious ethical problems, are sometimes regarded as missing the proper “kumbaya” tone. Yet thoughtful adults are not supposed to be Mr. Roarke saying, “Smiles everyone, smiles!” (Young people, work with me…)  Indeed, some New Thoughters even express boredom with discussions of world issues, or are grievously uninformed about such things. None of this produces a well-rounded person or movement.

We must improve the intellectual tone in New Thought – and avoid leaning on catechism when topics of tragedy or injustice arise. There is no “one answer” when approaching current events; people justly have different views of the world. But something that no serious spiritual movement can sustain is having no answer. Or no discussion. Or no perspective. I would rather enter a room full of people who civilly disagree on world affairs than are blissfully indifferent (call it what you will).

And this indifference is the problem that Andrea is putting her finger on. It is a serious one. Yet historically it was not a problem in the lives of New Thought pioneers like Wallace Wattles, or his publisher, Elizabeth Towne, a leading New Thought voice and suffragist activist. In 1926 Towne was elected the first female alderman in Holyoke, MA. Two years later she mounted an unsuccessful independent bid for mayor. The fact is, Towne, Wattles, and many of their New Thought contemporaries were socially and intellectually well rounded. They took seriously both the spiritual and public challenges of life. Their expansive outlook arose from their deep curiosity and engagement with their times. If we can foster a better, fuller intellectual culture within New Thought, I think the divide between social action and personal betterment would naturally become bridged.

Mind you, a coalescing of interests does not mean that New Thoughters will all agree about social issues, or vote the same. It means that New Thought values and methods will shine the way for everyone, in all circumstances, to shape his life – and the world – in accordance with his highest self.

Mitch Horowitz is a PEN Award-winning historian and the author of One Simple Idea, a history of New Thought, where he further explores the career of Wallace D. Wattles. Mitch is introducing and abridging The Science of Getting Rich and many other New Thought works for The Condensed Classics Library. This article is adapted from his new introduction.