I think that both the self-help movement and New Age are efforts at social engineering. I don't know the purpose, I don't know who's behind it. I only am aware that whatever gets into popular culture through media such as the news, music, movies, and publishing are filtered and have great impact on the beliefs and actions of the masses. I think that things are allowed or disallowed to get into the culture, and are also disseminated. Oprah Winfrey is a major disseminator of both self-help and New Age information and beliefs, and it seems to me that there is stuff in each that is genuinely helpful combined with opiates for the masses; or, a few genuinely helpful things get through, but under the same agenda-driven umbrella, so I still remain skeptical of them no matter how much they've helped me (e.g., Brene Brown, the book Boundaries, Stoicism). Neither self-help nor New Age is as fulfilling as it promises, but is full of dangling carrots that may lead to some satisfaction but also a lot of pursuit after unattainable "higher" things. They often promise to take people out of and transcend the mundane, rather than dealing with the mundane, so it's like having a filter of being high all the time. For instance, one popular author who promotes Stoicism and helped it become mainstream popular makes Stoicism seem as if it's the answer to overcoming everything, when it fact it is limited and is quite cognizant of the challenges of the mundane -- and of course offers rational suicide as a way out, which could also serve an agenda of population reduction. With New Age, which I used to believe in and practically preach, just as I did Christianity prior to that, I've looked at the history of the movement and it came in from several sources, including the cultish Theosophical movement, Edward Cayce, the Beatles (the second wave of Indian mysticism being introduced to the West and Transcendental Meditation) and neo-/Western Buddhism (see Chogyam Trungpa, the abusive alcoholic and addict founder of Shambala Buddhism and Naropa University, proponent of "crazy wisdom" such as pointing guns at people). The author of A Course in Miracles, a major New Age text, remained anonymous until after her death, received the text through "transmissions," worked closely in receiving the transmissions and writing it with a CIA operative, and was quoted as saying after it was published that she bitterly regretted "that damn book." If you look back at the movement of the hippies in the 60s, the CIA introduced drugs into the sub-culture, and one of the main leaders, Alan Watts, was a self-proclaimed spiritual entertainer who was brilliant but also played fast and loose with Zen doctrine. It was one of many waves of New Age beliefs and practices. The counterculture movement of that era was socially very promising and seemingly transcendental, and impotent in affecting real change. Nowadays, it's yoga and meditation and New Age and self-empowerment and -improvement and climate change and reducing one's footprint and social justice, etc. There's some good in all of this, but to what practical end? It seems to me more like diversionary tactics and wheel-spinning then ever arriving at any possibility of real change, whether at the personal, social, or global level, or the changes would happen.
I hope this post doesn't lead to a derailment of the thread! I just wanted to answer your question. This post is my opinion and perspective based on personal research and studies in semiotics (making meaning through language, such as cultural myths). I highly recommend the book Mythologies by Roland Barthes if you're interested in seeing how myths are disseminated in and influence popular culture. They generally play on emotions and beliefs and get people "high" so that they will buy into what is actually harmful and enslaving, whether of others (such as a colonialized culture) or themselves.
