Talk:Conspirituality

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Wording?

I'm not sure about this sentence in the intro: "The New Age is more "feminine" and optimistically focuses on the self, while conspiracism is more "masculine" and pessimistically focuses on the world and politics." There may be a few unstated assumptions there.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 08:43, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I'll rewrite that second intro paragraph. The wording is a bit hasty, and I also made that paragraph a bit half-joking in tone. It would take too much text to straighten out the connected ideas at the top of the article, and it's not worth the clutter. For more thoughts, see my response to the BoN below. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 16:23, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

A lot of it could use sources and examples of the topic in action whilst giving some commentary as to the mindset of the parties involved. Though the idea that the left is feminine and the right is masculine is definitely something those on the right tend to believe in, as a simplistic view of the world with no grounding in reality. What I tend to see in the right leaning politics is a trend towards fascism. I'll explain by pointing at some similarities here so you can get an idea of what I mean. When the right is a fan of indepedence from the world, this is counter to the new liberal ideas that interconnectedness between nations and economic interdependence with countries helps to prevent wars by making it non-beneficial for those countries to effectively shoot each other's customers. When the US depends on imports from China (and to some extent this is horrible because China exploits slavery), the US loves this because they get cheap goods that do not have to go through the same regulatory practices that a similar supply chain would have to go through at home. (This is a effing massive problem today and no politician on the left or the right has the 'balls' to stop those imports or grow a spine to stand up for human rights). Source. I don't want to segue too far from the main point here but this also dips into wilful ignorance, it is better to not know where your goods came from if knowing meant you would have to make an actual choice, get rid of the cotton imports and suffer or be complicit in cotton slave trade all over again.

Back to the main line; the thing about the fascists regimes is that they needed to become Autarkic because they could not risk sanctions or economic dependence from slowing down their war efforts. Economics is important in war time and aggression, you don't want to be throwing a hypothetical molotov at your major oil supplier if your goal is to sustain a long-term war strategy, this makes autarkic economics (protectionism, de-globalization, de-integration) massively important. You also would run the risk of upsetting a lot more people if they knew that the other they were attacking was actually what made your country great (the nazis did not mention the importance of Jews to their economy, or what the Jews did for them! To do so would grant the enemy sympathy!) Imagine if they had tried to justify attacking Italians, an ally in the war, people might've had more reason to question their leadership given they knew they were fighting alongside them. People would know that immigrants are fantastic people, who help them, they would gain a sense of togetherness that would be counter to any foreign campaigns on those countries. For that reason globalization is the enemy to fascism.

Seeing the world in terms of being a man or a woman is an infantile ambition (opinion), for children it is often important for them to aspire to become adults, for a boy it might be wise to ask that he think fondly of becoming 'a man' as a form of his natural growth. But for men to grow up fearful of emasculation or to fear their own emotions and humanity is a degradation, it is an undoing of growth, they regress, and never see past these trivial pursuits at the bigger picture, they never see the other sex as fundamentally more complex than a 'sex' object, with stereotypes defining people based on those physical characteristics rather than looking at everyone as an individual, with their own personality, lives, and passions. It is pettiness. It is not 'grown up'. Let alone the discussion on what it even means to different minicultures and culture at large to be a male. 86.10.101.16 (talk) 09:36, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

There's two related, but not exactly the same, observations. It may be worth having something on one or more of these two further down in the article text, but I'll keep it all from the intro after editing it more. I actually don't care so much for the language of feminine vs. masculine. I don't think it's useful to apply to normal left vs. right politics.

1. Ward and Voas describe New Age/wellness culture as dominated more by women, and conspiracy culture as dominated more by men. This brief mention in their old article is about the number of participants and the weight of their influence, not the subjective psychological qualities of feminine vs. masculine.
2. What I had in mind, the basically cliche ideas of the passivity, spiritual bypassing, etc., prominent in New Age and wellness circles, often associated with femininity both within and outside such movements vs. more conspiracy-focused mentalities with messages running counter to oft-criticized New Age cliches and promoting the "sacred masculine" and resistance to the evil powers.

I don't have any nice sources at hand for a clear and thorough description of the latter. It may be worth noting somewhere later, though, as it's sometimes close to the heart of the self-chosen identities of movements. (New Age pro-"femininity" vs. later conspirituality pro-"masculinity"). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 16:23, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Apart from reinforcing stereotypes about whatever masculinity and femininity may be, the wording also implied a somewhat binary interpretation of the whole thing. But as it's gone, and as there are lot of people a lot more invested than I am in this subject, I'll say no more. In principle I like the idea of the article.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 16:40, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

If a section is added later to properly cover that question, I think that doing so should highlight the silliness. I'm not sure how accurate my stereotype about stereotypes are, but here goes. For some reason, spiritual teachings and subcultures often seem to be very fond of the "masculine" vs. "feminine" division, perhaps because it's readily available and they try to generally assign everything to some simple abstract categories and see great transcendent meaning in/through this. Simple solutions and great "awakenings" are often sought in relating to such categories in ways different than the norm. On gender, even when such communities are inclusive and accommodate people who don't fit the norms, the same old categories are used in nonstandard ways to construct new woo ideas and dogmas about the special roles such people should play in order to play a positive, etc. part in the world. But this is getting into another side-topic. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 17:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

It's good to leave these parts be until knowing more, it seems. I'm now reading Asprem and Dyrendal, who criticize the way Ward and Voas characterized the movements. So that thus-far unused point I listed above is also contentious. There's more than one way to look at the New Age, and "Ward and Voas appear to use [the term New Age] in at least two different senses, and to shift between these at crucial points in their argument." Is it millennialism (the big shift into a new age is coming), or is it the big broad supermarket of spiritual ideas? And the conspiracy crowd also doesn't seem to be dominated by men. There's no clear contrast of that type between the types of people involved. But as for cultural currents associated with "feminine" and "masculine", here is a Washington Post article mentioning various themes. Themes could be written about without trying to shoehorn the whole into a particular mold later. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 01:02, 19 October 2021 (UTC)