Carl-Richard

"Be inclusive. If you're not, we'll exclude you."

With that said, I'm not trying to undermine the dark side of the New Age. I've been inside that world myself. Totalitarianism married with relativism is a two-headed beast.

I understand the point, but I think this observation is less about New Age and more about ideology in general. All ideologies do this: 1. they are corrupted by power hungry egos, and 2. they touch people at the deepest levels of their existence. Western ideologies (modernism) are more similar to each other than the New Age (which stems more from the East). It's simply a matter of contrast. In other words, New Age is not necessarily more epistemologically infectious than other ideologies, but rather it sticks out in comparison to the relative homogeneity of the Western worldview. We can instead reformulate the question and say that the Western worldview contains something which we would like to conserve (which is what metamodernism is about) and that a New Age religious uprising could endanger that project. I think this is the real drive behind Hanzi wanting to compare New Age to things like communism and fascism, because it highlights what is under threat, namely modernist values (democracy, progress, rationality).

The teachings in the Vedas were also orally passed down.

New Age religion has the same problems as old religion, but spirituality has always been an individualistic pursuit. It's your job to get it, not to throw some book in someone else's face.

Meditation changes your thinking in a positive direction.

@Bernardo Carleial Good video

? Happy holidays!

@Natasha "They're minerals, Marie!"

It has been said once already, but it bears repeating: you severely misunderstand the point of spirituality if you use it to justify evil actions.

Humans who want to live with other humans should probably learn to consider the preferences of other humans. It's not an absolute "should", it's a relative "if-should."

You're getting hung up on word games. Spirituality has nothing to do about harming other people. "Evil and good are not absolutes" refers to the fact that different moral frameworks are made by different people with different preferences. This doesn't mean that we're generally clueless about how to treat each other, but it's nevertheless not so easy to argue that any one of these moral frameworks are somehow absolute or universal.

Evil and good are usually not the same. Most people define them differently based on personal preferences. Ah, so you're asking me about my personal preferences. Nothing new there

Thanks! Sort of Thank you! If you're staying in psychology, you'll most likely run into some systems thinking sooner or later (some sub-fields are more explicit about it than others). So my advice is to stay curious and wait for the right curriculum It's very helpful in itself to just be aware of the fact that systems thinking is a thing when you come across it in some of your books, because that makes the reading so much more interesting. Other than that, I suggest checking out "The Systems View of Life" by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi. It's a very comprehensive summary of everything about systems thinking: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Systems-View-Life-Unifying-Vision/dp/1316616436

The three main facets might be simple to grasp intuitively, but to really embody them is far from simple. The mature systems view is without a doubt highly academic. This post was simply an overview. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Systems-View-Life-Unifying-Vision/dp/1316616436 Thank you!

JP presents concepts from Gestalt psychology and cognitive psychology that deal with perceptual structures, which relates to aspects of construct awareness.

If you act in accordance to your belief, then that is kinda pushing it less in your favor, making it more unknown, higher risk.

And this is a judgement based on priors, similar to how "heavy metals are toxic" is a prior to the judgement of whether you should consume them or not. You argument is about degrees. What is your standard for whether something toxic or not? Does it have to be measureable? Should you act on it?

Ok, but do you act according to that belief? Then your belief is that taking priors into consideration and erring on the side of caution is not smart.

The beliefs are not equivalent, because we know heavy metals are toxic. If we didn't know anything about the toxicity, then the beliefs would be more equivalent, but even then, you would still err on the side of caution, because the unknown carries risk. This is why rationality is not wisdom.

That is mental.

Oh my bad. I've seen people actually do that here from a sort of quasi-spiritual perspective ("death is not a bad thing") as an argument against vaccinations, so I was interpreting it as that.

...yeah, when you start questioning people's fear of death, it does kinda remove the seriousness of your comment. If you don't really mean it, then don't say it.

"Why are you so irrationally afraid of death?"