I’ve often made sport of TED Talks as nothing more than revival meetings for upper middle class suckers. Sitting in an arena listening to Joel Osteen or Rick Warren is like going to Walmart for these people. It’s yucky and gross. Instead, they get the exact same sort of pat on the head, without all the Jesus stuff and definitely without the riff-raff.

Well, it looks like TED has a competitor. Tyler Cowen is now pimping Voice & Exit, which kicks off this week in Austin TX, the phoniest city in America. This is what has Cowen hyperventilating:

We assemble those who ask: What are the systems and ways of life that are holding us back? What can we create to make those old ways obsolete? What innovations enable us to find wellbeing, life meaning and stronger connection to others? How can we live intentionally today so as to create that better future? Voice & Exit is an environment of exploration where we “criticize by creating” a better world.

I have this theory that is more of an observation than a real theory. Religion has been so marginalized, many people have simply lost the ability to recognize it. Humans are wired to believe so we will believe in something. There has to be an answer to the eternal question and a religion, ideology of theodicy will fill any void that exists. These techno-mega churches are just the latest attempt to answer the great question.

Strangely, to me anyways, is that these look pretty much like EST from the late 70’s and early 80’s. Beautiful people were running off to those just as they are running off to these weird revivals today. The fact that no one ever mentions the similarities says something, I suspect, about our increasingly hostile relationship with the past.

Maybe Cowen falls for this bullshit, maybe not. It is hard to know. He’s getting paid to decorate their roster and thus fleece more people out of their money. It’s possible he pretends to go along with it just for the money. But, Paul Krugman writes batshit crazy stuff all the time because he believes it. The answer is not always obvious.