new Age

The New Age contains under it a series of social phenomena in which there is an emphasis on personal spiritual work (meditation, release of inhibitions and an accurate view of reality without the conditioning and images we have of it), as a tool to change the world as opposed to Western teachings that (in general) believe in changing society as a tool for self-change (See socialism, communism, democracy, equal rights, sound economic policy, capitalism). 

This phenomenon as far as I'm concerned is a protest movement and whatnot, except that we've gotten used to seeing social protest as a mass of people carrying signs, climbing barricades, and shouting in hoarse throats. But the New Age movement has a different character, a more personal character. It is essentially a protest against the dictatorial rule of the bad thoughts that run through our heads, a protest where barriers are not placed but removed, a protest where signs are not written, but an attempt is made to see beyond the words, a protest whose manifesto is not written with lofty words, but with a lot of love, emotion and intuition. And this is the only protest that does not change the other, but yourself in the hope that if you change your environment will also change because each of us is also a part of society. Perhaps it is appropriate to end with a passage from a lecture I heard about a year ago from the writer Amos Oz at an appreciation ceremony in honor of his winning the Goethe Prize for Literature, where he tries to make a synthesis between these two worldviews (social and individual): "In the process of globalization that is sweeping the world, the first basic ability we are born with is gradually being erased - This is the capacity for solidarity. The capacity to feel that 'that' is also a little me. And I am a little bit he, but not completely. John Dane wrote in those unforgettable words from the seventeenth century, "No man is an island."

And I tell you: none of us is an island, and none of us is a molecule of the continent. Each of us was created a peninsula. Half of it is connected and should be connected to the continent of society, of others, of language, of culture and of family. Maybe first of all of family. But the other half of each of us is lonely and turns to the eternal elements, to death, to loneliness, to the great mystery of life and death, to the Spouse. All these things not only that each of us was created as a peninsula. We also need to remain as a peninsula."