Kitsch, Paranoia, Nihilism

Julian Walker posts the second part of his "Power of Worldviews" entitled "Spiritual Kitsch, Paranoid Process and Relativist Nihilism". Here's an excerpt:

"...In it's healthy form, Postmodern spirituality deconstructs the cultural baggage and prerational superstions of Magic and Mythic and expands Rational natural-world, sensual spirituality into a deeper valuing of both the inner world of the psyche and the universal truths and states of consciousness made available through the still valid perrenial practices at the heart of those traditions.

Instead we have what I call spiritual kitsch - a kind of lowest commmon denominator combining of angels, aliens, karma, positive thinking, narcissistic fantasies about manifestation and how the universe works, extra-dimensional spirit guides, astrology, psychics and everything happening for some cosmic reason - all supported by an imaginary new science that is really just a self-referential reflection of the marketing material that keeps this segment of the economy chugging along at ever greater profits.

This spiritual kistch is of course reflected throughout popular culture as a kind of dumbing down of the arts and the elevation of self-help platitudes to the status of philosophy and psychology."

See the whole piece, it's worth reading.