I Know This Subject Like The Back Of My Hand

I've had a problem with The New York Times' David Brooks for quite a while.

For instance, after telling us "Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible,..." he backed Obama (and his Secretary of State) based on his feelings about the crease in Obama's pants.

Later, I noted that Brooks had gone NewAge on us (funny that no one else picked up on that) just after the other smartest guy on the web - Robert Stacey McCain - agreed with me that "David Brooks is a useless son of a bitch."

Now comes a Sp!ked review of Brooks' latest book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, where they, too, catch his NewAge tendencies in full flight:

Brooks’ argument against reason culminates in an attack on the Enlightenment. Following Gertrude Himmelfarb (The Roads to Modernity), he writes of a ‘French Enlightenment’ that is overly rationalist and violent and a ‘British Enlightenment’ that emphasises sentiments and is moderate. Three hundred years later, the research finds, ‘the British Enlightenment wins’.

But this is a thoroughly flawed understanding: Enlightenment thinkers on both sides of the English Channel were defenders of reason, from science to politics. Brooks quotes Edmund Burke approvingly, and cites him as a leading member of the British Enlightenment – even though Burke became the leading opponent of the Enlightenment. The concept of reason was central to the American and French revolutions: it provided the basis for widespread social cooperation and was inherently democratic, because it was considered that everyone had the capacity to act rationally and play a role as a citizen.

The implications of Brooks’ anti-rationalist views are drawn out in his recommendations for social policy. He believes that the state can mould emotions and culture for positive ends. What this means in practice is the state intruding into the most personal aspects of people’s lives. Schools need to take over from families that don’t instil the right values to learn; state policies need to inculcate ‘the habits, knowledge and mental traits’ for success. He wants to take the latest findings about the brain and use them to control people’s behaviour.

But, all this said, the problem with The Social Animal is not just that Brooks simply elevates emotions and denigrates reason. It is that (despite protests to the contrary) he sets up a false dualism between the two.

You can read the rest for yourself, but I will point out that, not only have I been reminding you of the NewAge concept - and threat - of "duality" since I started this blog, but that I choose my topics carefully.

You see, having been schooled in the NewAge belief system, I don't need to have the word "NewAge" mentioned, or the landscape explained - I spotted David Brooks as having gone over to The Dark Side a long time ago, and without him having said much - just as I know Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the others I cover are NewAgers.

They don't have to openly declare it - as so many, wrongly, demand Obama should about Islam - it is revealed:

Just as I knew with Jared Lee Laughner, their associates, behaviors, words (evasions, really, which are another tip-off) and political positions, say far more about their occult beliefs than they ever imagine.

But, then, it's a lack of imagination that gets people into NewAge in the first place - and why the rest of you keep listening to them.

In This Time Of "Hope And Change", There's So Little For Us To Hope We'll Ever Change In Time

Singers aren’t supposed to have dairy before a show, but we all know I’m a rule breaker.

--Justin Bieber - convincing himself he's on the cutting edge because he eats pizza - in Spiked Magazine.

Victor Davis Hanson has a nice screed, about all of those who "rage against reality", while those of us who were raging for a reality-based outlook have been called "crazy".

It is a insane fact, of these insane times, that anyone who points out insanity will be labeled insane themselves.

Matt Drudge links to a "Top Psychic" (what are the qualifications for that designation?) making us wonder - in the year 2011 - what the difference is between those who believe in such NewAge mystical powers and the Haitians killing one another because they're convinced sorcerers are spreading cholera?

Does Matt Drudge also "rage against reality"?

We pointed you to Oleg Atbashian's "What to Ask Progressives" already. But did we mention that's only it's subtitle? It's real title is "Question Insanity".

If you hold such views, could you be said to "rage against reality"?

And how are you different from those Americans The Wall Street Journal covered who rely on "Hoodoo"?

Can't it be said they, too, "rage against reality"?

Spiked Magazine calls this "Our Brave New World of Malthusian Madmen" but no one enamored with Malthusian ideas will willingly call themselves "mad", just as we can't get Tom Cruise or John Travolta to admit they're in "a dangerous cult".

And, even worse, in all these cases there is hardly anyone willing to talk sense into any else's head - to make them "not crazy".

It's not even considered a goal.

Because, if you try to do that, you, too, will be labeled "crazy".

Sheesh. And we wonder how the Nazis ever got around to killing the Jews,...

Behaviorally, You're Getting What You Asked For (But Not A Single Leader Any Of Us Really Need)

"Obama may not cheat on his wife, he may not throw tantrums, but that does not mean, as Game Change implies, that he has inspiring policies and will be an effective president (in fact, he’s struggled in office so far). Conversely, just because a politician has personal shortcomings – has a mean temper, displays egotistical behaviour, whatever – it does not follow that he or she could not be, at the same time, a real leader with inspiring ideas."

-- Sean Collins, making an important observation about leadership - and the obvious wrong of insisting on a "balanced" and "peace-loving" NewAge posture for humanity - that too many miss in this age of superficial American Idol-style celebrity worship, while writing in Spiked.

Yo Momma's Vagina's Got Dirt In It

"Initial reaction to the Gaia hypothesis was not overly enthusiastic. Or rather, in respects, initial reaction was even worse than that, because the theory was enthusiastically embraced by the wrong people—joss-stick-burning, Eastern-religion-embracing, herb-consuming (eaten and smoked), Birkenstock-wearing, now-aging hippies and New Agers."

-- Michael Ruse, exposing the nuts in the early environmental movement of the '60's and '70's - NewAgers AKA "the wrong people" - who, cartoon-like, imagined this violent earth as their all-embracing mother, becoming a joke to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"If it’s not more healthy or time-and labour-efficient, what is the continuing attraction of organic food for certain people? The really important thing is that organic sounds more ‘natural’. Eating organic is a way of defining oneself as natural, good, caring, different to the McDonald’s-scoffing masses. As Mark Smith, writing in the Herald (Glasgow) today, puts it: ‘There is something more intuitive going on when I choose organic, something that’s important but hard to pin down in a report full of appendices and flow charts: organic food feels closer to the source, the beginning, the start of things.’ The real desire is to be somehow close to the soil, to Mother Nature, to Gaia, or whatever you want to call it."

-- Rob Lyons, speaking with "the wrong people" today - the joke's children - now with such an all-consuming snobbery they deserve to have their heads Spiked!.

Believe it or not (despite my admittedly crass take on titling this post) these are two very-good articles - especially the first one - explaining the history, and weakness, of the "Gaia Theory" throughout history, starting back in the days of Aristotle. The second is a an expose' on the weaknesses of the Organic Food Movement, and how stuck-up it's NewAge followers are.

Namaste, Bitches.

Bad Art Changes You Beyond All Recognition

"The content of pop songs is generally restricted to two essential modes: I Love You and I Hate Myself. In its limitations it resembles binary code. What should not compute, but unfortunately it does, is our insistence that the world’s greatest musicians should impoverish their own imagination by working in such a confined space."

-- Andrew Calcutt, reminding me why I can't stomach the work of The Spinners, or other related dreck - turn on the radio or any popular "Booty Call" music channel - and (no matter what I have to offer) may never become a popular recording artist myself, on Spiked.

Their Weapon

"Sharon Stone may argue that cutting caffeine is a cure for cancer, but day in day out the press reels out stories about how burnt toast is carcinogenic or how a red wine a day can delay your tumour. The star of Basic Instinct isn’t the problem here."

-- Emily Hill, gingerly telling us - whether we're discussing NewAge celebrities or NewAge journalists - we're surrounded by idiots, in Spiked!

I'm Positive None Of This Sounds Positive

"He’s a brilliant speaker and an inspiring figure, but his political programme is shallow and unsubstantiated. When one is able to discern a definite ‘Obama policy’, it tends to be illiberal and small-minded: for example, his camp, despite its criticisms of Bush’s fearmongering, ratchets up fear about terrorism in its own way, promises more Clinton-style ‘liberal interventionism’ around the world, and plans to reorganise American politics and the economy around the penny-pinching, horizon-lowering politics of global warming. However, it is important to distinguish between Obama the man and Obama the phenomenon.

Much of his support represents a healthy and positive reaction against the deep cynicism and fatalism of mainstream Western politics over the past decade and more. Obama supporters are not cultish slaves: they are people who have had enough of negative, fear-driven, small-minded politics, of both the Republican and Democratic variety, and now – as they keep telling us – they Want Change."

- Brendan O'Neill, of Spiked!, trying to spin the Obama cult talk

"Even blowing his nose, Obama gets applause"

- John McCormick, of The Swamp, proving why such spin is worthless

Ain't That Peculiar? And Such Nice People!

"There is a peculiar paradox that while Nazi Germany is held up as a symbol of evil today, many of the core ideas and beliefs associated with Nazism, such as the mystical worship of nature and hostility towards Enlightenment modernity, are increasingly commonplace amongst today’s radical middle classes."

-- Neil Davenport, writing in Spiked!

Charlie Wilson's War: Better Than Liberal Crap

"If you like your war movies worthy, pious and starring Susan Sarandon as the teary-eyed mom of a 22-year-old boy sent to his death by the Bastard Bush, then you should probably avoid Charlie Wilson’s War. There’s no simplistic antiwar message here, or even a simpleton antiwar message of the sort spouted by Sean Penn or Tim Robbins. Instead, this is a tightly-scripted, borderline slapstick comedy about America’s secretive arming of the Mujahideen during the Afghan-Soviet war of the 1980s. And guess what? It reveals far more about contemporary America and what lies behind its interventionist zeal than all of those achingly guilt-ridden films about lions, lambs and dead American soldiers put together.

This is a war movie with a difference. Where the execrable Lions for Lambs was largely a vehicle for Robert Redford and Tom Cruise to register their distaste for the war in Iraq, and Rendition sacrificed pace, plot and good acting to tell the tale of an evil CIA woman (Meryl Streep, effectively resurrecting her bitchy role from The Devil Wears Prada) and an innocent Egyptian terror suspect, Charlie Wilson’s War remembers to include a storyline and character development. And because its overarching aim is not to advertise its stars’ and producers’ narcissistic antiwar credentials, but rather to give us a story, encounters, sex, politics, it manages to paint a truer picture of America’s relationship with the Middle East than the black-and-white, conspiracy-driven drivel offered by the likes of George Clooney (Syriana) and Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 9/11).

If you like simplistic morality tales in which American administrations conquer the world in order to plunder its oil, and where the only redeemable characters are those brave Hollywood souls willing to make films about it, then go see the new Susan Sarandon vehicle,...

Brendan O’Neill, writing in Spiked!