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The New Age movement since 1980


Many commentators who seek to define the post-1960s New Age movement have stressed its breadth. For example, a cover story in Time Magazine characterizes it as a smorgasboard of beliefs, facts, and rituals, with most members subscribing to some parts but not to others. Historian Alan Mayne says some parts may seem "bizarre or utterly fantastic" to ordinary people, but other parts not at all. In his book The New Age Movement in American Culture, Richard Kyle attempts to define the content of the movement by means of its principal spokespeople and their books. Kyle credis Ram Dass with helping to initiate the movement in the early 1970s by popularizing Eastern spirituality. He cites David Spangler and the creators of A Course in Miracles for spreading esoteric ideas and practices, Marilyn Ferguson for producing a comprehensive introduction to the movement's goals, and Mark Satin for "presenting a vision for a new political and economic order". Ferguson's book The Aquarian Conspiracy, which The New York Times called "a bible of the New Age movement", includes chapters on spirituality, politics, and cultural topics: self-help, personal relationships, science, education, and more. Spiritual, cultural, and political chapters are also included in Kyle's book and other movement overview books, both from the 20th century and from the 21st.

Kyle saw the movement as aiming to "transform" both individuals and society. So did many others. One of the earliest books about the movement's goals was journalist George Leonard's The Transformation (1972). The New York Times quoted this passage from The Aquarian Conspiracy: "A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States.  Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought and they may have even broken continuity with history." Futurists Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps – recognized as New Age-influenced thinkers – declared in their book Networking that "an entirely new culture" is arising in the U.S. They described it as "Another America … an Emerald City of ideas and visions and practical enterprises …, a domain that is very new, and at the same time, very old."

Observers have long attempted to define, judge, and anticipate the New Age movement's future. In the 1980s, Time Magazine expressed concern about the possible left-wing or far-right implications of the movement, while journalist Annie Gottlieb looked forward to an evolution of the New Age and New Left into a "New Center". In the 1990s, Mayne suggested that the movement's emphasis on consciousness could radically reshape ordinary assumptions about people, culture, and politics. In the 2000s, the authors of The Cultural Creatives argued that the New Age movement was a "transitional phenomenon" that would fade as the new culture it expressed became more "normal in society", while The New York Times suggested that many of the cutting-edge ideas in Ferguson's book had already become "commonplace".

Second part of paragraph on Yair Lapid
In May 2020, following three elections, Lapid was named leader of the opposition in Israel. A month prior, Lapid had written an essay in which he described his version of centrism as "the politics of the broad consensus that empowers us all. Together, we are creating something new".

Up From Socialism
In his mid-70s, Satin wrote the book Up From Socialism (2023). It was edited by Adam Bellow, a son of the novelist Saul Bellow. In a review, law professor David Yamada – who says he taught Satin at NYU School of Law – describes the book as reflections upon Satin's political and personal life "in a first-person, journalistic style.  It is very opinionated, not overly concerned with political correctness, and sometimes rather detailed about the author's romantic connections". In a response that Yamada later added to the article, Satin wrote: David ... does not realize how much his perspective has contributed to my Up From Socialism book. That book is, among other things, an exposé of the nastiness, competitiveness, ego-drivenness, and bullying that went on in the New Left of the 1960s, the supposedly more idealistic "transformational" movements of the 1970s–1990s, and the supposedly more buttoned-down radical-centrist activities of our day – not to mention what's going on in the new New Left!

In Up From Socialism, I trace much of this awfulness back to many activists' poor relationships with self, parents, and partners; that's why there's little separation in my book between the personal and the political. And that's why the explicitly stated moral of my book is, "Only by becoming kind people can we create a kind world". ... I am a more or less Bad Guy through much of my book! Satin attempted to explain another aspect of the book on his page at the Civil Rights Movement Archive website: "[In my new book], radical politics no longer means taking an extreme side of an issue and acting as if you're right and everyone else is wrong (or, especially today,"evil"). Rather, it means listening empathically to the fears, needs, wants, and wisdom of people on all sides of an issue, and then working with all sides to develop genuine (not mushy-middle) solutions that address everyone's core interests. That is the kind of movement we need today, not a revival of the movements of the Sixties".

Without the blog content
In his mid-70s, Satin wrote the book Up From Socialism (2023). It was edited by Adam Bellow, a son of the novelist Saul Bellow. Shortly after publication, Satin attempted to describe the book's political perspective on the Civil Rights Movement Archive website: "[In my new book], radical politics no longer means taking an extreme side of an issue and acting as if you're right and everyone else is wrong (or, especially today,'evil'). Rather, it means listening empathically to the fears, needs, wants, and wisdom of people on all sides of an issue, and then working with all sides to develop genuine (not mushy-middle) solutions that address everyone's core interests. That is the kind of movement we need today, not a revival of the movements of the Sixties".