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Bridging the
Chasm between Two Cultures by
Karla McLaren
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A former leader in the New Age culture - author
of nine titles on auras, chakras, "energy," and so on -
chronicles her difficult and painful transition to skepticism. She
thanks the skeptical community and agonizes over how the messages of
scientific and critical thinking could be made more effective in
communicating with her former New Age colleagues.
I've been studying the conflict between the skeptical community and
the metaphysical/new age community for a few decades now, and I think
I've finally discovered the central issue that makes communication so
difficult. It is not merely, as many surmise, a conflict between
fact-based viewpoints and faith-based viewpoints. Nor is it simply a
conflict between rationality and credulity. No, it's a full-on clash of
cultures that makes real communication improbable at best.
I know this firsthand, because as a former member of the New Age
culture, I struggled for years to decipher the language, the rules, the
attitudes, and the expectations of the skeptical culture. Yet for a
great while, all I could hear from the skeptical culture was noise-and
confusing noise at that.
I'm not really sure how to introduce myself, except perhaps with this
paraphrase: "I have seen the enemy, and she is me." I'm an
author and healer (or I was, actually) in the metaphysical culture. I
wrote about energy and chakras, auras, healing, the different kinds of
psychic skills . . . the whole shebang. I've traveled throughout the
states doing book tours, seminars, and workshops. I've appeared at all
the top New Age venues, such as the Omega Institute, Naropa University,
and the Whole Life Expo (which I call the Hell Life Expo, but that's
another story). My books have been translated into five languages, and
I've even had a title in the One Spirit Book Club. Understanding the
metaphysical/New Age community and culture has been a central focus of
my life and my career.
I'm not just a member of the New Age community - I've also been a
purveyor of the very things the skeptical community is so concerned
about. I've been involved in metaphysics and the New Age for over thirty
years, I've written four books and recorded five audio learning sets in
the genre, and I was considered one of the leaders in the field.
I'm not in the field any longer, but it's hard to truly disappear
when so many of my books and tapes are already out there. It's also hard
to disappear when I don't really know what to say to the people in my
culture. The cultural rift is so extreme that anything I say will prove
that I have gone to the other side, the wrong side - the side of the
enemy. In actual fact, however, I have just seen enough to know that the
skeptics and the critical thinkers have some extremely pertinent and
meaningful things to say. I've now studied enough skeptical and
scientific information about paranormal abilities and events to question
many of the precepts upon which my work was based. More important, I've
seen enough to understand firsthand the real costs of the New Age.
I've also learned to understand the differences and similarities in
the New Age and skeptical cultures, so that I no longer react in a
stereotypically offended fashion when I or the people I know and love
are referred to as frauds, shams, or dupes. I understand now that these
terms are not meant disparagingly, for the most part. I understand now
that these terms often mask a great deal of care and concern for people
in the New Age culture. It's sometimes hard to unearth that concern - it
often requires an almost anthropological capacity to understand the
cultural differences between us - but the concern is there.
Until I understood that concern, I couldn't find myself in the
skeptical lexicon. I couldn't identify myself with the uncaring
hucksters, the wildly miseducated snake-oil peddlers, the self-righteous
psychics, the big-haired evangelists, or the megalomaniacal eastern
fakirs. I couldn't identify my work or myself with the scam-based work
or the unstable personalities so roundly trashed by the skeptical
culture, because I was never in the field to scam anyone - and neither
were any of my friends or colleagues. I worked in the field because I
have a deep and abiding concern for people, and an honest wish to be
helpful in my own culture. Access to clearheaded and carefully presented
skeptical material would have helped me (and others like me) at every
step of the way - but I couldn't access any of that information because
I simply couldn't identify with it. Until now.
I'm writing this piece as a thank you letter to the skeptical
community. I want to thank you for helping me to fully understand just
how much bad training I've been exposed to in my metaphysical/New Age
culture (actually, it's not my culture any longer, but for
simplicity's sake, let me continue to claim it for the duration of this
piece). But I'm also writing as an attempt to open a dialogue, and
perhaps to begin bridging the precipitous chasm that exists between our
two warring cultures, because at this point, the lion's share of people
from my culture can't really hear much (if anything) from the skeptical
culture. And that's a real shame.
This cultural divide is making it nearly impossible for me to be
honest in my own culture about the changes I've made. Right now, my Web
site says that I'm on sabbatical. I've cancelled all workshops, turned
down numerous book contracts, and I'm slowly deconstructing my career.
I've cleared out files, e-mails, and letters, thousands of letters, from
people who considered me an expert. I'm turning down all requests for
interviews and consultations, and I'm going back to school to get my
degree in sociology and behavioral sciences. If I write another book
about the New Age culture, I want to write it as a sociologist - not as
a mystic or as a naysayer, because neither of those positions has
been truly helpful to people in my culture.
The fight between our cultures has often been an ugly and confusing
one, and in all honesty, that fight can't be won the way we're fighting
it. I'm tired of seeing so many people get hurt when so little good
comes of that hurt. So I'm going to try something new, and I'm going to
try to find a way to expiate the damage I feel I've done. But first I
need to find the words to tell people in my culture what I'm doing and
why.
On one level, my story is not a typical one, because I'm not simply a
New Age follower who finally woke up. However, even though it is unusual
and perhaps even unheard of for someone in my position to make a
complete turnaround, I think the process I followed is fairly typical. I
started out in my youth, knowing (through direct experience) that the
things I learned in the New Age and metaphysics were true, and that
naysayers were just that. After a time, though, I began to question the
things I saw that didn't fit-the anomalies, the cures that didn't work,
the ideas that fell apart when you really looked at them, and so forth.
I wrote passionately about the trouble I saw in my culture, and I even
became a voice of reason. Sadly, though, every time I tried to re
the things that disturbed or troubled me, I hit a wall.
That wall, built of deep cultural differences and decades (or
centuries) of distrust, meant that I could find nothing within my
culture that could help me think critically. Critical thinking and
skepticism live in another world from mine-they live across a chasm
where no bridge and no safe passages exist. It wasn't until I became a
citizen of the Web that I was able to undertake the harrowing journey
across that chasm and land, finally, on solid ground.
How did a card-carrying, aura-wearing, chakra-toting leader of the
New Age become able to understand and eventually embrace the skeptical
culture? Well, it took quite a while, so let me start at the beginning.
I first encountered the New Age in 1971, when I was ten years old. My
mother had been experiencing numerous arthritic symptoms that just
weren't responding to medical care, and she was headed for a wheelchair.
Somehow, she found a yoga class, and slowly, she became well again. She
also became a vegetarian (which was very avant garde at the time) and we
began frequenting health food stores in of unusual things like
whole grain cookies, cod-liver oil, and bean sprouts. Our lives changed
very swiftly, especially after Mom became a yoga teacher herself and
entered more fully into the metaphysical/New Age culture. Yoga has been
jokingly called the "gateway drug" to the New Age. That was
certainly true for us.
Our family fell apart over this massive change (though my parents'
marriage was rocky anyway), as my father was and still is a skeptic with
a strong intellect and good native training in scientific and critical
thought processes. One of my brothers, who is now a mathematics
professor, joined with my father, while the rest of us kids (four total)
went along in our own ways with my mother's interest in metaphysics,
spirituality, and the New Age.
We switched from conventional medicine to homeopathic care, learned
to meditate, and joined groups that listened to supposedly
"channeled" beings-we became a part of the "in"
crowd. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and went to high school
in Marin County (the epicenter of the New Age explosion of the seventies
and eighties), so I was surrounded at all times by unusual people and
experiences. It was a fun and often exciting time, and though I much
preferred the magical world my mother showed us to the mundane world my
father defended, I was always a very bright and skeptical person. Even
in my early teens, I was able to see right through questionable things
like est, Scientology, breatharianism, urine drinking, and the really
dangerous cults-yet that same skepticism and intelligence actually
helped me validate other unusual experiences (of which I had many). I
knew many psychics and alternative healers who seemed to be very good at
what they did, and I directly experienced healings and psychic readings
that I couldn't logically refute.
In that period, it would have been wonderful to come upon skeptical
and critical thinking techniques, but alas, critical thinking wasn't
taught in my high school. I didn't even know the category existed! When
I went to junior college, I took geometry and logic for my critical
thinking courses and thus I missed out on the subject once again. In my
education, I didn't gain the skills I needed to help me understand what
was occurring when New Age and metaphysical ideas and techniques seemed
to work. My empirical experience "proved" the validity of
things like psychic skills, auras, chakras, contact with the dead,
astrology, and the like - and I had very little in my intellectual
arsenal at that time to help me understand what was truly occurring.
For instance, an understanding of cold reading would have helped me a
great deal. I never knew what cold reading was, and until I saw
professional magician and debunker Mark Edward use cold reading on an
ABC News special last year, I didn't understand that I had long used a
form of cold reading in my own work! I was never taught cold reading and
I never intended to defraud anyone - I simply picked up the technique
through cultural osmosis.
To be fair, a skeptical movement did arise during my early teens, but
it unfortunately created a deep cultural rift that continues to this
day. In the seventies, Uri Geller became popular. My first real contact
with someone in the skeptical culture was watching James Randi on
television, just tearing Geller to bits. I didn't understand what was
happening. Uri Geller appeared on the Mike Douglas show and on the Merv
Griffin show, and you could clearly see him perform his paranormal feats
right there on television. Surely Mike and Merv wouldn't be involved in
lying to the public? I really didn't understand what Randi's problem was
with Geller, and my friends and I thought Randi was very vitriolic. I
didn't learn about critical thinking from Randi - what I learned was
that some people just had it in for healers and people with paranormal
gifts. I know he would not like to hear this, but it's still true: James
Randi's behavior and demeanor were so culturally insensitive that he
actually created a gigantic backlash against skepticism, and a gigantic
surge toward the New Age that still rages unabated.
I certainly understand and support James Randi's anger, frustration,
and even vitriol now (especially after having lived through the New Age
for so many decades), but all I could see then was a very sarcastic man
who seemed to attack Geller personally. Now, after having been a regular
visitor to Randi's Web site (www.randi.org),
I can see him as a deeply caring man who works tirelessly for an
important cause. I also see that he is very concerned about some of the
unbalanced New Agers who write to him in barely legible missives. I
empathize with Randi, because people like that write to me, too (though
I take on the role of hero in their fevered fantasy lives, while Randi
is treated as a villain). Now that I can see him as an individual and
understand his culture, I can see James Randi as the excellent (and
intense) man he is-but it took me a while. Had Randi understood the New
Age culture back when Uri Geller was becoming popular, he could have
easily spoken in a way that might have been heard - or at least in a way
that wouldn't have caused such a violent backlash. Or perhaps I'm being
too idealistic.
You see, I've been speaking to people in this New Age culture in
their own language, and though I certainly was heard, I don't think
that, in the end, I really did any good. Growing up as I did in nutty,
kooky Marin County, I was able to see some of the most egregious
examples of New Age chicanery - and as I matured into a writer and
healer, I always warned against them. The problem is this: In my
culture, you can't openly attack anyone or their character, and you
can't use truly focused skepticism. In my culture, personal attacks are
considered an example of emotional imbalance (where your emotions
control you), while deep skepticism is considered a form of mental
imbalance (where your intellect controls you). Both behaviors are
serious cultural no-nos, because both the emotions and the intellect are
considered troublesome areas of the psyche that do very little but keep
one away from the (supposedly) true and meaningful realm of spirit. When
I wrote my books and recorded my audio programs, I had to write and
speak so carefully that it took most people two or three readings to
figure out that I was directly challenging many of the foundations upon
which the New Age is built. Actually, my culturally sensitive capacity
to attack without attacking and criticize without criticizing was so
effective that some avid readers still don't know what I was saying.
From a vantage point outside the New Age culture, my culture's
disavowal of emotions and the intellect may seem very strange and nearly
inexplicable. Nevertheless, it is a very real cultural component that
must be understood and considered if any useful communication is going
to occur. If we want to successfully communicate with someone, we've got
to understand not just their language, but the cultural context from
which their language springs. From what I've seen in both the New Age
and the skeptical cultures, this understanding is absent. I certainly
didn't understand the skeptical culture until I spent real time
considering it as a culture - and I know from my reading that
most people in the skeptical culture don't understand the New Age
culture at all. As a result, the yelling between our cultures just
becomes louder while the real communication falls into the chasm that
divides us. In all the din, people in my culture hear what they deem to
be hyper-intellectual and emotionally charged attacks upon their
cherished beliefs, while people in your culture hear what they deem to
be wishful thinking, scientific illiteracy, and emotionally charged
salvos in defense of mere delusions.
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This is of course a tragedy, but after reading through the
skeptical literature for the last three years, I feel that this tragedy
may be avoidable. I understand your culture now, and I understand the
concern, care, and interest you have for the people in my culture. I'm
now able to read past text I once considered inflammatory and see the
dedication behind it-not just your dedication to competent re and
information-gathering, but your dedication to clear communication. I see
your faith in human intelligence, your anger about swindlers and
charlatans, your open-minded ability to question authority and accepted
wisdom, and your willingness to fight to further a cause close to your
heart. My favorite people in the New Age culture share these same
qualities. I feel that people in your culture are capable of reaching
out to my culture in sensitive ways that will have a chance of being
heard - because it's vital that you are heard.
It's vital that a way be found to help people in my culture question,
think about, and critically interpret the barrage of information and
misinformation they receive on a daily basis. However, it's also vital
that the information be culturally sensitive. For instance, the first
time I visited the skeptical health care Web site called Quackwatch, it
felt as if I were walking into enemy territory. "Quack" is a
very loaded word-it's a fighting word! Though site owner Dr. Stephen
Barrett has every right to call his excellent Web site anything he
likes, I wonder why it couldn't have been called, for instance,
HealthWatch, HealingInfo, DocFacts, or something equally nonthreatening.
Why do I have to type the word "quack" when I want a skeptical
review of the choices I make in medical care? And why do I have to spend
so much time translating on the skeptical sites I visit-or just skipping
over words like scam, sham, quack, fraud, dupe, and fool? Why do I (the
sort of person who actually needs skeptical information) have to
see myself described in offensive terms and bow my head in shame before
I can truly access the information available in your culture?
I have a selfish reason for asking these questions, because one of my
first ideas was to make my own Web site a culturally sensitive portal to
the skeptical sites - yet I cannot find a way to do so. I've got a Web
page mock-up brewing in my files - a page that I've rewritten maybe
fifty times or more-that tries to introduce the concept of skepticism in
an open and nonthreatening way. I'd like to include links to the
brilliant urban legends site (snopes.com),
to Bob Carroll's online Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com),
to CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer (csicop.org),
and to The Skeptic (skeptic.com).
I also really wanted to include Quackwatch (quackwatch.org)
and James Randi's site (randi.org)
- but I just can't find the words. Sure, I can use my site to prepare
people for the journey, but I know from experience that they would be in
for quite a shock once they clicked on the links. I mean, it's one thing
to find out that much of my culture and belief system was based on
gossamer and hearsay, but it's another thing altogether to see people
like myself being denigrated and pitied.
I found your culture and persevered through the (perhaps
unintentionally?) insulting text and the demeaning attitudes because I
had a serious need. I had a need to understand the avalanche of New Age
ideas, gadgets, meditation techniques, and personalities I encountered
as my career gathered momentum. I saw so much as I traveled and spoke to
people in my culture, and so much of it worried me that I began to use
the Internet to organize this avalanche and acquaint myself fully with
information in my field. It was a harrowing journey, to say the very
least. I waded into your culture for much-needed information, and ended
up losing my own culture in the process. During the most difficult
throes, I joked that I would have had to cheer up to be merely
despairing - and that I would have had to calm down to be merely
enraged. I'm still working through this.
What I see in the tragic clash between the New Age and skeptical
cultures is that, for the most part, the skeptics have not yet been able
to speak in a way that can be heard. Certainly, neither have people in
my culture been able to perform that same feat. I see some scientific
types working in the New Age culture, trying to prove that chi
exists or prayer works (or whatever it is they're doing this week).
There's an awful lot of scientific jargon all over the New Age now, and
while it's sad to see science being bent and mangled by my culture, I
have to say that it shows we're listening to you. It shows that we're
trying to get it right-to say things in a way you can hear. I know that
my culture's sloppy and disrespectful use of science is something that
angers and confuses many people in the skeptical community, but can we
look at it in a different light?
People in my culture have heard you and we're trying to answer - but
we don't understand you. Our cultural training about the dangers of the
intellect makes it nearly impossible for us to utilize science properly
- or to identify your intellectual rigor as anything but an unhealthy
overuse of the mind. I know that sounds silly, but think of the way you
view our capacity to dive deeply into matters of spiritual or religious
study. You don't often treat our rigor as scholarship, per se (though it
takes quite an intellect to understand and organize the often
screamingly inconsistent sacred canon) - instead you tend to treat our
work as an overabundance of credulity or perhaps even a stubborn refusal
to listen to sense.
It is possible that our two warring cultures will never build a
bridge across the deep rift that divides us. I know that in my own case,
the transition from my culture to yours was long, arduous, and deeply
painful. It was not an easy traipse across a well-constructed bridge. In
essence, I had to throw myself off a cliff. I had to leave behind my
career, my income, my culture, my family, my friends, my health care
practitioners, most of my business contacts, my past, and my future. I
say this not to garner sympathy but to show what the leap truly entails.
The New Age is a complete culture with its own rules, ideals,
infrastructure, and social life. When I finally realized that my
cultural training had me teetering on a foundation of candyfloss and
dreams - and worse, that my work had encouraged others to teeter
alongside me, I was inconsolable, yet I had absolutely no one to turn
to.
I've made it, I think, through my rage and horror at my own
complicity in helping people remain susceptible - and perhaps through my
grief and despair (though that's more cyclical) about my own
miseducation. Now I'm considering what to do from here. I've discovered
in just the few (less than ten) conversations I've had with faith-based
people that skeptical information is absolutely threatening and
unwanted. What I didn't understand until recently is that when you start
questioning these beliefs, there's a domino effect that eventually
smacks into your whole house of cards - and nothing remains standing.
Opening the questioning process is a very dangerous thing, and people in
my culture seem to understand that on a subconscious level. In response
to their extreme discomfort, I've become completely silent around
believers - which is hard, because they make up most of my friends,
family, and correspondents.
If I were in this business for the money, I would have never
seriously questioned what I was doing. I would have turned back as soon
as my re challenged or threatened me. But I wasn't in it for the
money. I was there to help people, often very disturbed people who were
trammeling after this cure, that device, these gurus, or those miracle
supplements. I tried to help people in my culture make sense of all the
ideas and gadgets that were coming at them with such rapidity, but I was
unable to make even a dent. When I understood fully that, no matter how
good my intentions, the mere mention of things like auras, chakras, and
"energy" brought with them a host of truly unsafe and untested
assumptions - and that I was leading people into an arena where
skepticism and critical thinking were forbidden - I knew that it was
time to stop, and stop completely. It was a wrenching, isolating, and
despair-filled decision, but since my focus is to help others, it was
the only ethical or moral shift for me to make.
I respectfully ask that you in the skeptical community consider
making a similar (though hopefully not so jarring) shift in your
behavior and approach to us. I understand now, after years of reading
and re, that the skeptical culture exists because of a very real
concern for the welfare and well being of others. Of the two cultures, I
can honestly say I now vastly prefer the skeptical one. However, I know
firsthand that the skeptical viewpoint cannot be heard or assimilated in
the New Age and metaphysical community; it is anathema, and that's a
shame for every single one of us. It is a shame because the for
the truth, the concern for the welfare of others, the need to be treated
with respect, and the need to be welcomed in a culture - are all things
my people share with yours. We have a different language and different
references, but we share these basic human needs. I would ask you to
respect our humanity, and approach us not as if you are reformers or
redeemers. I would ask you to approach us as fellow humans who share
your concern and interest in the welfare of others. I would ask you to
be as culturally intelligent as you are scientifically intelligent, and
to work to understand our culture as clearly as you understand the
techniques, ideas, and modalities that have sprung from it. We are a
people, not a problem.
I think I have found a way to speak across the chasm, to you. I am
now learning to perform that same feat in reverse - to talk to people in
my culture about your culture, but that's a lot harder. I first need a
rest, and I need to be in a real school, studying real science and
getting a real degree (people in my culture tend to pursue offbeat
degrees in offbeat subjects at offbeat schools). Watching people in the
New Age has been as hard on me as it has been on you. Underneath all the
magic, the wise ghosts, and the never-ending remedies lies a well of
pain and loneliness that is immense and overwhelming. I always saw it -
I always saw the excruciating truth of my culture, and I thought I could
help. That I didn't help - not truly - is possibly the greatest
devastation of my life. I need to heal from being a healer.
My voice was an important one in my culture; therefore, I've got to
take responsibility for what I've done. I need to educate myself and
come back into the fray in a healthy and respectful way. Maybe by the
time I've organized my thoughts, a bridging culture will already exist.
Maybe I'll find a way to be heard - or to translate the skeptical
lexicon in such a way that people in my culture can access it without
being insulted or shamed. One thing I'll be sure to stress is the fact
that there is actually more beauty, wonder, brilliance, and
mystery in science than there is in the mystical world.
One of the biggest falsehoods I've encountered is that skeptics can't
tolerate mystery, while New Age people can. This is completely wrong,
because it is actually the people in my culture who can't handle
mystery - not even a tiny bit of it. Everything in my New Age culture
comes complete with an answer, a reason, and a source. Every action,
emotion, health symptom, dream, accident, birth, death, or idea here has
a direct link to the influence of the stars, chi, past lives, ancestors,
energy fields, interdimensional beings, enneagrams, devas, fairies,
spirit guides, angels, aliens, karma, God, or the Goddess.
We love to say that we embrace mystery in the New Age culture, but
that's a cultural conceit and it's utterly wrong. In actual fact, we
have no tolerance whatsoever for mystery. Everything from the smallest
individual action to the largest movements in the evolution of the
planet has a specific metaphysical or mystical cause. In my opinion,
this incapacity to tolerate mystery is a direct result of my culture's
disavowal of the intellect. One of the most frightening things about
attaining the capacity to think skeptically and critically is that so
many things don't have clear answers. Critical thinkers and skeptics
don't create answers just to manage their anxiety.
Maybe I'll find a way to capitalize on my culture's thirst for
answers, and my people's capacity to work with conflicting information
(metaphysical ideas change every six months or so and therefore people
in my culture are very accustomed to switching mental gears). I have
faith now that I didn't have before: faith in your culture's concern and
integrity, and faith in my culture's curiosity and capacity to learn new
things. I've also learned firsthand that bad training, though damaging,
is not a life sentence.
I have a lot of work and re to do, but I do see a possibility
now that I didn't see before. I want to thank you for your work and your
efforts to protect people like me from harm. You make a difference. I
hope one day to be able to do the same.
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