Politics & Power Quote by Joan D. Vinge

A neat trick hides inside Vinge's phrasing: she frames fundamentalism and New Age mysticism as opposite poles, then collapses them into the same impulse - a willful retreat from complexity. The opening, "These days", isn’t just a timestamp; it’s an alarm bell that presumes a cultural backslide, a moment when uncertainty feels so ambient that people start shopping for certainty wherever it’s packaged most convincingly. Her triple verb stack - "cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow" - is less argument than choreography. It makes the reader feel the bodily mechanics of refusal: not thinking, not seeing, not listening.

The target isn’t religion per se, but religion used as anesthesia. "Narrow, conservative tenets" points to doctrine as a tightening noose, belief as compliance. Then comes the pivot: "or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual". The jab is subtle and slightly mischievous. New Age is marketed as liberated, progressive, bespoke spirituality; Vinge undercuts that self-image by calling it "ancient traditions" and "ritual" - another script, another set of ready-made gestures to keep dread at bay. The shared verb is the tell: comfort.

Context matters: Vinge is a science fiction writer, a genre that lives on the thrill and terror of the unknown. Her subtext reads like a defense of curiosity as a moral posture. She’s warning that when societies get stressed, they don’t just become credulous; they become nostalgically credulous, reaching for any worldview that promises a clean story and a smaller, safer universe.