Not Positive Thinking Or Self-Help But NewAge

Introduction - A little while back, just before the New Year, I had started a series to be called "A Decade From Hell: I Am The Winner" that was going to detail all the correct calls I'd made over the last few years. Unfortunately, I got stuck after Part I because Part II was going to be on today's subject and, as I started on it, I immediately realized there was just no way to cover it all in a single post or two. So, with apologies for not continuing the "Decade From Hell' series, I now invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole that, if you don't know it's there, is capable of swallowing (if not destroying) almost any logical endeavor:

At some point, all the learned writers mention it - every one of them - but, in the end, they also tend to miss it by a country mile:

Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out called "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America".

Steve Salerno wrote one about "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless".

And, at right about the same time as Salerno, Francis Wheen released his entertaining tome on "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World".

Wendy Kaminer went so far as to say we're now "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials".

So what are they so haphazardly adressing? Positive Thinking, The Self-Help Movement, Mumbo-Jumbo, and Extra-Terrestrials - they don't really have anything in common, do they? Of course they do:

They're all part of The NewAge Movement.

I'm not surprised so many miss the whole enchilada. Trying to describe a sprawling, assaultive, spiritual culture - especially a corrosive one that doesn't necessarily want to be noticed - is like trying to capture a cigarette's plume with your hands. Even those of us who understand it can't even seem to settle on a terminology.

The Mystic Bourgeoisie's Chris Locke signals it's many permutations by calling it "New Age++". Connie Schmidt, of Whirled Musings, focuses on it's scams with the phrase "New Wage", while I tend to lean towards James Randi's "NewAge" because I think he said it best ("Rhymes with 'sewage'").

But, long before NewAge "Undermined America" or "Made America Helpless" - or even "Conquered the World" - writers who noticed just wrote about the coming New Age. Christians were so concerned about what they were seeing happening in our culture, as far back as 1983, they aired a cautionary documentary on WCFC TV in Chicago called "The New Age - A Pathway to Paradise?" Needless to say, they didn't answer in the affirmative.

But Chicago, the most recent home to what some have referred to as our first "New Age President", Barack Obama, is as good a place as any to start breaking down what all these disparate individuals (encompassing liberals and conservatives, as well as Christians and atheists) are so concerned about. Why? Because, as we all know, it's also the current headquarters of Obama's biggest supporter - the "NewAge goddess", Oprah Winfrey.

Ah, Oprah - the #1 talk show host in the world and the woman many call "a moral force bearing down" on America - what's not to like about Oprah? Like The NewAge Movement itself, she's seen as a positive influence, out to help others, right? Well, yea, that's how she's mostly seen - but is it true?

I say "mostly" because those who are paying attention have found that, underneath the conventional wisdom on Oprah's world-wide influence, something is just a little creepy and more-than-a-little bit off.

I guess people really started paying attention around the time the queen of daytime talk started hawking The Secret. According to Salon.com:

"The main idea of 'The Secret' is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes 'The Secret' more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed 'The Secret'; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame."

Did you catch that? Oprah, ostensibly the subject of the piece, is not just in with quacks, but specifically "New Age quacks". Like I said, all the learned writers mention NewAge - every one of them - but, in the end, they also tend to miss it, just as Oprah's followers (a word associated with cultism) tend not to see (or willingly ignore) that their all-seeing hero is repeatedly being mentioned in the same breath as a "pyramid scheme", a "con", and "venality" - or later (my favorite) just "baldfaced bullshitting". (Where are all the millionaires The Secret's advice was supposed to create? Why are we in one of the country's worst recessions right after it emerged? Wasn't this just a scan with Oprah getting people to waste their money? Never mind,...)

Oprah's fans also pooh-pooh charges she spreads "The Glamour of Misery" and, more to the point, any statement that says "Clearly, Oprah Winfrey has been converted into the New Age Movement." But, as this charade continues to play out, I'd like to make one point no one can ignore or deny:

We all know what they're talking about - people are aware there is *something* called "NewAge" stalking our culture - it's the "movement" part that's not so clear yet.

But, reading it's critics, NewAge sounds pretty cruel and gruesome, doesn't it? I mean, "pyramid schemes" and "misery"? Are we talking about Oprah's belief system here or Bernie Madoff's? Neither: we're talking about the Western World's - which, as all the writers mentioned above have stated, is pretty bad - and, starting with this post, I aim to prove to you they're not exaggerating. Not by a long shot. Listen to them again:

"Positive Thinking Has Undermined America". "The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless". "Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World".

Ladies and Gentlemen, NewAge - not politics or medicine or science - is why our world is failing. Those who have gravitated into it's sphere of influence (and many are politicians and doctors and scientists) are no longer capable of thinking clearly, and thus, they're putting all of our lives in danger for it.

I, for one, don't believe that - I know it. Soon, you will, too.

Stay tuned.

Shut Up, Kathleen

"The evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh."

-- Kathleen Parker, after voting for Barack Obama - and revealing herself as a NewAge conservative turncoat - on Nov. 19th 2008, in The Washington Post.

"When it comes to irresistible words, 'oogedy-boogedy' has few peers."

-- Kathleen Parker, revisiting her moment of shame - but still feeling pretty good with herself after a visit to The Daily Show - on Dec. 5th 2008, in The Washington Post.

"Deepak Chopra earns $20m a year selling spiritual guidance to the likes of Demi Moore, Hillary Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev - and he’s not the only self-help guru making a fortune. In the first of two extracts from his new book, Francis Wheen traces the rise and rise of mystic mumbo-jumbo:

'In September 1784 a Berlin magazine invited Immanuel Kant to answer the question: What is Enlightenment? "Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity," he replied. "Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolve and courage to use it without another’s guidance. Dare to know! That is the motto of Enlightenment."

The Enlightenment had many critics, but its illuminating influence and achievements were apparent in the history of the next two centuries - the waning of absolutism and superstition, the rise of secular democracy, the understanding of the natural world, the transformation of historical and scientific study, the new political resonance of notions such as 'progress', 'rights' and 'freedom'. Does that light still shine today? According to the philosopher Roger Scruton, 'Reason is now on the retreat, both as an ideal and as a reality.' The leaders of the counter-revolution may seem an incongruous coalition - post-modernists and primitivists, New Age and Old Testament - but they have been remarkably effective over the past quarter-century. Those who lack the courage to use their understanding 'without direction from another' are easy prey for self-styled gurus, and the sleep of reason has duly brought forth many such monsters, exploiting and expanding the demand for mumbo-jumbo."

-- Francis Ween, calling the Right and (more importantly) the Left's problem by it's proper name - all the way back in Jan. 27th 2004 - but never being invited anywhere except the blog (that apparently nobody else reads) called Religion News.

There's a portion of Francis Ween's "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions" on Google Book Search:

He's waaay more fun to read, and more accurately nails the problem, than silly-ass Kathleen Parker's oogedy-boogedy.