[MD] New Age++

[ian glendinning]

Gav, Ant and Mike, et al,

This is interesting territory. I made the link between "New Age" and
Mike's "New Objectivity" in the EDGE thread.

As Ant points out the issue here (with which Gav is totally
comfortable, ironically at least) is the pejorative rhetorical use of
"New Age", forever consigning its advocates to being seen as weird
hippie types, way off the socio-politico-intellectual (and academic)
mainstream.

Conscious dreaming (and similar "myths and legends") reflect the
endurance of the concepts, and suggest the grain of truth somewhere,
even if it's largely a psychological truth. Whilst I'm sympathetic, eg
I called myself New-Age+++, I still believe 99% of what is written
about new-agey ideas is 99% bullshit - the powers of pyramids,
chrystals, astrology, etc. What I do not discount though, is the
reality of some aspect of consciousness beyond the single human brain.
(My favourite Nobel-prize winner, Brian Josephson, about whom I've
blogged many times, similarly defends against those "scientists" who
100% consign the 99% bullshit to the scientific trashcan, as a reflex
move prior to any kind of analysis.)

Talking of conscious dreaming, recall that the closing lines of my MoQ
Conference paper were a quote from T E Lawrence "All men dream: but
not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their
minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of
the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open
eyes, to make it possible."

My interest is, of course, to rescue the grains of non-GOF-objective
truth (New-Age+++) from the new-age trash-can and hippie-communes, and
rehabilitate it into the new-objective mainstream.

Finally, by coincidence, my wife Sylvia, bought me everything
available from Bill Hicks on CD for Christmas. I didn't recall
dropping any hints - honest :-)

Ian