I was just listening to the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations, and thinking of the image of the Taos crystal mystic hippie and the “tinfoil hat” paranoid
And like, we look down on them but come to think of it the theme of the 20th century was totally “invisible, penetrating, omnipresent waves of mysterious power you can tap into with crystals”
Like in the 19th century there was already woo-woo stuff like hypnotism, animal magnetism, psychics and mediums using crystal balls to reach out through the ectoplasm/astral plane, and then people invented wireless telegraphy, like “yeah, you hook up the still kinda mystic power of electricity up to specially proportioned focus objects and then you can send invisible energy waves that you can hear with the right magic crystal”
And from then until the microchip revolution that was like the cutting edge technology, invisible omnipresent power waves \u2013 radio, radar, X-rays, microwave, infrared, magnetic resonance\u2026
Honestly if all we as a culture picked up from that was a sense of giving/receiving “vibes” and a ‘70s ESP thing that’s pretty underwhelming. Though probably for the best - we still have people trying to work “invisible omnipresent power waves” into deep culture, they’re the people who think wi-fi gives you cancer or 5G cell towers are for mind control or something
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