New Age

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New Age is an idealist, subjectivist, highly individualist consumer industry born in the West based on cultural appropriation of global indigenous practices and superexploitation of colonized countries. New Age is originally born out of the imperialist countries like the settler colonial United States of America, and is bound up with its Western imperialist and colonialist history, and expresses forms of chauvinism like 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 counter-cultural 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, wore headdresses, and many other racist practices. 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 Woodstock or 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 and deceit, 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 profits or fame. The core of New Age is fundamentally Western bourgeois ideology. Meanwhile, such things as meditation, traditional medicine, and reincarnation are milennia-old authentic indigenous beliefs and practices which the New Age industry appropriates, decontextualizes, and often malpractices them, borrowing the credibility of evidence-based traditions and flouting science. 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, regardless of whether such practices are effective.

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 that culture and appropriating Romani clothing as a "Boho" or "Bohemian" aesthetic. New Age people heard about psychedelics, so they started experiment with them outside the institutions of indigenous ceremony and tradition, gentrifying the practices and leading to environmental damage. 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 clientele.

John Lennon with a yogi

New Age has thus been criticized by indigenous organizations as a kind of Western individualism which severely distorts indigenous practices, which were intended to be for the cultivation of wisdom and the encouragement of specific collectivist values which are not always as comfortable, nor 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. That is not to say that indigenous traditions are entirely scientific, but as with many traditions around the world they do at least partially have scientific components which risk being discarded or distorted. 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 escapism, or to aggrandize their ego. They may even be harmful practices. Sellers of New Age also share overlap with cults and criminality, and there are many New Age cults in the imperialist countries.

Cultural genocide of Indigenous communities

New Age, among other forms of cultural appropriation, has been described as perpetrating "cultural genocide". Indigenous organizations and governments have "declared war" on all those interlopers who threaten their cultures, and among these enemies is the New Age people. The New Age industry presents a direct threat to the integrity of indigenous traditions, mainly because of its spread of false information, but also because of the threat that these wrong practices may "find their way back into" indigenous communities either through deception or capitalism. 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. In certain situations, indigenous knowledge risks being mistaken for New Age, and vice versa, to those unfamiliar with them. Indigenous activists have referred to New Age appropriation of their spirituality as "plastic shamanism" and "playing Indian".

The New Age industry 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. On the other hand, indigenous peoples believe that the abuses perpetuated by spiritual fraud are only possible when there is ignorance about cultures that said "shamans" claim to represent. These represent two opposite responses to the threat.

Despite often professing universal love, the New Age industry is built on a foundation of Western individualism, greed, and racial and cultural privilege. Its adherents frequently display defensiveness when called out by BIPOC. Simply put, many New Age people are racist and highly defensive towards BIPOC. New Age people have been caught engaging in fraud and theft of items of intangible cultural heritage. 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. Nonetheless, several indigenous "plastic shamans" have been documented engaging in outrageous practices of internalized colonialism.

So, driven by the quest for some kind of community and historical tradition, New Agers fetishize Native Americans and their religio-cultural practices. Yet the only way they know how to achieve the attributes that they project onto Native Americans is through commercialization and purchase. This cycle does not end their alienation. They are still so removed from any recognition of social relations (much less historical conflict) that they cannot understand why Native American peoples themselves would object to their appropriations. The individualism that has become characteristic of both capitalism and American political ideology cannot fathom political and social accountability.

In order to address the harms of New Age and other forms of "plastic shamanism", and cultural appropriation generally, indigenous activists advocate the establishment of regulatory mechanisms controlled and defined by indigenous peoples' governments (not that of the colonizer government) as an expression of their self-determination.

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, 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 Marxist materialism. 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, particularly opening a new market in "counter-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 these authentic practices require integrity, wisdom, discernment, a commitment to the greater good, and even declining to help or work with individuals, declining to make profits. Such traditional values are not favored by capitalism. Such authentic practices cannot scale with industrial appropriators, and so do not usually provide a stable source of income. It may be seen as "grossly insulting" to list indigenous traditions as a product that can be bought next to any other product such as a coffee maker or window cleaner.

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.

Often, the tourism industry promotes indigenous exoticism and partners with plastic shamans, and "religious practices become products for and of tourism".

United States countries engage heavily in the development of the New Age industry, even in the global south such as in India which sees foreign investment into Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, many of whose llamas are millionaires and reported spiritual abuse especially of women and vulnerable groups is rampant. This meddling by international capital is a new capitalist market and spiritual colonialism in the era of imperialism, often attracting westerners who have the means to travel to these remote retreats.

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 indigenous 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.

Liberal environmentalist forays into New Age

The Deep Ecology and Earth First! movements have engaged in appropriation of Turtle Island indigenous spirituality. This is reflective of liberal environmentalist "conservationist" philosophy which colonizes indigenous land for the sake of "conservation".

Bourgeois feminist forays into New Age

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.

Ultra-left liberal forays into New Age

The "restorative justice" movement from 1990s onwards has been criticized as essentially a New Age movement practicing "plastic shamanism" as applied to criminology.

Hippy Communes

It was, and still is, common to see New Age people build settler communes to escape society, and this infringes upon native land. Among these hippy groups criticized by indigenous peoples has been the Radical Faeries.

False criticism perpetrated by "pretend Indians"

It should be noted that some of the claims made about "plastic shamans" have been exaggerated by known pretendians like the now-discredited academic Ward Churchill, such as the claim that indigenous people 'never sell their traditions'. Such claims, while not necessarily malicious, are rooted in romanticization of and disconnection from indigenous cultures, and create confusion about the facts of the problem.