Self-acceptance is not accepting yourself as you are, with all your faults, that is shadow hugging. Self-acceptance is about accepting who you really are: the true Self, free from delusion and attachment.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Monday, June 6, 2016
The Gods Themselves
"Eyewitness reports of human encounters
with "supernatural beings" have been documented as far back
as the painted caves of Upper Paleolithic Europe 35,000 years ago and
brought right up to date with bizarre accounts of abductions by
aliens in the twenty-first century. Such reports include powerful
common themes... that science is unable to explain."
Supernatural: Meetings with the
Ancient Teachers of Mankind, Revised Edition, Graham Hancock,
page 269
What are the gods? Could billions of people from pre-history have believed in lies, founded on nothing but the hollow words of priests? Or were the gods based on some truth, some genuine metaphysical intelligence that humans contacted and communed with?
The gods, or the germ of the gods, began as extensions of the Truth. For whatever reason they fragmented; were rent from Truth and thrust into contact with the world: Dionysus, Anubis, Azazel, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli*, and others. Not all the gods, most are just myth; the personification of abstract thought. Did the average Greek believe in Zeus, or Athena, or Ares? Probably not. They represented aspects of human psychology and served as a means of learning these truths, just as ego, superego, and id centuries later.
Ares and Athena are both gods of war - personifications of abstract
ideas - but they signify different approaches to war. Ares represents
the old style of fighting, like Achilles or barbarians; men who fight
for personal glory and bloodlust. Athena represents civilised warfare,
with strategy and tactics and allegiance to the city-state. Stories involving the two were commentaries on societal evolution, from archaic to classical; from tribes and kinship groups to political entities that united multiple disparate families.
However, some gods represent genuine aspects of Truth that can be approached through transpersonal experience: the original teachers of mankind. Millions of people, from all times and all nations, speak of meeting the same entities through the use of drugs, fasting, or rhythmic dance. They cannot all be sharing in the same hallucination, or else be imitating one another from reading past accounts. No, these experiences must point to a genuine reality.
Over the countless eons, psychic garbage has accumulated around these fragments and they've taken on lives of their own. What began as projections of Truth were, through prolonged exposure to the collective shadow of humanity, rendered into entities with thoughts and personalities all their own. Wise and powerful beyond all conception, yet totally dependent upon humans for their existence. This is the condition of the gods. A lack of prayers cannot starve them, as in Aristophanes' The Birds, or has commonly been believed throughout the centuries. They do not need us to believe. Our beliefs merely give definition to their form. They have appeared in every culture under many names. All they require is the continuation within the collective unconscious of the same thought patterns, the same vortices, that created them. And so it does not matter if you believe in Anubis per se, it is the psychopomp, the one who delivers souls from this world to the next. Call it Yama, or the Grim Reaper, or Charon, or the Being of Light, it is still the same entity by whatever name you give it, and so long as the need remains for such a being, so shall it continue to exist, in all the different guises disparate cultures have given it.
That is the folly of man, thinking himself Adam, with the power to change the essence of a thing by changing its name. Water is still the same whether it is in a pot, or a towel, or on the floor, or in a cloud, or ice. A man is still a man, whatever mask he wears, by whatever name he refers himself. You cannot change a horse into a cow by changing the definition of "cow" to include horses, nor can you affect the gods by believing, or disbelieving, or by granting them different titles. You can lie to all the world, but in the pure light of Truth you cannot lie to yourself, and you will find, when you die, the lies you've told become chains and anchors preventing you from ascending to the Truth.
These gods are not the God, and though they live a long time, they are not immortal, and must return to the Truth eventually, when humanity has evolved and there is no further need for this world. On the contrary, a true immortal, though his body may die, his soul will remain as the unique expression of his being, even when his identity shifts from the individual to the Truth itself, dissolving the illusion of separation. The soul of the immortal is indestructible, even if he does not see himself as the individual.
In part two I will look at the nature of that which we call God.
*The god of human sacrifice. The Aztecs were unique in all the world for the sheer brutality and the numbers of their victims. Something, very dark and diabolical, had to compel the Aztecs to commit ritualised murder on such an enormous scale.
with "supernatural beings" have been documented as far back
as the painted caves of Upper Paleolithic Europe 35,000 years ago and
brought right up to date with bizarre accounts of abductions by
aliens in the twenty-first century. Such reports include powerful
common themes... that science is unable to explain."
Supernatural: Meetings with the
Ancient Teachers of Mankind, Revised Edition, Graham Hancock,
page 269
What are the gods? Could billions of people from pre-history have believed in lies, founded on nothing but the hollow words of priests? Or were the gods based on some truth, some genuine metaphysical intelligence that humans contacted and communed with?
The gods, or the germ of the gods, began as extensions of the Truth. For whatever reason they fragmented; were rent from Truth and thrust into contact with the world: Dionysus, Anubis, Azazel, Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli*, and others. Not all the gods, most are just myth; the personification of abstract thought. Did the average Greek believe in Zeus, or Athena, or Ares? Probably not. They represented aspects of human psychology and served as a means of learning these truths, just as ego, superego, and id centuries later.
Ares and Athena are both gods of war - personifications of abstract
ideas - but they signify different approaches to war. Ares represents
the old style of fighting, like Achilles or barbarians; men who fight
for personal glory and bloodlust. Athena represents civilised warfare,
with strategy and tactics and allegiance to the city-state. Stories involving the two were commentaries on societal evolution, from archaic to classical; from tribes and kinship groups to political entities that united multiple disparate families.
However, some gods represent genuine aspects of Truth that can be approached through transpersonal experience: the original teachers of mankind. Millions of people, from all times and all nations, speak of meeting the same entities through the use of drugs, fasting, or rhythmic dance. They cannot all be sharing in the same hallucination, or else be imitating one another from reading past accounts. No, these experiences must point to a genuine reality.
Over the countless eons, psychic garbage has accumulated around these fragments and they've taken on lives of their own. What began as projections of Truth were, through prolonged exposure to the collective shadow of humanity, rendered into entities with thoughts and personalities all their own. Wise and powerful beyond all conception, yet totally dependent upon humans for their existence. This is the condition of the gods. A lack of prayers cannot starve them, as in Aristophanes' The Birds, or has commonly been believed throughout the centuries. They do not need us to believe. Our beliefs merely give definition to their form. They have appeared in every culture under many names. All they require is the continuation within the collective unconscious of the same thought patterns, the same vortices, that created them. And so it does not matter if you believe in Anubis per se, it is the psychopomp, the one who delivers souls from this world to the next. Call it Yama, or the Grim Reaper, or Charon, or the Being of Light, it is still the same entity by whatever name you give it, and so long as the need remains for such a being, so shall it continue to exist, in all the different guises disparate cultures have given it.
That is the folly of man, thinking himself Adam, with the power to change the essence of a thing by changing its name. Water is still the same whether it is in a pot, or a towel, or on the floor, or in a cloud, or ice. A man is still a man, whatever mask he wears, by whatever name he refers himself. You cannot change a horse into a cow by changing the definition of "cow" to include horses, nor can you affect the gods by believing, or disbelieving, or by granting them different titles. You can lie to all the world, but in the pure light of Truth you cannot lie to yourself, and you will find, when you die, the lies you've told become chains and anchors preventing you from ascending to the Truth.
These gods are not the God, and though they live a long time, they are not immortal, and must return to the Truth eventually, when humanity has evolved and there is no further need for this world. On the contrary, a true immortal, though his body may die, his soul will remain as the unique expression of his being, even when his identity shifts from the individual to the Truth itself, dissolving the illusion of separation. The soul of the immortal is indestructible, even if he does not see himself as the individual.
In part two I will look at the nature of that which we call God.
*The god of human sacrifice. The Aztecs were unique in all the world for the sheer brutality and the numbers of their victims. Something, very dark and diabolical, had to compel the Aztecs to commit ritualised murder on such an enormous scale.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Sai Baba in Badrinath
June 1961, Sathya Sai Baba and his retinue visited the holy city of Badrinath near where the river Ganges enters India.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Britain Should Not Have Fought in the First World War
Here is a 1 hour 40 minute debate on the issue of whether Britain should have stayed out of the First World War.
I'm very surprised by this outcome. British people, apparently, can be moved by debate. This is in contrast to my own hypothesis that debate accomplishes nothing. What is also interesting is that 10% of the audience did not vote the second time.
Proposition----------------------------Before---After
Britain should not have fought------19-------27
Britain should have fought-----------40-------62
Don't know--------------------------------41-------1
The speakers who thought Britain should have fought constantly made reference to WWII and tried to conflate the Kaiser to Hitler and the Nazis, because the position would have been untenable otherwise. They say that the Germans executing 7000 Belgian civilians was the worst atrocity ever until the Holocaust and was more than enough justification for Britain to go to war, but ignore the millions of Congolese the Belgians murdered under King Leopold's reign. I have no sympathy for the Belgians. They were horrible people in 1914 and they're still the absolute moral anus of the entire universe in 2016. The Belgians are the most immoral people who have ever lived, and if 7000 had to die to assure a quick, largely bloodless war between Germany and France in a repeat of 1870, then so be it. Had the BEF not stepped in at the Marne in 1914 there would have been no WWI. The Ottomans and Italy would not have entered, France would have been defeated in a few months (the German army was very close to Paris in September), and Russia, having lost all its allies, would have sued for peace.
France and Russia have always been the historical enemies of Britain. Russia, in particular, under the Tsar, was the most repressive state in Europe at the time. They were much worse than the Germans, who had the highest standard of living, the highest concentration of scientific and artistic geniuses, and the most freedom of any of the peoples on the continent.
The only allegedly bad thing the Germans did was engage in a very brief arms race in the building of warships, with an explicit goal of far less than the British navy. The Germans never wanted to be a threat, and they quickly abandoned the aim of expanding their own navy. Really, Germany just wanted its own place in the sun. The ancient regimes of Europe had already established their own global empires, and Germany, barely 40 years old by that point, wanted a little something for itself. They didn't want to conquer the world, or even Europe, they didn't want to depose Britain's rule of the sea, they didn't want lebensraum or to exterminate people, the Germans were not a threat to Britain. And if the Germans had political domination Europe in 1914, would that really be such a bad thing? Not for Britain. Germany would have in a stroke defeated Britain's two chief rivals. France would no longer be posturing in Africa, and Russia would no longer be trying to make inroads in Afghanistan. Britain would have come out on top had Germany won a brief European war in 1914!
Furthermore, had Germany won in 1914 the great problems of the 20th and 21st centuries would likely not have happened, certainly not to the scale that they did. The collapse of the European colonial empires led to massive problems that continue to this day. You can't expect to introduce cavemen to the 20th century and have them become modern people in a single generation. Because the colonies in Africa had lasted for such a brief time there was no chance for the African peoples to modernise sufficiently to allow for self-rule in a modern global society. You give modern weapons to cavemen you're going to have a bad time. The Europeans introduce guns and a global economy and then after a generation they leave. It's no surprise Africa is so fraught with corruption and genocide today, the natural violent tendencies of peoples who have been slaughtering one another for millennia had now been given geopolitcal legitimacy and modern weapons.
The partition of India was a disaster. The British knew it would have happened, and they just drew a line on a map, threw up their hands, and left. For 500 years the Muslims had brutally subjugated the Indians. In a free and democratic India, with Muslims outnumbered 10 to 1, their grip on power would evaporate and fear of reprisal loomed. Rather than take responsibility like adults, the British instead split India into Muslim Pakistan, and Everyone else India, and then left knowing 2 million people would be killed in the mass exodus that was to follow.
And let us not forget Arabia. You kick the Turks out and promise the Hashemite dynasty self-rule and then you stab them in the back, give half the land to the French who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, and renege on your promise to defend the Arabs from the vicious, repressive, theocratic Saudi clan who swept in and took control, introducing Wahhabism to the region, creating the second moral anus of the universe and sewing the seeds of global Islamic terrorism.
And that's just the colonies! Had Germany won in 1914 there would never have been a Holocaust. The Nazis would have never taken power and Hitler would have starved on the streets of Vienna. Lenin would have never escaped his exile and communism would never have taken hold in Russia, leading to the disaster of tens of millions of dead and the terror of Stalin. There would have been no Second World War that left 60 million dead if Germany had won in 1914. Without communism in Russia there would have been no rise of Mao in China, with the 500 million dead in the wake of the most repressive regime in human history. Tibet and Turkestan would be free. There would be no Cold War, no divided Korea, no Vietnam, no war in Afghanistan, or in Iraq. Had Britain stayed out of the war and allowed Germany to have a quick victory hundreds of millions of people would not have been murdered and the world would be a far safer place today.
I'm very surprised by this outcome. British people, apparently, can be moved by debate. This is in contrast to my own hypothesis that debate accomplishes nothing. What is also interesting is that 10% of the audience did not vote the second time.
Proposition----------------------------Before---After
Britain should not have fought------19-------27
Britain should have fought-----------40-------62
Don't know--------------------------------41-------1
The speakers who thought Britain should have fought constantly made reference to WWII and tried to conflate the Kaiser to Hitler and the Nazis, because the position would have been untenable otherwise. They say that the Germans executing 7000 Belgian civilians was the worst atrocity ever until the Holocaust and was more than enough justification for Britain to go to war, but ignore the millions of Congolese the Belgians murdered under King Leopold's reign. I have no sympathy for the Belgians. They were horrible people in 1914 and they're still the absolute moral anus of the entire universe in 2016. The Belgians are the most immoral people who have ever lived, and if 7000 had to die to assure a quick, largely bloodless war between Germany and France in a repeat of 1870, then so be it. Had the BEF not stepped in at the Marne in 1914 there would have been no WWI. The Ottomans and Italy would not have entered, France would have been defeated in a few months (the German army was very close to Paris in September), and Russia, having lost all its allies, would have sued for peace.
France and Russia have always been the historical enemies of Britain. Russia, in particular, under the Tsar, was the most repressive state in Europe at the time. They were much worse than the Germans, who had the highest standard of living, the highest concentration of scientific and artistic geniuses, and the most freedom of any of the peoples on the continent.
The only allegedly bad thing the Germans did was engage in a very brief arms race in the building of warships, with an explicit goal of far less than the British navy. The Germans never wanted to be a threat, and they quickly abandoned the aim of expanding their own navy. Really, Germany just wanted its own place in the sun. The ancient regimes of Europe had already established their own global empires, and Germany, barely 40 years old by that point, wanted a little something for itself. They didn't want to conquer the world, or even Europe, they didn't want to depose Britain's rule of the sea, they didn't want lebensraum or to exterminate people, the Germans were not a threat to Britain. And if the Germans had political domination Europe in 1914, would that really be such a bad thing? Not for Britain. Germany would have in a stroke defeated Britain's two chief rivals. France would no longer be posturing in Africa, and Russia would no longer be trying to make inroads in Afghanistan. Britain would have come out on top had Germany won a brief European war in 1914!
Furthermore, had Germany won in 1914 the great problems of the 20th and 21st centuries would likely not have happened, certainly not to the scale that they did. The collapse of the European colonial empires led to massive problems that continue to this day. You can't expect to introduce cavemen to the 20th century and have them become modern people in a single generation. Because the colonies in Africa had lasted for such a brief time there was no chance for the African peoples to modernise sufficiently to allow for self-rule in a modern global society. You give modern weapons to cavemen you're going to have a bad time. The Europeans introduce guns and a global economy and then after a generation they leave. It's no surprise Africa is so fraught with corruption and genocide today, the natural violent tendencies of peoples who have been slaughtering one another for millennia had now been given geopolitcal legitimacy and modern weapons.
The partition of India was a disaster. The British knew it would have happened, and they just drew a line on a map, threw up their hands, and left. For 500 years the Muslims had brutally subjugated the Indians. In a free and democratic India, with Muslims outnumbered 10 to 1, their grip on power would evaporate and fear of reprisal loomed. Rather than take responsibility like adults, the British instead split India into Muslim Pakistan, and Everyone else India, and then left knowing 2 million people would be killed in the mass exodus that was to follow.
And let us not forget Arabia. You kick the Turks out and promise the Hashemite dynasty self-rule and then you stab them in the back, give half the land to the French who did absolutely nothing to deserve it, and renege on your promise to defend the Arabs from the vicious, repressive, theocratic Saudi clan who swept in and took control, introducing Wahhabism to the region, creating the second moral anus of the universe and sewing the seeds of global Islamic terrorism.
And that's just the colonies! Had Germany won in 1914 there would never have been a Holocaust. The Nazis would have never taken power and Hitler would have starved on the streets of Vienna. Lenin would have never escaped his exile and communism would never have taken hold in Russia, leading to the disaster of tens of millions of dead and the terror of Stalin. There would have been no Second World War that left 60 million dead if Germany had won in 1914. Without communism in Russia there would have been no rise of Mao in China, with the 500 million dead in the wake of the most repressive regime in human history. Tibet and Turkestan would be free. There would be no Cold War, no divided Korea, no Vietnam, no war in Afghanistan, or in Iraq. Had Britain stayed out of the war and allowed Germany to have a quick victory hundreds of millions of people would not have been murdered and the world would be a far safer place today.
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Sri Sathya Sai Mobile Hospital
Sathya Sai Baba created a mobile hospital unit as an extension of his free health service to the poor. They travel around Andhra Pradesh to serve villagers who cannot travel to brick and mortar hospitals.
Runs 15 minutes.
Runs 15 minutes.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
A Very Brief Introduction to Dragons
Were dragons real? Think about it, virtually every culture on earth, throughout all of history, has spoken of giant flying reptiles. All these stories can't possibly trace back to a single source. There has to be something deeper going on here.
The obvious problem is we don't find dragon bones. But we don't find the bones of lots of things. The number of unique human fossils could fill a bathtub, and a great many dinosaur species are known from a single bone (including the largest dinosaur ever discovered, which was identified by one bone that was destroyed in WWII in an air raid, and no other bones have been discovered since). Since fossils of anything are very rare it is not at all surprising that dragon fossils are rare, or non-existent.
What if we are looking in the wrong place?
People from all over the world who take certain hallucinogenic plants report seeing the same beings. One commonly encountered being is a man with an alligator head, and this alligator headed man says the same things to everyone. It can't all be a case of suggestion, where people encounter what they expect based on second-hand sources. What I suspect is that these are real non-physical beings who don't look like anything, being non-physical, but they assume a certain form in the mind of the person having the experience out of convenience.
What if dragons are like that? Dragons are not flesh and blood reptiles, they are non-physical beings encountered in altered states. That would explain why they can live for thousands of years, why they are wise beyond the limits of human intelligence, and why they are only encountered at the end of an arduous quest undertaken by an individual who has had specific preparation. What if going out to slay a dragon did not involve a knight suiting up in armor and riding off to battle a dinosaur, what if it involved fasting, and sensory deprivation, and ingesting certain hallucinogenic plants, and then the knight doesn't kill the dragon, the knight's encounter with the dragon allows him to eliminate negative qualities within himself? That is why only particularly pure knights of great spiritual fortitude could go out to meet with dragons, because the psychic shock would be disastrous for a lesser mortal (like a very bad trip). In that sense then dragons are not the enemy, they are the ally.
The obvious problem is we don't find dragon bones. But we don't find the bones of lots of things. The number of unique human fossils could fill a bathtub, and a great many dinosaur species are known from a single bone (including the largest dinosaur ever discovered, which was identified by one bone that was destroyed in WWII in an air raid, and no other bones have been discovered since). Since fossils of anything are very rare it is not at all surprising that dragon fossils are rare, or non-existent.
What if we are looking in the wrong place?
People from all over the world who take certain hallucinogenic plants report seeing the same beings. One commonly encountered being is a man with an alligator head, and this alligator headed man says the same things to everyone. It can't all be a case of suggestion, where people encounter what they expect based on second-hand sources. What I suspect is that these are real non-physical beings who don't look like anything, being non-physical, but they assume a certain form in the mind of the person having the experience out of convenience.
What if dragons are like that? Dragons are not flesh and blood reptiles, they are non-physical beings encountered in altered states. That would explain why they can live for thousands of years, why they are wise beyond the limits of human intelligence, and why they are only encountered at the end of an arduous quest undertaken by an individual who has had specific preparation. What if going out to slay a dragon did not involve a knight suiting up in armor and riding off to battle a dinosaur, what if it involved fasting, and sensory deprivation, and ingesting certain hallucinogenic plants, and then the knight doesn't kill the dragon, the knight's encounter with the dragon allows him to eliminate negative qualities within himself? That is why only particularly pure knights of great spiritual fortitude could go out to meet with dragons, because the psychic shock would be disastrous for a lesser mortal (like a very bad trip). In that sense then dragons are not the enemy, they are the ally.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Post Economics
Here's my take on the issue of capitalism versus socialism. Neither of these systems are ends in themselves, only means to an end, and that end is what I'll call "Post Economics". Post economics is a social order that has no economic system at all because people have evolved beyond the need for one. That may sound like fantasy, but there are examples of post economic societies that have existed for thousands of years. They are called monasteries.
The monastery is an enclosed society with very little contact with the outside world. Many are completely self-sufficient. They may start out with donations from outside, from a parent monastery or whatever, of things like building supplies and tools, but from then on everything they need is manufactured within the monastery itself. Food is grown, sheep might be raised for wool to make clothing, trees planted to supply wood, and so on.
Some people might fear losing things they value in a monastic society, but nothing of any value is lost.
Ambition. Monks have no ambition! Yes, yes they do, otherwise they would have never joined the monastery in the first place. The ambition of the monk is the supreme ambition of enlightenment (Kenosis in the Christian tradition, Moksha in Vedanta, Nirvana in Buddhism). All earthly ambitions are but pale reflections of the supreme ambition. On the relative side there is the fulfillment of perfect morality. What is missing is the ambition to collect stuff. Instead of buying new chrome hubcaps or building a gazebo or whatever, you would rather spend that energy helping the less fortunate, the sick, the disabled, the homeless.
Individuality. Well, certainly monks lack individuality! Not true. They may dress the same, and eat the same food, but they do that by choice. Individual monks still possess their individual talents, and it is part of the perfection of morality to develop those talents to their utmost for the benefit of others. If someone is good at medicine that person serves as the doctor. If someone is good at smithing that person maintains the metal tools, monks who can sing serve in the choir, scholars can become experts in particular fields.
Science is not lost in the monastery. The opposite is true, monasteries saved science from being destroyed in the West, and most of the great scientists of the past 500 years started out as monks. It is only very recently that the religious institutions of higher learning have secularised and a small group of atheist scientists have began saying science and religion are incompatible.
Neither is art, or music, or literature lost in a monastic society. Monks still produce great art and great music, they just don't put on a concert to get a lot of money, score some coke, and bang some groupies in a different city every night.
Hedonistic pursuits are lost, but they are also lost in communism since communism sees work as its own reward and wanton sex and drug use as a waste of energy that could be used to work, so the loss of hedonism would only be a problem as far as capitalism and European socialism are concerned.
The primary thing that is lost is selfishness. The thought "What's in it for me?" is the primary casualty of the monastic system. Monks don't ask "What's in it for me?" they do their work out of a sense of duty, to help others and to glorify God. If it's your time to scrub the floors or wash the dishes you don't complain how you would rather listen to Metallica or chopping fire wood. Monks do not act to see what they can gain, they act to see what they can give. Farmers grow crops, doctors heal people, tailors sew robes, and carpenters build things not because they can get money to buy a new Lamborghini (or Toyota), or ridiculous outfits that will be worn once and then put in the back of a closet, monks work because it is what is right.
For most humans, throughout history, this is a truly alien concept, but it is a human concept that has been embraced voluntarily by millions of people over thousands of years.
So about capitalism and socialism? We need to view the debate about reaching the ultimate goal of post economics. Which system will bring more people to eliminating selfishness within themselves? Which system will bring about the desire to glorify God and serve our fellow man? It is a decision that cannot be forced upon anyone. Coercion won't lead anyone beyond economics. Right off the bat we can eliminate European socialism, which is cultural Marxism or social justice warriorism or whatever you want to call it. That's the exact opposite of morality and enlightenment. Soviet socialism is a lot closer to post economics, but it is also entirely authoritarian and centrally planned, so there's that whole issue of coercion. The bad form of capitalism, that I call crapitalism, with billionaire CEOs who run AIG into the ground and get golden parachutes, and celebrities making obscene amounts of money and buying fleets of Maybachs and chopping down a whole acre of mahogany to put in the mansion you never live in, or that allows Apple or KFC to carve their logo on the Moon because "They paid for it," that's pure selfishness, so that's no good either. There has to be something, a healthy, gradual system that will take us to post economics eventually, but we'll never figure it out if we're arguing about economic systems as the end and not the means.
I suspect that that system lies somewhere in a much smaller state, with more freedoms, where like-minded people come together to achieve a common goal. Big huge states of tens or hundreds of millions of people must be broken up into much smaller poleis, because if there is one thing that kills compassion and breeds selfishness and indifference, it is large agglomerations of people. The brain can only associate with so many people, and only so many groups of people can associate with one another before groups of total strangers no one cares about start appearing. Plato said that 5,000 was the ideal number of people for a city-state, and research from modern neuroscience and sociology tells us he was right. Now, that's not a first step, but it is an intermediary goal to work toward. The first step, I would say, would be reducing the size of government, because the present system is not only unsustainable, it was known to be unsustainable 80 years ago. Now it is rapidly collapsing. We must begin to act, and we must keep the ultimate goal of the post economic system in mind when we act so we know which direction to go.
The monastery is an enclosed society with very little contact with the outside world. Many are completely self-sufficient. They may start out with donations from outside, from a parent monastery or whatever, of things like building supplies and tools, but from then on everything they need is manufactured within the monastery itself. Food is grown, sheep might be raised for wool to make clothing, trees planted to supply wood, and so on.
Some people might fear losing things they value in a monastic society, but nothing of any value is lost.
Ambition. Monks have no ambition! Yes, yes they do, otherwise they would have never joined the monastery in the first place. The ambition of the monk is the supreme ambition of enlightenment (Kenosis in the Christian tradition, Moksha in Vedanta, Nirvana in Buddhism). All earthly ambitions are but pale reflections of the supreme ambition. On the relative side there is the fulfillment of perfect morality. What is missing is the ambition to collect stuff. Instead of buying new chrome hubcaps or building a gazebo or whatever, you would rather spend that energy helping the less fortunate, the sick, the disabled, the homeless.
Individuality. Well, certainly monks lack individuality! Not true. They may dress the same, and eat the same food, but they do that by choice. Individual monks still possess their individual talents, and it is part of the perfection of morality to develop those talents to their utmost for the benefit of others. If someone is good at medicine that person serves as the doctor. If someone is good at smithing that person maintains the metal tools, monks who can sing serve in the choir, scholars can become experts in particular fields.
Science is not lost in the monastery. The opposite is true, monasteries saved science from being destroyed in the West, and most of the great scientists of the past 500 years started out as monks. It is only very recently that the religious institutions of higher learning have secularised and a small group of atheist scientists have began saying science and religion are incompatible.
Neither is art, or music, or literature lost in a monastic society. Monks still produce great art and great music, they just don't put on a concert to get a lot of money, score some coke, and bang some groupies in a different city every night.
Hedonistic pursuits are lost, but they are also lost in communism since communism sees work as its own reward and wanton sex and drug use as a waste of energy that could be used to work, so the loss of hedonism would only be a problem as far as capitalism and European socialism are concerned.
The primary thing that is lost is selfishness. The thought "What's in it for me?" is the primary casualty of the monastic system. Monks don't ask "What's in it for me?" they do their work out of a sense of duty, to help others and to glorify God. If it's your time to scrub the floors or wash the dishes you don't complain how you would rather listen to Metallica or chopping fire wood. Monks do not act to see what they can gain, they act to see what they can give. Farmers grow crops, doctors heal people, tailors sew robes, and carpenters build things not because they can get money to buy a new Lamborghini (or Toyota), or ridiculous outfits that will be worn once and then put in the back of a closet, monks work because it is what is right.
For most humans, throughout history, this is a truly alien concept, but it is a human concept that has been embraced voluntarily by millions of people over thousands of years.
So about capitalism and socialism? We need to view the debate about reaching the ultimate goal of post economics. Which system will bring more people to eliminating selfishness within themselves? Which system will bring about the desire to glorify God and serve our fellow man? It is a decision that cannot be forced upon anyone. Coercion won't lead anyone beyond economics. Right off the bat we can eliminate European socialism, which is cultural Marxism or social justice warriorism or whatever you want to call it. That's the exact opposite of morality and enlightenment. Soviet socialism is a lot closer to post economics, but it is also entirely authoritarian and centrally planned, so there's that whole issue of coercion. The bad form of capitalism, that I call crapitalism, with billionaire CEOs who run AIG into the ground and get golden parachutes, and celebrities making obscene amounts of money and buying fleets of Maybachs and chopping down a whole acre of mahogany to put in the mansion you never live in, or that allows Apple or KFC to carve their logo on the Moon because "They paid for it," that's pure selfishness, so that's no good either. There has to be something, a healthy, gradual system that will take us to post economics eventually, but we'll never figure it out if we're arguing about economic systems as the end and not the means.
I suspect that that system lies somewhere in a much smaller state, with more freedoms, where like-minded people come together to achieve a common goal. Big huge states of tens or hundreds of millions of people must be broken up into much smaller poleis, because if there is one thing that kills compassion and breeds selfishness and indifference, it is large agglomerations of people. The brain can only associate with so many people, and only so many groups of people can associate with one another before groups of total strangers no one cares about start appearing. Plato said that 5,000 was the ideal number of people for a city-state, and research from modern neuroscience and sociology tells us he was right. Now, that's not a first step, but it is an intermediary goal to work toward. The first step, I would say, would be reducing the size of government, because the present system is not only unsustainable, it was known to be unsustainable 80 years ago. Now it is rapidly collapsing. We must begin to act, and we must keep the ultimate goal of the post economic system in mind when we act so we know which direction to go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
