On the surface, it looks as if there is a movement toward treating the teachings and religions of other cultures with respect. People certainly seem interested enough in learning about them. But is that the reality?
Look closely at some of the books that are for sale in either the new age section of your bookstore, or even scarier, a new age bookstore, and check out the titles. Predominate will be stuff like Ten Easy Steps To Empowerment, Hidden Secrets Of Mystical Buddhism Revealed, Shamanism, Dreams, And Power, or Bang The Drum Slowly: Power Dances of the Native Americans.
If the titles of the books didn't make you gag, wait until you see the authors of the books and their biographies. There's never been a collection of blonder, more blue-eyed Indians, Hindi, or Amazon-basin Shaman in history. Maybe they've studied or done research and, in spite of their cheesy titles, the books are legitimate works of scholarship. If you call channeling the spirit of a 10,000-year old shaman, or being the reincarnation of a Cree medicine woman, or making it up off the top of your head study or research, then yes they have. But even if they had some sort of access to knowledge, and even if what they were saying had any basis in reality, what right do they have to set themselves up as teachers and purveyors of another's culture?
Less then 200 years ago, European and North American governments were doing whatever was in their power to obliterate these cultures. By some miracle, these people managed to survive our best attempts to destroy their traditions, and in some cases are only now managing to begin their recovery.
How do you think it feels for them to see the faces of their former oppressors looking back at them from the dust jackets of books claiming to sell their practices? Wouldn't it piss them off just a little?
I don't know if any of the titles I listed above exist or not. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but there are many of similar type written by people claiming some sort of knowledge or other. What it boils down to in the end is just another form of imperialism. These people have decided that they, and they alone, are the ones qualified to teach people about cultural concepts belonging to other peoples.
Article comments
1 - Dyrkness
My experience of "New Age" has been that it is only a mish-mosh of ideas,not wholesale exploitation of any culture in particular.It seems to me that they are using the jargon or key words of Enlightenment without the legitimate knowledge of all that entails.
That being said,I don't see why a Westerner could not learn all the "secrets " of another's culture.Or even TRUE Enlightenment. You say "How do you think it feels for them to see the faces of their former oppressors looking back at them from the dust jackets of books claiming to sell their practices? Wouldn't it piss them off just a little?" I'd say no,because truly Enlightened people would welcome the spread of Enlightenment and would not have the feeling of being "pissed" at anyone at all.
But maybe I'm just dreaming.I have never read or heard of anyone complaining that their culture was being exploited when it pertains to being Enlightened except when they claim it as their own ideas and not from the original culture.
2 - Che
Hmm not sure I agree with this. My dad was a Cherokee and my mother a Tennesee hillbilly. What does this mean for me? I'm supposed to keep my spiritual life limited to to either sweatlodges or holy-rolling snake handling? I think not.
I see nothing wrong with seeking wisdom in a variety of cultures. Good gods, anything that steers people in the US AWAY from right-wing evangelical fundamentalism is fine with me. If they find something spiritually valuable in my dad's culture, fine. (as far as my mother's is concerned, I don't see too many people lining up to handle pissed off poisonous serpents). It seems to me gaining familiarity with other cultures and religions engenders acceptance and understanding. We sure as hell could use a little more of that.
And once someone has gained experience and understanding they're supposed to do what? Keep quiet about it so as not to piss you off?
Cultures change, grow, develop, expand, and mix with other cultures. These days more than ever. Something new often arises from these mixtures. When western-african tribal religion met native carribean and american religion and catholicism, Vodun was spawned (a religion which very heavily influences my own spirituality). The fact is, I don't like the philosophies that predominantly govern my society so like many other dissatisfied people, I take it elsewhere.
And as far as the new age is concerned, I'm still trying to figure out what thats about. It does indeed, as Dyrkness pointed out, seem to be a hodge-podge of traditions, beliefs, ideas and practices loosely woven together from a variety of sources, some of those sources old, some new (such as extraterrestrial influences). You seem to be lumping everyone who seeks insight, inspiration and enlightenment in cultures foreign to their own under the umbrella of "New Age". But just because a new age book store sells a book on Buddhism doesn't mean all white people who find value and comfort in the teachings of Buddha are "new agers".
It is one of the unique marvels of the time in which we live that people CAN gain knowledge of other cultures and religion so very easily. This very second I could log into a chat room and have a conversation with a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Christian or a Siberian shaman. And while it is true that there are always going to be people cashing in on any and everything, including spirituality, faith and religion in its myriad and diverse forms, I don't think anyone should have their spiritual life defined and bound by the expectations of their society. Thats one of the big problems with this one. Too many people believing what preacher tells them without bothering to find out for themselves. Too many people blindly accepting the limitations set upon them by the faith of their parents.
3 - Richard Marcus
Che: I have no problems with anyone learning another religion or way of life. That's not cultural eploitation, that'e exploration. But it becomes exploitation when you start using it to make money and you're taking it out of its context.
If you want to be a Hindu or a Muslim more power to you, but you can't just take the little bits you like, cut out the rest and call it being a Muslim or a Hindu and set yourself up as a teacher who knows more than people who have lived it all their lives.
People are free to believe what they want, it's those who proclaim themselves teachers and masters or whatevers of something, without bothering to either acknowledge their debt to the people who developed it, or make themselves out to know more or better than those who were born into it that bother me.
I know plenty of people who are "pissed" about how their cultures are used and twisted by "new age" people; most of them are First Nations,of various tribes, but some are Hindu. Me I pesonaly am at a loss about all these people claiming to be Kabbalists, when most kabbalists spend their entire lives in religious study before even attempting that branch of Jewish mysticism. But I'm sure folks like Madonna know better then rabinical scholars.
Richard Marcus
4 - RedTard
So basically your pissed of because some people are exercising their freedom to write books that others are freely buying...hmmm.
I thought you long haired hippies shunned negativity. Also judging the author of books based on race is generally frowned upon, I suppose you get a pass because they were white though.
5 - Che
Richard, I do agree with your comment to a certain degre, I just can't help but feel there's this muddled area here where the definition of new age is getting construed with the practice of indiginous faiths by non-indiginous peoples. The New Age is a murky murky realm, for all its supposed enlightenment.
But one also has to ask at what point does one become Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Buddhist? What is the defining moment. It is a matter of expertise, cultural inheritance, or faith? Believe me I'm not thrilled with Kabbalah becoming a "craze" with madonna in the lead, of all people, but what makes her a Kabbalist or not a Kabbalist? Who defines?
Does the preacher who dunks one in the water make one a christian, or is it the belief, or is it the actions, or the knowledge? Who decides?
In mast cases, tradition decides, or should. In initiatory religions, the initiator decides. In experiential religions, experience - which is entirely subjective - decides. And in revelatory religions, one need only make the decision to accept the revelation in order to be deemed among the flock. You've certainly raised a lot of interesting issues and questions with your article. Definitely bears pondering.
6 - VGR
Alright, somebody fake-posted your blog as a "new york times" link on the sulekha.com news portal, and I clicked through to find myself in blogoland, where I usually lock my car windows and immediately hunt for a way out when I wander in by accident.
Friend, I will cheerfully presume to speak for all Indians (my 'Apu' kind and, what the heck, the American kind :) and put you out of your misery. You are hereby absolved of all shared and inherited guilt for the colonial era. You are not responsible for the condition of the world. If it helps, I assure you, we brown, yellow, black and red people of the world would have screwed up the world as effectively as the pink ones happened to. Rejoice and get a haircut.
And if you manage one laugh at yourself in the next 5 minutes, I'll double this incredible offer. All the blond-blue-eyed new age writers whose souls you worry about will also be absolved of any sins of omission and commision, past and future, in their repackaged publishing excesses.
Where's that darn ramp?
Please do not feed peanuts to my god.
VGR
7 - Aaman
What's the Sulekha.com article URL?
8 - Aaman
OK, found it
9 - Barnaby McEwan
Hello, I'm a member of NAFPS (New Age Frauds Plastic Shamans), an informal group set up by (American) Indians to campaign and inform on this issue (I'm not Indian myself: I just live in a town full of annoying hippies). I really liked your piece and would just add two things.
Firstly, Indian people themselves have been protesting about exploitation of their cultures as soon as they got wind of it.
Secondly newage exploitation of native religious ceremonies is dangerous for white people, as well as causing immense disruption in Indian communities. People have died in bogus 'sweat lodges' operated by fakes who cannot possibly know how to conduct one safely. Many others have been sexually, emotionally, financially and otherwise abused by these frauds. There are also spiritual dangers.
Using Native Americans or any other ethnic group as a spiritual security-blanket is a dehumanising, racist attitude. Do drop by our forum if you have any questions.
10 - Caridad
Cultural Spiritual Colonialism; Witness a Theft in Progress; West Central Africa. Below is a posted response (tribenet Iboga) to a White So.African businessman who publicly slandered Gabonaise (Africa) Traditional Practitioner Nganga Mallendi.
So.African Simon, Subjects Nganga Mallendi to the Erroneous Criteria of A NewAge Plastic Techno Shaman.
Simon, A So.African, Nganga wanna-be, has the gaul to Subject Multi- Generational Nganga Mallendi to NewAge Concepts of Neo-Shamanism.
Spiritual Genocide; Simon's Super Plastic Shaman Criteria is an Assault on the Prior Art of Nganga Mallendi. Simon & the likes are going for the throats of Traditional Practitioners to eliminate the competition. Simon & other Spiritual Neo-Colonists are patently damning African Indigenous knowledge into Oblivion.
Will Nganga Mallendi's great great grandchildren be persecuted by the WTO for patent infrigement for using Iboga? or perhaps be forced to use Sythetic derivitives at a high cost?
Contrary to SyntheticSimon's BS.....Iboga is safer than ibogaine and being treated in Gabon by an Nganga would be first on my list just because of the history of Pentagon funded 'Skunk Projects' aimed at data collection, & duping unwitting guinea pigs into submitting to experimentation & unessessary screening. Medical Apartheid.
Go for treatment from SyntheticSimon, & he won't even give you a little soup after, what a Schlump!
Simon could learn alot from Mallendi. Mallendi fed us after Iboga.