Have others noticed this? [View All]

In my admittedly limited experience, every person I've met in real life who claims to be a Taoist/Buddhist is in fact a kind of flaccid agnostic who's read a book about Eastern mysticism (or watched The Matrix) and thereafter decided that it would seem cool to be perceived as distinctively esoteric.

I admit also that every person I've met who's made that assertion was in a college town and between the ages of 18 and ~30, so obviously the demographics may play a part.

Is my tone patronizing and sarcastic? You betcha! Why? Because I'm fed up with people making the bullshit assertion that quantum physics has significant parallels with Tao philosophy, to name just one of the many inane pop-culture-Buddhist slogans so common among these so-called believers.

But what is it about this mysterious Oriental Belief System that inspires such casual devotion from otherwise spiritually disconnected Western youth?