A Critique of New Age Website Gaia.com
The Website Gaia.com says in its introduction:
SEEKING TRUTH Explore “Who are we?” and “Why are we here?” with specialists in metaphysics, ancient wisdom, the unexplained and more only on Gaia. Explore perspectives you won't find in the mainstream on some of life's biggest mysteries. Dare to Challenge the Status Quo Explore Seeking Truth Fact is that Gaia.com is a New Age propaganda site, or rather a propaganda site for The Matrix Conspiracy as such. In that it is filled with Pseudo-scholarship. Pseudo-scholarship is a work (e.g., publication, lecture) or body of work that is presented as, but is not, the product of rigorous and objective study or research; the act of producing such work; or the pretended learning upon which it is based. It is clear that New Age and its obsession with science, and lack of scientific knowledge or education, is filled with pseudo-scholarship. Examples of pseudo-scholarship include: Pseudoarchaeology Pseudohistory Pseudolinguistics Pseudomathematics Pseudophilosophy Pseudoscience Gaia.com is an attempt to create an alternative history. Alternative history or alternate history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. Since the 1950s this type of fiction has to a large extent merged with science fictional tropes involving cross-time travel between alternate histories or psychic awareness of the existence of “our” universe by the people in another; or ordinary voyaging uptime (into the past) or downtime (into the future) that results in history splitting into two or more time-lines. It is also creating a so-called secret history. A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real (or known) history, which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars. Originally, secret histories were designed as non-fictional, revealing or claiming to reveal the truth behind the “spin”. Today we see how secret history sometimes is used in a long-running science fiction or fantasy universe to preserve continuity with the present by reconciling paranormal, anachronistic, or otherwise notable but unrecorded events with what actually happened in known history; for instance in the fictional time travel theories. For example, the New Age product The WingMakers story (see my article Time Travel and the Fascism of the WingMakers Project) combines this with the urban legend and alternate history from the Ong´s Hat myth. Though the WingMakers website tries to avoid critique by saying it is a modern mythology (where urban legends are considered as a modern folklore) it also keeps on, precisely as in urban legends, to insinuate that the story is true. It is therefore a piece of pseudohistory. Pseudohistory is purported history such as Afrocentrism, creationism, holocaust revisionism and the catastrophism of Immanuel Velikovsky (see Robert J. Schadewald). Pseudohistory should be distinguished from the ancient texts it is based on. The sagas, legends, myths and histories, which have been passed on orally or in written documents by ancient peoples are sometimes called pseudohistory. Some of it is pseudohistory, some of it is flawed history and some of isn´ t history at all. Pseudohistory should also be distinguished from historical fiction and fantasy. Anyone who cites a work of historical fiction as if it were a historical text is a practising pseudohistorian. There are also writers of historical fiction who intentionally falsify and invent ancient history. A technique to do this is to claim to find an ancient document and publishing it in order to express one´ s own ideas. An example is The Celestine Prophecy. A variation on this theme is to claim that one is channeling a book from some ancient being, e.g, The Urantia Book, Bringers of the Dawn, and A Course in Miracles (see my article Paranormal Phenomena Seen In Connection with Channeling). Gaia.com is permeated with references to vibrations and energy, advices to avoid the negative (you can tell good people by their eyes), stop doubting, follow your intuitions and premonitions, flow with coincidences, believe in the purposiveness of everything, join thousands of others on the quest, turn into your feelings and evolve to a higher plane. Follow your intuitions and dreams as you go through your spiritual evolution. Fact or fiction, it doesn´t matter. Truth is what you make it. Life´s too short and too complicated to deal with reality. Make your own reality. This New Age subjectivism and relativism encourage people to believe that reality is whatever you want it to be. The line between fact and fiction gets blurry and obscured. Subjectivism shuts down people´s critical faculties, making them suggestible for any Ideology. It involves making people quit thinking critically in order to open them up to thinking Magical about that Subjective validation and Communal reinforcement lead to bliss. Hypnosis is in New Age directly used as a means for inducing in people certain worldviews, or, actually, one ideology: The Matrix Conspiracy (also see my article Hypnosis, hypnotherapy and the art of self-deception). Gaia.com writes: YOU’RE HERE FOR A REASON Your intuition tells you there’s more to our story, something you’re not finding in your current paradigm. You can feel it in your bones. We are all connected, we’re part of something greater, and there is something more meaningful in this life that’s not present in our daily routines. Your intuition is right. Gaia is here with some new ideas and the world’s largest resource of conscious media to – well –empower the evolution of consciousness. That’s a rather massive vision, but truthfully, it’s why we do what we do at Gaia. We want to create a new reality, one of mindful people living in harmony with our environment and each other. And with you, we can do it. Thank you for being here. We promise to light the fire if you will carry the torch. So, Gaia.com is prophesying a New World Order (New Age) to emerge: the world of Alernative History, Alternative Physics, Alternative Medicine and, ultimately, Alternative Reality. How, given the recent and sorry story of ideologically motivated conceptions of knowledge – Lysenkoism in Stalin´s Soviet Union, for example, or Nazi critiques of “Jewish science” – could it again have become acceptable to behave in this way? In my article The Sokal Hoax you can read more about this development. The Fake News exposing website Snopes.com has this to say about one of Gaia.com´s articles on alien mummies: http://www.snopes.com/alien-mummy-peru/ Finally, Gaia.com (formerly known as Gaiam TV) web site has a long history of providing a platform for false and spurious pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, and paranormal claims. The company charges $95.40 per year for unlimited access to videos about remote viewing, contact with angels, alien abduction, crop circles, and the like. Jay Weidner is the Senior Director of Production for gaia.com (see the Matrix Dictionary for the entry on Jay Weidner). Related articles: Six Common Traits of New Age that Distorts Spirituality The Pseudoscience of New Age and Reductionism The Pseudoscience of Reductionism and the Problem of Mind The Sokal Hoax Robert J. Schadewald Predator Open Access Publishing Diploma Mills Fake News Related: The Matrix Dictionary |
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