Manifesting––yet another religious flash in the pan

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Cambridge Dictionary’s 2024 word of the year signals yet another desperate attempt to fill the yawning spiritual void.

I’m pretty much ignorant of popular culture. Fortunately (or not) Medium and Substack writer Matthew (Matt Whitely on Substack) keeps me somewhat current. Whether it’s takedowns of the Taylor Swift phenomena or some truly disgusting evidence of the moral emptiness of our so-called civilized world, he explores the spiritual implications of things that pop up into the quantum foam of our cultural world.

His recent post on manifesting introduced me to something happening that involves a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. What replaces discarded worldviews? How do we land on new and satisfying belief systems when the ones we’ve held previously are losing their sway?

Manifesting, as Matthew points out, is enough of a phenomenon to warrant the editors of the Cambridge Dictionary to declare it the word of the year. Heck, I was still trying to figure out brat and now they throw this at me. Here’s how Matthew explains manifesting:

“For those who are unenlightened, manifesting is pretty simple. You just ask the “universe” for things you want and then you get it. Really. You imagine all the stuff you want, money, possessions, holidays, fame, lots of money from…