Religion
Related: About this forumMeet the "New Age" Stephen Colbert
http://religiondispatches.org/meet-the-new-age-stephen-colbert/BY ANDREW AGHAPOUR MARCH 30, 2015
In the kitchen of his Charleston, S.C. home, wearing a flower in his hair, life coach and entrepreneur JP Sears explains, in a recent video, that, being gluten intolerant used to be limited only to those who are actually intolerant to gluten, but that now anyone can try it as long as they have a ravenous appetite for impossible standards and dogmatic feelings of victimization. When I first watched How to Become Gluten Intolerant, just a day after its release, it had already racked up half a million views. As I write, the count is at 2.7 million, and growing.
Sears vacuous serenity is familiar to anyone who has been trapped in a conversation about gluten, chakras, and homemade kombucha. He captures the condescension and fuzzy logic of New Age grandstanding so well that, like all good satire, it could just as easily be the real thing.
Sears wildly popular YouTube series on the Ultra Spiritual Life focuses the individualistic, condescending, bourgeois elements of New Age culture; its all about looking spiritual by wearing hundred-dollar Lululemon pants and talking endlessly about intuition and energy. And its about inconsistencies, like this one from episode 3 On How to Become a Vegetarian:
Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold.
more at link
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)This guy is my new hero.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)(it's the one linked in the article) and it is hilarious!
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)who eat gluten free and demand it but are NOT gluten intolerant, just convinced that gluten is a toxin. Same with peanuts. I'll be sharing it with them.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)it as funny as we do.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Have you ever thought about serving your friends vegetarian steak?
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Can't stand the stuff. Also, I don't cater to the unreasonable, so they tend not to come over for dinner. Heh.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)"If you meditate, if you do yoga, and you dont announce it over social media, then did you really meditate? Did you really do yoga? The answer is Absolutely Not. How are you going to get the benefits of yoga if you dont announce it over social media?"
"In fact, science is the enemy of true Ultra Spiritual growth. Im personally working on techniques to disengage my attachment to gravity. The more influenced you are by gravity the more stuck in your religion of science you are, therefore the less ultra spiritual you are."
cbayer
(146,218 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Level 5 vegans eat nothing that casts a shadow. I wonder what level you have to be to eat nothing that is attached to the ground.
Speaking of which, there is not much left:
- birds, if you catch them in-flight
- flying mammals, if you catch them in-flight
- insects, if you catch them in-flight
- some kinds of flying seeds (acorn, lion-tooth...), if you catch them in-flight
- fruit, after it falls off the branch but before it hits the ground
- atmospheric plancton: airborne bacteria, airborne organic particles, pollen...
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)And it follows a philosophy of non-violence that extends to all life while understanding that achieving this level of non-violence is impossible. There are approximately 6 million practicing Jainists.
yodermon
(6,143 posts)for more hilarity.
zazen
(2,978 posts)His video on parenting is brilliant.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Will watch the parenting ones next.