new age-isms

oh, your comment about new age phrase "you create your own reality"  (actually, starhawk's comment...see email below)

 

i think the problem with most New Ageism -- why is New Age beliefs considered flaky, insubstantial?  it's because they're communicating using a different worldview (miscommunication--the most common source of conflict?) ... new agers too often fail to adequately explain (to the non new-agers) the concrete details of their thought, connecting the dots between the words and reality.

 

for example, just recently sandrine opened my eyes to a new ageism i had found frustrating: "Everything is perfect, just as it is."  i thought: "how can everything be perfect?  if everything is perfect, we don't need to change or improve anything, right?"  sandrine's response, paraphrasing her, was something like: "no, everything is the *perfect result* of the causes that have happened up to now... that's what 'everything is perfect' means."  so, rather than being depressed that reality ain't what it's "supposed" to be, we try to understand how it has come to be the way it is.

 

i apologize sandrine if i misunderstand you!  please feel free to correct.

 

let's continue to seek to understand one another, and have our eyes opened to worlds we never knew existed.

 

george

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Colin Leath

To: ourcultureourcapitol@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 2:56 PM

Subject: [OurCultureOurCapitol] the book of yo & NewCiv.org & misc

Also (Sandrine :) ) Starhawk takes issue with "you create
your own reality"

p 75 "Creating your own reality" is a New Age watchword, but
many of those who espouse it really mean "take the best of
what the system has to offer for yourself"--an option open
only to a few of the more privileged among us. But to
actually change the terms of reality itself, to generate new
systems based on different values, is a far more demanding,
dangerous, and revolutionary task.

p 79 Awareness is the beginning of all resistance

p 82
When we rebel without challenging the framework of reality
the system has constructed, we remain trapped. Our choices
are predetermined for us.

p 83 for the choices the system presents us with inevitably
increase the system's control

p 83 to defy reality is not the same as to change it

p 84 resistance embodies a reality incongruent with that of
domination

p 86 survival - itself an act of ultimate resistance

p 86 to resist is to engage reality, to act.

Awareness, emotions, are not enough.

For acts of resistance against systems that destroy us are
ultimately acts of survival, creation, and nurture.

p 86 "I don't want to focus energy on resistance, on the
negative."

resistance is the refusal to be negated by systems of
control.

-Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org/

Colin
http://j9k.org

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