“New Age”
Despite my best efforts, there a lot of things I don’t understand. Math, spectator sports, that guy that always wears a Bluetooth headset, or why my cat keeps shitting a foot away from the litter box. I have a certain set of tools, and there are some jobs they just don’t work for. There’s one that has baffled me since I first learned of it. Well-intentioned, all-inclusive, and wholesome, New Age and I just don’t get along.
It wasn’t always like this. I can still remember when we went through our “honeymoon” phase. When we first met, New Age seemed to have an answer for everything. She knew how to fix problems I had, informed me about problem I didn’t know I had, and had solutions for issues that I had no idea were possible. At the time, I was having some health problems. So, I asked around. Sure enough, my body was a cornucopian sesspool of pollutants, food additives, and other horrors of the modern world. It was miraculous I lived past the age of 4. At the suggestion of a naturopathic physician (this is a doctor), I attempted to purify my body on a diet of psyllium husks and a tea of ginger, lemon, and cayenne. First came a cold sore, then the flu. I was told to eat more yogurt. It was clear that these people hadn’t the slightest clue what they were talking about.
I had my issues with New Agers’ feelings about “fact checking” and “empirical evidence”, but they were hard not to like. They were so damn… well intentioned. And for some reason, I can’t seem to avoid them. During 2011, I lived and worked on a collectively run garlic and herb farm, in Upstate New York. Other than the folks in Manhattan who bought our products, nearly everyone I came in contact with was really nice. They spoke softly, ate organic foods, practiced yoga, had an encyclopedic knowledge of “ancient wisdom”, and had an unshakable belief that nature was inherently loving. I mentioned that ricin and the bubonic plague were also “natural”, but nobody cared for my negativity. The logic was mysterious.
I’m a curious person, so I tend to ask a lot of questions. When I have that opportunity with a New Ager, it rarely ends well. When they state their beliefs, I hear so much passion, vitality, and hope. As I try to explore the beautiful vision they have for the world, each question unravels another thread of this reality. It confuses me. I’ve provoked several people to self-doubt or defensive anger in an attempt to understand their convictions. Anyone can tell me to avoid fluoride toothpaste, or that crystals have immense healing powers, but nobody can ever explain why. At some point, I realized that this wasn’t important to them. Their understanding didn’t need to dig far below the surface for the belief to be useful.
To be fair, I’ve also dabbled in mysticism. I once believed, with absolute conviction, that an obese white man was watching me from 1000’s of miles away. If he liked me, he would sneak into my house when everyone was asleep, and bring me gifts. I liked Santa. He was a master of breaking and entering and could bend the laws of physics, but the rewards were real. If I had doubts, there was the deductive logic of the half eaten cookie; last night there was a whole cookie on the mantle, now it has a bite in it, therefore Santa was here.
My parents taught me to believe, and so I did. So can anyone. About anything. Beliefs answer questions, and questions have answers. I don’t claim to have many of them, but I’m a firm believer that answers exist, and that they can be explained. For all the issues that New Agers claims to have solution for, it takes more faith than reason to apply them. I just want to know why the believers get so frustrated when I ask them about it.
