Saturday, January 29, 2011

We're Blaming Everything (But What's To Blame)

It doesn't seem to matter what kind of article we're reading about things going wrong, or being unfair, eventually the name of some NewAge icon or idea will pop up as the culprit, yet it's still a chore to get anyone to recognize it's the adoption of NewAge cult thinking, itself, that's screwing us. A case in point is Dominic Raab's article on feminism where he says this:
You can’t have it both ways. Either you believe in equality or you don’t. If you buy into the whole Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus theory of gender difference – with all its pseudo science - you can’t then complain about inequalities of outcome that flow both ways from those essentially sexist distinctions.
Very true, though we'd take issue with the mere claim of "pseudo science" and lay the blame where it should be - "spirituality" - specifically, NewAge.

Of course, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was written by "Dr." John Gray. What most don't know is "Dr." John Gray was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's personal secretary for the Transcendental Meditation cult. (Not only that, but his Ph.D was from a California university that was shut down, and his undergraduate degrees - in the made-up "Science of Creative Intelligence" field - were from the Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland. In other words, totally bogus.) Considering Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was a major best-seller, how many have absorbed Gray's (and the Maharishi's) cultish, "sexist" thinking - "with all its pseudo science" - as their own?

And why has TIME Magazine featured the thoughts of Deepak Chopra? He's a Maharishi alum, too. Also - considering the Maharishi was a fraud - what has elevated Chopra to the role of an American spokesman, worthy of speaking on American television about topics as diverse as politics? Who, exactly, is he speaking for? What good has Chopra accomplished? Other than duping millions, what has he actually ever done? Does anyone care? Or, in the age of Bernie Madoff, is deceiving people considered an accomplishment in and of itself?

No one looking seriously at the subject can miss how the NewAge scam works:

The Huffington Post posts a column by Deepak Chopra, defending Oprah Winfrey's promotion of quackery, using celebrities Jenny McCarthy (above) and Suzanne Somers.

Or, put more accurately, a John-Rogers cult member (seen above) ran a bald-faced lie by a Maharishi cult member, defending a NewAge accolade's "crazy talk", using a (now debunked) anti-vaccinationist and natural cancer cure fraud.

Catching on yet?

As Dominic Raab pointed out with his "Dr." John Gray example, we now have the entirety of Western culture (and business) willingly, and wrong-headedly, following these scam artists and "mystical" frauds, destroying the fabric of our society - without ever questioning when these crooks (as TIME Magazine says) "jump to easy conclusions and,...spackle over problematic gaps and inconsistencies in the ideas". Why not? When was it a part of the American character to allow charlatans, and outright cultists, to operate amongst us unmolested - giving them power, and making them fortunes, beyond their wildest dreams to boot?

Oh yea, since we entered the NewAge.

3 comments:

  1. great writing.
    i do think John Gray offers good advice, regardless of his background. I have never read any of deepak's books so couldn't say. anyway, it ain't where you are from, it's where you are at.

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  2. i do think John Gray offers good advice, regardless of his background.

    And regardless it's sexist and filled with pseudo science. (How far does this "regardless" thing go? Regardless that he's a rapist? Regardless he got your sister raped? Where does it stop if merely lying to you - about who he is or the information he's selling - is a fraud?) I guess, putting a positive spin on it, you're saying you like John Gray for the same reason liberals like The New York Times:

    It may be a steaming pile of corrosive-to-society lies but, My God, it's so well-written!

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