Modern western society

Happiness not only for sale Have you ever heard of Tao Zen? Psi-energie? Ying-yang thinking? Or maybe mandela painting? They’re very popular today and might sound familiar to you. They’re all examples, which belong to New Age. Why are they so popular today? What is New Age? And what does it say about finding happiness nowadays? In this essay I will dispute the way of finding happiness in the modern western society of today. The statement which I’m going to defend is: “New Age helps people to find happiness”. To start with the apprehension of New Age. New Age stands for a new period of time which is about to come. This new age has to offer an alternative for the rationalistic and materialistic thinking of the modern western society. New Age movements emphasize the uniformity of human, space and nature and believe in human intuitive. It’s only in this time that a book as the Celestine Prophecy (a book that is considered as the unraveling of New Age) becomes such a great success in today’s modern western society. Apparently people feel attracted to spirituality. Spirituality is the interest in originality and the truth of existence. But why this interest? Because the modern western people of today are looking for other ways of finding happiness, besides materialistic accomplishments. Likewise we see the rising amount of alternative healing methods, which also belong to New Age. Lots of people decide to transfer to an alternative method, instead of the regular medical treatments. What we see her is that the rationalistic, medical treatments make way for the intuitive, alternative treatments. A clear shifting from one side to the other. On the other hand New Age seems to be kitsch. Kitsch because something essential seems to be absent; everything that’s ugly, annoying, dangerous, dirty and disgusting. It discusses one side of live; the positive side and that is, of course, not the reality. New Age tries to hide the negative things in live, but how can you find happiness without knowing what unhappiness is? And can you be happy just by hiding your negative feelings about things? However New Age still helps people to find happiness, because the popularity of New Age movements gets bigger and bigger. And if New Age wouldn’t help people to find happiness, why would it be so popular then? Therefore New Age helps people to find happiness. We see that people are not only attracted to materialistic accomplishments, but also to spirituality. Likewise we see the shifting from the rationalistic side to the intuitive side.