Week 9 - Kenrick Chiang

For this week's readings, I thought that they did a good job discussing these ideas of New World and tying it with these notions of the spirit realm. In the reading, "New Age Commodification and Appropriation of Spirituality," the author gives an in depth description on what the New Age is. Seeing how it is something that relates to the rapid decline of traditional religion, we are able to see this decline happening around us in this time of age. The New Age is something that has been seen in different fields such as health and education in which we promote Western notions and ignore traditional beliefs. I thought that these ideas from the reading tied in with these different topics that we have discussed in class that involve the spirit realm and how we've just become so western dominated that we overlook tradition and old techniques. This notion of the New Age relates to this week's theme which is the future of the spirit realm. The New Age refers to our new way of thinking in which we start to become more and more westernized. However, instead of believing that we've lost all forms of tradition, I personally feel like it is important to emphasis on combining these ideas in which any idea is accepted, rather than belittled or ignored.
A question that I had was, were there any ways in which we could incorporate both types of ideas into our society?