The Celebrity World's Fine (Things Are Going To Hell Because I'M Fucked-Up)

According to the National Library of Medicine, Anti-vaccination and pro-CAM attitudes both reflect magical beliefs about health, but, still, no one thinks of NewAge as a negative - though it encompasses all of them and more!

 

NewAge Naziism 101: Making An Industry, Or Ideology, From What Hurts Others

“Years ago it occurred to me that hope is a negative emotion....Hope can easily involve a kind of magical thinking,...This has become part of a number of New Age “philosophies” involving visualization and “the power of attraction.” I even heard one young woman say she didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant because the mere fact of not wanting to get pregnant would stop conception from happening. All I can say to her is “good luck with that.””

America Is The Only Nation Filled With People Who Self-Selected To Be Suckers

Studies Show The Most "Free Spirited" Are The Easiest To Make Swallow Bullshit

“Yoga continues to cast its spell on both practitioners and those toying with falling in line,...”

The only way cultism makes sense to me is when I remember the Dead Kennedys made California Uber Alles and The Butthole Surfers liked "the girls, and the money, and the shame of life".

Put them together and that's when I go, "Huh - Yoga."

"My Concern Is With The Ultimate Fate Of Knowing."

The best dissection of the moon landing "hoax" ever created,…

The Unpersuadables Is A Cock-Up NewAge Investigation

These are three pictures of the author.

Having had a bit of experience with the NewAge offshoots, pro and con, that are covered in Will Storr's new book, The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, I grew rather frustrated reading it's reviews. That's because Storr seems to have reached the conclusion that, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em - just don't believe what they say - and that, my fellow bugaboos, will not do. Why not? Since I don't want to recount my own tale again, I'll let Mark Henderson of The Observer explain:

 It is the very quality of these chapters,...that makes Storr's book disappointing and infuriating. For having shown he can achieve the kind of sceptical distance that makes Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux such effective chroniclers of weirdness, he casts it aside in an indulgence of wishful thinking. It is not enough for Storr to consider why people believe weird things; he also wants to challenge whether these things really are weird. He seems to accept, deep down, that they are, but he doesn't want to admit this. He is like the child who still wants to believe in Father Christmas, but who is just old enough to know better. Life would be more magical, more fun, if the story were true.

So it is that homeopaths are given a more sympathetic hearing than sceptics, with no discussion of the harm that unscientific medicine can do: Storr's storytelling does not extend to children like Neon Roberts, denied timely radiotherapy for his brain tumour as his mother sought an "alternative"... 

Someone Storr didn't interview.

That's it, right there, and anyone knowledgeable knows it - people die behind indulging these beliefs. Usually other people - not the "happy" ones Storr was searching out. They've already "moved on" to the next sucker. This is something Storr never considers (nor do most others) as he assumes his position as NewAge's latest entry in the cheerleading line-up. 

A mind so open his brains fell out.

Storr wrote the book he wanted, no doubt, but, if you ask me, from the very beginning, he was asking the wrong questions to all the wrong people, and, thus, getting all the wrong answers. 

Accept them as they are.

And, if that's the case, how could anyone expect otherwise?

For A White Culture (It's Just Amazing How Dark It Gets)

The psychologist Melvin Lerner developed just world theory in the 1960s, arguing that we’re motivated to believe that the world is a fair place. The alternative—a universe where bad things happen to good people—is too upsetting.

So we engage defense mechanisms such as blaming the victim—“She shouldn’t have dressed that way”—or trusting that positive and negative events will be balanced out by karma, a form of magical thinking.

Kraus and Keltner found that the higher people perceived their social class to be, the more strongly they endorsed just-world beliefs, and that this difference explained their increased social class essentialism: Apparently if you feel that you’re doing well, you want to believe success comes to those who deserve it, and therefore those of lower status must not deserve it. (Incidentally, the argument that you “deserve” anything because of your genes is philosophically contentious; none of us did anything to earn our genes.)

Higher-class Americans may well believe life is fair because they’re motivated to defend their egos and lifestyle, but there’s an additional twist to their greater belief in a just world. Numerous researchers have found that upper-class people are more likely to explain other people’s behavior by appealing to internal traits and abilities, whereas lower-class individuals note circumstances and environmental forces. This matches reality in many ways for these respective groups. The rich do generally have the freedom to pursue their desires and strengths, while for the poor, external limitations often outnumber their opportunities. The poor realize they could have the best genes in the world and still end up working at McDonald’s. The wealthy might not merely be turning a blind eye to such realities; due to their personal experience, they might actually have a blind spot.

Spearited Away (In Leaps And Bounds)

Dark alleys leading down dark alleys. Turn back now:

"A person who shits on the kitchen floor because it gives them erotic pleasure and a person who shits on the kitchen floor to ward off the demons living in the cupboard are both shunted into the diagnostic category of encopresis. It’s not just that their thought-process don’t matter, it’s as if they don’t exist. The human being is a web of flesh spun over a void."

Saying it's wrong doesn't condescend or deny our humanity. 

So (again and still) fuck "you can believe what you want to believe"...

Khmer Rouge: Poking Out Eyes Of Those Who Can See

When conservatives started acting like liberals - best exemplified by electing the NewAge Romney - I knew I'd lost who I was conversing with, too,...to NewAge. Listen to the language of advice, spoken now (red emphasis mine) all of it right out of the TMR Playbook:

The Tea Party started this war on Obamacare with no chance of success and no idea how to end it — similarly intoxicated by a self-image of heroic “resistance.” And just like Nasrallah, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas engaged in magical thinking, declaring that the House vote to defund Obamacare — although rejected by the Senate — was “a remarkable victory.” But most of his Republican colleagues aren’t buying it. They see only ruin.

***

But the tea party has a lot to learn, and quickly. “It’s not enough to feel, you need strategy. They need better leadership, not people interested in money, power and fame. Public service requires sacrifice. I see too many self-seekers there…

Most important? “I don’t like saying this but be less gullible. Many of your instincts are right but politics is drowning in money. A lot of it is spent trying to manipulate you, by people who claim to be sincere, who say they’re the only honest guy in the room. Don’t be the fool of radio stars who rev you up for a living. They’re doing it for ratings. Stop being taken in by senators who fund-raise off your anger. It’s good you’re indignant, but they use consultants to keep picking at the scab, not to move the ball forward, sorry to mix metaphors. And know your neighbors: Are they going to elect a woman who has to explain she isn’t a witch, or a guy who talks about ‘legitimate rape’? You’ll forgive politicians who are right in other areas, but your neighbors and the media will not. Get smart about this.

"Get smart," in this case, can only be an admonishment to watch a TV show detective. When it comes to real Americans, I have more confidence that traffic in India works better:

“From what I can tell, a law was passed, people didn’t like it, and they thought they could reverse it by shutting down the government,” said Elizabeth, a 33-year-old Romney voter. “But to me, it’s like, something already passed. Let’s work to fix it. Holding everybody hostage is not the way.”

The women compared politicians’ behavior to kindergarteners or toddlers. “The guy reading—Cat in the Hat? What was it? Green Eggs and Ham?” said Cass, a voluble 40-year-old restaurant worker who voted for Obama. “That summed up the government right there. You’re talking about Dr. Seuss? This is the first intelligent thing I’ve heard out of your mouth right there.”

A few were personally affected by the shutdown: One had a brother who was a furloughed federal worker; another had a friend with terminal breast cancer who couldn’t reach anyone at Social Security to plan for her family’s future without her. They used words like “powerless,” “frustration,” “disgust” and “anesthetized” to describe their feelings. “It’s a sinkhole,” Julia said. “You can keep throwing in dirt to fill it back up, but it’s never going to be level.”

Rather than throw up their hands at the mess, the women said they’d pay more attention to politics and try to get more involved to fix the problem. “We’ll be smarter next time. We won’t vote for somebody sitting next to a tractor just because we like tractors,” said Karyn, a 25-year-old who voted for neither major-party presidential candidate in 2012.

...Jaclyn, a 30-year-old Obama voter, corrected her. “We’re the ones who voted,” she said. “It’s our fault.”

 And no one could talk these new “powerless” folks out of doing it (don't call them anybody's "victims"). They were all so sure and positive, they'd bury anyone who disagreed - including their friends. 

 And don't tell them to look at what they've done to their allies - they'll bury you with them. That's how cultish thinking "works": 

It kills compassion for those you abuse - merely because you don't want to admit you were wrong - and can't face you wronged them.

 

No, there's been no place for me, amongst such people - and nowhere to run from their madness - for a long, long time,...

 

She Got The Whole World, In Her Hands, She Got The,...

I wish I had access to whatever drugs Ann Althouse took in her youth - they had to be mind-blowing:

  Maybe Boehner is the woman endlessly imploring her man to talk about their relationship, and Reid is the taciturn man who's waiting for her to give up and do what the junior partner in a marriage is supposed to do: what he says.

Alternatively, Boehner is the man who relentlessly pursues his ex-girlfriend asking only for a chance to talk to her, and the woman — Reid — curtly informs him that there's nothing to talk about.

We instinctively turn away.

Well, she does anyway, because - as I've often said - Miss I Shut Off Comments To Concentrate On My Writing doesn't care if what she says is wrong, as long as the woman "wins". 

Notice two things:

1) Reid has the Constitution on his side, and Ann's a law professor, but our little Guide To Life is portrayed as male oppression - doing "what he says." And only "the junior partner in a marriage" does that.

2) In Ann's feminist outlook, naturally, even if the woman isn't oppressed by the man, she's ending the relationship to get her way - again, our little Guide To Life plays no role in the law professor's reasoning. It's utterly irrelevant. She simply doesn't want to give in and it's been made very clear she doesn't have to - everyone and everything else be damned.

"Wonder why they call you 'Bitch'?"

In both scenarios, using magical thinking, there's no basis for wrong or right (the Constitution, Wedding vows, whatever) involved in the woman's decision making. She'll never be wrong. She'll never be right, either - she just destroys everything, to validate claiming she was wronged.

And that is because people have usually turned away. ("They came for the Communists,...") I know - shouldn't go there - but I'm very familiar with people who have utilized the situation and feelings Ann's describing. 

But, then, so are quite a few divorcees,...

I Wonder How Many People Told These Guys, Now That They're Aware Of Cultism, That THEY Should Be Quiet?

 I'm always a *little* proud when I see these kinds of videos, almost like I had a hand in them - which I did - by letting those in cults know, with my screams, that somebody understood what was happening to them. They certainly weren't making these before. And not like these. Look at their eyes. I love the look in their eyes.

But these videos are also always sad, because, like these folks, I've lost a lot. Most notably my marriage, but I'm not alone in that as you can see. Losing friends is just as weird, mostly because I had no clue how many were involved, how many "believe" in malarky. You lose them in mass. They're cultists.

The general attitude, online and off, was that NewAge is too big to beat, so (grin) "if you can't beat 'em,..." 

I needed to care about how I look - to the cultists. I needed to stop screaming and learn more about it. Didn't I want to get laid? I've heard it all. The point is my life would be diminished, by the cultists, if I didn't "get it" (Werner Erhard) and they have done their work well.

But I'm still here, screaming. And watching videos of defiant escapees. And being an asshole, while all the "nice" people commune together in the universal consciousness, or around daytime TV, with those who share the monied, magical, make believe hump-me hippie happy thoughts. So I'm not part of a world where medicine isn't medicine, professors don't act like professors, "nurses" use therapeutic touch, and politics is a suicide pact. I don't mind. Ever since October 25th, 2005 - the day I asked "Honey, are you in a cult?" - I haven't really been myself. I don't think I ever will be again. I am the cult's soul eater and losing my own self in the process was the only possible outcome. They were going to get me one way or another. That's life. And I've now been dead a long, long time.

And that's about all I have to say about it today,...

White Cultural Infrastructure: I Heard That Phrase On TV

Magical thinking. It all sounds like so much magical thinking:

Evil is banal yet alien to our everyday sensibilities; the up-close representation of atrocity encourages prurient voyeurism, though ignoring the gory details skates dangerously close to apathy; there are socio-cultural climates that promote evil behavior, but we should not lose sight of individual human agency; it is easy to recognize the evil actions perpetrated by another country but hard to see those perpetrated by one’s own.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Yep, somehow, nobody seems to ever see a thing,...

 

Sound And Fury Signifying Nothing (We've Seen Before)

 

Yes, Obama came off like an idiot talking about Detroit, but while Motor City's politics and infrastructure suck, I want to remind you that it was also the home of Motown, and it's birthed cultural bright spots ever since. Detroit's decay inspired it's artist's to respond and they did, with dreams of themselves as George Jetson, and that holographic flower has been rising secretly from the broken concrete ever since.

 

Recreating, refining (and eventually replacing) the now-silenced jack hammer sounds of those good paying industrial auto factory jobs their parents had, but with a very early ear past old folks' Rock 'N" Roll to the real soundtrack Steve Jobs should've been influenced by, recording artists like Juan Atkins and Derrick May imagined how modems would "sing" long before they (or we) knew what a modem was. Both instantly took their rightful places alongside electronic musical visionaries like Warner Bros.' legendary cartoon composer, electronics innovator, and Motown's actual head of electronic music, Raymond Scott, German pioneers, Kraftwerk, Japanese giants, Yello Magic Orchestra, and the father of merging electro with Hip-Hop culture and Rap, Afrika Bambaataa.

I'm saying Detroit changed the world and, sonically, we'll never go back.

   

Detroit Techno is our past, present, and, now, our future. It's proven itself to be The Borg that will never stop. And if you ask me, as a statement about the people of America's most maligned city - one that's been effectively on it's back for the last 60 years - that accomplishment's nothing to sneeze at.

But for the president to also see what is essentially a mirage - however real it sounds - is nuts,...

Blasphemy Blasphemyou (L. Ron Hubbard In Your Head)

"Taking a set of tragic shocking circumstances, and maintaining that it was orchestrated for a more sinister purpose, is difficult for some to comprehend."

-- Christopher Thresher-Andrews

Knowing that, I guess you can say, when it comes to me "helping," Elvis has not only left the building but already returned from meeting Nixon - high as a fucking kite - and, with his new presidential drug enforcement badges, can surely be counted on to "crack the case" any day now.

Come along, Watson:

"We had the Pagans. 

They were into sex, death, and religion in a night-time telly type of way."

-- Eddie Izzard, Dressed To Kill, 1998

Americans know nothing about the Pagans.

Scientology's in the news right now - not only because it's being investigated (and in the specific manner I've been calling for because I've always known I couldn't do it alone) but because Scientology's been around for so long. Before many of us were born.

It follows that Scientology is now being investigated - and the revelations are startling - precisely because few ever understood what Scientology actually is or was to begin with. Queer, isn't it? How there could be this group you're all familiar with, yet know little about, until now?

If anybody's still asking "What's The Harm?" Baby done a bad, bad ting.

But at least we now know what they're working with:

"Scientology is partly a new-age self-help mantra and get-rich-quick scheme,…."

We know nothing about the Pagans but everybody understands get-rich-quick schemes, right? 

Good - forget about 'em for a moment - let's expand our horizons:

When did Self-Help - Ben Franklin's reliable admonitions - get dragged into this Pagan cesspool?

"It was in the seventies that we began to shed that baggage, starting with the outer layer of self-help: common sense. Children of the postwar middle class were weaned on the mass paperbacks of Dr. Spock, and their parents learned how to win friends and think positively from Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale. But in the late sixties, that gray-flannel-suit howtoism gave way to the reemergence of an older, more mystical strain, part bootstrapping and part magical thinking. The New Age,…."

Whoa, Nellie, so let's back-up a minute. There was nothing in that previous description of Scientology indicating it had any actual science in it, either. It had some Self-Help, but not "an older, more mystical strain, part bootstrapping and part magical thinking." There's a lot of Self-Help today, not all by Scientologists, but it still sounds like they're currently working from the same playbook:

"I blame Deepak Chopra. Although I highly doubt he was the first promoter of alternative medicine and various New Age thought to use and abuse the term 'quantum' as a seemingly scientific justification of what in reality is nothing more than ancient mystical thinking gussied up with a quantum overcoat to hide its lack of science, Chopra has arguably done the most to popularize the term among the science-challenged set. In Chopra’s world, the word 'quantum' functions like a magical talisman that explains ™everything because in the quantum world anything can happen. Actually, I should clarify. While it’s true that many bizarre and wondrous things can be explained through quantum theory (such as quantum entanglement), it is not, as Chopra and his many imitators would have you believe, a 'get out of jail free' card for any magical thinking you can imagine, and quantum effects do not work the way people like Chopra (say, Lionel Milgrom, who seems to think that homeopathy works through quantum entanglement between practitioner, remedy, and patient) would like you to think."

See? It's all right there. And Deepak ain't no Scientologist - he peddles woo - so we've got to be talking about more than mere Self-Help. Something that can embrace U.F.O.s, crop circles.

Hey - I've got an idea:

Maybe Self-Help is now a subset of NewAge.

Everybody keeps putting NewAge before mentioning other stuff. 

They're all "new-age self-help mantra" and "New Age thought". 

Could be important. 

I'm leaving out the "spiritual" aspect for now, and I want to reference the three quotes I used above.

Each is by a writer who individually used the term "New Age" as he or she saw fit. That's all I chose them for. (Notice that NewAge is never defined, always assumed. A cult on-a-roll can really make that work to their advantage,…). Based just on the listed interests these fine folks associated with the term, NewAge would appear to encompass self-help, mantras, (some forms of) get-rich-quick schemes, a lack of common sense yet positive thinking, mysticism, magical thinking, quackery, "quantum", alternative medicine, a lack of science, and homeopathy.

So, based on what we know of them all, I'd say there's absolutely nothing to stop the "teachings" of Scientology or Deepak being included on that list, would you?

If you think about it, in this "open-minded" society of ours, all that sure is covering a lot of territory! 

Why, some part of NewAge could be practically everywhere you look!

Actually - when you really do think about it - it's not all that much. But all of them, literally, are frauds. Many of them, in essence and/or execution, are crimes. People do die from them. And yes, many of them are children. All "tragic shocking circumstances", yet hardly anybody mentions The NewAge Movement as a possible source of society's problems or even a serious adversary.

Why not?

“I was ashamed of my own stupidity.”

-- Academy Award-winning Director Paul Haggis

Looking back on it - this also sounds stupid - but I thought it was just my wife. I was married to that woman for 20 years and never considered she was in a cult, much less several. Flash-Forward, to one of the last days I spoke with her, and I found she was speaking in plural:

"We're in the hospitals - we're getting legit - you'd better 'get it' before it's too late!"

Whoa. Wondering what, if not legit, "we're" supposed to be "in the hospitals" - while apocalyptically threatening outsiders the whole time - is how I discovered the beliefs of The NewAge Movement.

Known today mostly as the "spiritual but not religious" (having abandoned the NewAge brand after the embarrassment of 1988's spiritually disastrous "Harmonic Convergence") it is my contention, whether we're talking about Scientology or the wider cult(ure), as these individually stated parameters of NewAge are expanding, what we're really looking at are their works, aided by an even greater level of ignorance than what's been shielding Scientology "in an interesting night-time telly type of way."

This is Paganism 2013:

"Federal regulators on Wednesday released their final ruling against POM Wonderful LLC, makers of a popular pomegranate juice, saying ads for the juice such as one headlined 'Cheat death' made misleading claims about the drink's health benefits."

It's (almost) all right there - self-help, mantras, (some forms of) get-rich-quick schemes, a lack of common sense yet positive thinking, mysticism, magical thinking, quackery, alternative medicine, and all with a lack of science - as the saying goes, "Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff." Making sure to spend part of your day at Whole Foods:

"You have to be a good citizen of the planet. You have to give back."

-- Lynda Resnick, owner of POM "Cheat death" Wonderful LLC

Which doesn't sound so bad until you get there. 

And then, once you understand what's going on, it's always too late:

"Lynda had read about the fruit's reputation as a mystical cure-all and began to explore its market potential,…"

Honestly, if she had been looking at Mitt Romney for the last Republican presidential exploratory committee, wouldn't that sentence read the exact same way?

She was screwing the public the same way he was.

They're both NewAge, remember - you can't forget:

Put NewAge in front of whatever cosmic occurrence is being described.

Whatever cosmic occurrence is occurring:

It makes everything bigger than anyone's ever had a right to believe,...