File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2000/bhaskar.0006, message 132


Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 23:00:51 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Of Wrong Sorts & a Lost Leader was.Re: BHA: Realism and latent theology


Hi Gary

Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au> writes
>But such prejudices apart, I venture to say that the New Age movement is 
>not a monolith.  It does of course contain its charlatans (not like the 
>Marxist Movement!).  Yet it also at its best represents a response to the 
>spiritual needs of today.

Of course New Age is not a monolith, and of course there are positive
things in it (it's even articulating a 'new paradigm' nowadays which
usefully stresses relationality, processuality, etc). The question is
whether this is what EW emphasises or whether, as I find, it emphasises
many things thoroughly ideological about New Age: the narcissistic
deification of the self; voluntarism and idealism re social
transformation; and anti-science and anti-Enlightenment. It even seems
to endorse the whole gamut of New Age methodologies for accessing the
spiritual dimensions of the cosmos: astrology, astral travel,
numerology, etc - you can even move your consciousness up and down the
galaxies like a cursor.

I can only advise waiting till you've read the book, Gary, so you can
judge for yourself.

Mervyn

-- 
Mervyn Hartwig
13 Spenser Road
Herne Hill
London SE24 ONS
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7 737 2892
Email: mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk


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