Meet the "New Age" Stephen Colbert

[cbayer]

http://religiondispatches.org/meet-the-new-age-stephen-colbert/

BY ANDREW AGHAPOUR MARCH 30, 2015




In the kitchen of his Charleston, S.C. home, wearing a flower in his hair, life coach and entrepreneur JP Sears explains, in a recent video, that, “being gluten intolerant used to be limited only to those who are actually intolerant to gluten,” but that now anyone can try it as long as they have a “ravenous appetite for impossible standards and dogmatic feelings of victimization.” When I first watched “How to Become Gluten Intolerant,” just a day after its release, it had already racked up half a million views. As I write, the count is at 2.7 million, and growing.

Sears’ vacuous serenity is familiar to anyone who has been trapped in a conversation about gluten, chakras, and homemade kombucha. He captures the condescension and fuzzy logic of New Age grandstanding so well that, like all good satire, it could just as easily be the real thing.

Sears’ wildly popular YouTube series on the “Ultra Spiritual Life” focuses the individualistic, condescending, bourgeois elements of New Age culture; it’s all about looking spiritual by wearing hundred-dollar Lululemon pants and talking endlessly about intuition and energy. And it’s about inconsistencies, like this one from episode 3 “On How to Become a Vegetarian”:

As a spiritual seeker you don’t believe in death, [since] it’s only an illusion… But as a vegetarian you need to strategically forget this belief at times so you can get more emotionally charged at people who kill animals.

Were Sears simply a critic and comedian shattering New Age pieties his videos would still be clever and hilarious, but Sears is a full-time life coach whose work focuses on emotional healing. When Sears notes that he too is guilty of the behaviors he lampoons, he puts himself in the far more interesting tradition of those who criticize and question the beliefs they themselves hold.

more at link

[Dr Hobbitstein]

1. Ha!

This guy is my new hero.

[cbayer]

2. I just watched his episode on becoming gluten intolerant

(it's the one linked in the article) and it is hilarious!

[Dr Hobbitstein]

3. I know WAY too many people

who eat gluten free and demand it but are NOT gluten intolerant, just convinced that gluten is a toxin. Same with peanuts. I'll be sharing it with them.

[cbayer]

4. He totally nails it, but I'm not sure your "gluten intolerant" friends will find

it as funny as we do.

[DetlefK]

5. Some vegetarian meat-substitutes are made from gluten.

Have you ever thought about serving your friends vegetarian steak?

[Dr Hobbitstein]

13. Good old seitan...

Can't stand the stuff. Also, I don't cater to the unreasonable, so they tend not to come over for dinner. Heh.

[DetlefK]

6. "not eating a meat- or plant-based diet, because those foods are attached to the gound via gravity"

"If you meditate, if you do yoga, and you don’t announce it over social media, then did you really meditate? Did you really do yoga? The answer is Absolutely Not. How are you going to get the benefits of yoga if you don’t announce it over social media?"

"In fact, science is the enemy of true Ultra Spiritual growth. I’m personally working on techniques to disengage my attachment to gravity. The more influenced you are by gravity the more stuck in your religion of science you are, therefore the less ultra spiritual you are."

[cbayer]

7. Is he not hilarious? I am so glad I have discovered him.

[DetlefK]

8. He's even more hardcore than the level 5 vegan from "The Simpsons".

Level 5 vegans eat nothing that casts a shadow. I wonder what level you have to be to eat nothing that is attached to the ground.

Speaking of which, there is not much left:
- birds, if you catch them in-flight
- flying mammals, if you catch them in-flight
- insects, if you catch them in-flight
- some kinds of flying seeds (acorn, lion-tooth...), if you catch them in-flight
- fruit, after it falls off the branch but before it hits the ground
- atmospheric plancton: airborne bacteria, airborne organic particles, pollen...

[cbayer]

9. There is also Spanish moss and orchids!

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Jainism is perhaps the oldest practiced religion in the world

And it follows a philosophy of non-violence that extends to all life while understanding that achieving this level of non-violence is impossible. There are approximately 6 million practicing Jainists.

[yodermon]

14. "disengage my attachment to gravity".. google "Yogic Flying"

for more hilarity.

[zazen]

10. thank you! just shared it with a circle of sardonic, weary, highly imperfect progressive friends

His video on parenting is brilliant.

[cbayer]

12. I am going to try and get through them all while I have a good connection.

Will watch the parenting ones next.