free software resistance

 the cost of computing freedom is eternal vigilance

### can-new-agers-be-left-wing *originally posted:* aug 2025 well over a decade and a half ago, i was extremely depressed for a substantial period of time. im not relating this to say that i have a cure for depression- i was so depressed that i had no motivation to do anything at all, i was dead inside- and i desperately needed a distraction from my misery. a lot of this is about that distraction. this is also not an effort to prove that new agey ideas are compatible with left wing politics. im going to ask the question, im going to try to answer it with what i know so far, but only because im interested in the question. this is not rhetorical. i am both interested in, and sympathetic to, the idea of mysticism. at the very least, ive had experiences that were more interesting, pleasurable and relaxing than being physically intoxicated, but im not going to go into details about that. im not here to sell you something- my interest is not in a particular school, a product, a specific book, or a particular technique. i have generally approached the subject as an agnostic, and sympathise most strongly with approaches that welcome and are compatible with agnosticism. though i dont necessarily disagree with the idea that relentless scepticism can be an impediment. if it is possible, it may be necessary to suspend disbelief to a certain degree. i applaud the debunking of cults, and discourage any mindset that places infallibility on a teacher or leader or leadership. i am sympathetic to people who go after charlatans and frauds when they treat each person individually, but less so when they judge based on occupation or belief rather than actions. for answering this particular question of course, you may feel im doing the latter. ive tried, to the best of my ability, to develop a sort of unified theory of mysticism. the connections are countless, some are even surprising, and i dont blame someone very much for dismissing that as people just lumping together whatever nonsense they can convince people is real- i mean, ive been pretty judgmental of people first saying they are mediums or psychics and then they get to stuff about ufos and im like... why are you even doing that? im just saying that ive had the same dismissive attitude, but also i can explain the connection at this point. one thing i can assure you of is that you dont need to believe in all of this stuff to take interest in it. ive compared religion to star trek for many years- you dont have to believe the federation and the enterprise actually exist to find the show and its characters absolutely fascinating. ive explored mysticism from the standpoint of it being potentially real, but ive leaned towards a fox mulder attitude with bits of a dana scully approach to mulders style of inquiry. at the moment, one of my hobbies is trying to rank or rate online psychics. i dont have the resources to hire the ones that dont do things for free, so this is primarily about vloggers. im not a fan of the upsell, incidentally. i once decided to try a "palm reading" advertised as being very cheap, and was immediately upsold to a tarot card reading that cost ten times as much. i was willing to blow that money on a tarot reading just the once, but i didnt like the tactic at all. if it had ended there (i ended it, shortly thereafter) i wouldve been happy and at worst, amused enough, though the reader then tried to upsell me again (now as much as 40 times the original price of the "palm reading") and i left, annoyed but at least without hurting financially. i should note that i dont mind the price of the first tarot reading itself. it was average for the trade and tarot readers dont all bother me. if you want to waste your money, go in completely sceptical. if you want a nice reading, look up what a fair price for a reading is and go in open-minded. if it seems like a waste to you, simply do not go. if youre too poor to spend the money on a reading, get a standard-ish tarot deck (the fancier ones cost more, you dont actually need those) and learn how to read them online. readings will be affected by any personal biases or assumptions you make, so if you are genuinely interested in exploring tarot youll have to learn about your own biases. do i think psychic powers exist? i mean, how strong an answer i have to that depends on what you mean by "psychic". i think there are some wild coincidences, some syncronicities that are very interesting, which sceptics dismiss as coincidence and biases while many mystics believe that coincidences dont exist. if you actually mean intuition, im pretty sure THATS a demonstrably real thing, intuition is based on connecting with your subconscious and bringing it to the level of conscious thinking. noticing patterns in the way your body feels in response to certain situations for example, or simply playing poker, are ways of exploring intuition. but i am open-minded to the possibility that we all have a degree of psychic ability. perhaps it is only intuition, which i just described, perhaps it is more than that, im not here to try to convince you of this. incidentally, psychic ability (like intuition) is very much about a connection between your conscious and subconscious. your dreams CAN for example, tell you about things that have been on your mind, but perhaps running in the background. so if psychic abilities are indeed a thing, then there is overlap with a scientific or non-mystical understanding of intuition. one thing that people expect of psychic ability is that people are either all-knowing and infallible, or frauds. im not implying that charlatans, opportunists and frauds dont exist- but i am implying that the best psychic in the world could be mistaken more than once. if psychic abilities are real, they are a tendency, in the way that professional athletes have a tendency to play well- theres no guarantee of winning, let alone playing perfectly. ive never met a person with no biases, ive never met a person who never makes mistakes. i wouldnt expect a psychic or even a wizard to depart from this pattern of fallibility. and this is said with great sympathy towards the person who wishes they had reliable answers. i mean, if just a guess is sufficient, we can all simply guess, right? but you will also be told that predicting the future for example, isnt about a future thats fixed. what would the point be of predicting the future if it cant be changed? when it comes to the future- which not all divination and psychic information is even about- a prediction is for the most likely future based on how things are at the point of time the prediction is made. readings are not set in stone. but thats probably a good thing. like i said, im not here to convince you that this stuff is real. i love the way mulder repeats himself, saying things like "well how do you explain this, scully?" sometimes what he says is ridiculous. sometimes hes right. other times, theres a lot of evidence that points to him being right but carter writes another magnificent twist to leave the whole thing inconclusive. my experience with mysticism isnt any different than that. i should note that im pretty well versed in what sceptics say, too. i know about cold readings and hot readings. i know about statistical similarities to chance- though only in terms of the concept, im not well versed in statistics. and if you want to blame my interest in the subject on being shit at math you can go right ahead, my grasp of math and statistics is terrible. any power i might have as an intellectual has got to rely on something other than being good at calculations. im not even good at numerology. though ive rarely seen any professional sceptics get a calculator out. statistics are relevant at least when youre deciding how accurate something is compared to anyones guess. anyway, there are several routes we can choose from, just to get started on answering the question ive posed here. we could start by just looking at the way religion tends to skew to the right- a debateable notion in my opinion, but not one id strongly disagree with. without calling myself christian i would say that jesus is respected or revered in more traditions than you might expect, if not as a saviour in the new testament sense then as a teacher, or mystic, or reincarnation of another figure, or as a protector of earth and its people. but at least on average, his followers lean right. this isnt said to spite however many leftists believe in him. perhaps its fair- remember im awful with statistics, but perhaps its fair to say that leftists probably lean either atheist or agnostic too. im not a fan of the authoritarian "left", i reject the very idea of it, but there goes what i would guess constitutes the majority of the left, then. i mean i think the point of leftist politics is to eliminate authoritarian rule, but thats easier said than done. drifting to the right towards the cia, the cold war meant that any means of gaining an advantage against the enemy was considered, and funded. this included research into psychic ability. the official story is that project stargate examined the potential, and it was abandoned for lack of evidence- that was it. at least according to one of the people who worked on it, ingo swann, stargate represented cia interest in remote viewing, it was defunded due to political leadership changes rather than lack of evidence per se, and basically snatched up by the u.s. army when the cia was done with it. im not here to prove to you that this shit is real, i just find these details more interesting than the official story about stargate. for me, the fact that retired cia people (as in hired by the cia) and retired army people still write books about this stuff and offer classes on it is relevant. maybe theyre all grifters, okay. but to me it doesnt make a lot of sense to lump them in with the person using palm readings to upsell tarot sessions. perhaps thats naive. this is where the ufos come in as well. during the extensive experimentation on military applications, the people interested in the scientific approach to remote viewing wanted to see if they could discover targets beyond those of military value- in space for example. ingo swann wrote some interesting things about this. if the data is of any use (im not saying it is) they discovered outposts of extraterrestrial life. if you accept that remove viewing is a science and not a grift of government funding, then they also purported to see life on the moon and/or mars. am i trying to convince you of that? fuck, no! im only explaining where these other themes start to overlap. and now maybe youre laughing- which is fine, imo. my primary interest is in the psychic part. note that ingo swann doesnt think remote viewing data on extraterrestrial life is infallible either, though he claims he predicted rings on uranus and thin atmospheric conditions on mercury before our probes found them. ive only tried to keep track of a single medium or tarot reader that uses remote viewing. divination and mediumship and remote viewing are mostly different approaches, which can possibly be used together. then there is the connection between divination, mediumship and witchcraft. one doesnt have to be a witch to do divination, but divination witches are a thing. one doesnt have to be a witch to do mediumship either, but witches who do mediumship are a thing. this brings us to wealth manifestation, which brings us to overlap with things like "the secret" and abraham and esther hicks. i dont know if its fair to say this is inherently right wing, but i think the idea of manifesting wealth certainly draws in people who believe that financial privilege is acceptable or even natural or good. while we are talking about leftist values, its worth talking about colonialism, landback and the native peoples of turtle island. this isnt meant as a gotcha, its meant to make you think. i personally will not validate an allegedly left wing perspective that does not allow anyone their ancient beliefs- i do not consider that leftist. the only lefists i would ever support will at least leave natives of turtle island alone, rather than subjecting them to further colonisation in the name of some greater marxist good. white people have done enough to the natives. im not trying to create a false dilemma here, i have not read or seen anything to suggest that marxists have any plans or intentions towards native peoples in the west. even stalin, who im no fan of, was amenable to (some degree of) providing indigenous peoples with land where they could live. when the ussr shifted further towards capitalism or "reform", a lot of people who had tolerated each other during the regime broke out in fighting and even genocide. i see THE PREVIOUS TOLERANCE as a welcome side effect of the regime rather than a triumph of it, but perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. with that said, native tribes have religious or sacred beliefs, and the concept of sacred land may not be compatible with most leftist concepts- but it may be compatible with some. if youre looking to resolve a contradiction between sacred land and leftist politics, youre probably best off looking at anarchists and natives of turtle island. but im certainly no expert. another approach is to look at new agers as having a strange relationship with politics on average. this is tenuous, and im not sure how practical or reliable it would be. what i mean about a strange relationship is one that to a certain degree transcends political affiliations while seeking a future where humanity evolves on a spiritual level. this may be incredibly easy to debunk, im not sure im convinced either way yet and i consider it worth looking at. but to say, if you can actually see a trend towards humanity growing in empathy and having needs met, then a spiritual shift away from authoritarianism and away from poverty and away from fighting over the petty things that conservatives and fascists like us to fight about could only be a good thing. of course, this is where new agey stuff overlaps with christian messaging, which i phrase as "messaging" since most followers dont seem to care about jesus as a peacemaker, moderator or socialist- they want to go to war, they want to be rich, they want to judge everyone else while being hypocrites. im not actually trying to say all christians are bad, and youre welcome to say that the worst of them stand out more. it should be noted than this is being written in 2025, and the amount of trouble being created while hiding behind jesus is some of the worst in my life so far. what i mean is, that the "love and light" people of the new age might not be any better in practice than the "god is love" people beating us to death with the new testament, so im not trying to say "aha, this proves new agey shit is GOOD actually". on the one hand are the claims of love and light, and on the other would be the actual practice of love and light. you know how that goes. if i were being harder on the psychics, it might be a lot easier to say that new agers are inherently right wing- they favour financial privilege, faith over science, apathy over justice, inaction over praxis. it would take even longer for me to explain why im not yet convinced thats a fair assessment, but i dont want you to think that i havent considered it. because biases are known by practitioners to affect readings, i consider it a dealbreaker of sorts, when a medium or psychic or witch is openly right wing. the more right wing they are, the less i will have anything to do with them. one medium i can think of, who isnt even american, was utterly tickled and tingly with the idea that trump was returning to office. ive paid her no attention since that point- i think i actually watched one video she did, and that was that. i have little patience for readers who "both sides" politics, even in the name of a united humanity. i stopped paying attention to bea lucile, because she got a little too both sidesy for me to stomach at this point in the course of political events. i think she probably cares about humanity, i think she probably (openly) cares about the people being hurt by whats going on, but at this point im more interested in her insistence that shes not on one side or the other than i am in her predictions. among the psychics, tarot readers and mediums that i rank the highest, the trend i dislike the most is the veneration of the pope (to the best of my knowledge, none of these readers are either catholic or christian, but the world is obsessed with this pope for reasons beyond me) when the pope is so openly against trans rights and trans people. i find this really disturbing, and the person im willing to show the most patience towards (because i feel hes earned it) is "psychic nathe", who is a french youtuber offering divination and predictions. the people ive mostly stopped watching, it has often been for giving the pope too much credit. if we decide to accept that psychic predictions are worth more than coin tosses, perhaps the pope himself will come around. but i find it very difficult to resolve the idea that psychics can be left wing and that the "best" psychics i can find all seem to think an openly transphobic pope is a wonderful guy. i do not appreciate the pope at all, i dont appreciate his bigotry and inhumanity towards trans people, and i think its just weird that liberals venerate him so much given the things he and pope francis have said about the lgbtq community. i have no interest in the portion of the left that doesnt care about lgbtq rights, and i dont consider liberals to be left wing- they are on average, centrist at best. they pose no serious threat to capitalism, to exploitation, to illegal wars for the past few DECADES. i consider liberals to be a sad and terrible joke on politics and on our species. their monopoly on all forms of progress is both detrimental and deadly, reeking of controlled opposition. even so, i have not given up on this question. i have known practitioners who are both left wing and members of the lgbtq community. i do not consider them foolish, or simply cult followers- though that would be the most trivial way to resolve the potential divide between lgbtq rights and new age practices. i do not consider any of this conclusive. but, i have definitely given it some thought. license: 0-clause bsd ``` # 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 # # Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any # purpose with or without fee is hereby granted. # # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES # WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF # MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR # ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES # WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN # ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF # OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. ``` => https://freesoftwareresistance.neocities.org