This is amazing. Dr. Darrell Cass and his team at the Cleveland Clinic performed fetal lung surgery on 24-week old baby girl. She was born without complications 12 weeks later. It's so inspiring to see work like this that saves valuable lives! #prolife https://t.co/kIjhSM0bO1 pic.twitter.com/aJn0PzGCAS
— Oregon Right to Life (@OR_RTL) April 7, 2022
Friday 8 April 2022
Surgery on 24-week baby
Science forgets respect for truth
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| Searching for the truth. Photo Pavel Danilyuk |
My previous post on this blog, Scientists's theories thrown into confusion, describes how the Standard Model of quantum mechanics is in being chipped away at as new findings raise doubts about it.
Such misgivings about the solidity of established models must sear from the broad scientific community any conceit held as to certainty concerning findings, eliciting an attitude in social discourse of humble service.
There is conceit but also corruption within the scientific community:
In their [2010] book, Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. In seven compelling chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era. [Source]
Corruption in science is not only for monetary advantage, but also for ideological ends, as we can see with the civilization-ending transgender ideology sweeping through the "science-based" professions. These capitulate if not through simple cowardice at bucking the professional fashion, then because members do not care enough about the truth.
Naomi Oreskes, saw her work Merchants of Doubt, referred to above, make a valuable impact, particularly through a film sequel, in establishing the forces at play over the climate crisis. She is professor of the History of Science and affiliated professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. A world-renowned geologist, historian and public speaker, she is a leading voice on the role of science in society and the reality of anthropogenic climate change.
In our context of the role of science in social discourse, her 2019 text Why Trust Science? warrants fresh attention.
As Nick Spencer notes in a piece this month, Oreskes offers many examples in the history of science where science was not worthy of our trust. Neither the "absurdities" of phrenology (taking the skull as indicative of mental faculties and traits of character) nor the "horrors" of eugenics did not prevent both being "considered serious and established disciplines in their own time".
He reports on further areas where scientists' mindset got in the way of good science:
Limited Energy Theory, from the late [1800s], argued that women were not suited to higher education on the grounds that it would adversely affect their fertility. Building on the ideas of thermodynamics, medics argued that the female of the species had only a limited supply of physical energy, much of which was needed for reproduction. Higher education would shrivel their ovaries and uteri. The medics who propounded the theory were all men.
Continental Drift, the idea that Earth’s continents had drifted over its surface in geological history, was well established in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century, but American geologists had methodological objections to it:[...] too much theory, not enough observation. By why was this an issue in America and not in Europe? According to Oreskes: “American geologists…explicitly linked their inductive methodology to American democracy and culture… deduction was consistent with autocratic European ways of thinking and acting… [the Americans] methodological preferences were grounded in their political ideas.”
So how can we accept anything that scientists proffer as a fact? Oreskes answers that in recent times method has won through as the main means to quieten sceptics. The popular view was that "the processes of science enabled theories to be verified, or they enabled theories to be falsified, or they enabled things to be predicted", as Spencer phrased it, adding: "Science was trustworthy because of its commitment to a reliable method."
However, complete acceptance of that principle has faded, with method being seen as necessary, but not necessarily sufficient. Distrust of science is rearing its ugly head again, as anti-vaxxers pick up on any inconsistencies in official scientific pronouncements, or as medical and psychological services leave young people mutilated as the transgender fad sweeps many Western societies.
Central to the trustworthiness of science is this, as Spencer explains, drawing on Oreskes:
“It is not so much that science corrects itself, but that scientists correct each other.” And, as the growing body of sociology of science shows, when scientists are too homogenous, too similar, too close to outside interests, or too vested in certain ideologies, their ability and inclination to correct one another is blunted. “Objectivity [emerges] as a function of community practices rather than as an attitude of individual researchers.” (52)
Spencer adds: "It may be that the importance of [gender] diversity among scientists matters more for some disciplines – particularly those closer to the questions of human nature and society – than for others."
He states that "none of this amounts to a wholesale rejection of scientific method, so much as a question mark over its sufficiency".
In her conclusion, Oreskes outlines five “themes” that combine to produce scientific knowledge:
1. Method
2. Evidence
3. Consensus
4. Values
5. Humility
It is striking, says Spencer, that the last three direct the question of why we should trust science "away from the narrow confines of what most people consider to be science, and towards the wider social and ethical context in which science takes place".
Oreskes uses her depth of knowledge of the history of science - all the wrong paths taken, personal preferences and delusions, the conceit and unwillingness to face new evidence, the blindness to ethical issues - to plot a course for us as we open the door, with too little care, to the world of AI, the pursuit of immortality, and genetic manipulation for reasons of vanity - designer babies.
To borrow from Spencer's language, Oreskes states that matters of import to society cannot be left to just the scientist. Scientists should work in association with others who are suitably educated, learned, and informed. But education alone is not enough. We need the community to be involved, with members bringing to the fore their various backgrounds and experiences.
Community participants, like scientists, must be characterised by integrity, patience, diligence, and responsiveness. Their work should be marked by humility, a refusal to foreclose on answers, an openness to new ideas, a reluctance to claim that you have somehow finally fathomed the mind of God.
But above all, the community should be varied, so that just as scientists correct each other to make better science, so members correct each other to make a better interpretation of the evidence.
Science is a process, and the material world is the usual ingredient of that process. As the leading agent in that process, the scientist must not be closed from the real world. Ideological filters must be removed in conducting research so that a wider reality is not excluded. Here, I'm thinking of those prominent WEIRD neuroscientists who take what they know - so far- of the brain and go on their way mocking the more than 85 per cent of the world's population who acknowledge a spiritual dimension in their life.
Three takeaways: Science is essential in knowing our world; science does not stand alone; science is one part of the warp and woof of our human experience.
And a fourth: Scientists belong to a community that is devoted to the truth, and whose members are willing to fight for the truth.
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Thursday 7 April 2022
Scientists' theories thrown into confusion
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| Particles of the Standard Model of particle physics (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN) |
The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought.
“It’s not just something is wrong,” said Dave Toback, a particle physicist at Texas A&M University and a spokesperson for the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Lab, which conducted the experiments. If replicated by other labs, “it literally means something fundamental in our understanding of nature is wrong.”
That fragility of science's understanding of the "really beautiful and weird” components and forces of what exists and how these unite to sustain our life was stressed in a BBC article on the same news arising from the publication of a research paper published in the journal Science:
Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the Large Hadron Collider, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.
"The hope is that these cracks will turn into chasms and eventually we will see some spectacular signature that not only confirms that the Standard Model has broken down as a description of nature, but also give us a new direction to help us understand what we are seeing and what the new physics theory looks like.
"If this holds, there have to be new particles and new forces to explain how to make these data consistent".
The BBC report continues:
The AP provides insight into the shock waves sent through all those digging into the mysteries of quantum mechanics:All eyes are now on the Large Hadron Collider which is due to restart its experiments after a three-year upgrade. The hope is that these will provide the results which will lay the foundations for a new more complete theory of physics.
"Most scientists will be a little bit cautious," says Dr Patel.
"We've been here before and been disappointed, but we are all secretly hoping that this is really it, and that in our lifetime we might see the kind of transformation that we have read about in history books."
The result is so extraordinary it must be confirmed by another experiment, scientists say. If confirmed, it would present one of the biggest problems yet with scientists’ detailed rulebook for the cosmos, called the Standard Model. [Go to this site for an interesting read]Duke University physicist Ashutosh V. Kotwal, the project leader for analysis, said it’s like discovering there’s a hidden room in your house.
Scientists speculated that there may be an undiscovered particle that is interacting with the W boson that could explain the difference. Maybe dark matter, another poorly understood component of the universe, could be playing a role. Or maybe there’s just new physics involved that they just don’t understand at the moment, researchers said.
The finding is important because of its potential effect on the Standard Model of physics.
“Nature has facts,” Duke’s Kotwal said. “The model is the way we understand those facts.”
Scientists have long known the Standard Model isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explain dark matter or gravity well. If scientists have to go in and tinker with it to explain these findings they have to make sure it doesn’t throw out of whack mathematical equations that now explain and predict other particles and forces well, researchers said.
It is a recurring problem with the model. A year ago a different team found another problem with the Standard Model and how muons react.
“Quantum mechanics is really beautiful and weird,” Toback said. “Anyone who has not been deeply troubled by quantum mechanics has not understood it.”
I like that thought - that the design of the universe, whether on the scale of innumerable galaxies or on the scale of subatomic particles - is "beautiful" and awe-inspiring ("troubling"?). It gives science as a whole a fresh purpose, that of serving humanity by revealing the wonder of what has been provided for us out of love.
💢 See also Machine finds tantalising hints of new physics
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Wednesday 6 April 2022
Hero Mom saves daughter from sex-change pressure
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| Determined mother exposes fallacy of transgender rules Photo by Albert Rafael |
Theresa's daughter went through a time of wretchedness believing that the answer to her anxiety over the changes occuring in her body at puberty was to become a boy. Theresa stood her ground as the daughter's school followed the "affirm, affirm, affirm" path. By changing school and losing access to social media, Theresa's daughter has regained her balance and is happy she can flourish as a teenage girl.
Whereas the "experts'" response to the daughter's declaration was to affirm every thought the daughter had, Theresa wanted to tread carefully and, particularly, protect all options for her daughter's future. Theresa and her husband were not against transgenderism but they knew their child, who had delighted in all things feminine but also had a history of anxiety and depression. They wanted the school to continue to treat their daughter as a girl and to support her as she went through a period of counselling to identify exactly why she felt distressed at that time.
Accounts of clashes between protective parents and schools that have succumbed to transgender orthodoxy are very informative about the character of our society, where the right of parents to have the governing responsibility for care of children is clearly downgraded by those whose goal is to redefine the family and to assert that the rights of adults must take precedence, no matter the harm inflicted on the vulnerable.
To scrutinise the rescue of Theresa's daughter is definitely instructive:
Despite their daughter’s protests, Theresa and her husband decided it would be best that she be identified as a girl and by her real name when she returned to school in mid-January. They assumed their local suburban school district about 30 miles west of Milwaukee would support their rights as parents to make this delicate medical decision for their daughter.
They were wrong.
Leaders of her daughter’s middle school told Theresa that while they couldn’t change her daughter’s name and gender in official records, they would refer to her as a boy and by her new chosen name, Leo, if that’s what her daughter wanted. “We’re an advocate for the child and not the parent,” they told her, Theresa recalled. To Theresa, the school-district leaders were usurping her and her husband’s rights as parents.
Theresa and her husband have sued the school district, as other challenges to school policies that shut parents out from decisions regarding kids’ gender identification at school occur in California, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia. Cases are that schools violated their constitutional rights as parents.
This is the situation:
To progressive trans advocates, not immediately affirming a child’s new gender identity is a form of abuse. Earlier this year, teachers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were instructed by “diversity” staffers from a local college to hide their students’ changing gender identities from their parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned”, according to leaked training documents.
This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in a case regarding a Madison Metropolitan School District policy, adopted in 2018, that commits to affirming “each student’s self-designated gender identity” and prohibits staff from letting parents know that their child is using a new name and pronouns at school. To prevent the parents from finding out, staff are instructed to use “the student’s affirmed name and pronouns in the school setting, and their legal name and pronouns with family”, according to the policy.
Back to the circumstances to Theresa's daughter:
Anxiety and depression had been an issue throughout her daughter’s childhood, and that got worse during the Covid-19 lockdowns when she was isolated at home, stuck in her mind, and with access to too much social media.
“She struggles with self-worth, and feeling like she’s pretty enough, is she thin enough,” Theresa said. “She has struggled with that for some time.”
On the first occasion that her daughter had opened up about wanting to be a boy Theresa had responded with the message that:
“I think we need to work on you starting to like who you are instead of constantly focusing on changing yourself into something you’re not.”
She continued to press for that basic step when her daughter entered a mental health facility for a few days. She asked the girl's counsellor whether he had looked into whether the eruption of depression and anxiety might explain why she was trying to “create a brand new person”.
“And he was kind of like, essentially, ‘No.’ But he was like, ‘If you don’t do what your daughter wants, if she decides to hurt or kill herself, that’s really going to fall on you guys, because you’re not respecting your child’s choices.’”
Theresa said her husband was willing to call his daughter whatever she wanted if that meant keeping her alive. Theresa put her foot down. Her daughter is a girl, “and until somebody is going to take some time to find out what the hell is going on in her mind, it’s going to stay that way,” she said. “I’m not going to appease her for short-term gain when I feel like there are long-term problems that need to be worked out.”
At home, she said, her daughter was continuing with outpatient virtual therapy and growing angrier. Some nights her daughter just vented, said she was a boy, and called Theresa a “transphobe”. But Theresa said she refused to negotiate.
“I told her, ‘I’m not telling you that you can’t be transgender. I’m not telling you that you can’t be a boy. I’m telling you that you can’t change your name and your gender right now,’” she said. “You have a lot of underlying issues that need to be addressed before you make the decision that you were born in the wrong body. I understand that all these people around you are appeasing you and giving you want you want, and I’m not doing that, and that makes you angry. But I am your best friend. I am looking out for your best interest.”
Her daughter just seemed to grow angrier.
Therapists were telling the girl that her mother was her biggest opponent to any sex change. Theresa states:
“I was going to be the biggest problem in her life because I do not accept her for who she is now, nor will I ever,” she said. “They discussed her getting on medication to transition to a man because it’s easier when you’re younger. Her anger was fueled by the therapy I was paying for.”Theresa took her daughter out of the school that would not comply with her wishes for her daughter. It cited an executive order on transgender issues from President Biden. This was in January 2021. At that time her daughter now identified as a lesbian. Also:
Theresa didn’t send her daughter back to her therapist after her month of outpatient care ended. She took away her daughter’s access to social media. And after a couple of weeks, she said, her daughter’s demeanor began to revert back to where it was before.
Time is a great healer!
One day, Theresa said, she came home and found her daughter in the kitchen talking with her dad. “She was like, ‘You know, Mom, I’m really sorry. Affirmative care really messed me up. They really made me hate you and Grandma. I know that you love me, and you just want what’s best for me,’” Theresa said. “She’s just a completely different kid.”
Theresa said her daughter now sees a therapist they vetted well. They work well together, and her daughter is doing better. The family bought a new home in another school district, and her daughter is going to school there. She said her daughter no longer identifies as a lesbian or a boy, though she would be free to do so in her new school.
What a great mom! She went the full forty yards. For the sake of her daughter she studied peer-reviewed research on gender dysphoria and treatment, which made her concerned about the affirmation approach. She would not let the self-identified experts and officials push her from the track she knew was best for her daughter. She knew that it was going to be her and her husband who would have to pick up the pieces if transgender orthdoxy were to be inflicted on their daughter.
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Monday 4 April 2022
Male+female parenting is best
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| Artificial families are not optimal for children |
Society is beginning to suffer in fundamental ways from this kind of self-indulgence, and especially from the form manifested in the civilisation-destroying triumph of gender ideology.
One way that society is being affected detrimentally by the explosion in our midst of "gay rights" and by the tragedy of same-sex marriage, is in the loss of the rich insight from time immemorial that a child needs parents who are male and female. Conversely, each child is in the best environment when they are raised by their own biological mother and father.
A thorough reading of the academic literature makes it plain that parents of each sex have distinctive attributes and combined, they complement each other. That said, it goes without saying that the devoted single mothers and fathers bringing up children deserve only praise from society.
However, the University of Texas Child and Family Research Center can stress in its document "Five things you should know about the importance of fathers", that children suffer through the absence of a committed male father:
Involved fatherhood is linked to better outcomes on nearly every measure of child wellbeing, from cognitive development and educational achievement to self-esteem and pro-social behavior. Children who grow up with involved fathers are:
39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school,
45% less likely to repeat a grade,
60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school,
twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school,
75% less likely to have a teen birth, and
80% less likely to spend time in jail.
This post will delve into substantial research on the subject of female-male parenting, but, first, interesting findings:
Dads [...] seem to offer a unique touch, with at least one study suggesting that fathers are better than mothers at teaching children how to swim because they are less overprotective and more likely to let their children venture into the deep end or swim facing away from them.
Broadly, the research suggests that boys lean on their fathers more than anyone else as they develop social skills. And one large study of nearly 9,000 adults confirmed that a father’s death affects sons more strongly than daughters, leading to the same sort of health problems seen after an ugly divorce.
Most studies suggest that, until children hit puberty, the father effect is roughly equal for boys and girls. Both boys and girls who are fortunate enough to have dads in their lives excel and, in some cases, outperform their peers. But when hormones kick in, studies demonstrate that dads suddenly become the arbiters of their children’s sexual behavior too. This is most acutely felt by teenage daughters, who take fewer sexual risks if they have strong relationships with their dads.
Although DelPriore examined several outside factors, one of the most salient links between a woman and her sexual decision-making was how close she felt to her father [as a man].
Promundo, a global group promoting sexual equality, provides these research results:
Over the last four decades, efforts by researchers and practitioners have contributed to increase the body of evidence that improved the conceptualization and understanding of the myriad ways fathers can positively impact the health and wellbeing of children. Though most of the research is from the Global North, it has become clear that fathers can and do distinctly contribute to foundational components for children’s growth and development including nutrition and safety, early learning and responsive care (WHO, 2018).[My emphasis]
Fathers’ positive engagement in their children’s upbringing has been linked to children’s improved physical and mental health, better cognitive development and educational achievement, improved peer relations and capacity for empathy, fewer behavioral problems (in boys) and psychological problems (in girls), higher self-esteem and life satisfaction, lower rates of depression, fear and selfdoubt into adulthood, lower rates of criminality and substance abuse, and more openness to critically examining traditional gendered roles (Levtov et al., 2015).
The distinctiveness of how each sex relates to their children is clear from a 2019 paper from UC Berkeley. The author states:
I provide evidence on the role of parent gender. Fathers are more likely than mothers to enter their child into competition, and this difference is sizeable enough to make fathers choose more competition for girls than mothers do for boys. The difference in mothers’ and fathers’ choices is not explained by a difference in their beliefs about children’s preferences. Rather, it appears that parents’ choices are partly determined by the competitiveness preferences of parents themselves, with fathers being more willing than mothers to compete (51 percent versus 32 percent).
Another instance of sex coming to the fore naturally in dealing with children is this:
Also, lesbian biological mothers typically assumed greater caregiving responsibility than their partners, reflecting inequities among heterosexual couples.
The traditional family has survived for good reason. Schumm reports on research findings:
Relationship instability appears to be higher among gay and lesbian parent couples and may be a key mediating factor influencing outcomes for children.
Western society has let itself down by not defending more vigorously the foundations of what makes for a healthy existence, especially for the most vulnerable. The tide-change in mentality toward aggressive individualism fostered the narcissistic sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, and now the massive family-redefinition machine.
Psychiatrist and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association Scott Haltzman observes:
Parenting styles correlate to biological differences between men and women. Women, compared to men, have higher levels of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for emotional bonding—and oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin serves to calm anxiety, reduce motor activity, and foster an increase in touch. In contrast, testosterone—present in men at levels tenfold higher than women—is correlated to an increase in motor activity in infant boys and may be responsible for higher levels of physical activities in men compared to women.
Rob Palkovitz, professor of human development and family studies at the University of Delaware writes,
As far as biological sex goes, men tend to be firmer and more nondirective than women as parents, while women tend to be more responsive, structured, and regimented than men. Fathers are more demanding of children in regard to problem solving than mothers and make more action-related demands for accomplishment of tasks. Fathers tend to be more unconventional in their toy and object use than mothers and use objects to engage in physical contact with children to a greater degree than mothers. Fathers also destabilize children during play through the use of teasing to a greater extent than mothers.
Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, notes that fathers “emphasize play more than caretaking and their play is more likely to involve a rough-and-tumble approach”.
Fathers emphasize more competition, risk-taking, and independence while mothers stress more self-paced play, that is, mothers tend to encourage more play that is at their child’s level. For example, fathers are more likely to encourage their kids to go hiking with them and take a more challenging trail. Fathers are more likely to engage in wrestling and grappling with their kids and also to play sports that are more physically demanding. By promoting and encouraging diverse activities, fathers and mothers build their children up in distinct ways.
The 2010 research conclusions from Biblarz and Stacey that there was no difference in outcomes for children raised by male-female and those by same-sex couples have been well and truly debunked with the preponderance of research in the past 10 years producing evidence that children need male-female parents to be equipped to thrive.
Children's rights are a much neglected area. It shouldn't be that way, but thanks to the successful push for legislation introduced on behalf of adults' "rights", society is going to have to learn from its suffering as children grow up in less than optimal environments and wreak havoc through mental illness, drug consumption and anti-social behaviour. Reality will win out.
So let's get back to reality, away from the woke-imposed anti-scientism that flows through the study of history, through sociology, and into a debilitating form of family life.
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Friday 1 April 2022
Trading God for Goop: The pitfalls
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| Elise Loehen and Gwyneth Paltrow Source |
The latest such person to sound the alarm is no less than Goop's former chief content officer, Elise Loehen, who made multiple appearances on the Netflix series The Goop Lab and co-hosted the Goop podcast with company founder Gwyneth Paltrow. Loehen has earned Paltrow's praise for helping transform what started in 2008 as a newsletter into a prominent lifestyle brand.
The Independent reports:
Although it’s been almost two year since her departure, Loehen recently opened up how working at Goop impacted her mindset in a video posted to Instagram, in which she said that there was a time where she wanted to “foreswear cleansing” after leaving the company. According to Loehen, when she left Goop, she was in a place where she felt like she had to “punish” her body through “cleansing,” and noted that she felt the wellness method had become synonymous with “dieting” and “restriction”.
Loehen also raises the matter of how the "wellness culture can be toxic", given the emphasis on body weight, or in eating only those foods someone has declared "correct". She said on Instagram:
I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely. [...] I’m just trying to get to a place where I can again be in conversation with my body, as those conversations had become distorted.
I've come to realise I really like my body and am grateful it is mine.It's great that Loehen has broken free from the harmful mentality of Goop's consumer-oriented business which vigorously uses Paltrow's celebrity status to promote the latest food fads and its ever-expanding list of "must-have" products.In addition, a harmful mentality is seen on Goop's corporate front. The Independent states:
Over the last few years, Goop has been called out for creating a poor work environment. According to employee reviews posted on Glassdoor, and reported by the DailyMail, the wellness company has been described as a “toxic” workplace, with “fear-based management” and a “mean girl vibe”.
According to Insider, more than 140 employees had been laid off or resigned from the company from 2019 to September 2021. Some of them spoke to the publication and cited low pay, burnout, and difficult leadership as the reasons why they left Goop.
To investigate the wellness space more generally, we get this kind of picture:
There is a type of “all-natural” Instagram influencer who, at first glance, appears to be all about living her best, healthy life. She is an avid proponent of meditation, clean eating, yoga, and a vague form of Asian spirituality. Her approach to life — and health — is “holistic.” And her social media feeds are a whiplash of content, ranging from the benefits of gua sha and ayurvedic diets to her skepticism about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.
Over the past year of the pandemic, the wellness space [...] has grown rife with politically motivated misinformation on QAnon, Covid-19, the prevalence of child trafficking, and election integrity.
Media coverage has largely centered on these New Age-type influencers as peddlers of a libertarian, anti-science ideology that refuses masks, social distancing, and vaccines. “California’s yoga, wellness and spirituality community has a QAnon problem,” read a recent Los Angeles Times headline. “Wellness influencers are spreading QAnon conspiracies about the coronavirus,” declared Mother Jones. In March, the Washington Post wrote about “QAnon’s unexpected roots in New Age spirituality”.
The conclusion is this:
These articles explore a concerning facet of American life, a phenomenon researchers call conspirituality, or how conspiracy theories have found a home in spiritual circles that are skeptical of Western medicine and established institutions. The observations stop short of implying that certain practices, like yoga, are a direct pathway to radicalization. Blame is generally assigned to the wellness communities where these fringe, anti-science ideas comfortably fester. Still, while most coverage identifies the prevalence of these dangerous, unfounded beliefs accurately, there is often little context on the wellness space’s relationship with Orientalism (or the West’s tendency to romanticize, stereotype, and flatten Asian cultures) and libertarian individualism.
For decades, many health and medicinal practices have been exported from Asia to the West, including yoga, ayurveda, reiki, and aspects of traditional Chinese medicine such as cupping, gua sha, and acupuncture. Such traditions are often categorized under the “alternative medicine” or “New Age” umbrella — vague terms that conflate different philosophical and medical systems into a uniquely Western mishmash of ideas.
This "mishmash of ideas", regularly the next port of call for those who abandon traditional institutions, includes alternative medicine. One observer of that domain last year found that:
[T]he gurus of “alternative health” are having a good pandemic, informational chaos and legitimacy crises bolstering their positions. YouTube brims with them: thin, tanned, toothy juicers who mix boring, sensible advice like “get enough sleep”, with sexily counterintuitive emerging wisdom like “fat doesn’t make you fat”, then each throw in their own twist: normally something involving curcumin, infra-red light, and the healing power of beef tallow.
That observer wondered why wellness gurus become Covid dissidents; and found that: The world of alternative health was already primed to question the medical establishment.
Other elements of the rebellion against traditional institutions are that:
... "the so-called pandemic has been little more than a casus belli for a broader system of global control that aims to create a common international identification system, to puppet ordinary folk towards the vague ends of Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and various other plutocrats. A theory often known as The Great Reset."
The difficulty in this particular domain is that dissidents can fly free, dismissing moral/ethical boundaries that society expects of its leaders. Therefore:
There are a range of questions that medicine, with its careful studies, cannot yet answer. Outsiders, in informal structures, can make the links quicker, and offer rules of thumb without worrying about clear cause and effect.
All of these conditions are part of the world that greedily absorbs many institutional dissidents, especially those who have rejected their religious heritage for freedom, as they think, to do and be what they want, even if it impacts negatively on the common good through a breakdown of their own well-being.
In this light, the pervading individualistic character of Western society that gives rise to the dissident "wellness" and "Alt-whatever" environment, is clearly having a serious effect on the well-being of young people. To take one statistic, that relating to the number of people reporting a sexual/gender identity at odds with the norm, we find a match between that number and the gradual-then-swift rejection of traditional spiritual institutions and the morality they teach.
The health care organization, HealthPartners, gives these statistics for LGBTQ mental health:
People in the LGBTQ community experience mental health issues at higher rates. A recent study found 61% have depression, 45% have PTSD and 36% have an anxiety disorder.
Additionally, 40 percent of transgender individuals have attempted suicide in their lifetime. This is nearly 9 times the overall rate in the United States.
Stigma certainly contributes to those disturbing statistics, but they show that the culturally promoted gay lifestyle, and more worryingly, the notion pushed even at elementary school level that trans is normal, is already having an impact on the overall well-being of society.
Without the traditional religious institutions to be our ship over troubled waters, we end up with the wellness space turning toxic, with anti-science proclamations harassing the health field, and with a fraudulent "conspirituality" that bedevils the world of mindfulness and the like.
The solution: Stay on board, and do your exploring where history has shown that your adventure will be rewarded with unimaginable treasure, and with a relationship that endures for eternity.
💢 Also, read carefully the information on how society permits the grooming of kids
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