The New Age movement is part of the larger context of consumer culture. A number of social theorists have proposed that, increasingly, lifestyles, identity, cultural, and even spiritual meaning have become commodities for purchase. Images, styles, and representations are no longer mere promotional accessories to economically useful products; they have become the products themselves. Thus, in contemporary consumer culture, a romanticized representation of spirituality can become a product to be purchased and consumed. Products that are appealing to the underlying diaspora of separateness and disconnectedness that is all pervasive in the human condition. (of present day earth) There was a bulletin board, covered with advertisements for dozens of healers, body workers and various schools of mystical arts. This was very much what can be referred to as the Spiritual Supermarket a plethora of offerings appealing to our sense of spiritual poverty, offering relief in the form of spiritual commodities, higher states of consciousness, travel to higher realms, secrets of the universe. All of it appealing to the underlying diaspora of separateness and disconnectedness that is all pervasive in the human condition. The overriding theme in this spiritual supermarket was that there was something missing which could be provided by the products being sold. Nowhere was the notion evident that perhaps the real problem was that we had too much to begin with, and what we really needed was to let go. Everywhere the message was self centered, me, me, mine. The recurrent thread throughout was that of personal entitlement, getting something, reaching or attaining something. All of it seemed demeaning in a way, a tacit acknowledgment that there was something missing, that an individual could find and possess by reading the book. I could not help noticing some of the customers browsing the titles, most appeared to be dissatisfied people desperately seeking some sort of answers. to really change the world we need to hand out real tools: rugged, free, collaborative tools for understanding the world and our role in it, for seeing the systems in which we are trapped; tools for learning how to work together to either transform those systems or destroy them completely and bioremediate the rubble. Tools that help us as people make meaningful changes in both our own lives and the world. We need to make people participants, not consumers. We need answers that address peoples lives, not their lifestyles.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:01:41 +0000
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