New Age

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New Age is an idealist, subjectivist, highly individualist industry born in the West based on cultural appropriation of global indigenous practices. New Age is originally born out of the imperialist countries, and consequently has its roots in Western imperialism, colonialism, Orientalism, and racism.

Origins

New Age is a term popularized in the 1960s, to refer to "The Age of Aquarius", and has deep ties with Theosophy. New Age can be considered the ideological descendant of Theosophy. In the 21st century, New Age and hippy are frequently used together, however "hippy" aka "flower child" was a broad countercultural youth movement in the 1960s that overlapped with New Age. Hippies, however, also practiced cultural appropriation to rebel against contemporary Western norms. Hippies grew their hair long to imitate indigenous Americans. The Hippy movement could be considered the precursor to New Age, as Hippies were predominant in the 1960s before the more esoteric New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s grew up, and continues today. They often go to festivals like Coachella, and are famous for partaking in psychedelic drugs, however this is not strictly part of the definition.

Characteristics

Many New Age practices lack empirical support and are considered pseudoscientific. Because New Age feeds on ignorance, deceit, and faith, it has much in common with organized religion.

The New Age industry uses an eclectic mix of beliefs and practices derived from legitimate indigenous spiritual traditions (often taken out of context) and invented modern superstitions to pursue their own personal, often consumerist or at least ego-driven, desires and concept of "happiness". The core of New Age is fundamentally Western bourgeois ideology. Meanwhile, meditation, traditional medicine, and reincarnation are authentic indigenous beliefs and practices, however the New Age industry appropriates, monopolizes and decontextualizes them. For example, crystal therapy is an invented New Age practice that was "inspired" and decontextualized from the use of gemstones and sacred stones that hold a spiritual significance in many indigenous cultures. The New Age hippy would take this out of context and introduce "crystal therapy" which is more individualist and based on whimsy, and is in no way representative of the original indigenous practices or beliefs. More people know about "crystal therapy" than they know that there are indigenous cultural practices to do with precious stones.

The New Age industry is all-encompassing, takes from all sources it can, is focused on acquiring all that is exotic (and leaving behind the simple and plain), and therefore can be found dabbling in thousands of practices. New Age people created a brand new Western astrology that they derived from an ancient Greek tradition, and infused it with Theosophy. New Age people heard about Romani fortune telling and tarot, so they started playing with this and appropriating Romani clothing as a "Boho" or "Bohemian" aesthetic. New Age people heard about ayahuasca and peyote ceremonies, so they started going on vacation to experiment with this. New Age people heard about smudging with white sage, so they began destroying the habitat of white sage through overforaging, disrupting indigenous Turtle Island traditions. The New Age industry has intruded into the fields of meditation and yoga, for example, and invented countless "new techniques", not because they actually work but because the sensationalization brings them more money, that is, they attract buyers. Such self-serving goals of New Age people has more to do with consumerism and enjoying the spoils of imperialism than it has anything to do with indigenous spirituality, and its approach is one of a salesman using gimmicks to capture the attention of consumers.

John Lennon with a yogi

New Age strays so far from the intended purposes of the appropriated indigenous practices, as to be diametrically opposite. Such indigenous practices were intended to be for the cultivation of enlightened beings and the encouragement of collectivism in society -- things such as cultivation of virtue, the pursuit of truth and wisdom, detachment from desire, and transcending the ego, and which are not always as comfortable, nor are indigenous ceremonies quite as glamorous. Indigenous people have often fiercely objected to the appropriation of their spiritual practices, citing that it causes misinformation, commercialization, trivialization of their sacred traditions, and the public perception that indigenous practices are wholly unscientific and irrational. In fact, many indigenous practices have a materialist basis transmitted through oral traditions that were later confirmed by scientific research. Often, New Age practices are snake oil and do not deliver the results they promise, except to entertain, to make the person "feel good" temporarily, as an escape from reality, to gratify a sense of rebellion or alternativeness, or to aggrandize their ego. Sellers of New Age also share overlap with cults and criminality, and there are many New Age cults in the imperialist countries.

Impact on Indigenous Communities

The New Age industry presents a direct threat to the integrity of indigenous traditions, mainly because if its spread of false information. A huge part of New Age is not just appropriation but pure fabrication: creating "traditions" that look ancient but have no history beyond the 1970s. In the context of colonialism and the struggle of indigenous peoples to preserve their cultural heritage, this is dangerous.

The New Age industry has also caused contradictions among indigenous peoples about how and when to make money from certain practices, if at all. New Age has made it more difficult for young, displaced and diaspora BIPOC to engage with certain aspects of their own cultures. Distinguishing between New Age/hippy and real indigenous traditions has become a core contradiction in the cultural sphere of decolonization struggle, particularly when opportunist charlatans can be found among their own communities. Many practices have been driven underground for cultural preservation, or else forced to confront the New Age industry directly. In certain situations, indigenous knowledge risks being mistaken for New Age, and vice versa, to those unfamiliar with them.

Despite often professing universal love, the New Age industry is built on a foundation of greed, and racial and cultural privilege. Its adherents frequently display defensiveness when called out by BIPOC, a reaction that protects their colonialist approach to spirituality. Simply put, many New Age people are racist and highly defensive towards BIPOC. Although some BIPOC in the imperial core have been observed getting suckered into New Age, BIPOC tend towards feeling uncomfortable with New Age practices, because often New Age is catered towards the ego and comfort of the racist white colonizer.

New Age impacts on class consciousness

New Age ideology often promotes "positive vibes only," which leads to spiritual bypassing, or using spirituality to avoid dealing with real personal, societal, and political problems (e.g., racism, inequality, trauma).

The New Age movement heavily incorporates modern psychology (e.g., Carl Jung's archetypes, positive thinking) to make its teachings more appealing. This has led to a focus on "self-actualization" rather than collective spiritual goals, further reinforcing individualism.

Jung's interest in astrology (as a symbolic system rather than a predictive, divination tool) was adopted by New Age thinkers to lend credibility to their practices.

The New Age concept of an "Age of Aquarius" (a time of spiritual awakening) derives from Theosophical ideas about astrological ages. However, this belief often overlooks the astronomical complexity of precession and simplifies cultural narratives (e.g., 2012 Maya prophecies) while ignoring others (Vedic astrology does not align with any 'Age of Aquarius'). This millenarian thinking can foster spiritual bypassing: ignoring real-world problems in favor of "cosmic" solutions.

Connections to Fascism

New Age beliefs are widespread among fascist movements and fuel conspiracy thinking since they aren't based in materialist philosophy. The link between white supremacy, imperialism, fascist esotericism and New Age is demonstrable because of the Orientalist thought of authors such as Julius Evola, Helena Blavatsky or the appropriation of the swastika (an ancient symbol found across countless cultures globally, including Hindu, Jain, Native American, and European traditions) by the Nazis.

Read more: Fascism#Blavatsky,_Cultural_Appropriation_and_New_Age_Myths

New Age role in monopoly capitalism

Due to monopoly capitalism, New Age exercises a dominant influence in many fields of culture.

Many companies that present themselves as an alternative to the capitalist pharmaceutical complex are successful businesses that earn millions of dollars every year, while indigenous people whose practices were misappropriated out of context yet remain exploited and impoverished. In fact, in the West, the New Age genre of books has completely overtaken the spirituality section and become synonymous with "spirituality", which has caused traditional practitioners reaching out to global audiences to start publishing their books in the "New Age Spirituality" section in order to attract an audience, despite their work not being New Age. They are forced to compromise or be completely ignored. Due to market forces, any person living in the West who looks to learn about "spirituality" is faced with "New Age", which reinforces the cycle of harm, confusion, and cultural appropriation.

In their relation to capital and the means of production, traditional practices are artisanal practices, and so cannot outcompete New Age practitioners or any capitalist imperialist enterprises because their authentic practices which require integrity, wisdom, discernment, a commitment to the greater good, and even declining to help or work with individuals. Such authentic practices cannot scale with industry, do not usually provide a stable source of income, and so many traditional practitioners are proletarian -- that is, they have regular jobs or side hustles and perform their sacred work in their off time, with or without pay.

Due to the wealth generating aspect of the New Age industry, a variety of opportunist indigenous charlatans (such as Osho and Jaggi Vasudev in India) have capitalized on marketing New Age ideology in the guise of indigenous wisdom and become extremely wealthy making their audience feel smarter than others while spreading false information. Also, their cult of personality, flaunting of wealth, and criminal history belies their supposed enlightenment or guru status. It is unclear whether such charlatans genuinely believe in what they are selling, but they shamelessly trample on established traditions in exchange for fame and capital.

The Wellness Industry

As decades have passed, the New Age industry has moved into new markets, including the Wellness industry. It's a multi-trillion dollar industry that repackages these appropriated practices (yoga, meditation, "clean eating") as luxury commodities for a mostly white, wealthy clientele. However, in the nature of industries, its expansion eventually filters down to the proletariat. For example, the Holistic Psychologist and Jordan Peterson promote a crackpot, New Age version of psychology that misleads and marginalizes many people who have trauma or disabilities. There has also been a rise of "wellness" influencers on social media who commodify spirituality without credit.

Bourgeois Feminism

New Age emerged at the height of Western bourgeois second wave feminism, and created spaces for women and feminist reinterpretations (e.g., goddess worship, feminist astrology, feminist tarot). However, this did not make it any less New Age, remains centered on white Western women, and such cultural feminists frequently engaged in cultural appropriation. Feminists of Color frequently criticized these practices.