Matthew takes a break from the news to expand on the possible origins of conspirituality—as being related to intergenerational trauma.What is conspirituality, if not the mobilization of forced, fragile, and ultimately empty spiritual aspirations, made to temper hypervigilance? It's also just a relief and a pleasure to spend time away from the feeds, and immersed in this brilliant film.Show NotesDr. Nerurkar on the glorification of trauma
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Thank you.
Hello Conspirituality listeners.
In the three short weeks since I published my last installment in our bonus category here about Canadian bypassing, war has broken out in Europe, trans children have been targeted for harassment and family separation in the state of Texas, and we've already seen some yoga and wellness QAnon boosters begin to incorporate these news streams into their demented worldview.
Now, if you're like me and you feel that once again you have come to a saturation point in terms of hopeless news, I hope the subject today is a little bit lighter, a little bit more promising, but also parallel to the beat we cover here on the podcast, but an angle that engages with it in such a way that gives a little bit of breathing room.
I'll start with a little bit of a review.
The definitions of conspirituality that we've run through over the past two years have definitely evolved, as one would expect in the accelerated milieu of the pandemic and online chaos.
The one we started with, however, I find to be perennially useful.
It comes from Charlotte Ward and David Voas, from their paper in 2011.
They write, 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.
Conspirituality is a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled 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 and the second rooted in the New Age.
So the first is that a secret group covertly controls or is trying to control the political and social order and, secondly, 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.
Okay, so then, we've added to this already very rich description in a number of ways.
We've added the concept of disaster spirituality, in which a very real public health crisis, or a fictional moral panic like QAnon, or critical race theory in some quarters, becomes the basis for an evangelical call to spiritual renewal.
So, you might be familiar with the construction of this phrase from Naomi Klein's work, to which we're very indebted, and she shows how the captains of disaster capitalism seize distressed assets for privatization after a natural disaster or a war.
But in Disaster Spirituality, the charismatics of the movement seize attention and emotional commitment from their followers, and then they funnel that attention into monetized networks that sell spiritual and wellness products that are focused on individual well-being as opposed to the common good.
And this paradoxically leaves the consumer even more isolated and unprepared for social stress.
We've also done a lot of work to place the political economy of conspirituality within the context of the broader wellness industry under the microscope.
We've looked at the intersections between cultic dynamics and online recruitment for conspiracy theory groups, and then also the extremist versions of those groups, like QAnon.
And we've drilled down on the techniques of charismatic persuasion that seem to unify the leadership protocols of these groups.
Now, more recently, I, in particular, amongst the three of us, have pushed at the boundaries of these definitions by beginning to look at how the structures of conspirituality play out in perhaps more unlikely places, and this has led to some vigorous debate.
So, for instance, I pissed some people off with the argument that I made about Sam Harris's work In which I said that if you stoke moral panics about Islam and wokeism, which I don't think is controversial to say about Harris, but then claim that meditation will fix those political views and imply that that will set your soul at ease, you're in conspirituality territory, as far as I can tell.
I've also pissed some people off, and might piss a few more off right now, again by looking at how the structure of Marianne Williamson's content really isn't all that different, especially epistemologically, from the structure of the content we see from people like Christiane Northrup, or even flat-out QAnon promoters.
So my argument there, which I'll flesh out in a future main episode, is that when you have been the Dwayne of the depoliticized New Age world for 30 years and made your name on the back of a book you still teach from, so that would be A Course in Miracles, and that book says the world is an insane illusion,
Where you can transform your consciousness by accepting the light of God as the only reality, and I'm not exaggerating, that's what this book says, you don't suddenly get political credibility.
And then when Russia invades Ukraine and you tweet about, quote, dark psychic forces, unquote, you really sound like you're doing a conspirituality on Telegram.
So, Marianne Williamson trying to convince people that she has credibility, connections, political stamina, it's a real sleight of hand that's worthy of a true charismatic.
And she may have progressive views that I appreciate, but in my opinion, she could put her money where her mouth is.
If she just stood in the background and raised money for actual activists with network experience and a grounded view of reality.
I just think that anything short of that is egotistical spoiling in the attention economy.
So that's a little bit of a review.
Today I want to sidestep all of that wonkery to look at something just a little bit simpler and beautiful and redemptive, I believe, that really took me by surprise last week.
And that is Disney's new movie Encanto.
I guess it's not that new.
Maybe I'm just coming to it.
I think it's been out for a year.
Now from week to week, there's a lot of pressure involved in researching and producing the content here, and that means that in the absence of, you know, robust editorial support that larger platforms have where somebody would step in and say, is this really on point?
So it's really tempting to just take anything that one encounters and turn it into grist for the mill, you know, to devote every waking hour to the subject matter and then to use its lens like a hammer hunting out nails.
So I have I sat with myself to ask whether or not that's what I'm doing with this, or whether I just simply needed a break, or whether there is an advantage to turning over the conspirituality prism yet once again and shining yet another light through it.
So I'll let you be the judge of that.
I think it works, but you can let me know in the comments.
I think we've always been aware that there's really good value in seeking to humanize the drives behind conspirituality.
To go beyond the salacious details and the morbid fantasies and the obvious grifts and to honestly look at what the real needs are that are being addressed by this intersection of spiritual aspiration and political cynicism.
So in watching Encanto, which is about intergenerational trauma and the potential for its resolution, I think I'm coming to an understanding of another humanizing lens.
