That's all well and good, Steve, but I don't think one needs to become a Buddhist or meditate in order to figure it out. It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous.
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That's all well and good, Steve, but I don't think one needs to become a Buddhist or meditate in order to figure it out. It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Here is how I am using empathy, I first read about this during the waterboarding controversy - the point was made that a good interrogator or torturer needed a kind of empathy (from the German mit-fuhlen "to feel with" ...) in order to better understand how to manipulate or inflict suffering.
Empathy Definition | Greater Good
"For more: Consider the dark sides to empathy: Some argue that sociopaths can use empathy to help them exploit or even torture people, and caregivers risk feeling emotionally overwhelmed if they can’t regulate their empathy."
Three Kinds of Empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, Compassionate - Daniel Goleman
"The first is “cognitive empathy,” simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking, this kind of empathy can help in, say, a negotiation or in motivating people. A study at the University of Birmingham found, for example, that managers who are good at perspective-taking were able to move workers to give their best efforts.
But there can be a dark side to this sort of empathy – in fact, those who fall within the “Dark Triad” – narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths (see Chapter 8 in Social Intelligence) – can be talented in this regard, while having no sympathy whatever for their victims. As Paul told me, a torturer needs this ability, if only to better calibrate his cruelty – and talented political operatives no doubt have this ability in abundance"
Daniel Goleman's first book on emotional intelligence was very good and I'm aware that he's continuing to work in this area. Scheler too realized that the best torturers and abusers are indeed able to comprehend what their victims feel and enjoy making it as insupportably painful and terrifying as possible. But Scheler uses a different term/concept to refer to that kind of aberration, reserving the term/concept 'empathy' for the genuine article, as most of us do. I think we need to preserve the term in that usage because 'sympathy' doesn't quite express the sharing of another's pain to the extent possible, which does help afflicted persons.
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smcder
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That's all well and good, Steve, but I don't think one needs to become a Buddhist or meditate in order to figure it out. It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I agree! I don't think any one needs to become Buddhist ... but I've personally found value in the practice and literature and where it's influenced my thinking I share that as I would any influence. If I feel a quote is appropriate I'll use it and I'm happy to try and clarify it if there are questions. If someone has a different understanding I'm ok with that and I'm open to learning from it.
It occurred to me that it's probably like your experience with trying to convey Phenomenology and the common misunderstandings of it.
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smcder
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" It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous."
Do you have a source for this? There is a lot of crossover influence of ideas and techniques from Buddhism in recovery and therapy circles and this sounds very familiar.
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Do you have a source for this? There is a lot of crossover influence of ideas and techniques from Buddhism in recovery and therapy circles and this sounds very familiar.
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" It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous."
Do you have a source for this? There is a lot of crossover influence of ideas and techniques from Buddhism in recovery and therapy circles and this sounds very familiar.
I heard it from a psychologist I know who specializes in treating and rehabilitating alcoholics and other addicts. My impression is that it's often invoked in recovery from addictions to teach new ways of self-regulation since without such skills recovering addicts often tend to replace one addiction with another.
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smcder
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Here's the talk
Exclusion and embrace - Big Ideas - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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Comment at this link:
"Forgiveness of another for excessive wrongdoing is not easy. Philosopher and mystic Douglas Harding devised the alternative solution of thinking equally well of all of our fellows, by looking past the accidents of their nature to their essence.
The following is an outline of the Harding approach. It involves science, religion, and a new form of experimentation.
SCIENCE: What you are depends on the range of the observer. At several metres, more or less, you are human, but at closer ranges you are cells, molecules, atoms, particles… Viewed from further away your body becomes absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Science’s objective view of you – zooming towards and away from you - reveals a hierarchically organized system of layers that is alive, intelligent and beautiful. Thus you have many layers, like an onion. You need every one of these layers to exist. Your human identity, vital and important as it is, is just one of these layers. You are also sub-human and supra-human. But what are you at the Centre of your many layers? The scientist cannot say because she can only observe you from a distance. However close she gets to you, she remains outside you. What or Who you really are, the Ground of your Being, remains a mystery.
RELIGION: Down the ages, across the world, and from many different perspectives, human beings have wondered about and debated the true nature of the self. The world’s great mystics have a common message:
"There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within”. Douglas Harding.
HARDING EXPERIMENTS: “Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of 'seeing into one's Nature' or 'Enlightenment' has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot - to the space I occupy, to what's given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it's like being 1st-person singular, present tense.” Douglas Harding.
In the difficult area of forgiving others for excessive wrongs, I suggest Harding’s approach is worth testing, weighing up, and trying out. It involves an increase in wisdom and virtue, thinking equally well of all of our fellows by looking past the accidents of their nature to their essence."
Experiments
If anyone tries these experiments let me know what you think.
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smcder
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One needs something more basic, though, which phenomenological philosophers identify as openness to others and to the world (both to nature and culture). Empathy and compassion are natural expressions of human and other animal consciousness provided that these qualities have been expressed toward and received -- experienced at least to some extent -- by individuals in their infanthood and childhood, and also supported by the dominant ideology/world view of the societies in which individuals develop into adulthood and carry on their lives. What I'm getting at is expressed well in the works of an early phenomenologist, Max Scheler, which I've been meaning to bring forward in the Consciousness and the Paranormal thread. I'll cite him first here and then also in that other thread. Here is an extract from the article on Scheler at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosohy, with the link to the whole article.
Max Scheler
2. The Meaning of Philosophy and Phenomenology
“. . . At the end of his life, Scheler wrote that the central issue in his thought and writing was the question regarding the meaning of the human being (GW IX, 9). This question not only guided his ever expanding philosophical endeavors, but also defined his approach and understanding of philosophy. Like many of the Lebensphilosophen (philosophers of life) who had influenced him, Scheler strove to save philosophy and thought from the reductive mindset of the positive sciences and to a degree, American pragmatism, a mindset that defined the human being as mere homo faber (tool-maker). The human being is without a doubt a practical being, seeking to master and manipulate his or her environment to achieve desired results and avoid future suffering. For Scheler, practical knowledge and practical consciousness are genetically the first form of knowledge for the individual. Yet, human beings are not necessarily tied to practical affairs and have the ability to comprehend and regard the world in terms of its essence or being. Philosophy, for Scheler, is the “loving act of participation by the core of the human being in the essence of all things” (GW V, 68). The move from the practical to the philosophical is motivated by wonder, a concern for the world as it is in itself, a question of what the world means (GW VIII, 208).
Hence, what motivates philosophical thought is the love of a world full of wonder and the willingness to participate in its meaning. This “loving participation” of philosophy is, however, distinct from the classical notion of love (eros) as a lack. Love is understood by Scheler here in terms of the Christian sense of agape, loving as giving. The human being as a loving, philosophical being is not motivated to know by a sense of a lack, as is the case with eros, but is rather motivated by the abundance and surfeit of the meaning of the world (GW VI, 84). Modernity's ethos of control and domination has transformed the world into a mere object of utility. As a means to reawaken a sense of wonder, Scheler called for a rehabilitation of virtue, in particular the virtues of humility and reverence (GW III, 15). The philosopher lives in reverence of the world, in astonishment of the world’s inexhaustible depth and secrets (GW III, 26).
Philosophical thought attends to the core meaning of knowledge as a Seinsverhältnis, an ontological relation. Knowledge, according to Scheler, is a relation between beings, a relation wherein a being ‘participates’ in what another being is in itself (GW VIII, 203). It is the humble divesting of oneself that opens one up to the other (GW VIII, 204) and presupposes the loving willingness to be open to that which is other.
Following Augustine, Scheler takes the emotional and affective life as foundational for any form of knowledge (GW VI, 87). Before the world is known, it is first given. Love is that which opens the human being up to the world, to that which is other. This openness demonstrates that there is a moral precondition for knowledge. Knowledge is possible only for a loving being (GW V, 83). This love is the movement of transcendence, a going beyond oneself, an opening to ever richer meaning. Love is always already directed to the infinite, to absolute value and being (GW V, 90). With this understanding of the relation of love to knowledge, Scheler declares that “knowledge is ultimately from the divine and for the divine” (GW VIII, 211).
It was not until he read Husserl's Logical Investigations and learned of the idea of phenomenology, however, that Scheler came upon a style of thinking that best captured for him the loving disposition of philosophy. Although he was greatly indebted to Husserl's genius and originality, Scheler was often critical of Husserl when describing the nature of phenomenology. For Scheler, phenomenology is unequivocally not a method, but an attitude (GW X, 380). Grasping the meaning or essence of an object has meant, since Plato, a type of disengagement from or suspension of an object's immediate and present existence. The intent of this disengagement is not to abstract from an object of cognition as it exists, but rather to look at the object as it is in itself. Phenomenology cultivates a shift in seeing so that the world is no longer taken for granted, as it is in the natural worldview, but is regarded critically. The phenomenological attitude does not negate the practical or the “natural” world and way of being. It merely holds the world in abeyance and brackets it by suspending judgment. Such a suspension is motivated not by a disdain or a devaluation of the practical life, but by a love of the world. It is in this respect that Scheler describes phenomenological attitude as a psychic technique comparable to Buddhist techniques of suffering (GW VIII, 139).
Scheler shares the conviction with the others such as Adolf Reinach that the essential insight of phenomenology is that by bracketing the world, one can intuitively and immediately grasp the essence of an object of cognition. This grasping of the object is never complete, but merely partial insight of the thing itself (GW V, 199). Scheler rejects the Kantian and neo-Kantian position that all knowledge of an object is mediated and manufactured knowledge. Whereas Modern thinkers suffer from a fundamental mistrust in the world, the phenomenologist assumes a fundamental trust. It is the world that gives itself to intuition, beckoning us to participate ever more fully in its significance. By virtue of this loving trust, the world itself is given. The phenomenological attitude is an expression of this trust and demonstrates that the human being is fundamentally open to that which is other.
3. Value Personalism . . . . .
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scheler/#Bib
This is an interesting connection:
"The phenomenological attitude does not negate the practical or the “natural” world and way of being. It merely holds the world in abeyance and brackets it by suspending judgment. Such a suspension is motivated not by a disdain or a devaluation of the practical life, but by a love of the world.
It is in this respect that Scheler describes phenomenological attitude as a psychic technique comparable to Buddhist techniques of suffering (GW VIII, 139)."
Quite a bit about Scheler and Buddhism online - I wish more of his books were online. Looks like the college library in town has a few of Scheler's books ... I'll try to drop by there this week before classes start back.
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smcder
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This is opening back up the connections between phenomenology and buddhism/eastern thought (east/west thinking in genera) I was looking at a while back on the C&P thread, lots of articles now that I have new search terms:
Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: Assessing the Buddhist Influences on their Conceptions of | Milan Vukomanović - Academia.edu
Concerning any possible Buddhist influence on ethics and epistemology of some Greek-Hellenistic philosophical schools, we may contend that Pyrrho’s method of suspending judgment (Gr. epoché) exhibits an amazing congruity with the original Buddhist meditation system (dhyâna). In European philosophy a similar method was elaborated, albeit in a much more profound theoretical manner, in Husserl’s phenomenology. As far as I know, Husserl him-self never referred to this interesting Buddhist parallel.
The first part - connection between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism I've read in another essay ... I remember we discussed Heidegger and maybe Husserl and Buddhism in the C&P thread but the connection was complex in Heidegger and I'm not sure there was any real evidence for influence on Husserl - would be interesting to research.
Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: Assessing the Buddhist Influences on their Conceptions of | Milan Vukomanović - Academia.edu
Concerning any possible Buddhist influence on ethics and epistemology of some Greek-Hellenistic philosophical schools, we may contend that Pyrrho’s method of suspending judgment (Gr. epoché) exhibits an amazing congruity with the original Buddhist meditation system (dhyâna). In European philosophy a similar method was elaborated, albeit in a much more profound theoretical manner, in Husserl’s phenomenology. As far as I know, Husserl him-self never referred to this interesting Buddhist parallel.
The first part - connection between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism I've read in another essay ... I remember we discussed Heidegger and maybe Husserl and Buddhism in the C&P thread but the connection was complex in Heidegger and I'm not sure there was any real evidence for influence on Husserl - would be interesting to research.
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smcder
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I heard it from a psychologist I know who specializes in treating and rehabilitating alcoholics and other addicts. My impression is that it's often invoked in recovery from addictions to teach new ways of self-regulation since without such skills recovering addicts often tend to replace one addiction with another.
Alan Watts Psychotherapy East and West was a classic on the subject ... but leaned toward the superiority of meditation, if I remember.
This article by Jack Kornfield who is very well known in western Buddhism brings out another view that touches on the concerns you describe above.
Meditation/Psychology - Jack Kornfield
Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal
by Jack Kornfield
For most people meditation practice doesn’t "do it all." At best, it’s one important piece of a complex path of opening and awakening.
In spiritual life I see great importance in bringing attention to our shadow side, those aspects of ourselves and our practice where we have remained unconscious. As a teacher of the Buddhist mindfulness practice known as vipassana, I naturally have a firm belief in the value of meditation. Intensive retreats can help us dissolve our illusion of separateness and can bring about compelling insights and certain kinds of deep healing.
Yet intensive mediation practice has its limitations. In talking about these limitations, I want to speak not theoretically, but directly from my own experience, and from my heart.
Some people have come to meditation after working with traditional psychotherapy. Although they found therapy to be of value, its limitations led them to seek a spiritual practice. For me it was the opposite.
While I benefited enormously from the training offered in the Thai and Burmese monasteries where I practised, I noticed two striking things. First, there were major areas of difficulty in my life, such as loneliness, intimate relationships, work, childhood wounds, and patterns of fear, that even very deep meditation didn’t touch. Second, among the several dozen Western monks (and lots of Asian meditators) I met during my time in Asia, with a few notable exceptions, most were not helped by meditation in big areas of their lives. Many were deeply wounded, neurotic, frightened, grieving, and often used spiritual practice to hide and avoid problematic parts of themselves.
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smcder
Guest
That's all well and good, Steve, but I don't think one needs to become a Buddhist or meditate in order to figure it out. It's the way most mature people learn to manage their discomfort for the benefit of others. 'Sitting on one's own pain' is, I believe, one of the recommendations shared in Alcoholics Anonymous.
More from Kornfield to this point:
When I returned to the West to study clinical psychology and then began to teach meditation, I observed a similar phenomenon. At least half the students who came to three-month retreats couldn’t do the simple "bare attention" practices because they were holding a great deal of unresolved grief, fear, woundedness, and unfinished business from the past. I also had an opportunity to observe the most successful group of meditators - including experienced students of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism - who had developed strong samadhi and deep insight into impermanence and selflessness. Even after many intensive retreats, most of the meditators continued to experience great difficulties and significant areas of attachment and unconsciousness in their lives, including fear, difficulty with work, relationships wounds, and closed hearts. They kept asking how to live the Dharma and kept returning to meditation retreats looking for help and healing. But the sitting practice itself, with its emphasis on concentration and detachment, often provided a way to hide, a way to actually separate the mind from difficult areas of heart and body.
These problems exist for most vipassana teachers as well. Many of us have led very unintegrated lives, and even after deep practice and initial "enlightenment experiences," our sitting practice has left major areas of our beings unconscious, fearful, or disconnected. Many American vipassana teachers are now, or have recently been, in psychotherapy in order to deal with these issues.
It should also be noted that a majority of the 20 or more largest centers of Zen, Tibetan, Hindu, and vipassana practice in America have witnessed major upheavals, centering on the teachers themselves (both Asian and Western), related to issues of power, sex, honesty, and intoxication. Something is asking to be noticed here. If we want to find true liberation and compassion what can we learn?
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smcder
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Did anyone else take the psychopathy test?
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smcder
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What would Max Scheler say? I don't know because I haven't yet read enough of his philosophy. What I would say is that the situation you describe {which I don't think requires that we contemplate reducing the population through mass murder} is that this is a situation our species has brought on itself by ignoring the warnings made fifty years ago by Obama's science 'czar' and other scientists, and that having brought ourselves and other living creatures to the brink of such an option we ought to adopt the appropriately tragic attitude and take the consequences of a protracted death of our and other species. In other words, live it out in time, consciously and regretfully, while trying to remediate the ecological problems we've created. Intentionally killing off a proportion of our species would leave the survivors in insupportable grief and guilt. Those left would be demoralized by an 'original sin' next to which the Biblical one pales in comparison. The idea is unthinkable.
Of course if this path is taken after the 'Singularity' occurs, no one will be functioning with the emotional sensitivity required to care.
In other words, live it out in time, consciously and regretfully, while trying to remediate the ecological problems we've created. Intentionally killing off a proportion of our species would leave the survivors in insupportable grief and guilt. Those left would be demoralized by an 'original sin' next to which the Biblical one pales in comparison. The idea is unthinkable.
I don't think I mentioned an ecological crisis. I don't think I specified other than that we had to reduce the population to 1 billion in a short time - short enough that active measures had to be take - otherwise it's 99.99999999999999% certain the human species will not survive.
I guess I'm more cynical and going from history - from survival situations in which some people have done anything to stay alive and most people have done something they think is wrong, I don't think grief and guilt would be at insupportable levels for the majority ... a few might stop eating and caring for themselves but not the majority - not if there were some rationale and equity in how the population was reduced ... some predictability as to what would happen. People have survived much much worse.
I'll put a hypothetical below ... but this comment about insupportable grief and the one you mention about the Singularity raised this very interesting idea to me ...
which is has the species already gone through this winnowing of emotional sensitivity?
Was that the Neanderthals perhaps? (see William Golding's The Inheritors) and so homo sapiens is already callused, on the average? Perhaps we haven't been the most remarkable species on the planet in terms of compassion?
Now the hypothetical:
first, most people wouldn't be involved in the decision making any more than they are now, so the vast majority of people would have nothing to feel guilty about because this would simply be carried out by the people in charge ... we obviously have persons capable of anything - so they would be capable of carrying this out ... in such a drastic situation, persons capable at least of carrying this out would likely be the ones in charge.
But, they at least hit on a relatively humane plan:
the virus operates entirely according to biological markers, without otherwise regard for social status, wealth etc ... selectively hitting persons at the end of their life span whether due to age or other stressors - in fact, generally speaking, the virus selectively euthanizes persons in pain or with incurable diseases (and it has an analgesic effect) and then the elderly and the relatively young and able are least affected. It also operates to reduce reproduction so that over the period of time it's active in the population - people actually suffer less physical pain and of course infant mortality, childhood diseases etc are reduced as reproduction is at very low rates. In the end the population is scaled back to a billion mentally and physically healthy persons and the species is likely saved.
Does that make a difference? Or do we need to keep tweaking the hypothetical? (I still have a few more tweaks up my sleeve)
This is opening back up the connections between phenomenology and buddhism/eastern thought (east/west thinking in genera) I was looking at a while back on the C&P thread, lots of articles now that I have new search terms:
Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein: Assessing the Buddhist Influences on their Conceptions of | Milan Vukomanović - Academia.edu
Concerning any possible Buddhist influence on ethics and epistemology of some Greek-Hellenistic philosophical schools, we may contend that Pyrrho’s method of suspending judgment (Gr. epoché) exhibits an amazing congruity with the original Buddhist meditation system (dhyâna). In European philosophy a similar method was elaborated, albeit in a much more profound theoretical manner, in Husserl’s phenomenology. As far as I know, Husserl him-self never referred to this interesting Buddhist parallel.
The first part - connection between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism I've read in another essay ... I remember we discussed Heidegger and maybe Husserl and Buddhism in the C&P thread but the connection was complex in Heidegger and I'm not sure there was any real evidence for influence on Husserl - would be interesting to research.
Yes. Let's go back to the sources you linked in this comparison and find more. I remember citing at that time the major work by Hazel Barnes in clarifying Sartre's philosophy in Being and Nothingness. A chapter toward the end of that work compares and contrasts existential phenomenology with Buddhism and other Eastern thought and the differences are significant. I read that book years ago when I first read Sartre and as a I recall the major distinction was in terms of the engagement in the political and economic problems of the world that Sartre calls for in revealing the 'situated freedom' we possess according to his philosophical analysis. I wish that chapter from Barnes was available online, and maybe it is somewhere, or perhaps she expressed the same comparison in a paper I can find. A number of Eastern scholars have pursued the comparison of phenomenology and Eastern thought, and I've read some of their papers online. I'll do some searching.
ps, I do think we should explore this back in the C&P thread.
Alan Watts Psychotherapy East and West was a classic on the subject ... but leaned toward the superiority of meditation, if I remember.
No doubt meditation is a useful tool in quieting the mind of an individual beset by pain of various kinds and overwhelmed by the state of the society and world in which he or she is trying to live a purposeful and peaceful life. Mindfulness meditation in particular seems to help practitioners to function in the world with an increased sense of personal efficacy, at least in terms of overcoming unhealthy attachments and free-floating anxiety, to live a balance between the self and as much of the world as one can handle. But attachment to this world is our natural condition, like the primordial 'affectivity' Panksepp recognizes in the most primitive organisms, which evolves into protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind. We are born open to and connected with that which surrounds us, our environment and the others in it, and this openness gives us the contextual sensible world we are part of and present to, providing us with both 'satisfactions' (Whitehead) and challenges. We can't abdicate our situation within this world without losing the ground of our actively meaningful existence in it -- and which becomes our responsibility to bring about for others as well as ourselves. These extracts you bring from Kornfield are very important to the extent that they show how care of the self is not sufficient (though it's necessary) for satisfaction in life and genuinely meaningful existence.
This article by Jack Kornfield who is very well known in western Buddhism brings out another view that touches on the concerns you describe above.
Meditation/Psychology - Jack Kornfield
Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal
Your next extract from Kornfield identifies the major issues more clearly:
Years ago a statement was implanted in my consciousness by a teacher specializing in American Literature, Criticism, and Culture, based in what he called an "organic" view of human existence: "That which a being is made to bear, he/she is not made to bear the want of." Nature has evolved consciousness and mind in our species and, if we are to live authentically in terms of our given condition, we have to find our way in the world on the basis of what we learn and think through our interactions with the world and what we subsequently do in and with the world. Our species short and brutal history has rendered most of us passive spectators of what those in power have chosen to do with the means and resources of the planet and with us, reducing us to cogs in machines, in Marx's terms "means of production." We no longer feel that we possess agency, individually or collectively. Perhaps the future of the planet is indeed out of our hands. But even if that is the case, we need to empower ourselves to the extent we can through the human solidarity that Scheler speaks of, or else in effect we abdicate ourselves, our intrinsic possibilities of taking responsibility. Sartre quoted Rousseau: "Man is free and is everywhere in chains." Neither said we should remain that way, and it is unhealthy -- because it is immoral, a failure of caring -- for us to do so. So yes, we should do what we can (and we can do a great deal) to heal ourselves, and then we should do what we can to heal others and to improve the conditions in which they and we live..
These problems exist for most vipassana teachers as well. Many of us have led very unintegrated lives, and even after deep practice and initial "enlightenment experiences," our sitting practice has left major areas of our beings unconscious, fearful, or disconnected. Many American vipassana teachers are now, or have recently been, in psychotherapy in order to deal with these issues.
It should also be noted that a majority of the 20 or more largest centers of Zen, Tibetan, Hindu, and vipassana practice in America have witnessed major upheavals, centering on the teachers themselves (both Asian and Western), related to issues of power, sex, honesty, and intoxication. Something is asking to be noticed here. If we want to find true liberation and compassion what can we learn?
Years ago a statement was implanted in my consciousness by a teacher specializing in American Literature, Criticism, and Culture, based in what he called an "organic" view of human existence: "That which a being is made to bear, he/she is not made to bear the want of." Nature has evolved consciousness and mind in our species and, if we are to live authentically in terms of our given condition, we have to find our way in the world on the basis of what we learn and think through our interactions with the world and what we subsequently do in and with the world. Our species short and brutal history has rendered most of us passive spectators of what those in power have chosen to do with the means and resources of the planet and with us, reducing us to cogs in machines, in Marx's terms "means of production." We no longer feel that we possess agency, individually or collectively. Perhaps the future of the planet is indeed out of our hands. But even if that is the case, we need to empower ourselves to the extent we can through the human solidarity that Scheler speaks of, or else in effect we abdicate ourselves, our intrinsic possibilities of taking responsibility. Sartre quoted Rousseau: "Man is free and is everywhere in chains." Neither said we should remain that way, and it is unhealthy -- because it is immoral, a failure of caring -- for us to do so. So yes, we should do what we can (and we can do a great deal) to heal ourselves, and then we should do what we can to heal others and to improve the conditions in which they and we live..
In other words, live it out in time, consciously and regretfully, while trying to remediate the ecological problems we've created. Intentionally killing off a proportion of our species would leave the survivors in insupportable grief and guilt. Those left would be demoralized by an 'original sin' next to which the Biblical one pales in comparison. The idea is unthinkable.
I don't think I mentioned an ecological crisis. I don't think I specified other than that we had to reduce the population to 1 billion in a short time - short enough that active measures had to be take - otherwise it's 99.99999999999999% certain the human species will not survive.
Ultimately it is a question of the planetary ecology -- how much life it can support. Our species (sitting at the controls of what happens) has had the 'brains' but not the sense to work together to reduce human birth rates. That in itself is a manifestly reasonable solution to our overpopulation problem, and should long ago have been addressed and enforced -- except that our warring tribal power structures cannot agree to work together to bring it about through the single global agency we have, the radically limited UN.
I guess I'm more cynical and going from history - from survival situations in which some people have done anything to stay alive and most people have done something they think is wrong, I don't think grief and guilt would be at insupportable levels for the majority ... a few might stop eating and caring for themselves but not the majority - not if there were some rationale and equity in how the population was reduced ... some predictability as to what would happen. People have survived much much worse.
Indeed: the Holocaust in Germany, and the one visited on the native population of North America (among similar outrages). That doesn't make your proposal more reasonable or acceptable (though you go on to elaborate details that seem to be more 'humane'). I don't personally want to debate those proposals, and I don't know how they could be applied responsibly: who/what body of medical judges would identify and justify each human obliteration?. To me only controlling the birth rate is acceptable, and it could be done. But speaking of the survivors of holocausts and genocides, in what sense do you mean 'survival'? Merely the continued existence of the survivors? As if those survivors didn't continue to live with broken spirits and scalded hearts? Have you talked with any of these survivors? I have, especially Jewish people who can't speak about what was done to their parents, wives, husbands, children without breaking down 30, 40, 50 years later, who live hidden away in their apartments fearful of the world beyond the door, unable to engage it, permanently disheartened by outrage and grief and a terrible sense of helplessness..
I'll put a hypothetical below ... but this comment about insupportable grief and the one you mention about the Singularity raised this very interesting idea to me ...
which is has the species already gone through this winnowing of emotional sensitivity?
Was that the Neanderthals perhaps? (see William Golding's The Inheritors) and so homo sapiens is already callused, on the average? Perhaps we haven't been the most remarkable species on the planet in terms of compassion?
That's an interesting idea about the Neanderthals that I've seen expressed elsewhere. Continuing genetic traces of Neanderthal DNA in ours could account for some of the extreme variations in sensitivity we see in humans today. I do think our species is in general more emotionally calloused these days, which I think derives as much from the dominant current interpretation of what we are (mainly dominant in the West) as from the variety of traumas that most people on the planet have passed through over time. Merleau-Ponty used this metaphor -- the fish is in the water and the water is in the fish -- to evoke for his readers the intimate interconnections and interdependence between consciousness and the world in which it exists. The metaphor also works if we extend it to the compromised health and vigor of organisms in polluted environments today. The more polluted the world becomes, the more damaged we become, both physically and spiritually. It's a vicious circle that needs to be remediated from both ends of the spectrum of subjectivity and objective conditions within which we live and find reasons to want to live, or not.
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Did anyone else take the psychopathy test?
I did. Here are my results:
Your score from primary psychopathy has been calculated as 1.7. Primary psychopathy is the affective aspects of psychopathy; a lack of empathy for other people and tolerance for antisocial orientations.
Your score from secondary psychopathy has been calculated as 2.6. Secondary psychopathy is the antisocial aspects of psychopathy; rule breaking and a lack of effort towards socially rewarded behavior.
You score for primary psychopathy was higher than 29.04% of people who have taken this test.
You score for secondary psychopathy was higher than 54% of people who have taken this test.
Here are some references to existentialist phenomenology and Buddhist thought that I just came across in a note to a paper concerning existentialist psychotherapy and gestalt therapy, which is interesting in its own right:
"3 There may be some crossovers between "nothingness" in Buddhist
thought and existential "nothingness," though the differences are largely
the ones I have outlined here. When Heidegger, toward the end of his life,
read eastern texts, he acknowledged some similarities to his own
philosophy. For more on the comparison/contrast of Sartre with Buddhist
thought, see Steven Laycock's book, Nothingness and Emptiness: A
Buddhist Engagement with the Ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre (2001). For
a discussion of differences, see Hazel E. Barnes (1967, pp. 211-77)."
Here is the link to that paper, which you need to download in order to read the end of the paper and the notes:
Nothingness as the Ground for Change Gestalt Therapy and Existential Psychoanalysis | Betty Cannon - Academia.edu
"3 There may be some crossovers between "nothingness" in Buddhist
thought and existential "nothingness," though the differences are largely
the ones I have outlined here. When Heidegger, toward the end of his life,
read eastern texts, he acknowledged some similarities to his own
philosophy. For more on the comparison/contrast of Sartre with Buddhist
thought, see Steven Laycock's book, Nothingness and Emptiness: A
Buddhist Engagement with the Ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre (2001). For
a discussion of differences, see Hazel E. Barnes (1967, pp. 211-77)."
Here is the link to that paper, which you need to download in order to read the end of the paper and the notes:
Nothingness as the Ground for Change Gestalt Therapy and Existential Psychoanalysis | Betty Cannon - Academia.edu
S
smcder
Guest
Comment at this link:
"Forgiveness of another for excessive wrongdoing is not easy. Philosopher and mystic Douglas Harding devised the alternative solution of thinking equally well of all of our fellows, by looking past the accidents of their nature to their essence.
The following is an outline of the Harding approach. It involves science, religion, and a new form of experimentation.
SCIENCE: What you are depends on the range of the observer. At several metres, more or less, you are human, but at closer ranges you are cells, molecules, atoms, particles… Viewed from further away your body becomes absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy… Science’s objective view of you – zooming towards and away from you - reveals a hierarchically organized system of layers that is alive, intelligent and beautiful. Thus you have many layers, like an onion. You need every one of these layers to exist. Your human identity, vital and important as it is, is just one of these layers. You are also sub-human and supra-human. But what are you at the Centre of your many layers? The scientist cannot say because she can only observe you from a distance. However close she gets to you, she remains outside you. What or Who you really are, the Ground of your Being, remains a mystery.
RELIGION: Down the ages, across the world, and from many different perspectives, human beings have wondered about and debated the true nature of the self. The world’s great mystics have a common message:
"There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within”. Douglas Harding.
HARDING EXPERIMENTS: “Over the past [sixty] years a truly contemporary and Western way of 'seeing into one's Nature' or 'Enlightenment' has been developing. Though in essence the same as Zen, Sufism, and other spiritual disciplines, this way proceeds in an unusually down-to-earth fashion. It claims that modern man is more likely to see Who he really is in a minute of active experimentation than in years of reading, lecture-attending, thinking, ritual observances, and passive meditation of the traditional sort. Instead of these, it uses a variety of simple, non-verbal, fact-finding tests, all of them asking: how do I look to myself? They direct my attention to my blind spot - to the space I occupy, to what's given right here at the Centre of my universe, to what it's like being 1st-person singular, present tense.” Douglas Harding.
In the difficult area of forgiving others for excessive wrongs, I suggest Harding’s approach is worth testing, weighing up, and trying out. It involves an increase in wisdom and virtue, thinking equally well of all of our fellows by looking past the accidents of their nature to their essence."
Experiments
If anyone tries these experiments let me know what you think.
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In looking for the review of On Having No Head in Hofstadter and Dennet's The Mind's I ... I found this:
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In looking for the review of On Having No Head in Hofstadter and Dennet's The Mind's I ... I found this:
An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
I appreciate the humor in your quip, but I'm not buying that paper's interpretation of how the operative notion of 'memes' that has run wild in popular culture was the fault of the general reading public's misinterpretation of Dawkins, Dennett, Hofstaedter, or Blackmore rather than the fault of the authors themselves. Dawkins was unclear in the first place and the rest of them took 'memes' to mean what they wanted them to mean. The author of that paper turns himself inside out to avoid stepping on the toes of the named individuals responsible for the confusion, likely because one or more of them might do him some practical good at some point in his career. An example of what's wrong with academia.