Harmonic Wealth

Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want by James Arthur Ray

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars

I give up. I simply cannot finish this book. He has a lot to say that I think is dead-on accurate, but he focuses WAY too much on financial wealth. It's only one of his "five pillars of harmonic wealth," and yet he devotes nearly half the book to talking about it.

I felt like he paid lip service to the philosophy that money can't buy happiness & that a lack of money or a mismanagement of money buys a lot of UNhappiness, but he lost me with the focus on becoming a multimillionaire. Particularly since he completely devalues formal education in the process (he doesn't have any form of college degree), saying that virtually no one will use what they learned in school anyway. (Hello?!! I use what I learned every day, even the things I never thought would be useful! I just don't use them in ways I would have expected when I was 20.)

I'm sorry--not everyone in this world can be (or wants to be) a millionaire. In fact, in order for people to hire folks to do all their menial tasks--you know, because they're on their way to becoming "bigger" and therefore richer people--SOMEONE has to work for a pittance. So his logic irritates the living daylights out of me. And admittedly I'm biased, but just because you're rich doesn't mean you provide more service to the world. I can think of a LOT of rich people who do far less to improve this world than a whole lot of less-well-paid folks: librarians, social workers, and teachers, for starters.

I could rant for hours on this book, but I'll spare you the rest. Bottom line: read something else instead. Try Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert or something by Thich Nhat Hanh, any of Barbara Kingsolver's nonfiction, or even You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. (I hear that one's good--haven't read it yet.)


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