Plato and the Platypus wrote:
Airhead philosophy
Airhead philosophy appeared on the scene in the late 1960's, coincidently with Harvard professors Timothy Leary's pronouncement that the way to enlightenment was through ingesting magic mushrooms. Subsequently dubbed "New Age Philosophy," airheadism is an amalgam of ancient eastern philosophies and some medieval beliefs such as astrology, Tarot cards, and the kabbalah. "Affirmation" - statements such as "I am one with my duality" or "As I learn to trust the Process, I no longer need to carry gun" - are also an important part of New Age philosophy. This reminds us of the elderly woman who approached British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge after a lecture in the early1800's and said, "Mr. Coleridge, I've accepted the universe." Coleridge peered over the top of his glasses and said, "My God, madam, you'd better!"
Happily, we have jokemiesters to illuminate the dimness of New age Thought.
How many New Agers does it take to change a light bulb?
None, they just start a "coping with the darkness" support group.
If there's anything up-to-date about New agers, it may be their belief in extraterrestrial beings that not only visit us, but invite us into their airships for dinner and romance. It takes a satirist to push the limits of such New Age beliefs to their logical extreme.
A Martian makes an emergency landing in Brooklyn and finds that a key part of his saucer has been damaged - the all important troover. He goes into a deli and asks the counter man if he knows where he can find a troover. The man asks, "What's it look like?"
The Martian says, "Its round, kind of hard on the outside, soft on the inside, with a little hole in the middle."
The deli man says, "That sounds like a bagel. Here, does this look like what you need?"
The Martian says, "It's perfect! What do you use it for here?"
The deli man says, "Well, you'll probably find it hard to believe, but we eat them here."
The Martian replies, "Your kidding! You eat troovers?"
The deli guy says, "Yeah, here, try one."
The Martian is pretty skeptical, but he takes a bite. "Hey" the Martian says, "with a little cream cheese, this wouldn't be half bad."
Another element in the new agers kit bag is their fascination with parapsychic phenomena, such as clairvoyance. Many old-agers - aka rational thinkers - continue to believe that there is always a reasonable explanation for such phenomena.
"My grandfather knew the exact time of the exact day of the exact year that he would die."
"Wow, what an evolved soul! How did it come to him?"
"The judge told him."
In many respects, I find this very amusing. This does indeed seem to be a growing trend. But for some reason, I am hesitant to really buy into this type of classification for people that are genuinely interested in subjects like Aliens and supra-philosophical processes. Metaphysics used to be the science of the day some thousand years ago and people like Aristotle placed pre-scientific treatises like
Categories in larger more accepted treatises like
Metaphysics. Indeed, if you read through Aristotle's
Metaphysics, you find that scientific theory, like thoughts on generation, are placed within texts that deal with more abstract notions, like the ontology of being. Science like that in the categories did not really fit in the larger spectrum of
Metaphysics (i.e. Zeta 7-9).
So that begs the question, do you think that airheadism (and New Age philosophy) is a dormant form of philosophical or scientific method that has yet to have it's time in the sun? At first glance, I would say no, but then again, modern science was considered pretty far out in Aristotle's time. Airheadism and New Age Philosophy may in fact be the next scientific method.
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