Turns out that many who embrace the New Age fall prey to some very old human tendencies. Like credulity...wishful thinking...
posted 11.25.05
THE NEW AGE GETS OLD
The cluster of values, beliefs and activities known collectively as New Age has become a disappointment for me.
A few years ago I considered myself something of a New Ager, associating the term with such positive values as enlightenment, open-mindedness, truth-seeking, rationality, a healthy skepticism regarding Establishment values, and a progressive social agenda promoting peace, love, and justice. Sadly, while New Agers sometimes do embody these values, my observations in recent years have repeatedly brought me face to face with the discrepancy between their notional values and the traits so often manifest in their actions.
Not so enlightened after all
Too often, what New Agers call "open-mindedness" is really gullibility, "sensitivity" is suggestibility, and "enlightenment" is self-righteous dogmatism. "Truth-seeking" steps through the New-Age looking glass to become rigid defense of emotionally held positions, with an amazing propensity for evading, ignoring or screaming bloody murder about any rational critique. In an Orwellian twist, "rationality" becomes irrationality, as indeed it must if fallacious but comforting beliefs are to be maintained. Thus also, "healthy skepticism regarding Establishment values" becomes closed-minded rejection of unpleasant ideas coupled with desperate swallowing of whatever "feels right," while the progressive social agenda falls by the wayside in the avaricious rush to fleece the flock, or degenerates into blaming others (science, the Establishment, etc.) for the world's ills. And to think I once felt that my having changed from a Bible-pounding fundamentalist to a New Ager constituted progress!
Recently my friend Jai tried to recruit me into a New Age pyramid scheme. My attempts to focus on the specifics in order to explain that pyramid schemes are inherently rip-offs were met with vague metaphysical slogans like "You've got to get out of that poverty consciousness and into prosperity consciousness," "The universe is abundant," and "You have to get past that linear thinking, Dixon; this isn't linear" (although Jai clearly had no objection to a linear increase in his bank account). To my surprise and disappointment, when I asked him if he thought that money would be produced from thin air so that everyone in the pyramid could profit with no one losing, he endorsed that as a possibility. (Would the materialized money have been magically transported from someone's coffers, in which case it would be grand larceny—or would it literally appear out of "thin air," in which case it would be counterfeiting? What would the serial numbers be? Would they all be the same? And would the bills feature the traditional portraits of dead presidents, or would they perhaps depict someone more appropriate, like Shirley MacLaine, Uri Geller or other icons of New Age hucksterism?) When I pressed on with my effort to explain the simple facts, he ended the conversation.
This anecdote gives us several examples of what we may call "New Age sewage": 1) the attempt to disguise plain old-fashioned money-grubbing with a veneer of New Age rhetoric, like a reeking harridan slathered with cheap perfume; 2) the assiduous avoidance of any unpleasant facts (manifested here by repeated retreat into vague slogans); 3) Herculean feats of irrationality and credulousness, in order to maintain the desired belief; 4) fallacious attempts to invalidate the person challenging the belief; and, when all else fails, 5) termination of the dialogue.
Please note that I'm not faulting Jai for being wrong about pyramid schemes. We all make honest mistakes. What really disappointed me was the considerable effort he put into avoiding being corrected. The payoff in a situation like this is clear: by avoiding the conscious acknowledgment that what you're doing is fraudulent, you can have your cake and eat it, too—that is, you can get the money without suffering the guilt that would appropriately accompany the knowledge that you had profited from a swindle. Thus, such vehement resistance to reasoned critique is pandemic among those who profit from various New Age goods and services, from crystals to channeling to unproven therapies to astrology to magic potions, ad nauseam. Moreover, most of these strategies are common even in situations where no money is involved, as the emotional need for sustaining a belief is typically enough to maintain the defense mechanisms.
A troubling aspect of Jai's case is that, as a professional psychotherapist, he should be particularly willing and able to engage in a critique of his own thinking and feeling. One shudders to think what habits of thought the numerous New Age therapists are reinforcing in their clients.
Torn between two worlds
One reason I feel so strongly about these issues is that I'm torn between two worlds. There's still a lot I like about the New Age crowd. I like to be with peace-and-justice-oriented people who dress creatively, dance wildly, hug a lot, and get naked; and I'm more likely to find these cuddly people among the New Age crowd. On the other hand, while I love the real warmth as well as the honesty, open-mindedness and intellectual rigor of the scientific/skeptical community, they're more likely to be afflicted with a sometimes repugnant political and social conservatism. As one would expect of a group consisting largely of people whose livelihoods depend on big business, government, and the military-industrial complex, they often fail to turn the light of their much-touted skepticism upon the claims, assumptions and values of those entrenched social institutions. The people I'm most comfortable with combine the best of both worlds. But such people are few and far between, partly because of a lack of real communication, not to mention rapprochement, between the "two cultures."
Thus I often find myself in uncomfortable social situations. For instance, recently I participated in an event billed as Drumming for World Peace. I love drumming and, of course, peace, and I value ritual if it doesn't invoke constructs like gods or other ideas I don't believe in. But this event turned silly when a woman got up on stage and spoke to us. She made it clear that she (and, I think, most of those assembled there) believed that the drumming in and of itself constituted work toward world peace. There was vague talk about some kind of vibration or energy that was rising up from the drum circle and somehow subtly nudging the world away from militarism and toward peace, love and harmony.
I accept that such rituals as drum circles could have positive social effects insofar as they make people mindful of issues like world peace and motivate them to do something substantive for the cause, like donating money or distributing brochures. But the claim this woman was making went far beyond that, into the realm of magical thinking. One of my biggest fears about this kind of thinking is that people who otherwise would do something substantive for a good cause might not do so, on the assumption that they've already done their part by drumming, praying or otherwise ritualizing. Another problem is that the credibility of valid ideas about peace, justice and the environment is compromised when they are packaged with dubious beliefs like astrology, psychic powers, and unproven alternative therapies. Thus I fear that people who might otherwise be recruited into the good fight for worthy social causes are driven away by the New Age baggage. In situations like this drum circle I get uncomfortable because I fear that my participation looks like an endorsement of the silly ideas being espoused. I feel a need, even a responsibility, to stand up and dispute the prevailing dogma. But that would be considered inappropriate—largely because any rigorous critique of cherished beliefs, no matter how diplomatically expressed, is taken as a personal affront in New Age culture.
Still hopeful
So I remain uncomfortably torn between two cultures, and particularly disappointed in the so-called New Age. This is not to say that New Agers are any worse than fundamentalists, white supremacists, or numerous more traditional movements; indeed, the basic patterns of irrationality are essentially the same in all of these groups. My greater disappointment in the New Age reflects the fact that I once had high hopes that it would be a radical improvement over the others. And now I'm afraid that I was wrong.
But I haven't given up on my New Age friends. They represent a lot of intelligence, talent and good will that could yet do the world considerable good. I would like to help bridge the New Age and the scientific/skeptical cultures, so that we may evolve a synthesis of rationality and social consciousness that could bring about a real new age. Who would care to join in this effort?
Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Resources for Independent Thinking. The article originally appeared in Independent Thinking Review, Vol. 2, No. 2. Dixon Wragg is an ex-fundamentalist preacher, ex-hippie, and ex-New Ager who is now a skeptic and plans to stay that way.
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