NewAge++

Few people self-identify as New Age. The category is relegated to crystal gazers and the tinfoil-hat crowd, which can be safely despised for their uncritical credulity by the more sophisticated, who swing for the higher branches -- like "quantum" manipulation of their own DNA, and other "spiritual" sports of nature. We need a more broadly inclusive category than the aging "New Age." Whatever it is, the related but hardly identical phenomenon I'm calling NewAge++ (with a tip o' the hat to software nomenclature) is proving its appeal (and market muscle) by proliferating like kudzu across bookstore shelf space: Self-Help, Relationships, Recovery, Psychology, Nature, Science, Philosophy -- in which last section is shelved this latest gem from Joseph Chilton Pearce, perhaps best known for smoking The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit "...examines the current biological understanding of our neural organization to address how we can transcend our current evolutionary capacities and limitations." Transcend our evolutionary limitations, uh huh. Maybe we can grow ornithopter beanies! Sure cut down on the smog in LA. And while we're talking cars, what the hell, let's also talk about race and class. BMW Feng Shui is just not that big in the hood yet. It's still more of a Santeria/Voodoo thing with white Cadillac Escalades. But whether it involves money or the immaterial, NewAge++ is all about the power of spiritual bling. Fungible muy mojo gris-gris, babycakes. You in?		for the chapter: NewAge++ The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality: Searching for the Higher Self, 1875-1915 Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America

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