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A lot of "new-age" style spiritual/self-help contexts abuse and debase original intent to present a prepackaged "ready to eat" style of insight and guidance. T

A lot of "new-age" style spiritual/self-help contexts abuse and debase original intent to present a prepackaged "ready to eat" style of insight and guidance. Though the motivations in undermining the context of Rumi by removing Islam may be more nefarious, the same thing happens with Stoicism. Take a few aphorisms, oversimplify them as an answer to a complex problem and repeat. Much like Rumi can't be read without the context of Islam, Seneca or Epictetus can't be understood without the metaphysics of Stoicism, but endless volumes of self-help books disagree. I may be the wrong one in light of that.

hinkley 5y ago
Check out secular buddhism, same (general) thing is going on there as well. And don't get me started on Mindfulness. It's hard to say with certainty where these things are 'back to basics' versus a high-brow form of cultural appropriation. Western, lower-case-p philosophy has been accused countless times of being reductive in nature (and our relationship to Nature is perhaps one of the clearest cases of this). You would think that studying eastern philosophy and indigenous ways of thinking/being would counteract that, but even that is breaking down now.
- HDMI_Cable 5y ago
  I don't think this is something endemic to the West, or even America in general. America and the West has produced a lot of upper-case Philosophy, like Satre and Camus (although they're French). This seems more like a problem of our current moment, where previous religious doctrines -- like Catholicism, Orthodox Islam, & traditional American Protestantism -- don't really fit anymore, and new ones haven't taken hold yet. Mix that with our very busy and efficient culture, and you get all of this mindfulness stuff.
microtherion 5y ago
If it's any consolation, self-help literature doesn't do that just to other people's culture. The transformation of the Christian message into contemporary "Prosperity Gospel" is downright bizarre.

hinkley 5y ago

Check out secular buddhism, same (general) thing is going on there as well. And don't get me started on Mindfulness. It's hard to say with certainty where these things are 'back to basics' versus a high-brow form of cultural appropriation. Western, lower-case-p philosophy has been accused countless times of being reductive in nature (and our relationship to Nature is perhaps one of the clearest cases of this). You would think that studying eastern philosophy and indigenous ways of thinking/being would counteract that, but even that is breaking down now.

HDMI_Cable 5y ago
I don't think this is something endemic to the West, or even America in general. America and the West has produced a lot of upper-case Philosophy, like Satre and Camus (although they're French). This seems more like a problem of our current moment, where previous religious doctrines -- like Catholicism, Orthodox Islam, & traditional American Protestantism -- don't really fit anymore, and new ones haven't taken hold yet. Mix that with our very busy and efficient culture, and you get all of this mindfulness stuff.

microtherion 5y ago

If it's any consolation, self-help literature doesn't do that just to other people's culture. The transformation of the Christian message into contemporary "Prosperity Gospel" is downright bizarre.