Exploring the Movement AGAINST Science

There’s a spiritual string that’s being tugged at my heart, the kind that almost gives me an existential crisis. In marketing, it’s important to have a polarizing standpoint; otherwise, people will wonder what you do stand for and what you’re willing to defend. People want to know you will defend your tribe. (Aah, memories of Aaron Burr from the broadway number, “My Shot,” from Hamilton.) Sometimes I’m exhausted of having to defend myself from people who share biased beliefs about certain topics. I’d much rather accept that we have different minds, and that we may agree to disagree.

In one instance, one unfortunate individual posted on the Tony Robbins’ UPW Virtual Facebook Group a sound argument that celery juice doesn’t seem to have any hard scientific evidence to suggest its use. He asked the group to provide such resources and for a second opinion from an expert with a PhD in nutrition. I was genuinely interested in learning this as well. Instead, he was attacked by a barrage of passionate people who defended the celery juice and suggested to the admins to ostracize him from the group for “being off frequency” with their thoughts; in fact, multiple comments accused him of being a bully! Many people gave their own positive anecdotal evidence – all worth acknowledging!

This individual was not wrong or offensive in anything he said. Perhaps his delivery could have had more tact. In fact, we spoke the same language – it’s just that he was the one to have expressed our minority opinion. He paid and suffered the consequences. Most importantly, I thought this particular Facebook group was a place of open conversation – apparently, this is false. It also polarizes Tony Robbins followers away from me. My thoughts are not of their thoughts, and I am not like them. Often, I feel like “the other.” Still, I don’t feel I have enough evidence to believe in this.

My little efforts to quell the angst was to say, “Yes, our science is flawed and inadequate, but don’t be afraid of science because there are goods things about it as well.” Good things - such as logic and reasoning. It was one little nudge to get people to think in a neutral perspective, but my comment really just dissolved in the cesspool of the thread.

What is wrong with wanting more information about celery juice? Why should I be satisfied with Tony Robbins’ homily on celery juice – or anything for that matter? Of course the answer to these questions is I have total liberty in all of this. I can seek out more information about celery juice, and I don't need to be satisfied by what's already been given to me. But why must my thoughts be the minority opinion? Why do people think the way they think? That is my true question.

Pride is a double-edged sword. I am really proud that I came from a strongly logical mindset, entrenched in the scientific method, and hypothesizing the world away to my satisfaction in order to understand my very existence. In the same vein, this scientific mindset is ultimately what empowered me to question the world in which I live. Why am I here? What is my calling in life? If all things by the Mechanistic Model of the Universe is predictable and linear through a set of formulae, then does anything I do to change my life matter? It can’t be the case! I question the very basis of science and come to the realization that often science does not give me the adequate answers to quench my thirst for knowledge. Thus, I turn to the quantum realm, to the mystical, to the spiritual side of life, and to my own observations.

I attribute my curiosity for more information to my background of science. In this perspective, science can be quite innocent. And if we do embrace the basic philosophy of science which is to explore that which is unknown… it restores us even to our inner child! How did one philosophy of thought become so bastardized in our society – a community and culture that has been largely developed into modern constructs of thought largely by science and logic? Where did our largely scientific culture go wrong so that their very skepticism leads them astray from intellectual property?

For one, I do think the infancy of our anti-science mindset comes from the early 1900s where the birth of quantum physics was still underway and Abraham Flexner’s report in 1910 created a gargantuan shift in medical academia. Science was booming, and we placed emphasis on our microscopes. The 1950s and 1960s also served as our moment of awakening as many pursued enlightenment through psychedelics – something to this day is still considered taboo because science still “sort of” says so. Then there was the shift to Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the 1990s going into the 2000s which later prescribed a new terms thereafter: Integrative Medicine, Collaborative Medicine or Multidisciplinary Medicine so as to be more inclusive of other healthcare systems and in tune to our more sophisticated thoughts on health.

Now, everyone has turned their shoulders against science marking it as inflexible, terribly rigid and impractical in our world when in reality science is all around us. Science is in the crystals charged with energy within their tightly compact molecular bonds that many cultures believe have healing properties. Science is in the needles that belong to an acupuncturist – their placement and purpose strategic by the expert. Science is in the healing hands of someone trained as an energy healer and in the hands of a bedside nurse doing touch therapy to provide compassionate care. Don’t ignore science. Don’t be afraid of science. It is just that our science doesn’t know everything. And just like how we don’t know everything, it’s okay that science doesn’t know everything. Perhaps it is our fault for having put science on a pedestal.

Ten years ago, there was a dearth of peer-reviewed research articles on Reiki. Fast forward to the present time, we have ample research albeit in clinical research (rather than the basic sciences). Let us praise science for learning! Let’s celebrate that, in its sleepy state, it is waking up to the possibility of more depth! You can’t wrong me for being short-sighted with celery juice! I became a Reiki practitioner when there was no research just so that I could make my own observations. Still, why do I still feel like the odd man out in any group I find myself in?

Perhaps the easiest conclusion is that I am simply unique. I am a mind of the flexible and yet inflexible abstract. One who sees more colors than others. And one who ponders not on the skepticism of things, but on the potentially unveiled information I have yet to learn. I am not cemented in the scientific mind. I speak multiple languages in this regard, and that’s a great thing. I might often be "the other," but I say that I am extremely excited about that (and so should you).