Institute Panel Discusses New Age Politics in U.S.

"The realm of politics in our society is the realm of powerful ideas and powerful myths," Rick P. Ingrasci, founder and director of Interface, said last night at an Institute of Politics panel discussion titled "New Age Politics."

The well-attended discussion, held at the new Kennedy School's Arco Forum and mediated by Ira Einhorn, fellow at the Institute, covered topics ranging from the nuclear proliferation threat to encounter sessions at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur, Cal.

Mark Satin, author of "New Age Politics--Healing Self and Society" spoke first, explaining that his conception of "new age politics" grew out of a need for "Americans to come up with a politics that convinces people that we are ultimately responsible for the world we create--we are not its victims."

"All existing political ideologies come out of -isms that originated in Europe in the 19th century. The new age politics comes out of the American experience," Satin continued.

Satin concluded his remarks by stating that the relevant unit in new age politics will not be the individual, but rather the "psycho-cultural classes of life-, thing-, and death-oriented people."

"The effect of these efforts," she continued, "is that we now expect current plutonium levels to be responsible for one out of five of the present generation of Americans' contracting some form of cancer."

Angry Gods

Helen M. Caldicott, instructor in pediatrics at the Medical School, said the nuclear threat will play a crucial role in the formulation of new age politics. She focused her fifteen minute remarks on the known effects of plutonium, which she said is "named after Pluto, god of the underworld--appropriately, for I've never read about an element so dangerous."

"The collective scientific guilt over the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings," Caldicott said, "led the scientific community to concentrate on atoms for peace."

The remaining members of the panel, Michael M. Murphy, founder of the Escalen Institute, and Ingrasci of Interface, concluded the discussion by relating personal experiences that they thought reflected the continuing emergence of a new age politics.