Newage Thought: Blaming the victim
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." — Saul Bellow
A while back I met someone who was into newage ideas. He spoke of vibrations, of auras, of the power of feelings, psychic phenomena, the power of thought, karma, harmonisation of energies, and so on. When he heard about the illness I have and its rather devastating physical effects, he said “What an interesting path you have chosen”. When I denied having chosen anything at all, he said “Don’t be so sure. You must have chosen this path. You must have things to work out in your karma”. Sigh.
For many newagers it seems that those who do not share their particular Weltanschauung (world view) are assumed to be somehow lacking, not in tune with the universe, have limited in sensitivity, and hence are doomed to misfortune. For just as
Christian fundamentalists are convinced they are right and all other faiths are wrong, newagers believe in the truth of their own world view and the consequent ignorance of everyone else. Such beliefs are ultimately rooted in classicism. They are I would suggest, really just another version of the narcissism I have termed
Oprahism. All despite appearing to be something quite the opposite.
The cult of self dominates the cultural landscape of the west. And of newage thought. This cult contains the classic traits of the psychopath: extreme narcissism, grandiose ideas, surface charm masking an uncaring personality, insatiable desire for stimulation, inability to differentiate fantasy from reality, constant lying, enjoying manipulating others, self deception, and most of all, conviction in the supreme rightness of their own ideas. This psychopathology is the ethic of corporatism, for it promotes the underlying infantilism and unfettered greed so essential to mass consumerism. Indeed, infantilism and unfettered greed are at the core of a psychopathology in which personal advancement regardless of the cost to others is touted as “individualism” and discovery of the “self”. It cuts a swath of ignorance through the mind. Ignorance wherein learning and intelligence are denounced in favour of mystical mumbo-jumbo which confer magic powers - sidis, enlightenment, awareness, bliss, beyond karma, insight, oneness - upon the ignorant. It took the Buddha a long time to see through this perverted ethic, and he warned against them. How sad that his warnings have in the main, been ignored by the very newagers who so loosely invoke his name in their ravings.
Let’s take a closer look at three of the most commonly held newage beliefs so representative of this narcissistic infantilism: non-dualism, karma, and non-absolutism.
In Hinduism there are supposedly three main paths to enlightenment - dvaita (dualism), vashishadvaita (non-dualism with a number of qualifications), or advaita (pure non-dualism).
I describe
real advaita and non-dualism here. If you read that description you will see that advaita as discussed by Ramana Maharshi and others is radically different from the typical non-dualism espoused or described by the majority of the western ’gurus’. For advaita does
not mean an absence of the subject-object dichotomy as these folks usually say. Nor does it imply that everything is One, Whole, and already complete - i.e. non-dual.
The underlying problem I feel, is that this belief in ’non-dualism’, of the oneness of all things, is used as an excuse to be lazy. Precisely the difficulty of which
Adi Shankara (c. 800 CE) warned. The argument newagers so often tell themselves goes like this: If I am already whole, inseparable from perfection then there is no need for me to struggle or to grow. Because I am already whole and therefore perfect. I am already free.
What a wonderfully insouciant tautological teleology - I am already whole (non-dual) so there is no need to do anything more to attain oneness. This is, in my opinion, merely an excuse for narcissistic laziness. And for ignoring the plight of others, albeit in the guise of loving kindness. Perhaps this is why so many of these folks talk about compassion, but so often lack it?
One cannot perceive suffering when one no longer perceives otherness. Exactly as the Christian fundamentalist rationalises genocide of non-Christians as justified because the forces of rapine and death are ’doing God’s will’. Tautologies whether of the newage non-duality type, the Christian warrior, or guru wanna-bes do not allow freedom. They prevent it.
Non-duality in its true sense does not mean there is a self seeing itself as free or bound. As the Buddha so beautifully put it, make the slightest distinction and you are dead.
Non-dualism as used by the majority of newagers (though thankfully not all) is about distinction.
Some time ago in India at the South Western Railways Mysore station, posters began to appear with the bold declaration: “Sin causes disease”. Soon these signs started to pop up at other railway stations. At bus stations, and so on. No one objected, and government officials did not intervene. And so the message went out - if you are ill and suffering, it is your own fault.
This sort of belief system is one which invokes moral superiority over others merely because others are suffering. It is unfortunately typical of the blind belief so essential to religious or evangelical
fundamentalism. It is the same belief of moral superiority which makes it okay to
kill and maim the others. It is a system of thought wherein no proof is needed, no fact checking, no knowledge, no investigation, no science, no logic... a system in which requires only a strong belief in the rightness of ones own viewpoint. All despite the plethora of evidence to the contrary.
For 3500 years or so, Brahmanism has influenced Hindu society. The scheme was a wonderful one - convince the poor, the weak, the diseased, the suffering, the unlucky that their lack of success in life is entirely their own fault. Even if they had lead an exemplary life. Why? Because their their base actions in a ’prior life’ meant that they must now suffer the consequences of that prior life’s activities. And furthermore, they used this idea to create a class system second to none - above Shudra were Vaisya, above whom where Kshatriya, and finally ruling it all, where Brahmin. So since it was impossible for a Shudra to climb the social ladder, instead the religion the Brahmins founded said they could climb the karmic ladder instead. By being of exemplary service to Brahmans, their next life would be better.
And so servants, soldiers, gardeners, renderers, tailors... the downtrodden should cheerfully and diligently work for Brahmans. For they and they alone merited all that is good in life due to their own goodness in former lives. Karma - the perfect justification for moral superiority if one was highly placed in society. Three thousand years of religious classicism, without ever having to have a guilty conscience.
Sadly newagers have taken this ultimate classicism to heart. Why are some people gurus and others merely disciples? Karma. Why are some people poor and others not? Karma. Why are some people ill and others not? Karma. Why are some people multimillionaires and others not? Karma. Where ’karma’ means you are not worthy because your bad actions in past lives have led you here. You have chosen a path to correct your flaws and march up the ladder of karma for a better life next time around. That is to say, ’your sin is the cause of your disease.
Karma - a wonderful philosophical tool for simultaneously blaming the victim, excusing your own fate, and justifying using others to fulfil your own avarice. Those Brahmins really knew how to organize things.
3. Perception is reality:
Newagers frequently use the term ’paradigm-shift’, or if not that exact phrase then some more expansive hypernym such as epiphany, sudden awakening, totally grokking, changing mindset, and so on. They use these terms to indicate that most people hold an an internal framework from which their behaviour stems. In exactly the manner of the posters in Mysore Railway station described above, but with more scientific-sounding legitimacy.
Take for example the oft-expressed newage refrain that “perception is reality”. This belief implies that if one’s reality is a difficult one, all that is necessary is for the victim to change her perceptions. To shift to a different, better, more ’spiritual’ paradigm. The idea held by newagers, executive coaches, lifestyle coaches, and similar folks concerning paradigm shift is a horrible debasement of Thomas Kuhn’s work on the nature of scientific theory: ’La Structure des Revolutions Scientifiques’.
Kuhn, Bourdeau, Jaspers and other postmodernists saught to demonstrate the fluidity of apparent reality. They were pursuing very specific scientific, anthropological, or philosophical approaches. Very, very different from the debasement the newage executive coaches and their ilk have made of there closely reasoned writings. The clarion call that ’perception is reality’ is a thorough misunderstanding of post-modern ideas. And for that matter of ancient Buddhist (Nahayana for example), and similar thought.
Consider for a moment Hitler’s wonderfully adept propagandist, Goebbels. He wrote extensively concerning the concept that ’perception is reality’. He argued that the concept could be a useful tool in shaping public opinion. Hence the perception that ones neighbour disagreed with Hitler just needed a slight nudge - a paradigm shift - to be re-brand ’disagreement’ as ’unpatriotic’. And ultimately, ’criminal’.
Goebbels wrote that perception of reality could be altered by using very basic tools -
fear being the easiest. Mao used similar techniques to shift perceptions, arguing that disagreement with his government was not merely unpatriotic, but so harmful that it was right and just to treat those who disagreed with him as criminals, and lock them up. Stalin took this a step further declaring that those who disagreed were not merely unpatriotic but literally insane, and had them confined to psychiatric institutions for that wonderful cure-all, frontal lobotomy. All for the good of the state of course.
And so we have a plethora of paths and other fundamentalist expressions of newage thought which use paradigm shift, and ’perception is reality’. This is ultimately the same technique as that which underlay Goebbels work. Albeit thank goodness, not with the sick violence of these former government leaders.
For with a little persuasion or in worst case scenarios, coercion, perception becomes reality. And the conviction arises, spread by ’teachers’ and ’enlightened beings’ that individuals are the authors of their own discontent because of their perceptions. Which for a small fee the leaders will change to the right perceptions (i.e. ’paradigm shift’). And with these newly corrected perceptions their lives will be so much better. They will be enlightened, or at least happier.
But as with the fundamentalist evangelical shouting to a paraplegic with no legs “In Jesus’ name, walk!”, all the smoke and mirrors and right thinking in the world, will not change reality.
Or to put it another way, if the homeless man lying in a freezing alley starving to death on the streets of Chicago would only change his paradigm, then he would be fine. Because after all, it is his own fault he is suffering.
It is the conceit of the narcissist to suggest that reality is what one thinks it is, and that by merely changing thought so too reality will change.
