- The term conspirituality was coined in 2011 to represent a growing disillusionment that leads to belief in conspiracy theories.
- This particular affliction affects spiritually-minded people suspicious of anything deemed institutional.
- Conspiritual thinking is the juncture where far-left "wellness" purveyors meet right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Coronavirus got you down? No worries. A bit of oregano oil will protect you from this virus that, by the way, was created in a Chinese laboratory. That news flash is thanks to Gabriel Cousens, a homeopathic doctor who used to run an East Village storefront that sold gall bladder cleanses, which required drinking a ton of olive oil. On his Facebook page you'll also find plenty of information about the dangers of 5G and the fact that vaccinated children often get the diseases they're supposedly protected against, while unvaccinated children remain healthy and free.
There are lots of ads on that page for his Shaktipat workshops, which usually requires that the guru transfers psychic energy by touch. But hey, a man has to make a living in the age of social distancing. It turns out that Zoom has a feature that transmits sacred energy!
Social media leaves a trail of breadcrumbs leading you down a trail of conspiracies. "The End Of The Vaccine Era Is Today!" claims one holistic vegan, who also states that the "Microsoft Couple" and "Facebook guy" are not that smart—posted on Facebook, obviously. Forget vaccines, a steady diet of enzymes, water fasting, higher consciousness, and rebounding (pretty sure that's not basketball) is guaranteed to cure you of this "scamdemic."
I've hung out on the edge of the "wellness community" for over 20 years. My undergraduate studies focused on Eastern religions. I started practicing yoga shortly after leaving Rutgers in 1997; I began teaching it in 2004. Having been active on social media platforms as a journalist since their inception, I've spent decades communicating with a variety of people in the so-called wellness space. While I've long been wary of many ideas being circulated in this group, COVID-19 has inspired a pandemic of conspiracy I could not have foreseen.
In 2011, Charlotte Ward coined the term "conspirituality," which she defines as "a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews." In the article, published in Journal of Contemporary Religion, Ward names three first-generation charlatans that represent this emerging toxic fusion of New Age ideology and right-wing conspiracists. One is former soccer player, David Icke, of whom she writes,
"He is notorious for alleging that a shadow government harbours the bloodlines of an ancient race of reptilian extraterrestrials."
Why conspiratorial thinking is peaking in America | Sarah Rose Cavanagh | Big Think
Icke recently repeated this factoid on an episode of "London Real," which has garnered nearly 6 million views on YouTube. Icke begins by claiming the world is controlled by a cult. He then rails against the implementation of 5G towers and warns that nanotechnology microchips will be inserted into COVID-19 vaccines in order to track us. We need to recognize these truths in order to be part of a "spiritual awakening," which not-so-ironically is a term often used by wannabe cult leaders. Full circle, I guess.
If trying to follow that plot confuses you, don't worry: that's part of the rhetoric. Ward continues,
"Conspirituality has spread from being a scattering of single, first-generation providers to a large chain. It is now part of the spiritual supermarket: clients shop around, settling upon the outlets whose interpretations of the two core convictions best suit their own opinions and tastes."
Which is how in recent weeks my Facebook feed became filled with posts warning that Bill Gates wants to depopulate the world in order to microchip humans through vaccines. The plan is to save lives so that he can control the population he initially set out to destroy. 5G is in there somewhere because, I don't know, analytics?
A lack of critical thinking has long plagued the wellness community. An example: Since herbs and tinctures can be sold as dietary supplements with minimal federal oversight, and since companies go to great lengths to advertise their products regardless of clinical evidence, a multi-billion dollar alternative medicine market has emerged. If you want to achieve success in this market, you need to be alternative to something. That something happens to be vaccines, and Big Pharma in general.
Not that Big Pharma isn't an appropriate enemy. The for-profit medical model is not set up in the interests of the broader population. A real conspiracy is the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors fostered by lackluster federal oversight. We should be up in arms about a mental health crisis that has in large part created by profit maximization. But that story is complex and our brains are not designed to process complexity. An easier conspiracy is vaccines, one of the most effective and important scientific advances in history.
If you were to tell me a year ago that a pandemic would be cause for political polarization, I would have dismissed the notion, even in the Trump era. Obviously, I'm too hopeful. In an essay on conspirituality in the COVID-19 age, philosopher Jules Evans writes that even the term "conspiracy theory" is confusing now. "It can be a way of simply dismissing a topic without considering it." He continues,
"The pandemic has led to a breakdown in knowledge and certainty. We don't know much about the virus or the best way of dealing with it, but we know it's killing a lot of us and we're afraid. This is happening to the entire human race at the same time, and we're all connected on the internet."
In 2012, I started a now-defunct blog with four fellow yoga teachers that tackled issues regarding yoga and politics. While yoga has always been deeply political, the modern incarnation, which began in America in the early nineteenth century and became a marketing juggernaut in the eighties, usually eschews political talk. Yet the entire physical revolution of yoga in the early twentieth century was a response to British occupation. The only era of non-political yoga is modern, affluent America.
On our site, we strove to remind people that being a yogi means engaging as a citizen. At the most basic level, citizenry in a democracy equals voting. We achieved some success and started a few conversations, yet we were never blind to the reality that companies marketing leggings will immediately reach a much larger audience. Humans are not built to care about things that don't directly affect them, even if one of the most popular mantras in modern yoga talks about the freedom of all sentient beings. What that usually means is "I want to feel good right now," not "I'm willing to fight for livable wages so that everyone can afford their rent."
Then a pandemic rolls around and suddenly everyone is affected. Since much of this wellness community has been checked out of politics, the first thing these healers and rebels encounter are rehashed right-wing talking points couched in the language of spirituality. This is not how conspirituality starts—that's usually by men with agendas they want to monetize—but it is how it spreads. Ideas are as contagious as viruses, no matter how thoughtless or dangerous they prove to be.
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Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His next book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."
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