I've given up reading the writing that the new-age movement produces a long time ago, but recently some of it landed on my reading table anyway in the form of a magazine. Not much has changed in the last 15 years, but for the readership. It used to be that the new-age movement appealed to a small group, but now... This stuff has become completely mainstream. 250.000 copies of the magazine were shipped to the customers of Durion . That's a lot. My favorite Dutch newspaper has a circulation of 265.000, the largest has a circulation of 763.000.
The magazine was well received, according to the editors. Not surprizing, really. Durion is a company that sells "green power". State-subsidized electricity that is generated by burning "biomass", mostly (treated) wood, municpal waste, and (polluted) river silt. The majority of the readership consists of people working in service- and (semi) government jobs. Thats the mainstream alright.
So what are they reading then, the mainstream reading then, in a magazine that claims to be "an independent magazine about the people and ideas that are changing the world"?
There was an article about dolphins of course, an interview with Sting, something about "the Africa in you", shamanism, Mayas and Incas. Nothing unusual.
The thing that struck me most was a letter the magazine copied from the Human Kindness Foundation, in which the anonymous writer, who claims to be a former member of the Bloods, explains how he was forgiven by the policeman he fired at. The letter can be found here. The magazine has taken a few liberties while translating it. No mention is made of any attempts to verify it's authenticity. The story is not quite as unlikely as the average inspirational fiction, but there are plenty of things that could have easily been clarified, but weren't. The magazine makes no effort to excuse ifself for the lack of veracity, it merely states that they were "moved" by the story. It's fiction, and they know it.
And once you begin to see that these magazine people are not journalists, but fiction writers who create their own truth, you should also begin to see the danger of their ubiquitousness.
The progessive movement that wants to have clean energy, sustainable business practices, fair trade, a solution for the poor, for the most part these days, consists of people that believe this stuff. And mixed in with all the goodie-goodie stuff come statements like "where you discover a repeat pattern in your life, there is an imprint in your energyfield", "the invisble world always manifests itself in the visible world". These people are your nurses, your governement, your children's teachers.
The really scary bit: "In all large cancer centers in the United States, there are nurses and docters that have taken shamanistic courses. We have trained 200 docters and hundreds of nurses".
When asked about the casualties that natural disasters that the Maya indians predicted for 2012 bring with them, the director of the movie the "The Year Zero" says that "Maybe this is the only way the world can be freed from the current power structres".
We need to start a resistance movent.
Posted by mduvekot at September 25, 2004 01:38 PM