First things first, let's get an idea for who these so called new agers and world savers I'm referring to are. I'm sure you know a few...

Typically, they:

• Are perennially perky, positive people who see nothing but love and light, and encourage you to do the same even in your darkest hour.
• Are obsessively concerned with their carbon footprint (and yours) and bandy buzz words around like "sustainable," "organic," and "green."
• Follow Indian gurus, silently hold that theirs is better than yours, and tell you that "we're all one."
• Sometimes can't be around your "negative vibe."
• Preach that vegetarian, vegan, and raw diets are far superior to any other.
• Tell you as you face foreclosure or other such crisis that you created the situation with a choice and a choice will get you out of it.
• Market pseudo-scientific healing techniques, and for $100/hr., will perform a "remote healing" for you.
• For hefty sums will "coach" you to realize your dreams through the power of your thought alone.
• Seem to have every answer to every existential question, yet their answers sound strikingly familiar to every stanza in The Power of Now.

You get the idea. 

Actually, many of these people are really well intentioned but often commit atrocious mistakes that render their efforts to help others and make the world a better place ineffectual (and sometimes perilously harmful). Here's the top 3 worst and most self-defeating mistakes they make:

#3 — Confuse Charity for Vanity.

"Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know." — The Tao

You could also call this politics disguised as compassion. The classic example is the marketer seeing opportunities in the $11B self-help industry who pretends to be a healer to turn a profit. It's the humanitarian who travels to foreign lands to "help," but really is there to push a personal agenda or for a photo opportunity to further a career. 

#2 — Project Personal Issues On the World.

"Let him that would move the world, first move himself." — Socrates

The vast majority of new agers and world savers have not done their own inner work and carry deep pain from unresolved childhood issues. So now it becomes their job to heal others and the world, which is really just a coping strategy for avoiding their own shadow ... their own pain. This is why they all seem to live in a one season world of faux happiness, where everything is "all good" and "love and light." 

#1 — Fail to Act.

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." — Edmund Burke

Most new agers and world savers though knowing every answer to every existential question can't seem to cross the bridge from knowing to action. It's one thing to say "we're all one" and entirely another to act on this understanding. Indeed many decry Big Brother and the evil of the establishment, yet continue on in their smiley one season world without ever doing a thing about it.

(Interesting sync after publishing this post was reading this NY Times article.)