From Astrology to Q

One of the reasons that so many members of the “New Age” community are becoming increasingly entangled with belief systems like QAnon and other insane conspiracy theories is that they are primed to accept that made-up nonsense might be true if it “feels right” even if it doesn’t have any basis in fact.

Things like astrology and crystal healing might not be super harmful on their own (except perhaps when people forgo actual medical treatment in favor of putting a rock on their forehead) but training people to accept things that don’t make sense without demanding rational support is extremely dangerous.

I understand that it brings many people a great deal of comfort to hold onto plainly irrational beliefs but in an age of hyper-fast exchange of ideas, harmful nonsense spreads like a virus when there are large populations who are taught that suspending disbelief is a reasonable way to approach the real world.

This isn’t to say that all people who believe in astrology are going to believe things like what QAnon is spreading but it’s difficult to ignore the underlying psychosocial similarities.

Religion poses a similar risk, which again, isn’t to say that all religious people are prone to being misled in the most harmful ways but most organized religions do seem like the perfect framework through which to inject arbitrary erroneous beliefs into large populations. History is full of examples of various religions being misused in exactly this way.

The difference between organized religion and many of these New Age belief systems is that organized religions tend to have centralized leadership structures which can either resist harmful misinformation or weaponize it. Conversely, New Age beliefs don’t tend to be governed by any central authority which makes the adoption of specific harmful beliefs much more chaotic and unpredictable.

Prior to the internet and social media, the most harmful New Age ideologies required the insulation and control of a cult in order to spread and thrive but it seems that now our social technologies facilitate the rapid spread, curation, and amplification of cult-like ideologies without the need for central control or enforced social isolation.

In this new environment of political memes and fake news, it’s more important than ever that we demand that our beliefs have a basis in fact and actually make sense instead of simply accepting things that feel like they might be true.