In 1921, the British psychologist William McDougall declared:
Read MoreI have two hobbies — psychical research and eugenics. So far as I know, I am the only person alive today who takes an active interest in both these movements. [‘The need for psychical research’]
In 1883, the same year that Francis Galton coined the word ‘eugenics’, a strange religious text was published, announcing the coming of a new type of human. The grand announcement went completely unnoticed at the time, and yet it would capture the imagination of the world in the coming decades. The book, of course, was Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra.
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On the 18th of January, 1874, a remarkable dinner party took place at the London home of Erasmus Darwin, older brother of naturalist Charles Darwin. The guests included Charles Darwin, the novelist George Eliot, a young classicist named Frederic Myers, and Darwin’s cousin, the statistician Francis Galton.
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This week, psychedelic scientists and investors converged in Miami for the Wonderland conference. One of the panels was on the ‘shamanic approach to investing’. There, spiritual healer and financial advisor Sylvia Bentino said she’d had a vision on ayahuasca that cryptocurrency was going to change the world.
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The aim of the ‘Spiritual Eugenics’ research project is to explore the overlap between New Age spirituality and eugenics. It will explore how New Age spirituality adapted Darwin’s theory of natural selection into a theory of the ‘spiritual evolution’ of a new species of superbeings, a master-race.
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Two cheers for the work of Theodore Roszak, a Californian academic who died 10 years ago, and who is one of the more intelligent chroniclers of New Age spirituality. I’ve read four of his books now, and find much to admire in his prose. Encountering his work in New Age culture is like coming across a dapper gentleman in the heart of a steaming jungle.
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Our psyches are deeply connected to the material and symbolic worlds we weave around us. The habitat of our daily lives re-inforces our habits, for good and ill. All our stuff – our apartments, our clothes, our books, our TV, our online activity, our food, our relationships – helps make us who we are, in a powerful feedback loop.
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How are you feeling? How well are you? Is your weight where you want it to be? Smoking too much? How happy are you on a scale of one to ten? Are you optimising your personal brand? How fast was your last five kilometre run? Would you like to share that via social media? Would you like a life-coach to help you overcome these challenges on a way to a better, happier, more awesome you?
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Watch out folks. There is a murky world lurking behind the scenes, a sinister cabal of policy-makers, psychologists, CEOs, advertizers and life-coaches, watching you, measuring you, nudging you, monitoring your every smile, all to try and make you happy. We must resist. This, broadly, is the message of sociologist William Davies’ book, The Happiness Industry: How Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.
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