What is "new agey"?

How do we know why you find it annoying? We’re not you.

You are close-minded?

open yourself to new experiences… u’ll understand anything after that

I think of “new-agey” as superficially appropriating bits and pieces of various traditions and making a goulash that doesn’t taste so good to me. Sure, there’s some good ideas in there, but on the whole the crystal/angel/chakra/incense thing leaves me cold.

Wishing for something doesn’t make it happen.

@Judy: Let’s see. You find nature, organic foods and yoga annoying. Can one deduce that you love foods that have been sprayed, industrial sites and migraines, lower back and neck pain, irritable bowel disease, and acid reflux?

Nature is amazing, organic foods are the way to go, and yoga kicks my ass everytime.

“New Age” still doesn’t work for me. :)

@Pup: I agree. Her question did not jibe with her tags. I am not in favor of sitting around Roswell waiting for “them” to arrive but to pass up freshly picked unsprayed berries? Whoa.

Yeah, the tags don’t really correlate, do they? Hmmm.

ok, fair, my tags for “new agey” are lazy.

in my defense, i was the one who asked what new agey was, because i know it bothers me and i still can’t articulate what it means.

i DO think organic has a blind following, yoga is not the only answer, and using the fact that nature is awesome to dump on the concept of civilization is silly.
and raw food is just laughably over priced.

i do dig incense though.

i think pupntaco had the most satisfyng response—> wishing for something doesn’t make it happen.

It is really a meaningless label. Look at what you applied it to with your tags.

Who can even agree on what it is? Instead of generalizing and lumping a whole bunch of things together, what about evaluating each on its own merits and using some rigor in your thinking?

I disagree totally with you about organic food eaters. I think their concerns about pesticide use are very legitimate.

I don’t know of anyone who ever said “yoga is the only answer.” It is a form of physical meditation that has scientifically proven benefits for health, stress reduction, etc. It is a tradition that goes back thousands of years.

Glad you like incense. Personally, I worry about the particulate matter given off by the indoor burning. Study suggests it is dangerous.

As to raw food is laughably overpriced, I don’t even think that makes sense. Do you mean vegetables and fruits at the store? That is raw food.

I agree with PupnTaco that it’s the “cherry picking” aspect of New Age lifestyles that makes them hard to take seriously. They pluck the sexy and mysterious trappings out of several very serious and ancient traditions, but leave behind the context that gives them meaning.

Any valid spiritual tradition will force us to change our minds. That change is for our own good, but like most things that are “for our own good”, we encounter a great deal of internal resistance to that change. I’m deeply skeptical of anything that sells itself as a spiritual path that doesn’t require a stiff dose of discipline, perseverance, and sacrifice. The effective paths will be the ones that make you eat your broccoli before you get your dessert. New Age seems more about going straight for the cherry on top.

I keep thinking about the saying “If the water is ten feet underground, digging ten one-foot wells won’t quench your thirst”.

@Harp and PnT I don’t have a problem with your arguments regarding the validity of cherry picking from ancient tradition and cobbling something together. I usually feel the same way.

But what are we talking about here? What “new age” tradition, belief, lifestyle, practice are we discussing, dissecting or critiquing? I have no idea from this question.

Certainly not the definition that judyprays provided. I am reluctant to even provide any support for what is clearly blind prejudice on her part regarding things she has labeled as “new agey.”

It does not make any sense to me to criticize something that has not even been defined.

@Marina
Fair enough. This is the kind of hodgepodge I think of when I hear “New Age”. Yoga in itself is not New Age. Neither is organic food, nor incense.

@Harp Gack! I agree. I guess I am just grousing about the tendency to label everything, group everything, polarize everything, and then badmouth it all with generalizations. I think I’ll go eat a hot dog and shut up.

First of all, no person, who has truly embraced the ‘new age’ concepts will call him or herself ‘new agey’. The term has an air of codescention and un-new ageness about it.
A ‘new agey’ person would call himself ‘spiritual’, ‘evolved’ and such.
So, 1. there is a whole layer of people and ideas gravitating towards the spiritual and irrational in the world of ideas and towards earthy, natural, simple in the world of things.
2. You might be annoyed by a certain self-righteousness displayed by a lot of ‘spiritual’ people. They do tend to go around telling people how to be a lot.

@nine Nicely done and without even a tilde!