I’m guessing this is the hardest thing ever said or written by a researcher on new age/newness. The quote was in some local newspaper, as I remember it, from the northern United States or Canada.

Carl Raschke has been controversial, committed to Satanism, among other things. Philosopher and theologian. Professor at the University of Denver. He was beaten by colleagues who thought he was too alarmist, one-eyed.

I feel like he had a point. (That’s why I even ordered a copy of that article once.) I think I understand what he was reacting to. Other observers have taken much the same view of the “holistic” world of thought, but expressed themselves more sensitively.

Today, when I see what some acquaintances have started to link and share on Facebook, for example, I am horrified. What’s going on? What’s going on?

Criticism of the authorities’ handling of the Covid-19 epidemic. All right. But it is as if a certain kind of distrustful, trusting thinking of authority, has released all inhibitions and become petty paranoia. Criticism of vaccines is mixed with Jewish conspiracy, the Illuminati, that Trump is the one who will save us, etc. Anything goes, it seems. It’s an upside-down world, if anyone asks me.

The potential may have always been there, it just hasn’t been fully realized. Until now that the phenomenon of new age/newness itself has mutated into a nasty virus not seen before.

Raschke was onto something.