New Age
The New Age movement consists of an eclectic range of beliefs and practices based on Buddhism and Taoism, psychology, psycho-therapy, paganism, clairvoyance, tarot and magic.
The New Age movement is probably best characterized as a 'spiritual supermarket' from which individuals are free to pick and mix those spiritual beliefs and practices which they feel best help them achieve peace of mind or realize their full human potential.
The movement has no central headquarters; therefore, no leadership or membership lists are available. So we have no clear statistics that tell us how many people are followers. Some have sought to determine the number of adherents by other means , such as by finding out how many people hold to one or more of the major beliefs of the New Age.
Incel context[edit | edit source]
The incel community has been very critical in regard to new age philosophy. Many New Agers believe the human individual has divine powers and it is believed that self-help culture originated from this movement. Self-help in of itself is not a bad thing, but when its used to gaslight and subvert it loses its intended purpose.
It is argued that the Redpill community formed within the ashes of the New Age human potential movement. Blackpillers deny most aspects of this philosophy because they believe self-improvement and maximizing potential in isolation is not meaningful enough to lead a fulfilling life.
In addition, New Age is technically a religion but one without rules. It encourages spirituality without guidance and is sort of an open-ended framework that encourages people to create priorities and values in their own minds. It is often viewed as a hypocritical movement because it implies that individuals are responsible for their own happiness, and that happiness can ultimately be achieved by bastardizing different aspects of other religions in order to achieve a higher mental state.
This raises an important question. If New Age teachings are so helpful to mankind, why haven't these teachings helped improve life in the countries where such ideas originated?