It was pretty easy to read the original hippies. They’d say they were all about the exploration of the mind and a universal brotherhood of peace, but ‘free love’ was just a way to get laid more often, and the ‘psychedelic experience’ an excuse to get ripped to the scalp on a buffet of heavy narcotics. Essentially, the whole movement was a large-scale, drug-fuelled orgy in a headband.
Nothing wrong with that.
No, it was the revival of hippy thinking, twenty odd years later, that brought all the trouble. Because, as with most revivals, it completely missed the point. Out went the suede fringe jackets and giant bongs, in came crystal energy and orbs. Where once we had Jimi Hendrix and Mama Cass, now we had Deepak Chopra and Jomanda. Welcome to the ‘New Age’.
I enjoy a touch of the esoteric as much as the next man – indeed, the lure of the exotic has led me into a host of adventures and, occasionally, trouble. But the ‘New Age’ holds no temptation – mostly because it is incredibly silly and therefore monumentally dull.
A woman I knew in the nineties was very much into this stuff. I liked her, which is why I was persuaded to attend some ‘New Age’ events. I figured the only way to approach these things, was with an open mind. Hours of unbridled scepticism would have been too exhausting. I tried, but the entire culture was clearly an exercise in the exploitation of the naive.
For starters, everything was fantastically expensive. A couple of minutes having your ‘runes’ read was twenty quid; half an hour lying on a bench, with lumps of quartz on your back, cost the best part of fifty pounds. My friend ‘treated’ me to a photograph of my ‘aura’. The apparatus was quite obviously fitted with a light diffusing lens, producing the requisite, wobbly blur. These people were purporting to offer a spiritual alternative, but were actually making investment bankers look like ascetic hermits.
Then there’s the music. Good grief. There’s plenty to enjoy in the ambient field, as any Brian Eno fan will confirm, but that’s not the same thing at all. ‘New Age’ music is nothing if not plentiful. On websites, at fashionable markets, across pop festivals and certain exhibitions, it’s impossible to miss the mountains of CDs with names like ‘Mantras In Harmony’, ‘Into The Light’ and ‘The Spirit Of Wesak’. They’re all the same. They’re tinkly, wooshy, flippity-floppity, tuneless and empty. All the same and in endless supply.
‘New Age’ philosophy is not only flimsy, it’s quite capable of being insulting too. If I were a native American, keeping bar in a Cherokee casino, I’d be more than a little perturbed to see rich, white businessmen, peddling a horrible mash-up of my traditions, dolphins and fortune-telling. Devout Buddhists would be forgiven a similar annoyance. As an atheist, I find many aspects of the world’s major religions perplexing, but at least they are rooted in a general, collective belief. ‘New Age’ adherents are putting their faith in an amorphous conglomeration of anything that takes their fancy, leaving them vulnerable to the money chasers who attach themselves to the ‘movement’. This relationship is every bit as exploitative and unhealthy as those TV appeals from imploring, red-faced evangelicals. Some folk are so busy believing, they’ve stopped thinking.
The ‘New Age’ may well have risen and evaporated in a puff of its own ectoplasm, had it not been for the eagerness of celebrities to embrace its various strands. From Madonna’s ludicrous Kabbalah fixation (again, a rather insulting take on Judaism), to Gwyneth Paltrow’s alternative lifestyle site, every unproven and whimsical notion now has a famous face to endorse its dubious claims. Of course, Homeopathy has hit the mother lode – it has Prince Charles to promote its evidence-free treatments. Rather sadly, many people are easily convinced by a fool with a public profile, and so this tumbling ball of half-thought and make-believe perpetuates. At one extreme it’s merely infantile; at the other, people are encouraged to entrust their health to charlatans proposing a ‘no food’ diet, or coloured spotlights as a cure for cancer.
It’s just possible I’m missing something here. Maybe certain stones do have a sprite living within them (available for sixty US dollars). Perhaps a burning cone of waxed paper shoved in my ear, will improve my hearing and balance. I’ll never know. Because I prefer to place my belief in the proven, the visible and the tangible. If that makes me a grumpy, aging cynic, then so be it. Bring on the ‘Old Age’.
Nothing wrong with that.
No, it was the revival of hippy thinking, twenty odd years later, that brought all the trouble. Because, as with most revivals, it completely missed the point. Out went the suede fringe jackets and giant bongs, in came crystal energy and orbs. Where once we had Jimi Hendrix and Mama Cass, now we had Deepak Chopra and Jomanda. Welcome to the ‘New Age’.
I enjoy a touch of the esoteric as much as the next man – indeed, the lure of the exotic has led me into a host of adventures and, occasionally, trouble. But the ‘New Age’ holds no temptation – mostly because it is incredibly silly and therefore monumentally dull.
A woman I knew in the nineties was very much into this stuff. I liked her, which is why I was persuaded to attend some ‘New Age’ events. I figured the only way to approach these things, was with an open mind. Hours of unbridled scepticism would have been too exhausting. I tried, but the entire culture was clearly an exercise in the exploitation of the naive.
For starters, everything was fantastically expensive. A couple of minutes having your ‘runes’ read was twenty quid; half an hour lying on a bench, with lumps of quartz on your back, cost the best part of fifty pounds. My friend ‘treated’ me to a photograph of my ‘aura’. The apparatus was quite obviously fitted with a light diffusing lens, producing the requisite, wobbly blur. These people were purporting to offer a spiritual alternative, but were actually making investment bankers look like ascetic hermits.
Then there’s the music. Good grief. There’s plenty to enjoy in the ambient field, as any Brian Eno fan will confirm, but that’s not the same thing at all. ‘New Age’ music is nothing if not plentiful. On websites, at fashionable markets, across pop festivals and certain exhibitions, it’s impossible to miss the mountains of CDs with names like ‘Mantras In Harmony’, ‘Into The Light’ and ‘The Spirit Of Wesak’. They’re all the same. They’re tinkly, wooshy, flippity-floppity, tuneless and empty. All the same and in endless supply.
‘New Age’ philosophy is not only flimsy, it’s quite capable of being insulting too. If I were a native American, keeping bar in a Cherokee casino, I’d be more than a little perturbed to see rich, white businessmen, peddling a horrible mash-up of my traditions, dolphins and fortune-telling. Devout Buddhists would be forgiven a similar annoyance. As an atheist, I find many aspects of the world’s major religions perplexing, but at least they are rooted in a general, collective belief. ‘New Age’ adherents are putting their faith in an amorphous conglomeration of anything that takes their fancy, leaving them vulnerable to the money chasers who attach themselves to the ‘movement’. This relationship is every bit as exploitative and unhealthy as those TV appeals from imploring, red-faced evangelicals. Some folk are so busy believing, they’ve stopped thinking.
The ‘New Age’ may well have risen and evaporated in a puff of its own ectoplasm, had it not been for the eagerness of celebrities to embrace its various strands. From Madonna’s ludicrous Kabbalah fixation (again, a rather insulting take on Judaism), to Gwyneth Paltrow’s alternative lifestyle site, every unproven and whimsical notion now has a famous face to endorse its dubious claims. Of course, Homeopathy has hit the mother lode – it has Prince Charles to promote its evidence-free treatments. Rather sadly, many people are easily convinced by a fool with a public profile, and so this tumbling ball of half-thought and make-believe perpetuates. At one extreme it’s merely infantile; at the other, people are encouraged to entrust their health to charlatans proposing a ‘no food’ diet, or coloured spotlights as a cure for cancer.
It’s just possible I’m missing something here. Maybe certain stones do have a sprite living within them (available for sixty US dollars). Perhaps a burning cone of waxed paper shoved in my ear, will improve my hearing and balance. I’ll never know. Because I prefer to place my belief in the proven, the visible and the tangible. If that makes me a grumpy, aging cynic, then so be it. Bring on the ‘Old Age’.
