Noura said her tribe was not going to find an idol by “digging” or “making it so hard”. Instead “it’s going to be literally like a gift”. Then she made a sound like a heavenly benediction “ah-ahhh”. This probably sounded somewhat ridiculous to most viewers, because players are almost never simply bestowed immunity idols as if from the heavens. Russell Hantz didn’t get his idols as “gifts” – he got them by busting his ass. So why would Noura say this?

I suspect that Noura has read a book called The Secret. The main idea of The Secret, which has suckered millions of people, is that the only requirement for success is visualizing that success. No hard work, talent, education, or strategy are necessary. Just visualize your success and it will come to you. Survivor seems to be a case study in how this is wrong, since almost every player has strongly visualized themselves winning the game (sometimes delusionally so), yet there can be only one winner.

The people behind The Secret claim that quantum mechanics shows that everything is a “field” and that we can manipulate the fields around us, which means if we visualize our success, then we will change our surrounding fields to manifest that success. Obviously, this is not supported by any actual scientists who research quantum mechanics.

Outside of the fact that it’s not true, The Secret also has some ethically harmful implications. If our life events are caused by our visualizations, then slavery and the Holocaust were largely caused by their victims’ own inability to visualize positive events. The perpetrators of these evils therefore lose much of their ethical responsibility. Then again, maybe the slaveowners and Nazis were just following The Secret better by visualizing their own successes more strongly.

I know, heavy talk for Survivor, but this feels like a heavy season. I actually shouldn’t be too hard on Noura. She’s developed into one of the few decent (though crazy) human beings playing this season.