“[O]ver those long years in [Canada, Satin] caught sight of and began to plan for the general movement for change that is taking form now.”
– Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, The Cultural Creatives, Random House, 2001

 

New Age Politics:
Healing Self and Society

[new subtitle: Our Only Real Alternative]

 

The Book by Mark Satin

   

My book New Age Politics (originally Canada, 1976; U.S., 1979; “40^th Anniversary Edition,” 2015) has a long and colorful history.

 

I wrote it as a Vietnam War draft resister in Canada.  After Jimmy Carter's pardon, I toured the U.S. with it, mostly by Greyhound bus, speaking anywhere and everywhere for nearly three years (see HERE).  Many now say it was the first book to weld insights from the feminist, ecology, human-potential, spiritual, decentralist, world-order, and similar movements into a holistic new political philosophy or ideology that could challenge the dominance of liberalism and Marxism.  Of course, that ideology is still under construction today.

 

Picture at left: Cover of the 40th Anniversary Edition (aka 4th edition), 2015.  According to the foreword bv David Spangler, the cover depicts "faceless people on both sides fighting with each other to the ultimate detriment of us all."  Our only real alternative is spelled out in the book.

 

Here’s what you’ll find below:

 

I. A PDF (electronic copy) of the press release for the fourth edition, published in October 2015;

 

II. Excerpts from the 2015 edition (shown at left),

 

III. The story of New Age Politics, written for this website in 2014;

 

IV. An account of the three-year New Age Politics bus tour, launched in 1978;

 

V. Excerpts from 50 reviews and print-media mentions of the book;

 

VI. For more information.

 

 

I. PDF of the OCTOBER 2015 PRESS RELEASE

 

Just click HERE

 

The press release telescopes the book into 850 words for busy journalists and bookstore owners.  Its first two headlines: “Lorian Press to publish updated “40^th Anniversary Edition of Mark Satin’s classic New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative / Upstart Seattle publisher obtains rights from Random House.”

 

 

II. EXCERPTS FROM THE FOURTH EDITION (2015)

 

Just click HERE.

 

 Excerpts include the detailed Table of Contents and the first three pages of Satin’s “Introduction, 2015.”

 

 

III. THE STORY OF NEW AGE POLITICS

 

A. What’s It About / Why Does It Matter?

 

New Age Politics, which I began writing exactly 40 years ago this nmonth (February 1974), was an attempt to articulate a new political philosophy, based on the movements that began to arise after the New Left faded away in the 1970s – especially the feminist, spiritual, ecology, human-potential, decentralist, and world-order movements.

 

Many dedicated thinkers and activists are now engaged in that great search for a new political philosophy that can take us beyond the 19th century worlds of liberalism, conservatism, and Marxism.  But when I started writing New Age Politics, first in a freezing Montreal garret, and then in a series of communal houses and island dwellings in and around Vancouver, B.C., I felt intellectually alone.

 

Most of my friends and political colleagues were anarchists or socialists of one kind or another, and felt no need to change their ways. The Revolution was just around the corner, wasn’t it?  And if it wasn’t, well, that didn’t have anything to do with the beloved industrial-era analyses, values, goals, and strategies we were projecting ... did it?

 

B. First of Its TYPE

 

Today, New Age Politics is often recognized as the first book of its type.  For example, in the original draft of his foreword to the German edition of New Age Politics (1993), Fritjof Capra – co-author of Green Politics – wrote:

 

[I]t was the first attempt to not only describe a new kind of political activity but also to provide a synthesis of the new political theory beyond left and right.

 

Similarly, writing in The Nation (August 31, 1985), antinuclear activist Harvey Wasserman states:

 

The themes of New Age politics were first articulated in the late 1970s by Mark Satin, ... [after] it dawned on him that “the ideas and energies from the various ‘fringe’ movements – feminist, ecological, spiritual, human potential and the rest – were beginning to come together in a new way."

 

And in his foreword to the fourth edition of New Age Politics (2015), spiritual thinker David Spangler writes:

 

[I]t stands as the first comprehensive articulation of a transformational political ideology.  It shows, in great and systemic detail, how we can depthfully understand our world of crisis and get to a world of collaboration and wholeness.

 

In fact, New Age Politrics was quickly followed by a number of books that also took comprehensive (holistic) appraches to fashioning a new politics out of the new energies at work in the world.  Any short list would have to include Theodore Roszak’s Person / Planet (1978), Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s The Third Wave (1980), Hazel Henderson’s The Politics of the Solar Age (1981), and Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point (1982).  Roszak obttained a copy of my book in 1976, from me, at the World Symposium on Humanity in Vancouver; the next day he told me he’d read it all night and wished that he’d written it himself!  Ferguson and the Tofflers obtained copies in 1978.

 

C. FOUR Versions of New Age Politics

   

There are four distinct versions of New Age Politics.

 

The first, printed in 1976, is the most succinct (84 tightly-packed pages) and is aimed at a largely counter-cultural audience.  At the time of writing, I was a 27- to 29-year-old American Vietnam War resister living in Vancouver, B.C., in what we all then called – without a trace of irony – “voluntary simplicity.”  I worked on my book in a variety of places including a free-love commune in (of course) the Kitsilano neighborhood, the great main library at the University of British Columbia, the offices of a far-left underground newspaper – The Western Voice – on whose editorial collective I’d once loyally served, and a house trailer on Mayne Island, off the Vancouver coast, where on clear days you could see all the way to the U.S.

 

I had made myself persona non grata in the small publishing world of Canada at that time, when I went ballistic over the vulgar and wildly inappropriate cover my Toronto publisher had created for my autobiograohical novel (that cover is still tormenting me on Amazon, HERE).  Thus it was that I wrote, designed, typeset, and printed the first edition of New Age Politics myself, and lugged it to the first “World Symposium on Humanity,” held in Vancouver in 1976 – where it promptty sold out and garnered the attention of the Toronto Star (which ran a humongous article about it) and New Age Journal in the U.S. (which serialized key parts of it).  Many printings followed.

 

The second version of New Age Politics was published by Whitecap Books, in Canada, in 1978.  It is considerably longer than the first (240 pages) and aims at a broader audience.  It benefited from the keen eye of Bonnie Kreps, a Canadian journalist and spiritual seeker and founder of Toronto New Feminists.  The cover art was contributed by Anne Koedt, co-founder of New York Radical Feminists and author of a paper that was ubiquitous in transformational circles the 1970s, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm.”

 

After U.S. President Jimmy Carter pardoned all draft resisters, I embarked on a two-year speaking tour of the U.S., largely by Greyhound bus, with a big box of books always in tow.  I eventually spoke at over 90 venues; see HERE.

 

Picture at left: Satin speaking to over 600 community organizers at his first U.S. event after Carter’s pardon – the annual Northwest Network of Non-Profit and Cooperative Groups conference, Silver Falls State Park, Oregon, April 1978.  See section V.-E, "Coda," below.  I still love you, Nancy, Brian and Sue! – M.S., 10-17-15

 

The third version of New Age Politics appeared in the U.S. in 1979.  It came about when a representative of Dell Publishing Co. discovered that I was, surreptitiously, selling dozens of copies of my book at a plant- and cat-bedecked booth at a national meeting of the American Sociological Association.

 

The third version is longer than the others (349 pages) and far more detailed.  It includes important new sections on New Age economics, and a 22-page political platform offered as a “discussion document.”  In addition, its tone is different.  It is the third version that is discussed in political-science texts like Andrew Jamison’s The Making of Green Knowledge and Herbert W. Simons and Michael Billig’s After Postmodernism: Reconstructing Ideology Critique.

 

ADDED IN 2015: The fourth version of New Age Politics, aka the “40^th Anniversary Edition,” was published by Lorian Press of Seattle in 2015.  It is my favorite version by far and I’m sure it is the best.  Taking advantage on my 30 years of experience as a political newsletter editor (see HERE and HERE) and attorney, I took the first and second versions, totaling 160,000 words, and turned them into an updated and “streamlined” 50,000 word version that speaks to the present moment (see Table of Contents HERE).

 

 

IV. THE NEW AGE POLITICS BUS TOUR

 

People don’t do this sort of thing anymore.  See HERE.

 

 

V.  EXCERPTS FROM THE MEDIA

   

A. EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS OF THE CURRENT EDITION (2015)

"New Age Politics:  Our Only Real Alternative (Lorian Press, 2015) by Mark Satin captures the transformational political perspective emerging out of the social movements of our time. Originally published in the 1970s the ideas have been streamlined and are now more relevant than ever."
– “The Political Prison,” Utne Reader website, September 2016 (introducing a 3,500-word excerpt from New Age Politics)

“[I]t’s perfect timing for the revised edition of a classic book from the 1970s that goes right to the heart of [today’s] dilemmas and offers an optimistic route into the future—Mark Satin’s New Age Politics.  Originally published in 1976 by a non-profit publishing collective in Canada, the book became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. …  With its advocacy of a whole raft of institutions that are now beginning to emerge 40 years after Satin first outlined them, New Age Politics was way ahead of its time. …  Satin sees … the essential sub-structure of a different form of politics.”
– Michael Edwards, “How Can We Make Our Politics Reflect What’s Best in Us?,” openDemocracy website, July 18, 2016

“Forty years after it was originally published, Mark Satin’s book on spirituality and the political sphere, New Age Politics, is being updated and re-released.”
– Emma Koonse, PW: Publishers Weekly website, April 27, 2016

“New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative crosses over between politics and spirituality because of Satin’s conviction that the best political change is inspired by a transformed consciousness.  Although my views are strictly secular and Satin’s are not entirely so, I’ve found him to be one of the most intriguing thinkers of our era.”
– Rick Heller, “The New Age 40 Years Later,” Huffington Post, April 25, 2016

“[Satin] strove to pull together the differing transformational movements of the 1970s into a holistic political ideology that reached deeper than boundaries, ballot boxes, and economic philosophies. …  In the effort he created a powerful image of a six-sided mental prison, its walls consisting of established systems, attitudes, and institutions. …  After 40 years we find ourselves still imprisoned by multiple issues such as racism, nationalism, sexism, environmentalism. …  So we still need writers like Mark Satin to point out the complexity of the structure, to tell us that if one wall is cracked others will crumble.”
– Rhoda Gilman, “New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative,” Green Horizon Magazine, Spring/Summer 2016 [scroll to page 20]

“Mark Satin is one of the most creative political theorists of our time, and his new book represents his best thinking. This comprehensive critique of the present and vision for the future was published originally in another form, and Satin has transformed it into a compelling workbook for the massive changes facing the US and other nations. One of the most attractive features of New Age Politics is that Satin is a true centrist, integrating left and right into a more productive whole.”
– The TechCast Team [William Halal et al.], “New Age Politics,” TechCast Global website, January 2016

 

“Satin writes with an assurance that comes off as almost smug, but there is an important saving grace: his ideas are not entirely his own and he draws on a large number of thinkers. …  [S]pirituality … is one of Satin’s elements of a New Age society – which is why BSN endorses his views. …  Satin’s book is one of several signs that things are now picking up.  It is a very good guide as to how readers can become part of the major historic developments that are taking place [now].”
– Elihu Edelson, Both Sides Now Journal, issue no. 143, first quarter 2016

 

B. Excerpts from reviews of the first edition (1976)

 

“In 60,000 words Satin has made a comprehensive critique of North American society and outlined a Utopian society to replace it. ...  At 30 he’s already miles ahead of the academics and intellectuals who cling to the Marxist vision.”
– Robert Nielsen, Toronto Star, January 26, 1977

 

Picture at left: The cover art for the first printing of the first edition was truly dreadful – even David Spangler laughs at it in his foreword to the 2015 edition.  Fortunately, subsequent printings of the first edition were humanized by this cover from artist Suzanne Soldan of Vancouver, B.C.  It was meant to depict an androgynous young person looking skeptically at the world she or he is inheriting.

 

“Satin does a good job of drawing the best thinking of over 200 new age philosophers into just a few pages. ...  [A] stimulating and inspirational book.”
– Art Rosenblum, Green Revolution magazine, March 1977

 

“Satin is a surprisingly practical utopianist, a thrower out of the old.  His little book (60,000 words ...) is not at all the usual dogmatic sophistry of the pamphleteer.”
– James Barber, Vancouver Province, March 12, 1977

 

“[T]his is an excellent book of the new spiritual consciousness that ... necessarily includes a new politics.”
– Many Smokes: Native American Magazine, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1977

 

“[T]he cogent political analysis we’d been seeking. ...  [T]he most intelligent effort we’ve seen to date that describes the politics emerging out of the union of power and innocence.”
– The Editors, New Age Journal, April 1977

 

“It is clear that feminism has made a deep impact on [this book].”
– Makara: The Canadian Magazine by Women for People, vol. 2, no. 3, Summer 1977

 

“Starting in an easy and pungent conversational style, ... Mark Satin develops not only a mental but also an emotional analysis of the present situation in its fullness.”
– Ronald Jorgensen, World Union magazine (India), June 1977

 

“[A] landmark publication. ...  Satin has done those who are interested in a new way, a great service.  This book marks him as one of this era’s most imoportant new philosophers.”
– Gordon Flagler, Ottawa Citizen, June 4, 1977

 

“Satin ... writes in an engaging, personal vein and raises stimulating questions.”
– East West Journal, July 1977

 

“A concise analysis and set of suggestions for evoluionary change. ... [Says] we must tap the inner courage to live life in a way which is in harmony with our vision.”
– Yoga Journal, July-August 1977

 

“A thoughtful analysis from an aware, well-read person.  I like his life-oriented (as opposed to thing-oriented) philosophy.”
– Plexus: Bay Area Women’s Newspaper, August 1977

 

“[A]rgues [that] feminism, men’s liberation, ruralism, ecology, humanism, non-traditional education, A.T., and neo-pacifism are melding into a new alternative to both Marxism and Liberalism.”
– Bill Ellis, TRANET, newsletter of the Transnational Network for Appropriate Technologies, Fall 1977

 

“[G]rand attempt ... to synthesize the thinking of an age. ...  [T]ries to wrench readers out of their ideological security.”
– David Ruth, Communities: Journal of Cooperative Living, September-October 1977

 

“Many young people have gone the route that Mark Satin describes, liberal to SDS activist to draft dodger during the Vietnam war, to the ‘growth movement’ and an inner search, to renewed activism with a different perspective and set of values.  But none [had] articulated the philosophic basis for their post-ideologial politics [until this book].”
– Donald Keys, One Family: Newsletter of Planetary Citizens, November 1977

 

“[A] fresh viewpoint to help us see out of the present impasse.”
– Brian Livingston, Cascade magazine, December 1977

 

“Mark Satin has done an enormous piece of important work.”

– Arnold Klassenm  Gay Community News (Boston), December 10, 1977

 

C. Excepts from reviews of the second edition (Whitecap, 1978)

 

“Mark Satin is one of the few profound political thinkers of our day who has grasped the significance of both spiritual practice and psycho-spiritual growth. ...  The auhor’s active political background, and more recent involvement in self-growth, make him uniquely qualified to draw together ideas which up until now have remained isolated from one another.”
– John Amodeo, Yoga Journal, November-December 1978

 

Picture at left: The cover art for the second edition was contributed by Anne Koedt, co-founder of New York Radical Feminists.

 

“Satin has brought together a million threads and woven a coherent message – and he’s not a Utopian.”
– Gerry Dixon, Odyssey magazine (South Africa), January-February 1979

 

“New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society inspired this year’s [University of Manitoba] festival theme of Living in the New Age. ...  Mr. Satin says he has traveled 40,000 miles, ‘mostly by bus,’ since his book was published and he has found people everywhere feel ‘that this continent deserves a second chance.’”
– Joan Sadler, Winnipeg Tribune, February 23, 1978

 

“New Age Politics ... [is] a gathering [of many people’s thoughts], a centering, a vast summary, gentle, conscious, confident, loving, high.”
– Mitch Walker, Gay Sunshine Quarterly, no. 40-41, Summer-Fall 1979

 

“Clearly, what Satin espouses in both his talks and his book – a politics of personal responsibility and reconciliation – is striking a responsive chord with a rapidly expanding audience.”
– Alison Wells and Stanley Commons, New Realities magazine, June-July 1979

 

“In this brilliant, cogently organized review of ... what has slowly been brewing in the seemingly ‘quiet’ times of the later 70s ... Satin captures the flavor of a changing political paradigm as no other author has.”
– Irv Thomas, Black Bart newsletter, August 1979

 

“[Satin] has taken the important realizations of the 1970s [spiritual, environmental, and feminist] movements, and welded them with the important realizations of his more overtly political 1960s years.  The result is ... a book which is creating a lot of interest and enthusiasm in Canada and the USA.”
– Guy Dauncey, Peace News (Britain), no. 2117, April 4, 1980

 

D. Excepts from reviews of the third edition (Dell, 1979)

“This is a compelling work, drawing on an impressive number of sources. …  [A] useful formalization of a number of related and converging ideas that have been around for a long time, but have gained increasing currency. …  [An] outstanding work of synthesis.”
– Publishers Weekly, September 17, 1979

Picture at left: My young editors at Dell had the art dept. create a cover that modeled the book's fresh and holistic new perspective.

 “[A]n attractive work of synthesis and summary.”
– Henry Steck, Library Journal, March 11, 1980

 

“[T]he indispensible introduction to what is now being called ‘new age thought.’ ...  [L]ibertarian principles, coupled with a renewed sense of moral responsibility and spiritual appreciation drawn from the rich lode of new age thinking, can produce a higher synrhesis accfeptable … perhaps even to a majority.  By showing the way to this synrhesis, … New Age Politics makes an extremely valuable contribution to contemporary political dialogue.”
– John McClaughry, Reason magazine, August 1980

 

“In New Age Politics, Mark Satin asks us to consider that the problems from which we as individuals and as a society suffer are caused by our values, attitudes, and views of reality, our feeling that we are separate from each other and nature, and our failure to see our basic connectedness and interdependence in the world. ...  It is a wonderfully inspiring book, and is as interesting as it is informative.”
– Robert Thompson, Yoga Journal, November-December 1980

 

“Satin is steadfastly upbeat, open-armed, self-effacing, and earnest toward friend and foe alike (though not necessarily toward their ideas). ...  [He] may move many readers to new or greater efforts to build the better place we all long for.”
– Michael S. Cummings, Alternative Futures, vol. 4, no. 1, Winter 1981

 

“[A] plain-spoken, pragmatic vision of a new politics that transcends the old political ‘isms,’ borrowing what it needs from conservatives and liberals, and showing us that there’s nothing incompatible about personal growth and social change.”
– Sy Safransky, The Sun magazine, April 1981

 

“The wealth of the material ... is likely to make the reader dizzy.”
– Henry Geiger, Manas newsletter, April 8, 1981

 

 “[A] major achievement. ...  Libertarians would do well to listen to the New Agers about ecology and people’s spitiual aspects.  What they have in common is the desire to set people free from impersonal, institutional forces that inhibit their aspirations.”
– Bob Beckel, Liberty, magazine of Students for a Libertarian Society, September 1981

 

“The themes of New Age politics were first articulated in the late 1970s by Mark Satin. ...  Drawing on decentralist and feminist theories of the early 1970s, Satin’s New Age Politics called for an escape from the ‘six-sided prison’: patriarchism, egocentricity, scientism, bureaucracy, nationalism and urbanism.  In its place Satin advocated a ‘third force’ which would transcend the traditional divisions between Marxism and capItalism.”
– Harvey Wasserman, The Nation magazine, August 31, 1985

 

“Coinciding with [the rise of] this legal self-help movement was a much broader sociopolitical movement [variously described as] ‘the third wave’ [citing A. Toffler], ‘new age politics’ [citing M. Satin], or ‘the aquarian conspiracy’ [citing M. Ferguson].”
– Ted Becker, “Conflict and Paradox in the New American Mediation Movement,” Journal of Dispute Resolution, 1986

E. Passages from books

“The do-it-yourself spirit also moved Mark Satin – a young American draft resister living in Canada – to write, design, and even typeset his own book, New Age Politics: The Emerging New Alternative to Marxism and Liberalism.  The book sold 10,000 copies, which Satin mailed from his basement before he sold reprint rights to a mainstream publisher – to secure, he explained apologetically, more money and wider distribution for his work.”
– David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America, J. P. Tarcher, Inc. / Houghton Mifflin, 1981

Picture at left: Satin carrying a box of New Age Politics books (fresh off the press from D. W. Friesen & Sons, printers for Whitecap Books) during his multi-year Greyhound bus tour of North America; on a stretch of now “redeveloped” Eighth Street off Market Street, San Francisco, 1979.

“New Age Politics ... [is an] absolute must for gaining familiarity with the aims and euphemisms of the New Age Movement. ...  Do not venture in the water without an excellent Bible basis, however.  Unless you know the real, the counterfeit could be seductive.”
– Constance E. Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, Huntington House, Inc., 1983

“In New Age Politics Mark Satin articulates some of the ethics and vaues that would likely form the platform of a new society in harmony with diverse spiritual beliefs.”
– Rick Fields, Chop Wood, Carry Water, Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc., 1984

 

“Mark Satin claims that we are more than simply economic beings, and our liberation must include a spiritual as well as an economic recovery.  In short, the New Age political message is our consciousness is unlimited and our responsibility is total.  As gods come of age we must transform the planet.”
– Douglas Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age, InterVarsity Press, 1986

 

“On the eve of the 21st century a growing number of thoughtful people are tired of debating 19th century theories on the most efficient method of production.  New Age thinkers, such as Schumacher in Britain and Hazel Henderson and Mark Satin in the United States, insist that neither Marxism nor Liberalism is adequate – that the basic values underlying both systems do not promote human development.”
– Greg MacLeod, New Age Business, Canadian Council on Social Development, 1986

 

“The most adequate example of an attempt to offer a systematic overview of New Age politics is Mark Satin’s New Age Politics.”
– Andrew Ross, in Lawrence Grossberg et al., eds., Cultural Studies, Routledge, 1991

 

“Readers who have accepted uncritically the media stereotype of the New Age as apolitical should refer to Mark Satin’s New Age Politics.”
– J. Gordon Melton, in James R. Lewis and Melton, eds., Perspectives on the New Age, State University of New York Press, 1992

 

“[A] fresh analysis if today’s culture … and the blueprint for a new politics beyond the traditional spectrum of left and right.”
– Fritjof Capra, “Vorwort” to the German edition of New Age Politics [Mark Satin, Heile dich selbst und unsere Erde], Arbor Verrlag, 1993  

 

“Mark Satin is one of the New Age’s leading political strategists. ...  New Age Politics present[s] a vision for a new political and economic order.”
– Richard Kyle, The New Age Movement in American Culture, University Press of America, 1994

 

“New Age Politics fascinated me.  It spoke of a politics that originated with the heart rather than the traditional power politics stresing manipulation and force of will.”
– Kenn Kassman, Envisioning Ecotopia, Praeger Publishers, 1997

 

“Mark Satin’s movement-encompassing treatise, New Age Politics, calls for a new ‘revolutionary’ strategy appropriate to our time. ...  [But] it explicitly rejects the working class as the primary agent of change, endorsing instead a range of local activities involving the transformation of one’s consciousness. ...  Like Laclau and Mouffe [in Henemony and Socialist Strategy, 1985], Satin labels himself a post-Marxist. ...  After treating ... both discourses, I turn to the ways in which a critique of New Age as represented by Satin ... reflects back onto post-Marxist prescriptions for revolutionary strategy. ”
– Dana L. Cloud, Control and Consolation in American Life, SAGE Publications, 1998, Chapter Six.  [Or see her similar chapter in Herbert W. Simons and Michael Billig, eds., After Postmodernism: Reconstructing Ideology Critique, SAGE Publications, 1994. – M.S.]

 

“[Charlene] Spretnak had edited The Politics of Wiomen’s Spirituality and would soon author The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics, and Satin was the author of New Age Politics and would become publisher of the New Age newsletter New Options. ...  Spretnak and Satinn played a significant role in facilitating the articulation of Green political thought, and the philosophies they represented have left their influence on the Greens’ ideological foundation.”
– Greta Gaard, Ecological Politics, Temple University Press, 1998

 

“Many of those leading the discussion of the antiquated aspects of the political system and identifying emerging trends came outside of the academic community. ...  Citizens found intriguing questions, analyses, and directions in books by nonacademics such as Heidi and Alvin Toffler, Fritjof Capra, Marilyn Ferguson, Hazel Henderson, Betty Friedan, E. F. Schumacher, John Naisbitt, and Mark Satin.”
– Christa Daryl Slaton, in Stephen Woolpert et al., Transformational Politics, State University of New York Press, 1998

 

“Mark Satin’s book New Age Politics is a survey of New Age and spiritual politics. ....  The book aimed to make this politics explicit by presenting in some detail its analysis, worldview, goals, economics, and strategy.”
– Alan J. Mayne, From Politics Past to Politics Future, Praeger, 1999

 

“Exponents of Teilhardism in our time are multiplying and becoming more eloquent, from Danald Keys Earth at Omega to ... Mark Satin New Age Politics.”
– Hanna Newcombe, in Walter Dorn, ed., World Order for a New Millennium, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

 

“The most ambitious effort to fashion a new-age manifesto was Mark Satin’s comprehensive but quite readable New Age Politics, which appeared ... just as multiple strains of the counterculture began to emerge as parts of an identifiable if not yet coherent ‘movement.’”
– Carl Boggs, The End of Politics, Guilford Press, 2000

 

“From the United States there seemed to be not one but many different kinds of movements developing [in the late 1970s] ... as well as a number of ideologies that already then seemed to be in competition with one another: the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, the new-age politics of Mark Satin, the appropriate technology of Amory Lovins, the ecofeminism of Carolyn Merchant, to name some of those that I became acquainted with”
– Andrew Jamison, The Making of Green Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 2001

 

“Since the publication of Mark Satin’s New Age Politics in 1978, it has been clear that New Age activists intend to continue promoting a political agenda for a united global community under the control of a one-world government.”
– Tim LaHaye and Ed Hindson, Seduction of the Heart, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001

 

“’New Age’ [is] being quietly but proudly reclaimed as a spiritual tag. …  [P]ublications that have been invoked as founding texts of an eponymous movement … did indeed promote the emblem, most notably David Spangler’s Revelation: the Birth of a New Age (1977), from Scotland, and Mark Satin’s New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society (1978), from Canada.  Although Spangler’s concerns are theosophical–metaphysical and Satin’s secular–humanistic, Spangler would surely agree with Satin’s basic thesis, namely: “If we want to change North America in a New Age direction, then we’re going to have to begin with our selves [sic].”
– Steven Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age, Routledge, 2003

 

“Mark Satin [was] a young man who had vehemently opposed the Vietnam War and while in Canada had written a seminal book, New Age Politics.  On returning to the U.S., he rode a Greyhound bus to 24 cities and regions, … shar[ing what] in those days (1970s) were often considered far-our ideas about human potential, threats to the environment, appropriate technology and renewable energy, feminist issues, decentralization,  futurist projections, world order. …”
– Belden Paulson, Odyssey of a Practical Visionary, Thistlefield Books, 2009

 

F. CODA

 

“After Satin accepted amnesty in 1978, he was invited to speak at a gathering in the States.  He had just returned, and he was awake all night before the talk with excitement and fear. ...  The speech got a standing ovation, and Satin wept.  His vision of what was possible, of what in fact was already moving through the culture, had evidently struck a nerve. ...  Two decades later, we know that Satin’s hopes for a new political platform did not materialize.  But over those long years in [Canada], he caught sight of and began to plan for the general movement for change that is taking form now.”
– Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, The Cultural Creatives, Random House, 2001

 

 VI. FOR MORE INFORMATION

 For Amazon.com’s page on the fourth edition of New Age Politics, go HERE.

Satin strongly, “objectively,” and passionately recommends the fourth edition.  However, used copies of the first three editions are still selling on Amazoin -  go HERE, HERE and HERE, respectively.

For Satin’s Amazon Author Page linking to all six of his books, go HERE.

For the Wikipedia biography of Satin, now a starred “Featured Article” there, go HERE.

If ou are doing original research on New Age or transformational politics, or on related subjects, hundreds of documents pertaining to Satin’s writing and promotion of New Age Politics are in the Mark Satin Papers at the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan.  The New Age Politics portion of the Satin papers includes 50 documents from Satin’s talks and workshops on New Age politics, 50 press clips and book excerpts about New Age Politics, 50 letters to and from Satin from 1974 – 1979, and Satin’s personal memoir of his New Age Politics years.

 A duplicate set of the New Age Politics portion of Satin’s papers is in the Satin, Mark papers at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library, University of Toronto.  A third set is in Satin’s personal possession in Oakland, CA.  If you would like to access them there, write him at msatin (at) mindspring (dot) com.  Please be brief, use 14-point type (because of his eye condition), and put “Research” in the subject line