The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
What I find sad is that the New Age movement is primarily a commercial undertaking. But it is answering to a human need.
I do feel that the trend is away from ageism and toward a recognition that older people have a unique voice.
Now that I've experienced ageism, I don't regard it as a bad thing. It's been a transition to something more exciting and maybe edgier.
Everything is so unstable in these times of progress at any cost, and social customs and methods of life alter so rapidly, that a few years now suffice to change completely the face of usages which, at their inception, bade fair to outlive the age - so enthusiastically were they welcomed by the public.
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
If readers, young and old, would take even a moment to reflect on our rapidly shifting culture and ideology, I would be happy. Many leaders of the older generation dismiss emerging culture. Those leaders are at risk of becoming a feeble voice-piece without followers. Most of the younger generation is going deaf to the truth.
I think the New Aesthetic is a series of observations. I think most of the trouble people have had with it comes from a misunderstanding of it as a movement.
Is New Ageism inherently fascist? Of course not, though I'm happy to pronounce its babble about chakras and cosmic energy errant quackery.
The New Age, I think, is a term that is well laid to rest.
The present age has seen a great slump in humanist values.