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Dirty Laundry
The mass media is messing with your mind, defining reality and feng shui for you. You should be suspicious. You are being force-fed some very ugly stuff.
Many people like the idea of the noble savage, a traditional person who is viewed as intellectually incompetent. Noble savages, it is believed, cannot understand the world as well as modern people. Modern people believe they are better at exploiting planetary resources.Translate the “noble savage” concept to feng shui and suddenly traditional feng shui is ecological wisdom, the secret of survival and well-being — but it must be “modernized” to be useful. This thinking is social Darwinism — and saying it’s “social Darwinism” is just a polite way of saying it’s an attitude of racial and cultural superiority.
Deborah Root noted that white society’s fascination with the “noble savage” idea works as
another means of colonial pacification because it presupposes the inevitable defeat and disappearance of traditional peoples. — Borrowed Power (1997:228)
Traditional feng shui provides what scientists call ritually regulated ecosystems — lifeways that enable traditional cultures to exist and prosper for millennia. The wisdom in traditional feng shui has been successful for several thousand years longer than any modern methods of feng shui. We should investigate traditional feng shui for solutions to modern problems, like global warming.
If ongoing study in science recognizes the benefits of a traditional practice like feng shui, and traditional feng shui works just fine in modern Asia, why does feng shui need “modernization”? Because some people don’t believe that Asian forms of “modern” are as good as Anglo-American forms of “modern.” This subtle racism is found in most of the feng shui books on the market. You can also find it on websites.
Choice of terminology is a moral statement. If morally neutral terminology is used for morally repugnant acts, it reduces the sense of repugnance. And when the same terminology is used for a moral and immoral act, a moral equivalence is created. — Bruce Dov Krulwich
Here are a few examples.
Nancilee Wydra
In Look Before You Love (1998) she says, “We must interpret ancient Chinese feng shui guidelines in a way that is acceptable today,” which means “to strip away cultural preferences.” (And substitute hers.) She claims that it’s time to abandon a traditional Chinese science that hasn’t seen fit to embrace Anglo-American culture, but she does not demand that her other practices meet this requirement. She demands the conversion of feng shui precisely because it is Chinese. This argument echoes those of nearly 150 years ago:
Although China is far from being a barbarous state, yet every system and institution there is inferior to the corresponding one in the West. … every thing in China is effete.5
Wydra’s associate Katherine Grace Morris repeats the Pyramid School ideology:
As Feng Shui found its way to America, it met with resistance and skepticism. People did not wish to turn their homes into places filled with Chinese artifacts and items.
Their customers wanted something vaguely exotic, not something foreign — and especially not anything Asian.
Nativists in the 1800s objected to the presence of Chinese immigrants and anything that hinted Chinese3 — after all, Chinatown was a ghetto.7
Feng shui has been in the US since at least the beginning of the 19th century. Based on eyewitness accounts feng shui was used in the design of gambling houses3 in the Chinatowns of New York1 and San Francisco.6 Its presence has been noted by commentators since the mid-19th century.4
It is the practices of the average McFengshui consultant that are greeted with skepticism. “Chinese artifacts and items” used as cures, such as the ubiquitous crystals and wind chimes, bagua mirrors, red strings, statues of everything from Guanyin and Buddha to frogs with coins, and the like, are the common “cures” found in Wydra’s books and those like hers.
Racism in education
One owner of The Feng Shui Training Center claims that “wandering tribesmen” came to China from the West. They allegedly brought feng shui with them around 4000 BCE. Alan Stirling, who runs the Feng Shui Institute (UK), says these “wandering tribesmen” came from “Sumeria (Iraq).” Only one problem: Sumerian culture (c. 3100 to 2000 BCE) wouldn’t be established for almost a thousand years after the first evidence of feng shui. They are claiming that white people invented feng shui and taught it to Chinese. There isn’t any proof, of course. But that hasn’t stopped them from perpetuating this racist myth. (They certainly wouldn’t give credence to the intriguing theory that the ancient Koreans were the ancestors of the Sumerians.)
Steven Post
Post says that feng shui knowledge existing today needs to be adjusted and updated to include information obtained by ongoing study. However, no “ongoing studies” have materialized from Post or his associates, except in the realm of “transcendental” marketing of their products.
Terah Kathryn Collins
Terah Kathryn Collins trademarked her version of feng shui, which she markets as honoring “the essence of its Eastern Form School Feng Shui heritage, while focusing on the practical applications it has in our Western culture.” The “essence” she kept was the term feng shui because that’s what sells. Her version of feng shui relies on Western occultism, Western pseudoscience and Western psychobabble. Her school does not teach San He calculations for eight mansions, or calculations for the dragons of mountain and water. Affirmations, the updated version of Puritan prayer-thought, made their way into McFengshui books thanks to Collins (published by Hay House) and Louise Hay, who invented affirmations.
William Spear
Spear lamented in Feng Shui Made Easy (1995) that “so much of what has come to us from ancient cultures has become dogmatic and, as such limiting.”He also said “it is essential to recognize the inherent limitations of feng shui adjustments in the external world.” (page 159) For Spear, feng shui is too old, too Chinese, and it doesn’t work anyway. Like Wydra, Spear does not demand that occult and New Age practices meet the same requirements as feng shui.Instead, he advocates that Greek philosophy replace the “limiting” dogma of traditional feng shui. How astonishing — Greeks (who didn’t know China existed) are the best source for Chinese ecological wisdom!
Mai’a Martin
Martin says in her book Feng Shui for the Southern Hemisphere (1999) that changes in the traditional system were needed because William Spear was upset Anglo-Americans were deserting their usual “intuitively pleasing” designs and aesthetics, and embracing Asian concepts. Spear was upset that white people were “going native”!
Ralph and Lahni DeAmicis
The authors of Feng Shui and the Tango in Twelve Easy Lessons (2001), claim “The Asian culture is yin, small dark-haired people, insular societies, wet-soil crops. … Western cultures are yang.” (pages 41-42) However, Asia is the largest chunk of dry land on the planet. Everyone from the Arctic Circle to the Indian Ocean, from east Russia and northwest Kazakhstan to Provideniya on the Bering Sea, from Israel and Turkey to Taiwan — in all, three-fifths of the world’s population — is “the Asian culture.”That is a lot of people, a lot of diversity. But the DeAmicis don’t see it. For them, Greeks, Russians, Israelis, Arabs, Iranians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Iraqis, Turks, Sikhs, Afghans, and basketball star Yao Ming are “yin” — and yin is womanly, according to them. Ralph DeAmicis (at six-foot-two or 1.88 meters) is dark-haired and would certainly look small standing next to Yao Ming (seven-foot-two, or 2.29 meters), but Ralph claims that he’s from a yang culture. Yang is related to the DeAmicis’ bizarre theories about agriculture (dry = Anglo-American, wet = Asian). It doesn’t matter that the traditional rice-growing regions of the world are below the 40th parallel in the Northern Hemisphere. The DeAmicis see the world in a unique way. Their worldview is from centuries ago, when Europeans traveled around the Southern Hemisphere and conquered the people they met.The DeAmicis claim that Chinese astrology is “graceful,” western astrology is “precise.” (page 149) The use of precise and graceful has the same connotations that Evelyn Fox Keller noted:
if science has come to mean objectivity, reason, dispassion, and power, femininity has come to mean everything that science is not: subjectivity, feeling, passion, and impotence.
By assigning Victorian notions of gender to astrology the DeAmicis communicate the alleged “delicacy” of women/yin (= intellectually and morally inferior) and the supposed “strength” of men/yang (= intellectually and morally superior). The DeAmicis are saying that Asians are inferior to Anglo-Americans. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia should not be sold as feng shui.
Do you understand what you are buying?
Keep in mind that
- People who sell a product are responsible for what they sell. That is the main idea behind laws that protect the public from unscrupulous businesses. Hold McFengshui authors and marketers responsible for their promotion of racism.
- Publishers sell what they think will make them money. If lies are selling a lot of books, then there will be more books that contain lies. Racism will remain in feng shui books until people complain, and until people stop buying the books that contain these vile ideas.
People are pretty much alike. It’s only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. —Linda Ellerbee
It all comes out in the wash
In early America, entrepreneurial Chinese had to earn their living as laundry owners and workers, or domestic servants. American culture at that time defined laundry, like domestic service, as yin. This was “women’s work,” often that of Irish women (or immigrant women in general). A Chinese laundry typically did not threaten white males, because laundry was “beneath” them. No “red-blooded American male” would dare go into the laundry business. It wasn’t manly. As Irish women wedded Chinese men, American culture grew suspicious of the laundries.Advertisements from the same period depict Chinese as distorted caricatures in servile roles and associate them with laundry products, but never show them actually purchasing the products.
References
- Beck, Louis J. New York’s Chinatown: an historical presentation of its people and places. New York: Bohemia Publishing, c1898
- Culin, Stewart. China in America: a study in the social life of the Chinese in the eastern cities of the United States. Philadelphia: [s.n.], 1887.
- Culin, Stewart. The gambling games of the Chinese in America: the game of repeatedly spreading out, or, the game of white pigeon ticket. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1891.
- Denslow, Van Buren. The Chinese question. [New York: A.S. Barnes, 1881]. Also Condit, Ira M. The Chinaman as we see him and fifty years of work for him. Chicago: F.H. Revell, c1900; and Genthe, Arnold. Pictures of old Chinatown. New York: Moffat, Yard, 1908.
- Gibson, Otis. The Chinese in America. Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1877.
- Stoddard, Charles Warren. A bit of old China. San Francisco: A.M. Robertson, 1912.
- Read The Unwelcome Immigrant by Stuart Creighton Miller. Also see John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882.
Myth: "Feng shui agrees with modern physics"
True.
However, the fact that feng shui does agree with modern physics is going to upset a lot of people. It means the death of their pet beliefs.
Energy
Feng shui people don’t seem to play golf or billiards. Those skills would help them gain an understanding of why feng shui does not defy basic laws of physics. Perhaps they would stop using “energy” as an explanation for everything.
They will try to convince you with a lot of babble about “vibrations,” and incomprehensible paraphrasing of Deepak Chopra. Yet there is no “vibrational energy” in some universal, mystical cosmic soup. Any energy can be measured if it is actually there.
Anyone can distinguish between a real phenomenon and one that is not, simply by having an independent party demonstrate that the phenomenon exists.
If a feng shui person claims to be exploiting some kind of “energy” with feng shui but can’t explain how their energy is measured, you are dealing with a con artist. (Or someone who is delusional. Or possibly both.)
“It is quantum physics,” they often insist, as if this answer is enough to stop your prying. “That cannot be measured.”
Just because they don’t understand the science doesn’t mean the science cannot be explained.
Quantum mechanics theory works at the atomic level and smaller, at a size most people simply cannot imagine: 0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 meters. This is a scale where quantum fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime theoretically become enormous. This is so small humans cannot see obvious signs of the effects of quantum gravity (non-Newtonian gravity).
Why do feng shui people claim to work with quantum physics or quantum mechanics?
Marketing! They are exploiting some people’s taste for nonsense. And some people are silly enough to believe it.
What's Wrong?! I'll Tell You What's Wrong.
One way to tell real experts from people who look like experts is to ask them about the last mistake that they made. The expert is still chewing over that last mistake and asking “What should I have been watching for?” The nonexpert will dismiss a mistake as due to bad luck or say that it wasn’t a mistake at all, but due to uncontrollable circumstances.
— Gary Klein, a psychologist and chief scientist at Applied Research Associates in Fairborn, Ohio
Karen Rauch Carter wonders how people came to the conclusion that she is a quack.
Carter says she wants to be of service to humanity, and claims she wants to be enlightened about how others view her work.
This article has been provided to help her understand. We’ll see whether she means what she says, or whether she is just another lunatic on the fringe.
A questionable business model
The conflict of interest at the heart of Carter’s business indicates there is a problem.
Fraud occurs when someone has motivation, opportunity, and a rationalization.
Feng shui fraud occurs when
- Someone intentionally makes an untrue representation about an important fact or event. In feng shui this regularly occurs in the marketing of a feng shui consultant’s techniques and abilities. Fraud also extends to tools and how someone markets their knowledge of their craft (including its documented history).
- The untrue representation is believed by the victim (the client).
- The victim relies upon and acts upon the untrue representation.
- The victim suffers loss of money and/or property because they relied on and acted on the untrue representation. Consider the story of the sick baby.
Karen Rauch Carter endorses and sells “tried and true feng shui solutions” that “offer a wide range of chi enhancements.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to speculate why Carter’s clients suffer a lot from problems that can be fixed by one of her “solutions.”
You cannot verify the truth of her statements (testimonials do not count).
- You do not know whether you actually need these items in your home or business — unless you believe Carter’s marketing.
- You have no way of knowing (beyond Carter’s marketing) whether any of these objects for sale are indeed traditional cures — or whether they enhance anything beyond Carter’s bottom line.
Has anyone tried returning one of her “solutions” because it did not work as advertised?
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
— Sophocles
Food for thought
Giovanni Maciocia made some interesting points that apply to feng shui just as surely as they apply to Chinese medicine. To paraphrase Dr Maciocia, the most important issue facing practitioners is not how to transmit the language of feng shui (an impossible task given the differences between Chinese and other languages) but how to transmit the clinical skills. The critical issue is not what words we use to identify something — the issue is whether feng shui students are able to master the ability to identify and diagnose environments accurately.
Unfortunately, the public is still at the mercy of the feng shui fraudsters and their marketing. People still must weigh the marketer’s language to determine whether their clinical skills are adequate. Learning how to read what the marketers are really selling is critical if you want to avoid being the victim of fraud.
Language helps us identify quacks and frauds
There is some interesting language in Carter’s definitions.
| What She Says | Reality Check |
|---|---|
| The five elements … are used to describe the five ways energy moves. Water describes a downward movement of energy, wood is an expansive movement, fire illustrates upward movement, earth describes a horizontal movement, and metal is a compressing movement. Organizing the motion and patterns of chi (energy) is the goal of feng shui. | Academics correlate wuxing with systems theory. That would be difficult to do if we used Carter’s definition of the five elements.
The five elements are used to describe interactions and relationships between phenomena. Wuxing literally translates to "five goings," and the word "energy" is not synonymous with phenomena. Carter’s philosophy is not Chinese — and it doesn’t make sense in terms of systems theory. Based on her definition, Carter would have difficulty identifying forms by wuxing (wood = tall rectangle, fire = triangle, metal = round or elliptical, water = wavy, earth = flat or horizontal square). This skill is essential for conducting a feng shui analysis. How does Carter manage an analysis if her clinical skills are lacking in this important area? I suppose Carter would also have trouble understanding the fengshui of Wenzhou, although this is a terrific explanation! Carter further claims the goal of feng shui is to organize qi. To quote the Book of Burial (Zangshu):
Where is the part about "organizing" qi? You won’t find it because it isn’t Chinese. It’s New Age Good Housekeeping. Keep that qi in order, little lady — just like your closets and the email Inbox — or else the clutter monsters will get you. |
| The bagua is considered "the map of feng shui," and is one of the most essential tools for evaluating a site, space or environment. The word bagua is roughly translated as "eight sides," which describes its octagonal shape. | Carter thinks there is only one — the McBagua of McFengshui. Actually Hetu and Luoshu are "essential tools" for evaluation. But these are nothing like the New Age stop sign that Carter uses. Neither bagua was originally an octagon — see for yourself.
The literal translation of bagua is "eight diagrams." That is where the term Eight Diagram Theory originated. |
| Chi is the word used most often to describe the invisible energetic forces that are being changed or manipulated when using feng shui. The American description most closely aligned with this concept is "life force". More scientifically, it is the intelligence-holding vibration of sub-atomic particles, which make up all matter. | "Invisible energetic forces" are a dead giveaway that we are in the mental theme park of McFengshui.
If these "forces" exist, they can be measured. If they cannot be measured then they exist because of a belief system. Carter is promoting a belief system: life force, sometimes known as the aura — a New Age concept borrowed from 19th century Vitalism and now found in Intelligent Design (Creationism). (Shows how modern "new age" really is.) Carter has also embraced the fraud of bau-biologie. "More scientifically" is a joke — there is nothing scientific about Carter’s statement. It’s New Age word salad of the Deepak Chopra Anthropic Principle. If Carter is going to claim some scientific backing for her excrementizing, then she needs to follow the rules and provide provenance. Because her ideas are found in history books, not modern science. Feng shui works in the world of classical physics, not below the Planck length! Carter has actually explained our universe the way that the ancient Greeks understood matter:
Rather than explaining the quantum foam (the chaos), Carter’s universe consists of nice, orderly particles — the "music of the spheres" of the ancient Greeks — an affinity she shares with William Spear.
Carter’s word salad suggests her ideas were obtained from other McFengshui adherents. After all, "intelligence building" isn’t Santiago Cognition Theory. The fabric of space can tear and reform in new ways, and it exhibits mirror symmetry that is violated in some cases. The nonconservation of parity, which is vitally important to understand if you are a feng shui consultant, is a typical stumbling block for McFengshui. |
| Feng shui is a system, or way of purposefully arranging an environment so that it positively affects those who live there. Although many cultures used various methods of feng shui to help themselves live life more harmoniously, it was first logged and documented by the Chinese culture - thus the popularity of their name for it. The words feng shui are translated as "wind and water," which describe the two forces that shape the environment. One visible and the other invisible, they both impact our lives constantly. | In the mental theme park of McFengshui all of this is true. After all, it sounds vaguely reminiscent of the greenwash that emanates from the Pyramid School.
McFengshui is a late 20th-century belief system that works off the Placebo Effect. Real feng shui is altogether different. Let’s look again at the definition in the Book of Burial (Zangshu):
The environment of Wenzhou was not "purposefully arranged." Wenzhou was arranged to fit into the environment. That is the critical difference between McFengshui and real feng shui. In authentic feng shui, cities, suburbs, houses — even horse barns and dog houses — are sited to fit into the environment. The article on Wenzhou illustrates the point that the city was sited for astronomy and its environment. The same thing is true of every capital city constructed by Chinese, including the original construction of Beijing. The objective of real feng shui is to play by the planet’s rules. Feng shui provides the rules that have enabled the longest continuous civilization in human history to survive. When we ignore the rules we invariably make more trouble for ourselves — think Katrina and the missing wetlands. Think of the missing mangrove forests that would have prevented so much devastation from the 2005 Asian tsunami. Think global warming. It is no coincidence that McFengshui does not acknowledge global warming or have a response beyond “buy more stuff” — in this case “chi enhancers.” McFengshui is stuck in the 19th century, talking about life force and auras and reeking of colonialism. Real feng shui does not exist to arrange the environment for our personal gain. It exists to fit us within the environment. By doing that feng shui keeps us safe and healthy. That is why feng shui can be used to combat global warming and environmental disaster. The First Peoples nearly succeeded in terraforming the entire Western Hemisphere before Europeans arrived, and they did it by the planet’s rules. That’s why it has taken us until the last 20 years to realize the hemisphere was terraformed. The McFengshui crowd would rather believe fairy tales about “universal feng shui” than give credit where it’s due. They keep repeating this outrageous lie because it suits their financial goals, not because there’s any truth in it. |
If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and makes the same sounds as a duck, it is probably a duck.
"Electrosensitivity" and the Placebo Effect
Sounding like an anthropologist studying victims of voudou, the lead scientist of a three-year study of people who claim “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” (EHS), summed up her research:
Belief is a very powerful thing. If you really believe something is going to do you some harm, it will.
— Professor Elaine Fox, Univ. of Essex1
No one argues that the “electrosensitivity” people are not suffering. But Professor Fox’s robust study2 joins a long line of other studies suggesting the illnesses are psychological.
I admit it: I’m a hypochondriac. But I manage to control it with a placebo.
— Dennis Miller
Alleged “electrosensitives” cannot detect when signals are on or off. The few who could detect signals during the study were within the proportion you would expect based on chance alone, the researchers say.
The statistical power was thrown a bit when a dozen of the study participants had to drop out because they were (by their own admission) too ill to continue. Professor Fox estimates a 30 percent chance that the experiment missed a real effect.4
A one-in-three chance of missing something? Those are terrible odds!
There’s not much of a glimmer of hope for believers, because this major study joins two other big double-blind studies that point to electrosensitivity not being caused by technology.
If people are convinced that they are suffering because of mobile phone masts they don’t investigate other causes.
— Professor Elaine Fox2
There has to be a mechanism in the human body to cause the illness of electrosensitivity. Moreover, the body must be able to differentiate between background radiation, the types of radiation that our bodies need to be healthy, and these extraordinarily narrow frequencies that people claim are making them sick.
So far, research consistently indicates the common mechanism is the brain.
It would be fascinating to see what parts of an “electrosensitive” brain start firing when sufferers feel they are awash in a toxic soup of electricity and magnetic fields!
A needle in a haystack — or a pea between mattresses
I wonder whether the sufferers of “electrosensitivity” aren’t just manifesting their agitation about the technological and cultural changes they have witnessed in their lives. You read about these people and talk to them, and their mindset resembles a tribal belief system.
Consider the analogy of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale of the princess and the pea. The swooning delicacy of the “electrosensitive” types stands apart from the rest us coarse, boorish techno-louts. A greater sensitivity to distress, indeed.
Or consider how, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you could spot King Arthur from far away because he was the only person who wasn’t covered in dung (to put it delicately).
Whether people can detect electromagnetic fields is a scientifically interesting question because as far as we know humans don’t have any receptors to do that.
—Professor Elaine Fox5
References
- BBC News. Phone mast allergy ‘in the mind’. 25 July 2007.
- Stacy Eltiti, Denise Wallace, Anna Ridgewell, Konstantina Zougkou, Riccardo Russo, Francisco Sepulveda, Dariush Mirshekar-Syahkal, Paul Rasor, Roger Deeble, and Elaine Fox. Environmental Health Perspectives. 115:7. July 2007.
- BBC News.
- James Randerson. Research fails to detect short-term harm from mobile phone masts. The Guardian. July 26, 2007.
- Caroline Williams. No evidence for cellphone mast illness. New Scientist. 25 July 2007.
Modern neatness is the enemy of wildlife
Neatness is the enemy of wildlife. Much traditional landscaping, for example, is open and neatly trimmed, with little room for birds and other animals, and it often requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides.
Let the weeds and bushes grow. Plant native trees.
Our demand for unblemished fruit and catsup without insect parts forces the heavy use of pesticides and forces farmers to go to great lengths to control birds and other “pests.” Blemished or slightly wormy fruit is still edible.
My father had the habit of never eating an apple without taking out his pocketknife and cutting it up. This habit was ingrained from being brought up on a farm in the days before the heavy use of pesticides.
Adopting simple habits like this can help to save wildlife (and maybe your own health).
— Dr. Peter Moyle, et al. From an introductory course on wildlife conservation taught at the University of California, Davis.
You can read it in its entirety..
As we manicure our green space, nuking bugs and napalming weeds, we drive hedgehogs and their food out into a wilderness with little sign of comfort.
Protecting Your Privacy with Feng Shui Consultants
Knowledge is power
- Who is collecting the information?
- How will this information be used?
- With whom will this information be shared?
- Do you have a choice about the use of your information?
How to avoid victimization
You should provide a practitioner with:
- your name
- your address
- your phone number
- the date you moved in
- the year the structure was built (and any remodels and their dates)
- a floorplan to scale
- plot maps, if appropriate
- your birthdate and the birthdate of those living with you who are part of the analysis
- the amount of usage an area gets and by whom
This is enough information to do the work. Shut up and let them do it!
Don’t pay feng shui people AND do their work for them by telling them everything. Would you give the same amount of information to the guy who cleans the carpets? How about the pool cleaning service? The gardener?
Call your family or your friends if you need validation.
Some practitioners say they need to “interview” you several times. That just means they’re incompetent. You can write everything they need on a piece of paper and leave it for them. Go outside, go watch TV, go to the bathroom — leave them alone to work.
If they can’t manage the work, you don’t need to finance their education.
What practitioners NEVER need to know:
- Information about your neighborhood. You are paying them to find out.
- A list of your goals and wishes for the future. Anyone who wants more information can be trying to commit fraud by using cold reading, fishing, and the Forer Effect.
