New Age beliefs that derive from racist pseudoscience (original) (raw)
Race science, or so-called “scientific racism,” was essentially developed by privileged white people who were really convinced that their prejudices would be borne out by scientific fact. It has a long and complicated history, but to really oversimplify things, some rich assholes decided to divide people up into “races” based on phenotypical differences, and attribute differences in culture to differences in genes. Racists have spent many years ignoring and distorting facts to defend this baloney (Shaun’s video on The Bell Curve is worth checking out on this), and many racists today are trying to make it an acceptable belief.
New Age developed during the 19th and 20th centuries, a time period when these kinds of beliefs were very popular and were being used to justify everything from forced poverty to genocide.
All spiritual belief systems are products of their environments, no exceptions. New Age and its associated alien lore incorporated quite a few of these beliefs, including:
- Different races, though able to produce fertile offspring together, actually have completely different evolutionary origins (polygenics).
- The purpose of evolution is to produce higher and better lifeforms.
- Some races are more evolved than others, and are thus qualified and obligated to guide “lower” races toward enlightenment.
- Some races are naturally more gifted in certain areas than others.
- Some people born today are the “next step” of evolution and are meant to lead the rest of us toward improvement.
- Evolution can go “backwards.” Races can become degenerate or “regress.”
- Entire races can be so genetically prone to selfish, manipulative behavior that the only solution is genocide.
- We could live in a utopia if it wasn’t for members of genetically backward races mucking things up.
Because these beliefs are typically applied to alien races rather than human ones, the racism can be easy to miss. And yet, it’s no coincidence that the Pleiadians, considered to be one of the most advanced and civilized of alien races, are typically imagined as tall, slender, and pale.
So yeah, always keep your eyes open and be very wary if you see this being pushed in any spiritual context.
See more posts like this on Tumblr
#racism #genetics #evolution #religion #new age #eugenics #genocide #aliens #extraterrestrials #spiritual eugenics #genetic essentialism #dna #spirituality #pseudoscience