Critical thinking on new age beliefs required please

[seeker36]

Hello,
I am researching a book i would like to write about spirituality and idealism in general. I would very much appreaciate it if philosophy now message board users could offer me their thoughts and constructive criticisms on the new age beliefs that thoughts create reality, morality is a relative phenomenon and collective consciousness can create a kinder more humane world. Rational criticism only please,no blanket “it’s stupid,they’re stupid” or simple insults will be helpful to me.

Thank you for you time and energy,
Chris.

[chaz wyman]

Hello,
I am researching a book i would like to write about spirituality and idealism in general. I would very much appreaciate it if philosophy now message board users could offer me their thoughts and constructive criticisms on the new age beliefs that thoughts create reality, morality is a relative phenomenon and collective consciousness can create a kinder more humane world. Rational criticism only please,no blanket “it’s stupid,they’re stupid” or simple insults will be helpful to me.

Thank you for you time and energy,
Chris.

Your first stumbling block is the concept of 'idealism', which has been bastardised by common usage. The philosophical concept is very different from it association with 'new age' thinking (if there is such a thing).

Spirituality is not in any sense 'new', what exactly do you want to know?

[seeker36]

Hello Chaz,

Sorry, I have not been clear about what i mean specifically. I can see that in hindsight,my post could comes across as some form of spam. I want to look at the weak version of the idea that "thoughts create reality". The notion that beliefs create human behaviours and that becoming aware of “the meaning of our meanings” through meditative practices or psychotherapy enables people to change their beliefs/behaviours in ways that embody compassion and generally pro social behaviours. Additionally, I’ve noticed a tendancy for critics of new age beliefs to “bash” new agers through accusing them of being amoral or ignoring “the reality of evil.” It is in this context that i wanted to discuss moral relativity. I hope that’s clearer.

I certainly agree that the concept of idealism(and realism too i think) has come to mean a million different things to a million different people and that this is not the same as philosophical idealism. Your feedback is greatly appreciated,
Chris.

[Bernard]

I'm unashamedly supportive of new age leanings. Okay, there are some really embarrasing faults within it, beginning with the idiot who decided to market it... whoever that was. But new age is more about using older ideas -pre-capitalist ideas if you like - and using them in ways that are in synch with current needs. It is perhaps naif and an irresponsible use of one's energy to be concerned with potentially inane and superstitious practices from the past, but many feel that our deep past contains more lessons than our recent past. The idea that we make the world with our thoughts is one of the Buddhas more well known sayings. It opens the dhammapada:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/sbe10/sbe1003.htm

The New Age seems to have taken root after the hollow that followed John Lennon's death. The hippy thing was fun and vibrant, and like all pretty flowerings things had to end soon and be replaced by something a little more considered. 'New Aging' was a way of forgetting, but also a way of recovering what was undoubtedly a sixties seed of some value. the term New Age was coined, I believe, because of the astrological belief that a large cycle was ending and a new one beginning: the age of Aquarius. Its a harmless enough idea, even if it has little rational value or practical application for a species tethered with the yoke of increasing over-population.

You may have seen this, quite an insightful doco on modern idealism, and of how it is tethered to the machine age:

http://vimeo.com/27393748

Sorry I couldn't find a better link to that. Episode two was probably the one I find most contextual with your interests:
A summary of it from http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/progr ... ving-Grace

Episode Two: The Use and Abuse of VegetationalConcepts

This is the story of how our modern scientific idea ofnature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually afantasy based on cybernetic ideas that were projectedon to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. Astatic machine theory of order that sees humans, andeverything else on the planet, as components, cogsin a system. But in an age disillusioned with politics,the self-regulating ecosystem has become the modelfor utopian ideas of human "self-organising networks" – dreams of new ways of organising societies withoutleaders, as in the Facebook and Twitter revolutions, andin global visions of connectivity like the Gaia theory.

This powerful idea emerged out of the hippiecommunes in America in the 1960s, and fromcounterculture computer scientists who believed thatglobal webs of computers could liberate the world.At the very moment this was happening, the scienceof ecology discovered that the theory of the self-regulatingecosystem wasn’t true. Instead theyfound that nature was really dynamic and constantlychanging in unpredictable ways. But the dream ofthe self-organising network had by now captured ourimaginations.

[seeker36]

Hi Bernard,
I was vaguely aware that the Buddha supported the idea of thought created reality. It's wonderful to see a direct quotation of that so thanks. I've just watched the first episode of machines and i can see how the ideas of wholism and certain randian notions can be seen as aspects of new age thought. I'm not sure i see the aquarious myth is all that useful taken too literally, but as a mythological device to inspire social change it might possibly be helpful. Thanks very much for the feedback and links,
Chris.

[chaz wyman]

There are two things going on here.
1) The idea that what we understand about reality can only be known by our impression and our thoughts. As such this is a respectable and arguable position common to Hume and Kant.
2) The other is the thought that, because of this our conception of reality is nothing more than an illusion; that consciousness is somehow primary, and thus reality is nothing more than our imagination. A less respectable idea which we can attribute to Berkeley.

My view is that position 2 is a misunderstanding of the idealist position 1. That individuals have taken 1 to mean 2 and have carried it to its ridiculous and illogical conclusion.

[Bernard]

I don't quite get your sentence in 2 Chaz.

To affirm for yourself that something is reality and that a whole dam world of people are able to be consensual about that reality, the one puts oneself in a very precarious position to decide for oneself that that reality is an illusion, especially when there is not other reality available to you beyond dreams.

I like your Nietzsche. He looks a like he has been looking after his health a bit more than usual.

[chaz wyman]

I don't quite get your sentence in 2 Chaz.

To affirm for yourself that something is reality and that a whole dam world of people are able to be consensual about that reality, the one puts oneself in a very precarious position to decide for oneself that that reality is an illusion, especially when there is not other reality available to you beyond dreams.

I like your Nietzsche. He looks a like he has been looking after his health a bit more than usual.

Sorry it was a bit garbled. I've edited it.
"2) The other is the thought that, because of this, our conception of reality is nothing more than an illusion; that consciousness is somehow primary, and thus reality is nothing more than our imagination. A less respectable idea which we can attribute to Berkeley." I'm not even sure that Berkeley held this to be true but may have been using it as a means for argumentation.


Thanks for the compliment about my sculpture.