So...as we know, Marianne Williamson is a bit of a spiritualist. And a lot of people think she's kooky as a result. And there may be some truth to that. For example, it was said, in the 1990s, that she encouraged people with AIDS to seek spiritual treatment like happy thoughts for the disease. The view also pointed out weird happy thoughts logic she's employed in the past too. And this is kind of coming back to bite her now.
I'm going to be honest, it makes me a bit angry too. Because as you guys know, I used to be an atheist, and still identify as a secular humanist, and at one point, I literally believed that spirituality was a mental disease and that it causes people to believe harmful things like this. To explain her views, they seem to come from the new agey/cosmic humanist worldview that believes in "manifestation" and the "law of attraction", in which the mind influences (or manifests) our physical reality, and physical diseases can be a sign of bad thoughts. This is victim blaming, and is one of the reasons I used to view spirituality as a scourge on this earth, and why Im still deeply distrustful of it. How we view reality matters, and it is important to live in reality and not seek miracle cures for diseases rather than hard medical science, and yada yada yada.
However, let's be honest. I'm somewhat spiritual now, I have my own story and my own reasons that I won't share, and now I kind of walk a tight rope between accepting spirituality into my reality and maintaining my secular humanist identity. And I think some compartmentalization is necessary. For POLITICS, full on rationalist and secular humanist. But I do have a PERSONAL spirituality.
Quite frankly, spirituality is like a you know what. It's fine to have one, it's fine to enjoy it. But don't go waving it around in public, especially in front of kids. No one wants to see that crap.
Honestly, I like to look at the question like this now: does Marianne Williamson's spirituality impact her politics in a negative way? I mean, if I were to look at her actual policies, does her new age woo woo crap shine through? Not really. I mean, I'm not seeing anything about manifestation or healing crystals or whatever in her healthcare plan. The most stereotypical new age thing in there is pushing yoga, and there are some potential benefits from that. Even if there are a couple planks of her healthcare plan I kinda sorta cringe on, she normally does offer some point in regard to those specific topics. Like maybe we should lean into more preventative medicine, and clean up the environment so our food is cleaner or whatever. I do think some aspects of her plan there kinda sorta resemble what I would expect from someone a bit kooky, but let's be honest, this is a significant improvement over Jill Stein 2016, for example.
Honestly, her healthcare plan is solid. It's mostly evidence based, and it's better than Biden's. Wanna remind people that Biden hasn't even done crap to advance his public option plan. And his public option plan...wasn't even that great. So...would I take the new age lady with single payer over the christian with the nonexistent public option? Sure.
Which brings me to another point. My current belief system came to be when I was an atheist, and was closely wedded to secular humanism and assumptions based on that. Most of America is Christian, most of the rest of America beliefs in other religions or is spiritual but not religious (the camp I'd currently classify myself in), and hard line atheists are only like 3% of the population. Honestly? Most of these people have little to no room to talk. Religious crazies exist all over the place. The entire GOP is dominated by religious radicals. And christianity is so pervasive most mainstream democratic candidates are christians too. Hillary talked a lot about her faith, and that worldview disconnect is why I disliked her in 2016. Same with Tim Kaine, and to some extent, Joe Biden. Worldview matters, and worldview does influence politics. We seem to be a okay with "normal" christian spirituality that seems to dictate we all work as if there's some higher purpose to it and we cant have abortion because souls and blah blah blah, but Williamson has some weirdo spiritual views with AIDS and that's crazy.
Not necessarily justifying williamson by the way, although the article I mentioned above does seem to point out that at the time there was no adequate treatment for AIDS so might as well lean into prayer I guess. I'm mostly once again pointing out that yeah, we tend to just normalize all of this mainstream spirituality and write it off as crazy then as someone has some unconventional weirdo views, we tend to attack them and act like they're unfit as president.
I mean, channeling secular humanist me, I feel like the overwhelming majority of politicians fall short of having a truly evidence based worldview. And a lot of mainstream christians also inject their views into politics, to effect that I find cringey.
I'm pretty much to the point now, that I won't criticize someone's private spirituality, but if they basically inject that stuff into politics, I will point it out. And looking at Williamson's 2024 platform, I don't really see much stuff that's actually influencing her actual ideology or positions on things. So to me, this is kind of a nothingburger. I mean, is it concerning she believed that stuff? Yes. But that was also 30 years ago, and given what I believed as recently as 15-20 years ago, eh, I have no room to talk.
So that said, let's stop digging up cringey stuff from decades prior, let's see what she thinks now. And given she's advocating for universal healthcare, and not healing crystals, that's good enough for me. Still better than Biden.
Would I prefer someone more evidence based? YES! Oh god, yes. I would love to have a more polished candidate who knows what they're talking about with politics and has the right positions and can do a better job defending them. Yes, I would love that. But that isnt where we're at. Bernie is too old, Yang is in his weird direction, and lets be honest, despite his MATH stuff, his numbers didn't add up according to multiple sources, including my own analysis. Honestly? When you have views as niche as mine, you end up learning to settle somewhat. It's better to go along with the person who agrees with me but might be kinda cringe in how they express it, than to go along with the person I disagree with, but who is a bit more "rational" in my opinion. Yeah. Biden is more rational, Biden is more polished. But biden's policies...kinda suck. I mean, he's okay, but only okay. I would like to see someone more progressive in control than Biden. And Williamson supports more movement in my direction than Biden does. So until a better person comes along, I'm team Williamson I guess. She's what we got, so that's what I'm going to stick with.
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