Conspirituality

A long-ish, engaging intellectual screed against the marriage of conspiracy theorizing and New Age woo. This was written with a lot of color and brio, so it's a lot of fun and quite podcasty.

This is a history of 20th and 21st century wellness movements - yoga, Reiki, all that New Agey stuff - and their underlying politics, as well as their often close relationship with conspiracy theories and cults. The first two parts are a lively sociological and historical study of this stuff, and I learned a lot and filled in lots of gaps that I had had. This was basically what I wanted to learn from American Veda, a book I am too lazy to actually buy. So, it was a lot of fun! And cut very close to home, especially the Theosophists and Buddhism in the West stuff. [I look down at my Buddhist tattoo in some chagrin.]

I didn't care for Part 3, where the authors present a Wall of Shame of the worst “conspiritualists” in recent years. Oh yes - “conspirituality” is basically the tight coupling of alt-right Qanon craziness with New Age business, and how the Covid pandemic was like gas on that flame. The Part 3 Wall of Shame chapters profiled the most egregiously awful of these yoga-practicing, coffee-enema-ing, Covid/election denialist influencers. And honestly, I just don't have the patience to listen to complete and utter garbage for chapter upon chapter.

The final part zoomed in on more quotidian conspiritualists - the conspiritualist next door, if you will. This was, of course, much less outrage-inducing and much sadder. e.g. The breast cancer patient who refuses mainstream medicine and dies amidst her magical thinking and potions. Ugh. It's just awful. So the book, ultimately, preaches compassion for these benighted and confused people.

The book also discussed the tropes of conspiritual thinking: namely, I replace your reality with my own. A lot of this has to do with people's ignorance re: the scientific method - and their disappointments in it (i.e. they expect science to be infallible and - once a scientific question is “answered”, the answer never changes). This is a real problem, indeed, and is the problem of MY CAREER, I would say: how do you get people comfortable with uncertainty? How do you convey the epistemology of the scientific methods(and statistics, do not even get me started)? Without them just completely jumping ship and swimming to crazy island?

I got to the end of the first section and found myself bored. The premise is sound and interesting enough but it's one of those “everything but the kitchen sink” books, where the authors include every single thing they know rather than paring it down to the most essential and deliver the clearest message. (Perhaps with three authors, they thought it needed to be three times as long?) Consequently, I decided to listen to the podcast and I found that to be a lot of pointless chatter in between relevant points (as many podcasts are, imo) but, frankly, it was more engaging. So, in conclusion, I wouldn't recommend this book but the podcast is interesting enough that I will be listening to it occasionally.

Thank you to whatever publisher it was that sent me this advance copy for review.

I will preface my review with the fact that I am not a listener of the podcast produced by the authors and had absolutely no awareness of their existence until I read this book so my review is based solely on the content of this book.
I really enjoyed the perspectives offered in this book, the authors have unique experiences with cults and cult adjacent groups which confers them a particular understanding of how people end up falling for ideas that might seem ludicrous and of how insidiously these ideas are often presented (often side by side with actually valid information). The book is very humane in its approach, and I really appreciated that (especially as I have family members who fall/fell at various places on the conspirituality spectrum without being lacking in intellectual capacities or humanity but maybe in media literacy).
There is a section about influencers and media people who peddle “conspirituality” ideas and it was really interesting for me to read what happened with JP Sears after I stopped following him (I was a fairly early YouTube followed but at some point his brand of humor stopped feeling a bit self-deprecating and started feeling mean spirited so I dipped and didn't keep up with him at all). They resist the urge to simply demonize people at every turn so even when discussing figures such as Teal Swan and Joe Rogan (which they describe as an enabler more than an active peddler) their tone is one of understanding.
I was especially fond of how they described the clash between vaccination being one size fits all and the need to be unique, to have things be bespoke, I had never thought of it that way and they expressed it succinctly and eloquently.
Extensive sources are listed at the end of the book and the style made for an agreeable reading experience even for someone who never listened to the podcast.
I received an eARC of this book from PublicAffairs through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.