Buddha, meet Psychopath
I won't pretend that I can imagine this eventuality. I won't pretend I have stong intuitions of what will happen. Armchair psychology can only take you so far. All I can say is that, from the people I associate with, my feelings are slightly with Buddha. But this could be due to self-selection effects in the people I take as friends and relevant others. If I worked retail, or in a call center in India, I might have different intuitions. Or even if I suffered greatly (in the sense of being beyond my Vygotskian zone of proximal learning), I might have better insight into what breaks people, into the Hobbesian intuition of war of all against all. This may be reinforced as I live my life, especially as I get on my own two feet during a recession and see the kind of cannibalistic competition for limited resources unfold.
People might misuderstand my conception of Buddha. I don't (necessarily) mean a bald dude in a robe, meditating with cornrows (in Thai style), or even the fat mendicant with huge earlobes (in Spadina tourist trap style). I mean anyone with insight into our human condition, anyone who has not turned away from the pitted, rutted, tundra of human desolation (with its ocassional flower-patches of happiness), the tundra dotted with strange beasts wandering among more-or-less genetically pre-conditioned tracks, the uncanny basilisks and terrifying mastodons, the profoundly wise leviathans and the hermetic albatrosses, the manipulator foxes and the terrifying fungal blooms. I certainly don't mean dime-a-dozen new-age gurus who spread an essentially psychological message to LSD-flashback-prone hippies with a yearning to project the unseen inward forces into something outside of themselves, who bastardize to the point of unrecognizability, who preach a message as coming from the Other (other culture, other person, other world...) when really it has always been hiding in plain sight. Seek it in Art, in friendship, in insight, in passionate bearing of troubles, in wild joy unbound by inhibitions, in the glories of discovery, in the stretching broadening of travel, in the learning of skills, in the cultivation of eloquence, in the education of the imagination, in open-handed giving, in magnanimous taking, in dance music running skiing yoga techno sweat paragliding sailing strolling improvising talking joking listening eating centering floating sleeping waking loving feeling projecting reminding... in many things. But not everything.
We all do this. We all fail at this all the time. We all succeed some of the time. So, hope? Fervent hope that we can withstand the psychopath with Buddha (that placid place somewhere within; that dynamically metastable response system we weave into our neocortex and limbic system.)
Consider: "It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought."
People might misuderstand my conception of Buddha. I don't (necessarily) mean a bald dude in a robe, meditating with cornrows (in Thai style), or even the fat mendicant with huge earlobes (in Spadina tourist trap style). I mean anyone with insight into our human condition, anyone who has not turned away from the pitted, rutted, tundra of human desolation (with its ocassional flower-patches of happiness), the tundra dotted with strange beasts wandering among more-or-less genetically pre-conditioned tracks, the uncanny basilisks and terrifying mastodons, the profoundly wise leviathans and the hermetic albatrosses, the manipulator foxes and the terrifying fungal blooms. I certainly don't mean dime-a-dozen new-age gurus who spread an essentially psychological message to LSD-flashback-prone hippies with a yearning to project the unseen inward forces into something outside of themselves, who bastardize to the point of unrecognizability, who preach a message as coming from the Other (other culture, other person, other world...) when really it has always been hiding in plain sight. Seek it in Art, in friendship, in insight, in passionate bearing of troubles, in wild joy unbound by inhibitions, in the glories of discovery, in the stretching broadening of travel, in the learning of skills, in the cultivation of eloquence, in the education of the imagination, in open-handed giving, in magnanimous taking, in dance music running skiing yoga techno sweat paragliding sailing strolling improvising talking joking listening eating centering floating sleeping waking loving feeling projecting reminding... in many things. But not everything.
We all do this. We all fail at this all the time. We all succeed some of the time. So, hope? Fervent hope that we can withstand the psychopath with Buddha (that placid place somewhere within; that dynamically metastable response system we weave into our neocortex and limbic system.)
Consider: "It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought."
posted by A. D. at 12:50 PM
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