Who are you and did you have to sell your soul at the crossroads to get the information that you just so prolifically shared?!? 🤯 I am a meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner and I try to be vigilant about not spreading the gospel of the New Age. And it ain’t easy because I truck on the edge of those waters all of the time. But I joined a yoga cult by mistake for a weekend once, so I am aware of the damage that selling “personal sovereignty” can do. I have just never had the vocabulary to back this up until I read your writing.
There is literally no check and balance in the industry that I work in so I’ve taken it upon myself to delve into topics like “spiritualism” and the perversion of yoga, so that I can show up for my clients as straight as possible. Ok, maybe a little too straight as I shared with a class that I was guiding meditation for the other night, that if COVID doesn’t show us how we are all intrinsically interconnected then I don’t know what will. I sit here in the Hudson Valley watching friends and family receive a virus that travelled over hill and dale and continents and crevasses because we all breathe the SAME AIR.
I don’t even know how to thank you for this forum.
Was just a long long bit of thinking beginning in 2006 with that darn "secret". I feel you—I likewise truck on the edge of those waters because those waters, in many ways, are worth stewarding—and the cleaner we make them, the clearer reflections we can lend. I refuse to drain em. Its just going to be a constant slog of correction and cleanup. Its worthwhile work tho.
Is it really the affect of capitalism that caused this mutated denial of shadow or rather a focus on material gain at a cost of character or integrity? Universally humans have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit over climbing to a taller part of the tree for a perhaps a better piece of fruit. Combine that easy effort high reward approach with marketing strategies that play off of the brains chemistry and you have a sort of an evil scientist level of sorcery triggering mass impulse trends in energy exchange. Couldn’t we create a system where hard work and expertise still translated into individuals being rewarded for that effort? A system that also factored in the long term costs and deviated from quarterly global returns. Hasn’t socialism’s approach already been seen and it’s failures are already present?
Fundamentally currency is just a token for a measurable amount of energy. How do we inspire further innovation without an individual reward?
A great question - what is the non-extractive incentive model. So you highlight two things - A. that humans have always been lazy and self serving and B. that socialism has failed so far. Game theoretics would state that behavior A is a given and so set all games to maximize A behaviors. This leads to multipolar traps that create immense existential, end game risk. Super bad if we want to survive. Socialism ALSO presumes that A is a given and attempts to modulate/control it for the common good. What we need to try is NOT presuming that A is a given.
This is what "Game B" theory is all about - choosing not to buy in to the notion of A. Difficult stuff - highly ideologically dependent, and the transition would seem to require socialist measures to aid in the transition, get everyone in the mood. For instance - value redistribution (as opposed to wealth redistribution) is key (motherhood, for instance, is a tangible value - yet creates no wealth in and of itself), and yet to get to an economy that did materially value motherhood would requires a socialistic transitioning IMO. Short answer tho - value redistribution.
Perhaps opportunistic is better than lazy, in defining this as a survival tactic. Without reflection of the long term cost in the moment or upon observing the effect, the value of the opportunity will not be understood! Plastic water bottles are a good example of this. In regards to value redistribution, we would have to establish a universal definition of value for it to be redistributed in a effective way. I have a hard time grasping what is universal value outside of what is trending these days; fiat currency, NFTS, doge coin, low quality goods inside of fancy packaging, etc. So what do we all value universally that can be redistributed, and can we live without goods that are created by furthering the inequality of such universal value resources? Hope this makes sense.
I have a hard time imagining a redistribution of value in terms of its interplay with fiat/etc. as well. But it becomes less convoluted in the context of barter. Things not currently valued in fiat become valued in barter. I raise the kids, you raise the corn. The intra system hack is to just divert some of the corn money to the raising of kids (socialistic). But in a system that valued both equally or relatively, diverting funds might not be necessary.
Jan 18, 2022·edited Jan 18, 2022Liked by Alex Ebert
As a slightly rehabilitated Spiritual Materialist, I never really expected to see New Age practices and beliefs become mainstream when I became a vegetarian and Yoga teacher back in 1980. 'Nor when I ordained as a monk for 4 years in Thailand in the late '80's. But from Mindfulness to all the rest of the feel-good spiritual buffet that comprises the New Age, it's HERE.
The good news is that erudite scholars of culture and consciousness like Alex Ebert now exist to biopsy and diagnose the cultural absurdisms that characterize what is arguably an adolescent phase of mass psycho-spiritual development. A dose of humor, a dash of honesty, all marinated in a broth of unconditional self-acceptance, and voila! A cure! Soon, we'll be all grown up.
And fyi, I actually posted a reply a year ago to that Trump-as-Lightworker gal on Youtube. Thought it seemed familiar...
I managed to watch 10 minutes of 'light worker'. My mind and soul are hurting. Am I projecting my own inner awfulness on that thing or what? So how do I make this crush of rotten shadow into a good thing? Not asking for a friend.
Just for context, I'm a 67 year old latino business owner who left Argentina at age 20 and now lives in Egypt for the last 35 years. I also lived in the US in the 70's and 80"s. It is clear that you have researched the issues deeply and have formed a well educated opinion that I happen to share but I tend to agree with Song Kang-Ho in saying that you could be much more effective and reach a significantly larger audience if you conveyed the information in a simpler way so that anyone can relate to it rather the run for the dictionary. I commend you on your efforts and hope that more and more humans will come to understand that the cult of the self is not the way forward.
I hear you. But I also think there is an importance to using the full breadth of language—without it, language is too reduced, drained of capacity, devoid of nuance, to avoid being formed into one flag or another. I'm sort of against flags—so I prefer a tongue that escapes them.
I really wanted to hate this, the hyper complex verbal aesthetic you employ is incredibly hostile to the average joe
But I enjoyed it a lot. Mostly the quotes.
The verbiage is too dense to actually read word by word and try to parse for meaning, but when I squint my eyes and skim, I keep stumbling upon interesting tidbits.
Good work. BTW, saw you perform with the white stripes at the Greek theater 15+ years ago when I was about 12 years old and I knew you were a star then, way before the magnetic zeros thing ever happened. You almost upstaged Jack white!!!!
Now dumb this whole essay down and stop being hostile to people that don’t share your taste for masturbatorily complex verbal gymnastics! I know you can do it because I know you are a star and I’ve known it for more than a decade!!! Go Alex!!!!!
Good ideas here, some of the better ways of describing the state of current culture and its exaggerated sense of self. The meeting of minds between the New Age movement and QAnon reminds me of observations made during my college years about the underlying reactionary qualities of the New Age movement and various self-improvement seminars like est. Rather than "creating our reality" we should say that reality is the medium in which we attempt to define it. The confusion of ideas with the things they represent is an old problem with an ancient pedigree. Perhaps I am fortunate to have slogged through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason long enough to come across his argument, Existence is not a Predicate. Philosophy can indeed find answers good for separating signal from noise, as long as we are patient enough to do the search.
Nice one. Its interesting tho (and the subject of an upcoming piece) that the enlightenment (including Kant) was sort of this reaction to heliocentricity's displacement of humanity from the center of existence.... by moving the locus of fact from the exterior world to the interiority of the subjective mind, they re-centered the subject permanently... and in many ways codified the religion of self we still exist within today...
Yes, Kant was a major contributor to the migration of philosophy towards phenomenology. Einstein and the revolution in mathematics after 1900 unwittingly helped usher in our currently popular ways of thinking, ironic in a way, since Einstein's theory, once shown to be consistent with observation, contradicted Kant's assertions about the absoluteness of time and space. Nietzsche is also a good barometer for the breakdown in Enlightenment thought and a significant contributor to the current religion of self as you have described it.
Absolutely. And it's an arresting stretch between quantum and classical—one that undeniably corroborates some phenomenological thinking upon a cursory read of it. Entanglement in particular, in its seeming erasure of cause and effect, lends itself to the un-systemic view point of new age manifestation. BUT... from my view the new age reading of quantum is all wrong. It is less an erasure of cause and effect and more a condensation of cause and effect—hence the term entanglement—and more a confirmation of the interpenetration of all things rather than a confirmation of the isolated "personal reality" meme thrown about to inflate self worth.
I really do see this as the beginning because once you trade New Ageism for an acceptance that we might owe each other something the ball is hard to stop from rolling! I think people are feeling sort of shorted by recurring personal run ins with a reality ever so marked by the Religion of Self's themes of not owing each other anything. I think this sense of having been shorted is present in dating/partnership norms, linguistic patterns, workplaces, and some other really interesting really cornerstone venues of daily life in the 2020s.
Just want to say this is very validating as someone who has been talking a lot about interdependence/connectivity lately and not feeling very met. (Woe is me tone not intended, I just definitely feel that even if people have encountered the idea they are slow to promote its visibility)
I know that I have yet to figure out clearly suitable answers but I think the neuropsychological humility approach is a good one to take in the dire push to effectively communicate interconnectivity-based ideas.
Alex, thank you for this excellent essay. I find it important to question an offhand aside, because I think it has big cultural implications. I’m curious why you frame identity politics as another problematic symptom of our disembodiment. I feel strongly the opposite. Identity politics, with roots in 70s feminism and social justice activism, is very much about bodies asking for necessary rights and protections in a collective reality. These bodies, due to their identities, are given less of a chance to experience autonomy, sovereignty, etc. Their bodily existence is negatively impacted by power. IDPOL works to bring those experiences to light and change them. I find that the continued lambasting of IDPOL as “the problem” often comes from the same reality-denying New Age thought that you deconstruct so well here. And the result is a dominant culture hostile to hearing the experiences of non-dominant bodies as truth, to taking them seriously, to doing something about it. As Ijeoma Oluo put it, “We don’t magically get to a system that addresses issues facing minority groups by ignoring issues affecting minority groups.”
Thanks for your response. IDPOL is not a symptom of the disembodied age, but rather the disembodied age is proliferating IDPOL beyond any tethering to embodiment. IDPOL of the embodied age is very legitimate. IDPOL of the disembodied age is increasingly abstractive, and so will be increasingly decoupled from embodied experience, leveraged instead as a pure tool of power, social status, and meaning.
Thank you Alex. I appreciate your communication. I don’t know exactly what increased disembodiment will look like in the future. From where I stand here and now, IDPOL is indeed a tool of building power, social status and meaning, necessary in a system that grants power and exploits attention, bodies and lives along lines of identity. What happens online increasingly has real impact on our material conditions, our emotions, and the decisions made by those in power. I remain unclear as to exactly what form of IDPOL are shattering to collective sense making. The kind of IDPOL that I see most often under scrutiny from people like Bill Maher or Sam Harris seems to include any message or movement that names a problem held by a non-white-cis-male identity. I believe these messages and movements are needed for fundamental integration. They move us towards a collective understanding of how the history of dominance and exploitation has shaped our current reality. What I find shattering to sense-making is when identity politics are dismissed in order to placate those with powerful identities, whether in fear of a backlash or in service to the current social and economic order.
The more any tribe relies on abstractions to reify their membership, the more of a challenge to inter-tribal sensemaking. Someone who believes they create their own reality, for instance, and is not subject to viruses because they have created a sovereign immune system, will not have much incentive to negotiate reality with others. But all of this has to be viewed through the lens of capitalist power. You rightly mention the economic order. Cocal cola is the perfect example of the truer and far more concerning placation taking place. IDPOL woke loves Coke due to IDPOL-friendly ads - yet Coke is one of the most nefarious actors on the planet. This problem cannot be overstated. By the disembodied IDPOL plays right into the hands of corporate power. Take race. IDPOL gives those with non-"white" phenotypes cover for practicing the same extractive behaviors that "whiteness" represents themselves. By identifying extractive behaviors as the domain of an essence called whiteness, those with other phenotypes get to bypass their own extractive participation in the same behaviors. This is happening everywhere. This is the problem with demonization. It inevitably, eventually, becomes a projection.
Interesting! Thanks for getting more specific with me here. What you describe as IDPOL being leveraged by corporations and governments, I call Representation Optics. As you suggest, it’s not about redistributing wealth or respecting life rights but about performing equity where none actually exists. Capitalism was initiated by a small elite of white people with the power of violence to enclose lands. The philosophical construct of white supremacy came later, as a reasoning for the explosive violence of colonization. And this process has embedded deep structural roots in a society where people with the white phenotype and the male gender are dominant in possessing wealth, power and freedom to do what they want. Is acknowledging that by default a demonization? Or simply perceived as such? My concern is the abundance of people in this society, particularly white folks raised in lineages of prosperity gospel, calvinism and now new age-ism, who are unwilling to confront the interdependent sources of their own power and freedoms. I’m not sure that interdependence can be made visible if we erase the chain of ancestry that brought us here. Surely it will take a lot more work to untether our minds from capitalist logic of extraction, dominance and profit, than to simply carry out the neoliberal salve of Representation Optics. And yet, just because corporations and governments will perform equity and some people will be fooled to call it progress, or because non-whites will accrue and abuse power under capitalism and some will again be fooled to call it progress, isn’t a strong enough reason for me to stop advocating for true rights and redistribution for those identities that need it most.
Right - no, the simple act of acknowledgment of wrong doing is not demonization or bypassing. Its when it becomes a criticism of wrong being. As soon as someone can be accused of wrong being, there is a level of abstraction that is boundlessly abusable. They become intrinsically wrong, essentially and spiritually wrong. when that happens, the bypass begins.
Cool. I suppose it becomes quite difficult for people to discern the nuance, since any flash of “wrong” sends up alert signals. To state more plainly, I don’t agree that corporate optics are the more concerning placation at play here. We know that many northern industrialists who funded and backed the civil war were motivated by profit, not human rights. In retrospect we wouldn’t say that abolitionists should have renounced abolition in cynicism. As long as we have capitalism there will always be opportunism surrounding cultural and political change. The cynicism around identity politics, critical race theory and wokeness is too often a permission slip to dismiss others' experiences, and ignore the need to cede and share power. I think we would move forward faster without that cynicism.
Hey Alex, this essay took my mind to a few different places. To paraphrase, if collectively verified opinions create these extreme aversions to what one might call common sense making, then where can we put the blame? Speaking not from a moral standpoint but simply cause and effect. It seems as though any time we push too hard towards collectivism, an errant individualist "gene" kicks back in contempt. Also, do you think the collective and interconnected reality are primary building blocks of our society? Or is the subjective reality the building block, and through the delicate care of subjectivity, we create a harmonious collective. I don't know where we should be looking for harmony to strike first, but if I look at my own life, and the hundreds of people I have paid close attention to, it seems as though that level of understanding can only come from an individual first, and then works its way out to the broader world. Just wondering to myself, what do we do?
Great question. Yes, interrelativity is how the process of emergence and evolution occur. Interrelativity is how the organs in our bodies operate. Interrelativity is how ecosystems work. Its all interrelativity. Including society. So my thoughts are that subjectivity is so entirely dependent on intersubjectivity that "I am" already presumes a differentiation between everything else and "I" - meaning there must be an "everything else" in order for the "I" to exist. From this place, sense cannot be made in a vacuum of self because there is no vacuum of self. However, "making sense" is not necessarily the aim of life. I dont state this in the essay, but more important to the subjective AND intersubjective experience is "transcendence", IMO. In terms of the question of achieving collective harmony, then, it would seem that removing the denial of interdependence is, at the very least, ONE of the first steps. (One I am trying to expedite). The very first step might be something that clues us in to this interdependence. Psilocybin, entheogenic whatnot etc, may be more important to both collective awareness and sensemaking, in that sense, than all the podcasts and essays in the world.
I am deeply appreciative of this work, and very much in agreement. If you look at the history of "new thought" or "new age" much of it can be traced to theosophy, H. Blavaatskre, (and like (as you mention) gnosticism, freemasonry, sabbateanism before that) and then that leads into occultism, magic, and very, very dark stuff.
My question to you is about the alternative or the solution to the problem of new ageism. I understand that you emphasize *interdependence* rather than independence -- and ecology, harmony etc. Isn't the best realization of this tradition as it has always been? Tradition is eternal.
I think you are right in your diagnosis of the problem, to quote from your above article:
*"The full history of this religion of self can be perfectly tracked from early Gnosticism’s belief in mind over matter, to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”, to the Protestant reformation’s emphasis on an individualistic relationship to God, to the enlightenment’s empirical emphasis on subjectivity, to capitalism’s “mutual self-interest”,"*
The enemy of this way of thinking has always been the Church. So what is keeping you from tradition?
wow , this sums up so much that ive been sitting and hurting in a real deep way with since 2020 began. thank you so much for sharing this! the new age community really helped me out in a big way at the start of my journey (wow hey i can take less shrooms and make cool overtone sounds with people and meditate and get just as high as the bigger dose, this is the jam! thought 2012 I)
but the nastiness ive seen since then has been like gravel in my gut
Who are you and did you have to sell your soul at the crossroads to get the information that you just so prolifically shared?!? 🤯 I am a meditation teacher and Reiki practitioner and I try to be vigilant about not spreading the gospel of the New Age. And it ain’t easy because I truck on the edge of those waters all of the time. But I joined a yoga cult by mistake for a weekend once, so I am aware of the damage that selling “personal sovereignty” can do. I have just never had the vocabulary to back this up until I read your writing.
There is literally no check and balance in the industry that I work in so I’ve taken it upon myself to delve into topics like “spiritualism” and the perversion of yoga, so that I can show up for my clients as straight as possible. Ok, maybe a little too straight as I shared with a class that I was guiding meditation for the other night, that if COVID doesn’t show us how we are all intrinsically interconnected then I don’t know what will. I sit here in the Hudson Valley watching friends and family receive a virus that travelled over hill and dale and continents and crevasses because we all breathe the SAME AIR.
I don’t even know how to thank you for this forum.
Was just a long long bit of thinking beginning in 2006 with that darn "secret". I feel you—I likewise truck on the edge of those waters because those waters, in many ways, are worth stewarding—and the cleaner we make them, the clearer reflections we can lend. I refuse to drain em. Its just going to be a constant slog of correction and cleanup. Its worthwhile work tho.
Let’s keep swimming the good swim.
Excellent essay, great work.
Is it really the affect of capitalism that caused this mutated denial of shadow or rather a focus on material gain at a cost of character or integrity? Universally humans have always gone for the lowest hanging fruit over climbing to a taller part of the tree for a perhaps a better piece of fruit. Combine that easy effort high reward approach with marketing strategies that play off of the brains chemistry and you have a sort of an evil scientist level of sorcery triggering mass impulse trends in energy exchange. Couldn’t we create a system where hard work and expertise still translated into individuals being rewarded for that effort? A system that also factored in the long term costs and deviated from quarterly global returns. Hasn’t socialism’s approach already been seen and it’s failures are already present?
Fundamentally currency is just a token for a measurable amount of energy. How do we inspire further innovation without an individual reward?
A great question - what is the non-extractive incentive model. So you highlight two things - A. that humans have always been lazy and self serving and B. that socialism has failed so far. Game theoretics would state that behavior A is a given and so set all games to maximize A behaviors. This leads to multipolar traps that create immense existential, end game risk. Super bad if we want to survive. Socialism ALSO presumes that A is a given and attempts to modulate/control it for the common good. What we need to try is NOT presuming that A is a given.
This is what "Game B" theory is all about - choosing not to buy in to the notion of A. Difficult stuff - highly ideologically dependent, and the transition would seem to require socialist measures to aid in the transition, get everyone in the mood. For instance - value redistribution (as opposed to wealth redistribution) is key (motherhood, for instance, is a tangible value - yet creates no wealth in and of itself), and yet to get to an economy that did materially value motherhood would requires a socialistic transitioning IMO. Short answer tho - value redistribution.
Perhaps opportunistic is better than lazy, in defining this as a survival tactic. Without reflection of the long term cost in the moment or upon observing the effect, the value of the opportunity will not be understood! Plastic water bottles are a good example of this. In regards to value redistribution, we would have to establish a universal definition of value for it to be redistributed in a effective way. I have a hard time grasping what is universal value outside of what is trending these days; fiat currency, NFTS, doge coin, low quality goods inside of fancy packaging, etc. So what do we all value universally that can be redistributed, and can we live without goods that are created by furthering the inequality of such universal value resources? Hope this makes sense.
I have a hard time imagining a redistribution of value in terms of its interplay with fiat/etc. as well. But it becomes less convoluted in the context of barter. Things not currently valued in fiat become valued in barter. I raise the kids, you raise the corn. The intra system hack is to just divert some of the corn money to the raising of kids (socialistic). But in a system that valued both equally or relatively, diverting funds might not be necessary.
As a slightly rehabilitated Spiritual Materialist, I never really expected to see New Age practices and beliefs become mainstream when I became a vegetarian and Yoga teacher back in 1980. 'Nor when I ordained as a monk for 4 years in Thailand in the late '80's. But from Mindfulness to all the rest of the feel-good spiritual buffet that comprises the New Age, it's HERE.
The good news is that erudite scholars of culture and consciousness like Alex Ebert now exist to biopsy and diagnose the cultural absurdisms that characterize what is arguably an adolescent phase of mass psycho-spiritual development. A dose of humor, a dash of honesty, all marinated in a broth of unconditional self-acceptance, and voila! A cure! Soon, we'll be all grown up.
And fyi, I actually posted a reply a year ago to that Trump-as-Lightworker gal on Youtube. Thought it seemed familiar...
Nice - you and I both posted a comment to that youtube a year ago then (or whenever that was). Thanks for sharing some of your story. Appreciate it.
I managed to watch 10 minutes of 'light worker'. My mind and soul are hurting. Am I projecting my own inner awfulness on that thing or what? So how do I make this crush of rotten shadow into a good thing? Not asking for a friend.
lol ya that crush of rotten shadow doesn't ferment well.
Just for context, I'm a 67 year old latino business owner who left Argentina at age 20 and now lives in Egypt for the last 35 years. I also lived in the US in the 70's and 80"s. It is clear that you have researched the issues deeply and have formed a well educated opinion that I happen to share but I tend to agree with Song Kang-Ho in saying that you could be much more effective and reach a significantly larger audience if you conveyed the information in a simpler way so that anyone can relate to it rather the run for the dictionary. I commend you on your efforts and hope that more and more humans will come to understand that the cult of the self is not the way forward.
I hear you. But I also think there is an importance to using the full breadth of language—without it, language is too reduced, drained of capacity, devoid of nuance, to avoid being formed into one flag or another. I'm sort of against flags—so I prefer a tongue that escapes them.
I really wanted to hate this, the hyper complex verbal aesthetic you employ is incredibly hostile to the average joe
But I enjoyed it a lot. Mostly the quotes.
The verbiage is too dense to actually read word by word and try to parse for meaning, but when I squint my eyes and skim, I keep stumbling upon interesting tidbits.
Good work. BTW, saw you perform with the white stripes at the Greek theater 15+ years ago when I was about 12 years old and I knew you were a star then, way before the magnetic zeros thing ever happened. You almost upstaged Jack white!!!!
Now dumb this whole essay down and stop being hostile to people that don’t share your taste for masturbatorily complex verbal gymnastics! I know you can do it because I know you are a star and I’ve known it for more than a decade!!! Go Alex!!!!!
I remember that show! As for the hostility... I think I have some softballs coming your way.
Good ideas here, some of the better ways of describing the state of current culture and its exaggerated sense of self. The meeting of minds between the New Age movement and QAnon reminds me of observations made during my college years about the underlying reactionary qualities of the New Age movement and various self-improvement seminars like est. Rather than "creating our reality" we should say that reality is the medium in which we attempt to define it. The confusion of ideas with the things they represent is an old problem with an ancient pedigree. Perhaps I am fortunate to have slogged through Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason long enough to come across his argument, Existence is not a Predicate. Philosophy can indeed find answers good for separating signal from noise, as long as we are patient enough to do the search.
Nice one. Its interesting tho (and the subject of an upcoming piece) that the enlightenment (including Kant) was sort of this reaction to heliocentricity's displacement of humanity from the center of existence.... by moving the locus of fact from the exterior world to the interiority of the subjective mind, they re-centered the subject permanently... and in many ways codified the religion of self we still exist within today...
Yes, Kant was a major contributor to the migration of philosophy towards phenomenology. Einstein and the revolution in mathematics after 1900 unwittingly helped usher in our currently popular ways of thinking, ironic in a way, since Einstein's theory, once shown to be consistent with observation, contradicted Kant's assertions about the absoluteness of time and space. Nietzsche is also a good barometer for the breakdown in Enlightenment thought and a significant contributor to the current religion of self as you have described it.
Absolutely. And it's an arresting stretch between quantum and classical—one that undeniably corroborates some phenomenological thinking upon a cursory read of it. Entanglement in particular, in its seeming erasure of cause and effect, lends itself to the un-systemic view point of new age manifestation. BUT... from my view the new age reading of quantum is all wrong. It is less an erasure of cause and effect and more a condensation of cause and effect—hence the term entanglement—and more a confirmation of the interpenetration of all things rather than a confirmation of the isolated "personal reality" meme thrown about to inflate self worth.
I really do see this as the beginning because once you trade New Ageism for an acceptance that we might owe each other something the ball is hard to stop from rolling! I think people are feeling sort of shorted by recurring personal run ins with a reality ever so marked by the Religion of Self's themes of not owing each other anything. I think this sense of having been shorted is present in dating/partnership norms, linguistic patterns, workplaces, and some other really interesting really cornerstone venues of daily life in the 2020s.
Just want to say this is very validating as someone who has been talking a lot about interdependence/connectivity lately and not feeling very met. (Woe is me tone not intended, I just definitely feel that even if people have encountered the idea they are slow to promote its visibility)
I know that I have yet to figure out clearly suitable answers but I think the neuropsychological humility approach is a good one to take in the dire push to effectively communicate interconnectivity-based ideas.
Very glad to receive this comment. Thanks Bailey.
Alex, thank you for this excellent essay. I find it important to question an offhand aside, because I think it has big cultural implications. I’m curious why you frame identity politics as another problematic symptom of our disembodiment. I feel strongly the opposite. Identity politics, with roots in 70s feminism and social justice activism, is very much about bodies asking for necessary rights and protections in a collective reality. These bodies, due to their identities, are given less of a chance to experience autonomy, sovereignty, etc. Their bodily existence is negatively impacted by power. IDPOL works to bring those experiences to light and change them. I find that the continued lambasting of IDPOL as “the problem” often comes from the same reality-denying New Age thought that you deconstruct so well here. And the result is a dominant culture hostile to hearing the experiences of non-dominant bodies as truth, to taking them seriously, to doing something about it. As Ijeoma Oluo put it, “We don’t magically get to a system that addresses issues facing minority groups by ignoring issues affecting minority groups.”
Thanks for your response. IDPOL is not a symptom of the disembodied age, but rather the disembodied age is proliferating IDPOL beyond any tethering to embodiment. IDPOL of the embodied age is very legitimate. IDPOL of the disembodied age is increasingly abstractive, and so will be increasingly decoupled from embodied experience, leveraged instead as a pure tool of power, social status, and meaning.
Thank you Alex. I appreciate your communication. I don’t know exactly what increased disembodiment will look like in the future. From where I stand here and now, IDPOL is indeed a tool of building power, social status and meaning, necessary in a system that grants power and exploits attention, bodies and lives along lines of identity. What happens online increasingly has real impact on our material conditions, our emotions, and the decisions made by those in power. I remain unclear as to exactly what form of IDPOL are shattering to collective sense making. The kind of IDPOL that I see most often under scrutiny from people like Bill Maher or Sam Harris seems to include any message or movement that names a problem held by a non-white-cis-male identity. I believe these messages and movements are needed for fundamental integration. They move us towards a collective understanding of how the history of dominance and exploitation has shaped our current reality. What I find shattering to sense-making is when identity politics are dismissed in order to placate those with powerful identities, whether in fear of a backlash or in service to the current social and economic order.
The more any tribe relies on abstractions to reify their membership, the more of a challenge to inter-tribal sensemaking. Someone who believes they create their own reality, for instance, and is not subject to viruses because they have created a sovereign immune system, will not have much incentive to negotiate reality with others. But all of this has to be viewed through the lens of capitalist power. You rightly mention the economic order. Cocal cola is the perfect example of the truer and far more concerning placation taking place. IDPOL woke loves Coke due to IDPOL-friendly ads - yet Coke is one of the most nefarious actors on the planet. This problem cannot be overstated. By the disembodied IDPOL plays right into the hands of corporate power. Take race. IDPOL gives those with non-"white" phenotypes cover for practicing the same extractive behaviors that "whiteness" represents themselves. By identifying extractive behaviors as the domain of an essence called whiteness, those with other phenotypes get to bypass their own extractive participation in the same behaviors. This is happening everywhere. This is the problem with demonization. It inevitably, eventually, becomes a projection.
Interesting! Thanks for getting more specific with me here. What you describe as IDPOL being leveraged by corporations and governments, I call Representation Optics. As you suggest, it’s not about redistributing wealth or respecting life rights but about performing equity where none actually exists. Capitalism was initiated by a small elite of white people with the power of violence to enclose lands. The philosophical construct of white supremacy came later, as a reasoning for the explosive violence of colonization. And this process has embedded deep structural roots in a society where people with the white phenotype and the male gender are dominant in possessing wealth, power and freedom to do what they want. Is acknowledging that by default a demonization? Or simply perceived as such? My concern is the abundance of people in this society, particularly white folks raised in lineages of prosperity gospel, calvinism and now new age-ism, who are unwilling to confront the interdependent sources of their own power and freedoms. I’m not sure that interdependence can be made visible if we erase the chain of ancestry that brought us here. Surely it will take a lot more work to untether our minds from capitalist logic of extraction, dominance and profit, than to simply carry out the neoliberal salve of Representation Optics. And yet, just because corporations and governments will perform equity and some people will be fooled to call it progress, or because non-whites will accrue and abuse power under capitalism and some will again be fooled to call it progress, isn’t a strong enough reason for me to stop advocating for true rights and redistribution for those identities that need it most.
Right - no, the simple act of acknowledgment of wrong doing is not demonization or bypassing. Its when it becomes a criticism of wrong being. As soon as someone can be accused of wrong being, there is a level of abstraction that is boundlessly abusable. They become intrinsically wrong, essentially and spiritually wrong. when that happens, the bypass begins.
Cool. I suppose it becomes quite difficult for people to discern the nuance, since any flash of “wrong” sends up alert signals. To state more plainly, I don’t agree that corporate optics are the more concerning placation at play here. We know that many northern industrialists who funded and backed the civil war were motivated by profit, not human rights. In retrospect we wouldn’t say that abolitionists should have renounced abolition in cynicism. As long as we have capitalism there will always be opportunism surrounding cultural and political change. The cynicism around identity politics, critical race theory and wokeness is too often a permission slip to dismiss others' experiences, and ignore the need to cede and share power. I think we would move forward faster without that cynicism.
This reminds me of an essay titled, “From Self Actualization to Self Transcendence” by Richard Rohr. Good stuff! Thanks for sharing this.
-Jesse (linktr.ee/humansaredivine)
Hey Alex, this essay took my mind to a few different places. To paraphrase, if collectively verified opinions create these extreme aversions to what one might call common sense making, then where can we put the blame? Speaking not from a moral standpoint but simply cause and effect. It seems as though any time we push too hard towards collectivism, an errant individualist "gene" kicks back in contempt. Also, do you think the collective and interconnected reality are primary building blocks of our society? Or is the subjective reality the building block, and through the delicate care of subjectivity, we create a harmonious collective. I don't know where we should be looking for harmony to strike first, but if I look at my own life, and the hundreds of people I have paid close attention to, it seems as though that level of understanding can only come from an individual first, and then works its way out to the broader world. Just wondering to myself, what do we do?
Great question. Yes, interrelativity is how the process of emergence and evolution occur. Interrelativity is how the organs in our bodies operate. Interrelativity is how ecosystems work. Its all interrelativity. Including society. So my thoughts are that subjectivity is so entirely dependent on intersubjectivity that "I am" already presumes a differentiation between everything else and "I" - meaning there must be an "everything else" in order for the "I" to exist. From this place, sense cannot be made in a vacuum of self because there is no vacuum of self. However, "making sense" is not necessarily the aim of life. I dont state this in the essay, but more important to the subjective AND intersubjective experience is "transcendence", IMO. In terms of the question of achieving collective harmony, then, it would seem that removing the denial of interdependence is, at the very least, ONE of the first steps. (One I am trying to expedite). The very first step might be something that clues us in to this interdependence. Psilocybin, entheogenic whatnot etc, may be more important to both collective awareness and sensemaking, in that sense, than all the podcasts and essays in the world.
I am deeply appreciative of this work, and very much in agreement. If you look at the history of "new thought" or "new age" much of it can be traced to theosophy, H. Blavaatskre, (and like (as you mention) gnosticism, freemasonry, sabbateanism before that) and then that leads into occultism, magic, and very, very dark stuff.
My question to you is about the alternative or the solution to the problem of new ageism. I understand that you emphasize *interdependence* rather than independence -- and ecology, harmony etc. Isn't the best realization of this tradition as it has always been? Tradition is eternal.
I think you are right in your diagnosis of the problem, to quote from your above article:
*"The full history of this religion of self can be perfectly tracked from early Gnosticism’s belief in mind over matter, to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”, to the Protestant reformation’s emphasis on an individualistic relationship to God, to the enlightenment’s empirical emphasis on subjectivity, to capitalism’s “mutual self-interest”,"*
The enemy of this way of thinking has always been the Church. So what is keeping you from tradition?
wow , this sums up so much that ive been sitting and hurting in a real deep way with since 2020 began. thank you so much for sharing this! the new age community really helped me out in a big way at the start of my journey (wow hey i can take less shrooms and make cool overtone sounds with people and meditate and get just as high as the bigger dose, this is the jam! thought 2012 I)
but the nastiness ive seen since then has been like gravel in my gut
share videos with tim bergling
I Kant wait till we get some new material from the “Bad Guru,” don’t even get me Satered. I truly appreciate all your Engels.
All the puns I could muster… 🥧
https://seadonkey.substack.com/p/citizens-unite-against-citizens-united?r=tbrrm&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web :) xo