Sökare i det 21:a århundradet

Är det Covid-19 som höjt temperaturen och till sist fått allt att brista, för folk man trodde man kände? Och som sänkt tröskeln för allt möjligt konspiratoriskt man är beredd att acceptera som sant eller åtminstone “intressant”…

Jules Evans om “conspirituality”:

There are two mood one finds in the history of spirituality, going back to Gnosticism and running through Romanticism. On the one hand, there is the euphoric mood — the universe is conspiring in your favour, you can fulfil your divine potential, you can change the world simply by changing your thoughts. If enough people raise their consciousness, a new age of love will dawn on the planet. This is Oprah’s inspiring gospel.

But then the new age of love doesn’t happen, adversity strikes, the economy tanks, shit goes wrong. And the dreamers start to ask, why hasn’t the age of love dawned? What or who is blocking us? That’s when paranoid conspiracies can arise.

As Isaiah Berlin puts it in his lectures on romanticism:

“There is another, more pessimistic, version [of Romanticism]… Although we individuals seek to liberate ourselves, yet the universe is not to be tamed in this easy fashion. There is something behind, something in the dark depths of the unconscious, or of history, there is something not seized by us which frustrates our dearest wishes…

This paranoia [can] take the form of looking for all kinds of conspiracies in history… perhaps history is formed by forces over which we have no control. Someone is at the back of it all: perhaps the Jesuits, perhaps the Jews, perhaps the Freemasons… We the enlightened, we the virtuous, we the wise and the kind seek to do this or that, but somehow all our efforts end in nothing, and therefore there must be some fearful hostile fore lying in wait for us.”

Why didn’t the age of love dawn? Because of Them. Why did my business fail? Because of Them. This is the paranoid version of the New Age dream. This is how spirituality curdles into conspirituality…

Får lust skriva nåt mer om detta “conspirituality”… För mig är det mest ett namn som stämmer in på egna iakttagelser o känslor. Inte så mycket studier. Men det är verkligen ett begrepp som verkar “trenda” just nu. Vilket friskhetstecken! Poddar, bloggar, böcker… I texten ovan, av Jules Evans (som kom som mejl, o gick därför inte att länka till) tar han bl a upp vad som verkar vara begreppets födelse.

Det var en artikel i Journal of Contemporary Religion som kom för tio år sen: “The Emergence of Conspirituality” (2011), av Charlotte Ward & David Voas.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846?scroll=top&needAccess=true

“The female-dominated New Age (with its positive focus on self) and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory (with its negative focus on global politics) may seem antithetical. There is a synthesis of the two, however, that we call ‘conspirituality’. We define, describe, and analyse this hybrid system of belief; it has been noticed before without receiving much scholarly attention. Conspirituality is a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.”

För, det är nåt som hänt… Det här med cirklar i sädesfält, UFOs (som ev mörkats av regeringar), mm… sånt har ju funnits med “i nyandliga kretsar” länge. Men efter 9/11?, Trump? och nu Covid-19?, har det blivit så aggressivt, personbundet… (Och, ja, jag är medveten om jag själv inte är så trevlig när jag kommer in på detta ämne)…

Det finns t ex de som hävdar att Elvis bara fejkade sin död och lever vidare, fortfarande går o påtar i rabatterna på Graceland. Det har jag inte så mycket problem med. Jag unnar honom all lycka & sänder tacksamma tankar varje gång jag hör (om) honom 🙂 Jag är mer bekymrad över hela den här QAnon-David Icke & Co-judekonspirations-9/11-Trump-kulten o alla dess tentakler. För mig verkar det som ett enda utprojicerat hallucinatoriskt mumbojumbo, pardon my French.