Mind, Body, Spirit Morons

In hippy disguise at the MBS Fest. Who would know it was an undercover atheist?

There are many sacrifices that I make for the godless and the most recent one was a trip to the Sydney Mind Body Spirit Festival (MBS Fest) at Sydney’s Darling Harbour.  The Melbourne version is on this weekend.  If these MBS Fests were to explode whilst full of the usual unvaccinated morons that attend these things, Australia’s intelligence would palpably rise.  The MBS Fest caters for the deluded, the gullible and the vulnerable. If you have half a brain, don’t go.

Why would the godless hate these nonsensical conclaves?  At the core of most godless people is not evil or cynicism.  Generally, the godless have a craving for proof.  We have a fondness for evidence based knowledge and shun beliefs and superstitions not informed by some intellectual process.  I make it sound pretentious and arrogant.  It is not that.  It is just sheer common sense and a need to feel that we are not having the wool pulled over our eyes.  The unbelievers I have encountered need evidence. We eschew the ridiculous assertion, the fairy tale and the unscientific quack.  This is important to us. 

Well if that is your predisposition stay well away from MBS Fest.  Every self tutored quack, charlatan or dope has gathered in one annoying congregation.  Every bozo with a silver bullet to enlightenment is there. 

There was “Gary the Clairvoyant Medium”. You could engage in “Equinox Astrology”.  There were many practitioners who promised that a solution, enlightenment or a cure that lies within all of us if we only just would consult them.  It was a place with a very individualistic feel about it where you can solve your own issues without a community around you.  Thus there were booths proclaiming “You Were Not Born to Suffer”, “What You Think, You Become” and “Your Wish is Your Command”.

What were some of the attributes common amongst this diverse gang of profiteers? First the profit motive masqueraded under a sense of pseudo concern for the punters. At least that is something that they picked up from Western medicine. 

Secondly, the selling technique of compliments is common. You might not believe this but I was called empathetic and sensitive at a talk on “Empaths and Highly Sensitive People.”  They got that wrong.  And there is a sense that we are all wise enough to be our own healers. “Be Your Own Psychic” was one seminar. I suppose it is simple to be something if delusion is the main (and only) skill offered.

There was a sense that simple, one line answers were proffered.  Each stall holder had a magic simple silver bullet solution to every ill.  Notwithstanding that the mind and the body are hugely complicated and different, the businesses offered one cure all be it tarot or psychic reading or astral plane travelling. Diagnosis was not necessary for everyone needed the same magic solution.

No one ever dies here. It is a world without decease for there are a variety of afterlives on offer from astral planes to spirit worlds to you name it.  It is vomit worthy.

Science was a dirty word. Folksy, natural, foreign or mysterious were the qualities of care offered.  Foreignness was especially esteemed from Japanese Reiki to Indian Yoga. Ancient pre scientific remedies are astonishingly lauded - hence the “Golden Age – The Ancient Crystal Skulls Prepare Us To Remember ‘Who We Are’ Seminar” or “Walking with the Gods and the Goddesses”.     

If ridiculous Reiki took your fancy you could attend an Empowerment Seminar the get divine healing energy in your hands (yes what a wanker).  Reiki has never been found to be efficacious for any condition by randomised clinical trials (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1742-1241.2008.01729.x/abstract;jsessionid=2F3B09C4253E388CBABD6C4A87F14B19.d01t04) but cancer suffers are known to seek any one promising a cure.   

Exploitation of the vulnerable is a major problem. Alternative medicine is rightly condemned for its abuse of the terminally ill.  Even the great Steve Jobs was sucked in thereby shortening his days on earth. The grieving are similarly prey to the psychics.  I went to the Psychic Reading Room and was astonished at the obvious crap peddled by these evil people and yet the crowds were baying for more.

This delusional stuff matters.  This repudiation of science is important. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if a few of these morons die earlier than they need to. In the long run, if enough of them prematurely expire it could be good for the world.  But the repudiation of evidenced based thinking threatens vaccination programs, climate change action, fair treatment of the ill, fair handling of the bereaved and any number of unpalatable or scientific truths that need to faced.  

Can you believe that such a room exists?

For the godless we need to not just condemn. We need to understand what it is about the human condition that makes us so vulnerable to these profiteers.  Why is it that the simple, mindless messages of the MBS Fest are so popular in this age of extraordinary scientific and academic achievement? Why do we look back, crave a simpler life or repudiate the achievements of scholarship.  Unlike the cures offered at the MBS Fest, these profound conundrums are complex. The malady that is the MBS Fest is easy to describe but less easy to treat.

What is your view?

·         Why do these simplistic misleading practitioners still exist?

·         Why is science now so on the nose some people believe it can be ignored on climate change, vaccination and other issues?

·         How do protect the vulnerable?

·         What is the secret of the MBS Fest? Can we atheists replicate that success?

Over to you guys...