I’ve often made sport of TED Talks as nothing more than revival meetings for upper middle class suckers. Sitting in an arena listening to Joel Osteen or Rick Warren is like going to Walmart for these people. It’s yucky and gross. Instead, they get the exact same sort of pat on the head, without all the Jesus stuff and definitely without the riff-raff.
Well, it looks like TED has a competitor. Tyler Cowen is now pimping Voice & Exit, which kicks off this week in Austin TX, the phoniest city in America. This is what has Cowen hyperventilating:
We assemble those who ask: What are the systems and ways of life that are holding us back? What can we create to make those old ways obsolete? What innovations enable us to find wellbeing, life meaning and stronger connection to others? How can we live intentionally today so as to create that better future? Voice & Exit is an environment of exploration where we “criticize by creating” a better world.
I have this theory that is more of an observation than a real theory. Religion has been so marginalized, many people have simply lost the ability to recognize it. Humans are wired to believe so we will believe in something. There has to be an answer to the eternal question and a religion, ideology of theodicy will fill any void that exists. These techno-mega churches are just the latest attempt to answer the great question.
Strangely, to me anyways, is that these look pretty much like EST from the late 70’s and early 80’s. Beautiful people were running off to those just as they are running off to these weird revivals today. The fact that no one ever mentions the similarities says something, I suspect, about our increasingly hostile relationship with the past.
Maybe Cowen falls for this bullshit, maybe not. It is hard to know. He’s getting paid to decorate their roster and thus fleece more people out of their money. It’s possible he pretends to go along with it just for the money. But, Paul Krugman writes batshit crazy stuff all the time because he believes it. The answer is not always obvious.
It isn’t Cowen – it is the other guy on the blog – Alex
I guess I can see the “church like” aspect you mention of some of the TED talks. But what interests me most about them is the technologies they showcase.
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I attended a Landmark Forum event (week-long) back in the early 90’s, and got real enduring value out of it. Very glad I attended. And I guess I can see how people could get “religious” over it. To me it was a good mental toolkit for improving your life.
Is that ‘religious’?
Very astute. It’s very difficult not to end up with a religion of some kind, as pretty much everyone has to take certain things on faith. The problem is when you fail to see it. What today’s progressives fail to see is what they see as innovative and new when it comes to morality and values is virtually always an old heresy come back to life.
“The fact that no one ever mentions the similarities says something, I suspect, about our increasingly hostile relationship with the past.” I’m not sure about that. I think EST and its competitors pretty much dropped off the cultural radar by the late 90s. I also think that the attendant vocabulary (“Getting” it, etc.) became diffused into the general culture about the same. I suspect there is enough reference material about than someone could put together a similar venue without having to re-invent the wheel. Those trainings offered a take on things that, for me at least, had a great amount… Read more »