From A Problem With Science And Metaphysics (To A Solution With Frank Zappa)

I'm always wondering, how is it that - in this "modern" high tech world - something can be known on one side of the planet, that NewAgers aren't aware of on the other? A problem with our satellites? For instance, here's a message from Yurp:

"Apparently, in Canada, osteopathy is strong and full of woo..."

Now, we know it surely can't be a language barrier, because this professor is in Germany, which is right next door to France - where they speak that silly oui-oui, pooh-pooh, lah-lah French - but, the Gauls are just as coo-coo-clueless as the Canadians, so what gives? How are these two nations, so renowned for their educations, modernity, and civility, not so renowned for being in-step with reality?

But, this speaks to how the whole NewAge phenomena is working, all over the world: how do some immediately know fraud when we see it, while many (if not most) NewAgers buy into whatever false "empowerment" (or whatever message) the cultists sell? And - if some people do and can spot it - why aren't they trusted? 

I think it's because, like everyone else, the NewAger's desire for power (whether over themselves, over rationalists, or the world) is stronger - and, they have more money than common sense to indulge it, so bad things happen (Which, of course, is why they shouldn't have power: they've already proven they can't handle it).

Whatever. Thinking about NewAgers makes the mind weary. So here's TMR's new answer to NewAge's problems - listen to Frank Zappa because none of it matters:

It really works. Better than any damned guru, I guarantee you. Big money bet.

Once You Get It, Wear It like A Badge Of Honor

Here is a message everyone should get firmly in their mind. So firmly it should practically cripple your brain (as it does ours) when you're confronted with a situation that demands you use it:

They all say they aren't "woo-woo" people, don't they? In fact, if you hear someone on a show about a faith healer say they're a skeptic or "not a woo-woo person" you can be pretty sure that she either has just said or is about to say something that proves she is a woo-woo person.

Now, we know what you're thinking:

Notice it says "she"? Whatever. The question is, do they "all" say they're not woo-woo people?

Well, let us ask you this:

With all the NewAge stuff around - from aura readings to the zodiac - when was the last time you actually heard someone, with their own mouths, openly claim they were NewAge?

Come on, somebody's going to all those psychics planted around America, right?

And somebody's buying those Homeopathic "medicines" in Whole Foods, making it a $12 billion industry.

And somebody's watching Oprah and making The Secret a world-wide bestseller - and yet, somehow, nobody's claiming to be NewAge.

Not even Oprah.

Now why is that?

Right here, we'll let Chris Locke AKA Rageboy explain it to you:

Stop me if you've heard this before. My inspiration, if you could call it that, was the painful death of an important relationship. She always protested that she was not New Age. You've heard that one before, for sure. "Who me? Oh, I'm not New Age!" We've all heard it. Only terminal cases ever admit to the proclivity. Maybe the last gasp of those people who recently died in James Arthur Ray's Sedona sweat lodge was "Oh fuck, I guess I am New Age!" But of course, we'll never know if, even then, the denial was finally overcome. When you get right down to it, nobody wants to be seen as New Age because nobody wants to be seen as irreparably stupid.

Now, here, we at TMR would like to point out a really super-duper important distinction:

That even though nobody wants to be SEEN as New Age, there are quite a few people who don't mind actually BEING NewAge.

What's important is to lie about it, to pull the wool over other's eyes, to deceive as many as possible, as much as possible, and as often as possible - so as to feel smarter than others and make cockamamy ideas, like your Aunt Bernice becoming a "Reiki Master", or that woman in Human Resources who moonlights as a "Psychic Priestess", seem as everyday normal as you are.

But they're not as everyday normal as you are. Because you're normal.

And there's nothing normal about NewAge.

Farrah Fawcett: Another Kind Of Pin-Up Now

"Dr. Jacob is into some serious woo,..."

-- Orac, commenting on one of Farrah Fawcett's NewAge German "doctors", who has been "treating" her anal cancer using "vitamin preparations that she says boost the immune system" (Yea: she says,...) since Farrah - using the wisdom she's always been known for - was apparently intent on blowing what's left of her time and money on taking the Steve McQueen route outta here, which is deserving of Respectful Insolence.

Homeopath = Liar

"To be a homeopathist, you have to be a dualist, a vitalist, and know about enough chemistry to make you dangerous. You also have to have approximately zero idea of how the scientific method actually works,...it doesn't hurt if you're a bit of a hippy-dippy syncrete, either.

You also have to be the type I refer to as a "fixer," which is generally someone who's suffused with the desire to help people (at all costs) and not enough brains, skills, or basic competence to do it very well. These types tend to become social workers, counsellors, and/or things like homeopathists, aromatherapists, or other woo-meisters. Key to pulling this one off is to be convincing (mostly because you believe it yourself) and have a pleasant demeanour (at least at first)."

- Interrobang's comment about homeopaths on Orac's Respectful Insolence blog.

"I know what you are trying to say here but for me it seems to let the practitioners of the hook to much. Many very probably do sincerely believe that what they doing is backed by evidence, and that they do indeed want to help others. The only problem is that they have no basis for holding that view. The only way they could have arrived at such a view is by a willful disregarding of how science, and medicine, works, and as such honesty is not something they can make much claim to. It is much like the situation with creationists. Creationism is not an honest position, and no one (with the exception I think of the mentally ill or mentally retarded) can hold a creationist position and make claim to be honest. There is a duty on people taking a position to understand the position they are taking. In the case of both homeopaths, and creationists, they cannot do so without ignoring masses of evidence."

- Matt Penfold's comment on the same subject.

"Homeopaths not outright liars? If not outright, they are liars nonetheless - outright deceivers in any case.

They defend themselves with the usual "pseudo-scientist" argument: If you can't prove something is impossible, then it's theoretically possible, and therefor if we posit that it's true, you can't say by your own logic that we're wrong.

That's all many who want to believe something need to give themselves permission to believe it. So the problem or question to tackle first would seem to be, why do their adherents want to believe the barely believable and how much do they want it?

And the countermeasures should involve less of a discussion of the logic of homeopathic suppositions than of the deceit involved in whatever efforts were applied that caused adherents to hope for an ultimately ridiculous prospect to begin with.

It is our nature to expect to be deceived, but we want to feel complicit in the deception - it must be of the type that reinforces our expectations. We didn't agree in advance to deception that only bolsters the deceiver's expectations."

- Royniles, adding one more comment.

Religion? Spirituality? Quackery? Cultism? New Age? Nonsense? Confusion? Insanity? Pseudo-Science? The Occult? Woo? Take Your Pick!!!

"If there's one thing I've learned about woo in the more than a year and a half that I've been doing this,...it's that there's definitely a religious element to virtually all woo. In essence, it requires believing in something that cannot be demonstrated scientifically, often despite science outright refuting it. For example, there have been several "victims" (I mean subjects) for this,...feature that have been explicitly fundamentalist Christian in nature,...Of course, if you're a New Age-type woo, you wouldn't call it "religious," at least not in the same way that Christians, Jews, Muslims, or other mainstream religions are religious. Instead, they'd call it "spiritual," which is how we end up with concepts like the "global orgasm," "sacred science," and "spiritual sound healing." Heck, the ultimate in woo, namely homeopathy, can best be described as a quasireligious belief system, in which water has remarkable power to "remember" the essence of whatever it has been "succussed" with in what can only be described as a magical or religious ritual that homeopaths do to "potentize" their remedies."

- The great Orac, showing he's learning, on his Respectful Insolence blog