What is the nature of good and evil, being and reality?
An open letter to two fine gentlemen, on my favourite philosophy podcast: Seekers Of Unity
I must say, with great respect, this is an excellent and extremely rare caliber of discussion, which is extraordinarily helpful to our world at this critical, pivotal time of global crisis; but it is a discussion between two individuals who self-evidently have never tasted, or glimpsed, reality.
I speak, by the way, not from theory, nor speculation, but from direct experience, frankly, because it must be said. The world is in too much peril for mincing of words or excessive delicacy.
Humility or non-humility has no bearing on it, once it is directly realized there truly is no self, and no duality of subject and object, self and other, whatsoever. Moreover, false modesty merely sows confusion, when what we need is clarity, above all. If you know how to walk, you do not say, No, I do not know how to walk. If you have seen, then you have seen. It is simply a matter of straight forward fact.
I do not have time to elaborate here, but as to the four critiques of the perennial wisdom, points 1, 3 and 4 are demonstrably false, and easily refuted. Point two is invalid, being a statement which can stem only from ignorance, from a dweller in the cave of shadows, from one who has never opened his eyes, and has not seen.
The central issue, however, is this: theory will never suffice. You can debate to the end of time, and remain forever in ignorance. The point is to deeply examine things for yourself, via a true radical empiricism, yes, and to actually see.
When the direct experience of the non-dual/interdependent nature of being and reality arises, there are no more questions, and no more theories – you know. Only the subtleties of interpretation and refinement of vision remain to be addressed, if even that. Reality becomes self-evident, and undeniable, for the first time. Until then, debate, discuss, and theorize all you like. But keep a true modesty about it, because you are still blind men in a dark cave.
As to the question of evil: universal, unconditional, subjectless, objectless compassion is the natural state of the awakened mind that directly perceives the non-dual nature of being and reality; moreover, it is compassion which itself opens the gates of wisdom, because it is the primary antidote to the ego-grasping which both stems from and also perpetuates the delusion of duality. That is to say, the door to enlightenment is opened solely through the key that is compassion. Compassion is therefore integral to the path, as well as the result. This is the union of the outer and inner, the exoteric and esoteric, the sutrayana path and the vajrayana path, the causal and result vehicles, in other words, or the relative and the absolute.
Furthermore, compassion is enlightened self-interest and basic intelligence, for all things are interconnected and truly one. Like ripples in a pond, whatever we send out, sooner or later echoes back, reverberates and returns to us. This is the nature of interdependence, which is the manifest dance of the non-dual ground of being itself.
The question of evil is therefore answered best, and answered adequately, solely by the perennial wisdom of the non-dual view, and by no other.
Whence evil? Evil is greed and hate, stemming from the delusion of duality, which Socrates and the ancient Greeks called, somewhat euphemistically, ignorance. Cut the root of ignorance, or more precisely, delusion, and evil ceases to arise. Until then, it is temporary, bandaid solutions only that are possible.
Or if we simply wish for freedom, liberation, happiness or peace, either for ourselves, others, or both, then it is likewise either piecemeal, temporary bandaid measures, or it is enlightenment. You take your pick.
Again: Brilliant, important work you are doing, yes; but be aware that there is indeed more to heaven and earth than is contained in your philosophy.
– With much love, J. Todd Ring,
Villa Samadhi,
Uruguay
November 27, 2023
Here is the original podcast, referred to above – which is, as I say, excellent, though by necessity limited, as was already explained:
The mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to the rest of the world, has been nothing short of a cultural, sociological, political, economic, ecological, spiritual, public health and psychological disaster; and it has led to to a global tyranny of neofeudal corporate-state oligarchy and technocratic scientific fascism.
Part of its logic, is to view all things, all of nature, human beings and all living beings, as mere objects: to be exploited, used up, and discarded at will. The natural result of its logic is to view all things, ecosystems, living beings and people as mere resources for wealth extraction.
We human beings are viewed, at least by the business elite, as cattle, to be milked for money, or yoked for sevitude, for money and power, or disposed of – or slaughtered.
Extrinsic value is the only value recognized: people, nature, living beings, and all things, only have value for their usefulness. It is a world view that is nihilistic and utilitarian by nature, and must, if its logic is consistent, degrade and destroy all other values, such as the systemic value of ecosystems and living beings, and the intrinsic value of ecosystems, nature and living beings. (I am borrowing here from one of my brilliant mentors, Professor Robert E. Carter – not the novelist, but the polymath scholar.) Money therefore becomes the measure of all things, including the measure work, the measure of social status, the measure of respectability, and the measure of human worth – or the worth of anything, or any living being.
When we examine closely the mechanistic materialist world view and its consequences, we can see and understand how and why it has been a truly catastrophic error, and one which must be quickly overcome, before it destroys us all, by destroying all life on Earth – and before it enslaves all of humanity, on its way to total ecocide, and collective self-annihilation.
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Anecdotes and personal stories are things I generally avoid, but the following is enlightening, I believe.
When I was a younger man, in my late teens, I decided in a flash, after reading Plato’s parable of the cave, in my first year of university, that I wanted to become a philosopher, a political theorist, and a writer. When I soon afterward announced to my parents that I was switching from studying science, to studying philosophy, my father, at least, thought I must be mad, or at least, drastically foolish. What money can you make as a philosopher? That was the only question that mattered, to his mind. That was the only measure of my studies, to his mind: does it make money? Of course, his view was, and is, the nearly universal view in modern society. But I was utterly resolved. Nothing would budge me.
As Margaret Atwood said, “This society doesn’t respect writing. It respects success. I could have been a used car salesman, and if I was successful, I’d be respected.”
Or as Emerson said, in his essay on The Poet, by which he meant the writer in the broad sense: “Every profession has its sacrifices. For the poet (or the writer), it is that for a long time, he will be considered a churl (a bum) and a fool, and will be understood only by his peers.”
Or as Thoreau said (and I am paraphrasing from memory), “Men are concerned, not with what is respectable, but what is respected.” “Such men deserve as much respect as wooden men, or clumps of earth.”
Nietzche was insane, and from what I can tell, his philosophy was insane; but he was right in one observation, when he remarked, “The ego – our last article of faith.” This is what mechanistic materialism, and the Puritan-capitalist psychology that arises from it, does to men’s and womens’ minds: they profess all sorts of values, but when you look more closely, their true values are money, status, and their reputation. Their true and over-riding concerns, thus, are comfort and ego. “What would other people think?” This is the thought that secretly haunts them, and it is both their prison, and the source of their moral bankruptcy and spiritual degeneration.
Thoreau also observed, “Most men would feel ashamed if their work consisted of throwing dirt over a fence, and throwing it back again; but most men are employed in no higher purpose that this.” We are obsessively busy, but what are we busy with?
(Kindred spirits, I have many. I have no need of false friends, nor of the trappings of worldly success. As Thoreau said (I am once again paraphrasing here), “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I could not agree more. To thine own self be true.)
Furthermore, when automation and robotics are poised to eliminate 90% of jobs, and make most people, in the words of Yuval Harari, “useless”, we clearly and urgently must re-think the nature of work.
Some years later, as a young writer, intellectual, activist and philosopher, my father said to my sister, “Todd’s on permanent vacation.” As far as he was concerned, any activity that did not make money, was not work – therefore, since your activities do not make money, you do not work; which, of course, in the prevailing culture and psychology of Puritan-capitalism, means you are a useless fool, and a worthless bum.
I thought to myself, and maybe I said it to him – probably so, since I was anxiety-ridden and depressed but also paradoxically fearless: I could work 40 hours a week, or 60, or 100, helping the sick, the poor and the dying with Mother Theresa, and you would consider me a bum who didn’t work, because I did it for free, and received no money for it. (His values seemed deranged to me, so I immediately disregarded his opinion, as itself being worthless.)
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That story shows the sheer insanity of what I call the Puritan-capitalist psychology, sociology, or world view. It is truly insane. To take it further, we could say that, if I, or anyone else, worked in the arms industry, dealing in weapons and tools for mass murder and killing, or in the pesticide or chemical industry, poisoning the people and the planet, I would be a respected member of society, and viewed as a hard worker, and praised, so long as I was paid well for my evil actions, and made a good income from it.
Puritan-capitalist ethics and psychology revolve around two central premises: busyness is always good; and more importantly, money is the measure of all things. If I work 100 hours a week saving the planet, or raising children, or healing the Earth, that is nice, but I am a fool and a bum, in the eyes of the grimly delusional great majority, who are literally brainwashed into the Puritan-capitalist psychology – and blinded and enslaved by it. But they will defend their chains to the death, and decry anyone who tries to liberate them, or who even points out the chains, as a dangerous heretic and a madman.
What madness is this? This, as Erich Fromm and Henry David Thoreau, and many others have realized, is sheer insanity.
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Artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, philosophers, activists, parents and care-givers, are generally all viewed as worthless and useless bums, and their work is invisible and discounted – unless they find a way to acquire money, wealth, status, fame or power, which are the great redeemers, and the only things the great majority of people seem to truly value in modern, nihilistic, materialist, Puritan-capitalist society: in which case, they are super-stars, and greatly loved, respected, and admired celebrities.
When, in practice, rhetoric aside, we value money, material goods, comfort, entertainment, status, wealth, power and fame above all else, then there is no room for justice, ethics, morality, virtue, nobility, wisdom, compassion, human decency, or even basic sanity. This has become the profoundly abnormal norm of our modern corporate-industrial society. Clearly, something needs to change.
When human beings are being systematically degraded, exploited, oppressed, indoctrinated, deluded, blinded, imprisoned and enslaved, and all life on Earth is being destroyed, and both as a result of our materialist mechanistic world view, and by our Puritan-capitalist psychology, it is clearly time to reassess and to change our world view and our pyschology. That, by now, should be undeniable. If it is not, then we are truly and deeply, profoundly delusional.
I am no cynic, nor am I a jaundiced, jaded misanthrope. Cynicism, fatalism and misanthropy are pathologies of the mind, and delusions to be overcome. The long term for humanity is promising, to put it mildly; but the near term and present are looking undeniably dark. What we make of our present, and our future, however, is up to us.
Noam Chomsky is right: “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” It is true, as science has confirmed (see Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, and Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization): human beings have a natural empathy and compassion, and we have survived, and thrived, because we have a deeply seated instinct for solidarity, community, cooperation and mutual assistance. But our good nature is being systematically degraded, twisted and deranged, by a society which is truly, deeply dehumanizing, and frankly, crazy. And that is before the soma kicks in.
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Our modern society, as I have said, is thoroughly insane. Re-evaluating our concepts of money, work, status, respectability, success, development and growth, and the values and psychology which underly them, is now critical. Without that, we are doomed to a madhouse – and one that is on wheels, travelling as fast as possible toward dystopia, and the cliff that lies just beyond it.
Buddhist meditation and mindfulness are very popular now, and have become mainstream. Hospitals, churches and secular classes are now offering meditation and mindfulness training and practice. That is a good thing, and it need not go with any kind of religious conversion; and in Western popular Buddhism, generally it does not. That is all fine and good, and there are definite psychological and health benefits to such a stripped down version of Buddhism, but I think we would be mistaken if we assumed that that is all there is to Buddhist philosophy or practice.
If all you can relate to is a bare bones, austere, arid and superficial version of Buddhism, stripped of all ritual and metaphysics, and plopped down into a secular, atheist, hyper-individualist, atomized and alienated, materialist worldview, and you practice meditation or mindfulness, or compassion, in that small shoe-box of a limited conception, that is great! That’s wonderful! But don’t be so foolish as to presume that you have plumbed the depths of Buddhism, or that your understanding of Buddhism is anything more than that of an infant, barely out of the womb. Because it is not. You have barely scratched the surface. But that’s a great start!
If you want more depth, go to Chogyam Trungpa, the Dalai Lama, Allan Wallace, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Ken Wilber or Joanna Macy. There you will begin to find the infinte. And it is much bigger than a shoe-box, I can assure you.
Who to trust? That is always a perennial question, and particularly now, when not only government, corporations, politicians, and corporate and state media have repeatedly been shown to have lied, grossly distorted or concealed the truth, and engaged in deceitful PR and propaganda; but also, alternative and progressive media, along with the left, the right and the liberal centre, have repeatedly failed, in glaring, very serious ways.
In terms of interpersonal relations and general human interaction, I strongly agree with Alan Watts: “People who mistrust themselves and others are doomed.” Absolutely correct. But we’re not talking about trust in that sense. We’re talking about who to trust for reliable information. I trust people as a rule, until or unless they give me reason not to. But that doesn’t mean I assume everyone is a reliable source of information, vision or analysis. Most people are not.
I also strongly agree with Chomsky, on most things, including his statement that, “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” Most people are decent. That does not mean they are reliable sources of information on world issues. Most people simply are not.
So, who to trust, in terms of being reliable sources of information, vision or analysis? I’ve written an article exactly on that topic, on this blog, but I’ll mention just a couple of names here. Again, these are generally reliable sources. That does not mean they are omniscient or infallible. Above all, do your own research, examine things for yourself – and think for yourself.
Top picks for reliable sources:
A very incomplete list – and remember, no one is infallible!
It cannot be stressed enough:
Question everything.
Vandana Shiva (virtually in a class by herself)
Whitney Webb – arguably the best investigative journalist alive, at this moment at least
Glenn Greenwald – a rarely matched journalist of integrity, rivalled only by Whitney Webb, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, John Pilger, and a handful of others
Edward Snowdon – did more for truth, democracy, human rights and freedom than almost anyone in decades
Julian Assange – exactly as I said about Edward Snowdon, the same applies
Noam Chomsky Peter Dale Scott Gerald Celente Max Keiser James Corbett John McMurtry Paul Craig Roberts James Howard Kunstler Richard Heinberg Helena Norberg-Hodge Joanna Macy Allan Wallace Alan Watts Aldous Huxley George Orwell Peter Kropotkin Bertrand Russell Murray Bookchin Rianne Eisler David Suzuki Maude Barlow Margaret Atwood Arundhati Roy Ronald Wright Mathiew Stein Geoff Lawton Erich Fromm Max Weber C. Wright Mills Peter Phillips Herman Daly Michael Albert EF Schumacher Cornel West Naomi Wolf Anthony J. Hall Michael Parenti Abby Martin Matt Taibbi Aaron Mate Joseph Campbell Mathew Fox Thomas Merton Gandhi Martin Luther King Jr.
And I would humbly add my own writing to that list as well.
That’s more than enough good sources to figure out what’s really going on, to stay informed, and to form, refine or retain an inspiring vision for a better world.
JTR,
July 17, 2021
Post-Script:
I forgot to mention a few other particularly excellent sources that I go to regularly, or as often as I can stomach checking in on this slow motion train wreck of a collapsing civilization:
David C. Korten
Jeremy Rifkin
Sayer Ji
Gary Null
Dmitry Orlov
Russell Brand
The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues (podcast)
Trends Journal – if you choose just one subscription, make it this.
Geopolitics & Empire (podcast)
The Centre for Research on Globalization
All of them are excellent. And of course, none of them are omniscient or infallible.
(Some people will think that talk of things such as feng shui is frivolous. To them I say, bracket that distaste – feng shui is a very small part of this discussion, which covers very important ground in terms of philosophy, the philosophy of science, history, anthropology, sociology, political-economy, ecology, science and scientism, and the state of modern industrial society. Please read on.)
Many people who think they are scientific, and even think they are scientists, have an out-dated view of the world, based in a pre-Einsteinian and pre-quantum physics paradigm of materialist reductionism. They are actually the great majority of “scientists”, doctors and academics. They are over a century behind. And they are stridently dogmatic in defending their dying materialist ideology.
Things like feng shui, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), or yogic, Buddhist or Taoist philosophy, are branded heretical and unscientific by these medieval high priests. But in fact, all these things fit perfectly well in the new paradigms, or models, arising out of modern science itself. (Science is the slow man in the race, and is only now catching up with the mystics.) These things don’t fit with the old materialist reductionist model of Newton and Descartes. But that 400 year old model is dying now, and that model itself does not fit with modern physics, ecology, systems theory, epigenetics, or recent mind-brain research.
How then, should we view these things that were previously thought heretical or taboo? Firstly, we must clarify that there is no linear causality. That means control is an illusion. It also means that the position of the stars or the design of your home, for example, do not singularly cause or determine your fate. They are an influence, among many other influences. If we are intelligent, we will take a holistic or full systems approach, and try to maximize positive systems influences and dynamics, while reducing or mitigating negative influences or dynamics. That is what yoga, Ayurveda, TCM, t’ai chi, chi gong, meditation and feng shui seek to do; exactly as permaculture or intelligent systems design seeks to do. The principle applies to ecosystems, landscapes, gardens, farms, homes, buildings, communities, relationships, study, work, spirituality, prosperity, resilience, and health. This is the logic behind feng shui, for example: intelligent design of systems for maximum harmony and well-being.
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E=MCsquared. Energy = mass x the speed of light squared.
What does that mean? Among other things, it means this. Einstein showed matter and energy and inter-convertible. In fact, both Einstein’s famous equation and also quantum physics show that matter is, in reality, condensed energy. Hence, not only does every living being have an energy field, and every thing, and every material substance, has an energy field, but all beings and things are in fact energy fields. Materialist reductionists quiver and foam at the mouth at such talk, but modern physics proved what I am saying over a century ago, and the materialist reductionist world view or paradigm is crumbling now, in any case.
Feng shui, like Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda and yoga, is based on a knowledge of how various patterns or formations of energy interact. If we are intelligent, we will be curious, and look into these bodies of knowledge, with an open mind and some serious humility, since they fill out the radically incomplete, grossly inadequate, and dying modern Western model or paradigm of science, and of health.
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There is no longer any question that acupuncture works. (See David Suzuki, The Nature of Things) Western conventional medicine has been forced to acknowledge it works. It has been used successfully for addiction recovery, and has been used as a replacement for anesthetics for surgery, so it definitely is proven to work. That should logically lead us to conclude that the medical model of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is sound, since that is the basis of acupuncture. TCM is based in Taoist knowledge and philosophy, acquired through meticulous empirical observations from more than 2,000 years of field experiments. That should then give confidence, logically, that Taoist knowledge and philosophy is sound. Feng shui is also based in Taoist knowledge and philosophy, and hence, we should have confidence that that system is also sound.
The hubris of modern Western society must be shattered, and now. Time to grow up. We have been boisterous and arrogant adolescents for far too long. It is a much bigger world than we were taught to believe. Our minds must now become open to the East – and on an equal basis, as Bertrand Russell urged decades ago – along with the Global South, indigenous knowledge, and knowledge from the past, particularly from the Enlightenment, the Romantics, the Renaissance and the ancients. Clearly and undeniably, the modern Western and Westernized world is drunk with power, suicidal, ecocidal, imperialist, and hell-bent on a course leading to the collapse of our civilization (sic). Our hubris will be our self-destruction if we carry on like this any longer. It is time for a little humility, and a good deal more open-mindedness.
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Science did not begin in Europe in the 17th century. That is a conceit that needs to be laid to rest. The Islamic, Arab world preserved science from ancient Greece, and further developed it, before passing it generously to Europe (which was still by and large in an anti-intellectual dark age) through Moorish Spain, in the Spanish Renaissance of the 8th to 13th centuries, and then, 500 years later, to the Italian Renaissance. We owe, not the birth, but the rebirth of science, therefore, to the Spanish and Italian Renaissance, and to Islamic, Arabic society, and only secondarily to people like Newton, Bacon and Descartes. A little humility now will save our skin. It cannot be emphasized enough.
If by science, we mean an empirical method of investigating life, then science began in ancient Greece, and India and China, and probably in many other places, thousands of years ago. Modern science, which is a mere 400 years old, has produced great knowledge, and powerful technology. But we are foolish in the extreme and dangerously deluded if we equate technological power with wisdom, or even understanding. That surge in scientific knowledge and technological power has made modern society arrogant and filled with hubris, presuming we understand more than we do. That is error number one.
Science requires an open mind, and that requires humility. Dogma kills science, and dogma is what we have descended into. That is not science. It is scientism: which is the dogmatic and anti-scientific clinging to presumption, orthodoxy, high priests, official doctrines and an official canon.
Scientism is a form of medieval scholastic dogmatism, which is an ideology, a form of secular fundamentalism. That is what reigns now, not science. That is the second error: to take our over-confidence, and turn it into a religion, and a cult.
The third big error was to adopt Cartesian dualism. The fourth was to adopt a Newtonian mechanistic, atomistic, materialist reductionist model, paradigm or world view.
The fifth great error of modern science was to elevate that which can be measured, to the status of the only things worth investigating. The sixth was then to assume that what cannot be measured is either unimportant or unreal, non-existent.
These six errors, plus the common problems of (7) group-think, (8) egotism and careerism – it is more important to defend one’s ego than to value the truth, (9) corruption by conflicts of interest – science is overwhelmingly controlled by big business and the state, both of which have their own agendas, and truth is not high on the list; and (10) cultural bias, cultural arrogance, or simple racism – modern Europeans know best, therefore indigenous knowledge, Eastern knowledge, ancient, medieval and Renaissance knowledge, must all be worthless… These ten errors, we can now count and list, have blinded science, and have blinded the great majority of scientists, academics and intellectuals, and have blinded modern industrial society more broadly. That blindness will be our downfall, if not corrected immediately.
Again, humility and open-mindedness are imperative, and urgently needed. We are myopic blind men, quarrelling in the dark over shadows on a cave wall. And we will remain so, until and unless we redefine empiricism more broadly, and more thoughtfully, and until we admit our ignorance, so that we can once again learn.
Remember Socrates, the founder of Western philosophy. Socrates famously said, “I am the wisest person I know, because I am the only one who realizes his ignorance.” Begin with an open mind, and an admission of ignorance, or at least, an admission that what we think we know, could turn put to be entirely wrong. Otherwise, we are not practising science, nor are we even practicing basic intelligence.
There is a Zen story worth conveying here. A scholar comes to a Zen master and asks to be taught. The Zen master offers the scholar some tea. The scholar says yes. The Zen master pours the tea into the scholar’s cup, fills the cup to the top, then keeps on pouring. The scholar exclaims, “Stop! My cup is full!” The Zen master replies. “Precisely. Your cup is full. You mst empty your cup before it can be filled.” We are that bombastic scholar, heads too full of preconceptions to learn anything, or even to see or to hear.
As geneticist David Suzuki said, we really have very little understanding of life. He was talking about modern science. But ancient, Eastern, mystical and indigenous knowledge traditions have a great, immense understanding of life, in vast scope and tremendous depth. Modern science, by comparison, is obsessed with the dust on the lens as it peers obsessively through a microscope at the molecular structure of the bark of a single tree. “What is this forest you speak of? Sounds like flakey, voodoo mumbo-jumbo to me!”
Watch Mr. Magoo. That is modern science. Too narrow, too myopic, and therefore, stumblng blindly along. We must take a step back, and broaden and deepen our perspective. As Shakespeare said, “There is more to heaven and earth than is contained in your philosophy.”
To abandon science would be asinine, to put it bluntly; but to worship what we narrowly define as science, and hence, to turn science into a quasi-religious cult of scholastic dogmatism, which we have done, and to presume that what we narrowly define as science is the only valid means of acquiring knowledge, and the only valid body of knowledge, is even more asinine.
Science, to be truly worthy of the name, must be empirical, not dogmatic. But science, even then, can only tell us how the world works, and even that in a very limited and superficial degree. Science, even when practiced well, which means empirically, cannot tell us how to live, what is meaningful, what is ethical or virtu or what is wise or unwise to do. Science offers no values, only facts, or more pften, presumed facts and partial truths. Science therefore, even at its best, must be subservient to philosophy. And philosophy, to be practiced well, must be subsevient to experience, and to a radical empiricism. This is not a circular argument: it is taking empiricism to a much deeper level.
We can call it mysticism, or prophetic vision, but I prefer the term, radical empiricism, borrowing from William James and Allan Wallace. This means we take figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Shakara, Moses, Meister Eckhart and Hildegaard of Bingen, Mohammed and Lao Tzu seriously. And we take our own experience seriously. Science now proclaims itself empirical, while invalidating direct experience. The radical self-contradiction is not perceived, but that is the root of our blindness in the modern world.
If you want to understand where science went wrong, read William Blake, There Is No Natural Religion. And read Emerson and Thoreau, America’s two greatest philosophers, for good measure. Until we admit our mistake, and radically expand our conception of empiricism and valid sources of knowledge, both science and modern “scientific” industrial society will remain blindly destructive, and we will continue to be on a collision course with reality, with full steam ahead.
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This short essay began as a brief musing on feng shui, but then I remembered that many people are very narrow-minded about such things, so I wrote a short preamble. That preamble has taken on a life of its own now. But that is ok. Let’s continue.
As I have said before, and written before, the old paradigm, model or world view of Newtonian-Cartesian materialist reductionism, is dying, and we are in the midst of a paradigm shift which has been going on for over a century. (Old dogmas die slowly.) But… What is wrong with the old paradigm? Well, besides the fact that it no longer fits with the scientific evidence, the mechanistic, materialist world view has been blamed for being one of the root causes of our destruction of nature, and for the growing environmental emergency we face. That indictment holds water, and can scarcely be denied, since the mechanistic, materialist world view reduces all living beings, ecosystems, plants, animals, forests, wetlands, oceans, rivers, and human beings, to the level of mere objects, mere things, to be exploited and harvested, and disposed of at will.
For the same reason, the materialist world view has led to a deep alienation between humans and nature; which means, between ourselves and life. That alienation is in turn driving people into mass addiction, addictive consumerism, compulsive escapism and perpetual distraction, mental illness, suicide, anxiety and depression. So yes, for many reasons, aside from purely scientific reasons, the old model needs to be discarded, post haste.
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One example of the utter failure and disastrous results of the grossly flawed model, paradigm, or world view of mechanistic, materialist reductionism, is the growing environmental crisis, as I have said, and as many have pointed out. Another example is the tremendous failure of modern “scientific” medicine. Despite all our much-vaunted scientific knowledge, we still have essentially zero success in treating the skyrocketing prevalence of chronic degenerative diseases, or mental illness and emotional distress. We can and do push freight train loads of pharmaceutical drugs, but these treat only the symptoms, and even those with patchy and poor success. The underlying causes remain largely ignored, because they require a holistic perspective, and that contradicts the official cannon and dogma of materialist reductionism. People are living longer, yes, but they are in general deeply unhealthy, both physically and psychologically, and they are living longer while saddled with multiple pharmaceutical dependencies, each of which has its own, often serious side-effects.
For context, a couple of figures that are not widely known, should become known. the US government has reported that 80% of pharmaceutical drugs have not been adequately tested for safety or effectiveness. That should be alarming. But why would this be the case? How could this be the case? It is the case because the big pharmaceutical companies are driven by concerns for profits, over and above public health. And it is the case because the pharmaceutical industry took over the medical colleges and the medical industry a century ago. It is corruption above, and dogmatic group think and indoctrination below – in the medical health field, and in our very much business-run society more broadly.
Worse yet, according to the US government, in the US alone, every year 200,000 people die from taking pharmaceutical drugs – correctly prescribed and correctly taken. That’s the equivalent of a fully loaded jumbo jet crashing every day. The US government report never made it on the news media, and the governments and the corporate and state media don’t mention it, because Big Pharma is too powerful to cross. Meanwhile, the much-decried natural health and traditional Eastern (TCM and Ayurveda) medical-health methods produce zero documented deaths per year. This is one of the many reasons why conventional Western pharmaceutical-obsessed medicine is in crisis, and is furthermore seeing an exodus to natural medicine and Eastern methods.
Andrew Weill is right: the future of medicine is integrative medicine. That means, we take the best of modern Western conventional medicine, and integrate it with the best of natural and Eastern medicine. The faster the dogmatists accept the fact, the better off we will all be.
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Now, to briefly discuss feng shui – from a layman’s perspective.
It seems to be the case that Western feng shui is a modern Western pop culture, New Age invention, and is not in accord with classical feng shui. So, if you are going to use feng shui, which in essence is a practice of harmonizing energy in homes and buildings and landscapes, make sure it is classical feng shui, not fast food feng shui. Second, it must take into account the specific home design, compass orientation, and natal charts. I’d say this is too complex to do on your own. Get a consultation with someone knowledgeable in classical feng shui. Otherwise, it can be like wiring up your own electrical breaker panel – too risky for novice hands. Consult a pro.
Normally I’d say you can do everything yourself. You can design and grow a garden, and grow your own food if you want to. You can build your own home, design it and build it yourself, even wire it, if you study up. But for wiring a breaker panel, get an electrician. It is out of bounds for laymen and novices. And for feng shui, consult someone who knows what they are doing. Otherwise, you could cause disharmony and harmful negativity when you wanted to do the opposite.
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I would offer the same advice with regards to yoga and meditation: stick to the classic methods, tested and proven to be effective for over 2,000 years. When you are fully enlightened, then you can invent your own style. Until then, bow your head before the true masters, and humbly learn what they have to teach.
(Be wary of New Age MacThis and MacThat. It is far too unreliable, to hit and miss, too much a case of Russian roulette, to entrust your health or spirituality to it – even though there may be, and are, some gems among that heap.)
For yoga, I know of two schools that are definitely reliable, who teach classic yoga: Sivananda and Kripalu. Other approaches or styles may not harm you, but you may not get the same depth or benefit, either.
For meditation, I would stick to Zen, Theravada, or one of the four traditional schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Again, New Age meditation teachers may not do you any harm, but you may simply be wasting your time, and likely are.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Not in this case. Not with yoga or meditation. Those systems and methods are based on thousands of years of experience. Stick to the classic techniques that have been developed over millennia. Avoid the fluff.
Modern society is addicted to novelty and newness. Everything must be the latest fashion – even in spirituality or health. But this is foolish. The best things remain unchanging. Only the superficial things change. Do not be superficial. Stick to what works. In home design and construction, sometimes in technology (though not always) and in many fields, new ideas are sometimes better ideas. Not when it comes to yoga, meditation, or spirituality.
Remember the saying from Aikido: “Big lake, but shallow. Small lake, but deep.” It is depth you should be looking for, not novelty. This is not a shopping mall approach. Find a path that works for you, and that is not based in some New Age egotist’s self-aggrandizement scheme, and stick to that. Find novelty elsewhere in your life. (Plant a garden, and read widely.) When it comes to health and spirituality, you need to focus, and you need depth. Don’t jump all over the place. Don’t dig shallow wells. Study broadly, think broadly, discuss broadly – but pick a spiritual or health approach that works for you, and go deep. That will produce results. Skittering across the surface of things will not.
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For clarity sake, let me add this. While it is now imperative that we allow the East into our minds on an equal footing, as Bertrand Russell urged many years ago, and do the same for indigenous knowledge, the Global South, the Enlightenment, the Renaissance and the ancients – because if we do not, modern Western, and Westernized industrial society, will most likely destroy the very basis of life on Earth; that does not mean we must have a mass conversion to Eastern or native spirituality. We must become renewed in our confidence, our dignity, and also our humility, yes. But we can still keep our own spiritual traditions, or our secular traditions, if that is what you prefer. It simply means that we must, of necessity, now broaden our minds.
The stakes now, are not only our wisdom, or capacity for wisdom, or our health, happiness or well-being, but our very survival. We need to draw upon the best of human knowledge and wisdom, from across the world, and across the spans of time. It is truly that imperative. And it should be exciting. No doubt this is a very challenging time. But it is a very exciting time, as well. We are witnessing nothing short of a rebirth of our world. And that is both painful, and also joyous.
JTR,
July 3, 2021
For more up to date scientific models than what the dogmatic materialists are offering, see:
Einstein, Schrodinger, Wheeler, Bohm, Vandana Shiva, Joanna Macy, Ken Wilber, David Suzuki, Rupert Sheldrake, Rene Weber, Michael Talbot, Thomas Kuhn, and Allan Wallace, as a foundation.
Unfortunately I am too new to feng shui to give specific references on that subject at this point, sorry. But stay tuned! I am always learning, and you should be too! That is, after all, the true scientific mindset, and the only intelligent approach to life. Shun dogma. Stay open-minded. And… Keep learning!
Pelagius: it’s a soft g, as in germane, not a hard g, as in gorilla, but otherwise the discussion here in this podcast below is good. Here are a few thoughts, after four decades of study, research and meditation, on the still-unfolding history of Christianity.
Know your history.
The Emperor of Rome, the bishops and the Popes decided what Jesus meant and what He did not. Some might call this false pride, the original sin. However you view it, it was decisive, and it was decisive at several moments in the early history of the new Christian church, where a fork occurred. One fork was the selection of who was to be the leading, founding figure of the new church. (This choice was made in the 3rd and 4th centuries.) Jesus, of course, some will say. But Augustine’s views became orthodoxy, over and above, and in contradiction to the teaching of Jesus, many will say. And this decision, to canonize Augustine as preeminent scholar and guiding father-figure of the church, and to declare Pelagius heretical, could have gone the opposite way. That fork, and that choice, has shaped the Western Christian churches and Christianity (“”) ever since.
It probably influenced the all-influential emperor, who definitively swayed the choice, that the bishop of Hippo, Augustine, made a gift of 70 extremely expensive and sought-after Arabian horses to the emporer, when the Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deciding on who was to be effectively sainted, and who was to be condemned.
It also surely swayed the emperor’s decision that Pelagius taught that all people are born free and equal. The Roman Empire was based on conquest and slavery. Ideas of freedom and equality were viewed as extremely dangerous and subversive to the empire. A doctrine of original wickedness and the futility of predestination, taught by Augustine, were not. In short: The church followed the emperor, and the emperor followed his love of worldly power.
This was the bifurcation point, the fork in the road, where Christianity became extremely dark and pessimistic, obsessed with the doctrine of original sin (Augustine’s dark invention) and viewing nature and humanity as fundamentally and hopelessly sinful. Hopelessly, because Augustine preached his view (not His view) of predestination, which meant we have no free will, and can never be redeemed from our innate wickedness.
The chosen few who are to be saved are predestined that way, and the rest are doomed. Celtic Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity did not agree with Augustine, and never adopted the doctrine of original sin, which became the central doctrine of the Roman Catholic church and the Protestant churches.
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Who was the true heretic here? Pelagius, or Augustine? I’ll leave that for readers to decide – and not the emperors, bishops or popes, all of whom, by the way, are equally human, and equally fallible, and at times, simply corrupted by worldly interests, power and greed. But I will say this:
The broad movement across humanity in the 21st century is a reclaiming and rediscovery of a sense of respect, compassion, and reverence for nature, as something that is basically good, not basically evil, even as something infused with the sacred; and a corresponding reclaiming or rediscovery of basic human dignity, since we are one with nature; and a view of nature and humanity not only being one, but also being undivided from the sacred or the divine. That was the view that inspired the first Renaissance, and it will also inspire the new Renaissance, that is emerging now. That view, which is the strongest and widest current that is now emerging in human culture globally, has far more affinity with Celtic Christianity, as well as the Christian mystics, and the mystics of the world, and also with Pelagius, than with Augustine’s dark and sordid, jaundiced vision.
Does that mean sin or error do not exist? Whatever terms you choose, clearly human beings are capable of error, or sin, if you prefer that word. I prefer the terms of Buddhism: there are three root poisons, and they are ignorance, greed and hate, and all evil arises from these three roots. But nowhere in Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu/yogic philosophy, or Celtic Christianity, or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is there an idea of original sin, or a basic badness of nature or humanity. Only in Europe and in Manicheanism (which shaped Augustine’s thought more than Jesus) did this dark ideology arise and take predominance over the minds of the people. And maybe, that ideology is dying now. All the evidence indicates that it is. Thank heavens.
We are born free and equal, and nature and humanity are one, and infused with the sacred. Whether we turn this world into a paradise or a living hell, is entirely up to us. That is what the gift of freedom means. It is inseparable from responsibility, and from power. Pathetic fatalism and the widespread illusions of powrrlessness, and jaded, jaundiced views, must be overcome. We must now learn to use the gift of freedom wisely, and with humility, as well as with a renewed confidence, and unshakable dignity. We err, but we are not our errors. We can move on. Change is the only permanent thing in existence.
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Some people will say, “I’m not religious – what do I care about religion?” They do not understand history, sociology, or psychology. You may not be religious, but your subconscious is. Western civilization is steeped in Judeao-Christian mythology. We either understand it and come to terms with it, or it will rule us as a blind impulse we neither see nor understand. Whether we truly believe in freedom, or merely pay lip service to it, will decide our fate.
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What we make of the future, and the present, is up to us. God doesn’t want us to remain infantile or adolescent forever.
We can count on assistance, but it is also true that we must learn to clean up our own mess. You don’t ask God to wash your dishes, or to clean up your house.
Why should we passively sit and wait for help, when we are responsible for the mess we have created?
Why would you sit idly and ask God to clean up our ecological mess? We soiled our own bed. We need to clean it up.
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Moreover, not only is this shift in consciousness occurring now, but I would argue that it must – if we are to survive.
If we do not shake off the doctrine of predestination, then the illusions of powerlessness, and the hopelessness and apathy that it spawns, will remain our prison. And that means that humanity will remain paralyzed, at a time when decisive action is needed. That means, humanity dies. We must now shed the illusions of powerlessness, or we are quite simply doomed.
Second, if we do not jettison the dark notion of original wickedness, the view that nature and humanity are inherently depraved by nature, then the hopelessness and despair this dark view creates, will continue to paralyze us, when we need decisive action – and thus, the dark vision will indeed become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we will annihilate ourselves, in a spree of self-hatred (alternately oscillating with a projected self-hate onto others). We either drop the dark vision of Augustine and original wickedness, or we are simply doomed.
Thirdly, if we continue to view ourselves and nature as fallen, wicked and basically bad, then we will continue to believe that authoritarianism, domination and conquest – the conquest and domination of nature, or of one group over another – will continue: and the genocide and ecocide will continue – and we will be doomed to extinction.
In short, we either embrace this shift in consciousness, and regain our sense of dignity, confidence, and power, balanced with a true sense of humility, and regain a sense of the sacred pervading all of nature and all of life, or our future is very dark, and bleak.
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The first rule of every empire is to employ the strategy of divide and conquer. The second is to demoralize your enemy. Whenever empire is concerned, the enemy is the people. You keep the people divided, and demoralize them, by making them feel powerless, and by undermining their confidence. That is precisely what we must overcome now. And that is what is beginning to happen.
The awakening of humanity continues, and continues to grow, like light rays penetrating dark, sooty clouds at dawn.
Let the new renaissance be born. We have a world to heal – and the future is truly in our hands.
J. Todd Ring,
June 12, 2012
See Original Blessing, by Mathew Fox, along with The Gospel of Thomas, Marvin Meyers translation, The Book by Alan Watts, The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic, by Max Weber, and The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, for further reading.
See also, the truly excellent films:
Stigmata, and, King Arthur (recent version, where the young Arthur takes Pelagius as his teacher)
Stoicism is recently faddish and in vogue, but it is popular and attractive only to those who don’t understand it.
It is not surprising that Stoicism is attractive to many people now, in the same way that many people are attracted to a death fetish: Stoisism is a philosophy of fatalism, and that attracts people who feel powerless and hopeless, just as death cults and death fetishes attract people in times of civilizational decline.
Exactly as happened in the late Roman Empire, when that civilization (sic) was in decline and crumbling, just as ours is in decline and crumbling now, people turned to death cults, death fetishes, and gladiatorial blood sports, and they turned to Sophism, which is to say nihilism, and they turn to Stoicism, which says that everything is predetermined, so, you may as well be fatalistic about it, because you have no power over anything anyway.
As an aside, it occurs to me now that the reason the Western Christian churches – the Catholics and the Protestants – became transfixed on the crucifixion, and focused on the suffering and death of Christ, while the Eastern Orthodox church has always focused on Christ’s resurrection and triumph, may have a lot to do with the fact that in 180-400AD, when the Christian churches were still new-born institutions and far more malleable than today, and Augustine’s dark vision became the official church dogma, during the same period the Eastern Roman Empire was strong, while the Western Roman Empire was in decline and decay. In the West, in the decaying Western Roman Empire, the prevailing mood or spirit of the time was a sense that life and the future are at best weary, and at worst horrific – the same spirit or mood of the times which gave rise to the popularity of Stoicism, also gave sanctification, endorsement and canonization, to Augustinian grim determinism, and his dark philosophy of worldly futility and powerlessness: a workd view which is echoed in Augustine’s philosophy, and was the very heart of the Stoicism which preceded it, and which, along with Manichaenism, gave birth to the dark philosophy of Augustine.
Nietzsche and Gibbon were wrong. Christianity is not a weakness to be overcome, and a weakness that led to the fall of the Roman Empire. But the fatalistic philosophies of Stoicism and Augustine are weaknesses and pathologies that almost certainly did contribute to the fall.
Internal decay, caused by great and excessive inequality, corruption and unresponsiveness of the ruling government, self-insulating and out of touch elites, and great suffering and oppression of the people (all of which strongly parallels what we see today), combined with hubris directed outwardly as well as inwardly, meaning, imperial over-reach, were the two primary causes of the decline and collapse, but it can be reasonably argued that the fatalistic philosophies of Stoicism and of Augustine sped the process of disintegration and fall. Apathy is not a wise or intelligent philosophy in any time, and particularly in difficult times.
It also did not help that the Roman elite liked to eat and drink from lead bowls and gobblets, and even sprinkled lead on their food as a flavour enhancer. We now know that lead causes brain damage and mental derangement. The elite drove themselves insane with hubris and the physical poisoning of their brains. The parallels are again striking. History is repeating. And, in the modern industrial world, we accept as normal the routine and systematic poisoning of our air, water, soil and food, and as a result, our bodies and our brains. With the elite self-deluded with hubris and insularity, and the people poisoned both in body by toxins, and in mind by propaganda, indoctrination, delusion, distraction, division, nihilism, illusions of powerlessness and apathy, fall and collapse can not be far off.
I would say that the best scholarly interpretation as to the primary cause of the fall of the Roman Empire is that it was a case of accidental suicide. But that makes it sound like this is an aberration in history. It is not. All empires commit suicide, unwittingly, if they are not brought down by revolution, war, or ecological collapse, which are the other three major causes.
In fact, accidental suicide is far too vague. What that really means, is that the government, and the elite who controlled it, carried out a series of actions and policies that led to the internal decay and ultimate collapse of the empire. What that means, in essence, is that they pursued a policy of imperialism abroad, and callous disregard for the people internally, until they brought the impressive house of cards down around their heads.
What caused the fall of the empire was therefore imperial over-reach – which is what all empires do in the end, because they are driven by hubris, power-lust and greed, and cannot stop themselves; and by corruption and self-serving contempt for the people on the part of the ruling elite, until finally the people began to refuse to pay their taxes, and a tax revolt so weakened the empire internally, that any relatively small precipitating factor was enough to collapse the system. The proverbial barbarians at the gate were a perfect example in history of the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was a slow motion collapse, exactly as is happening in the late 20th and early 21st century with the global corporate-state empire, but these were the reasons: over-stretch abroad, and corruption within, leading to inevitable decay and decline, and a slow motion disintegration, before the final collapse.
The best summary that I can see to date for the primary reasons the Roman Empire fell (there were many minor and contributing causes, of course), is that a) a combination of imperial over-reach in terms of foreign relations; and b) corruption and extreme inequality within, which led to a crisis of legitimacy (then as now), and which in turn led to a tax revolt; combined with c) a deliberate policy of devaluing the currency, which led inevitably to hyper-inflation; together led to the weakening of the empire to such a state that any relatively minor crisis was enough to bring the system crashing down.
Again, the parallels are striking. The Soviet Union experienced a slowly growing crisis of legitimacy over several decades, until, seemingly suddenly and overnight, it collapsed. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the crisis of legitimacy took nearly 300 years to weaken the empire to the state that “barbarians” were able to sack imperial Rome, and trigger the final fall. But whether slow or fast, an unfolding crisis of legitimacy will bring down any nation or empire if it is ignored. Empires and nations have only two choices when faced with a crisis of legitimacy: honour the people and serve their needs; or alternately, smugly dismiss the people as irrelevant, paper over the problem with ever-increasing and ever less effective propaganda, control mechanisms and PR, and thereby, ensure collapse. The US, and the broader global corporate empire which has swallowed it whole, along with most nations in the world, seem hell bent on repeating the same pattern as the Soviet Union and the Roman Empire. The results will be predictable. The fall is coming. Hubris has guaranteed it.
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Not that the Roman Empire, or any empire, was or is worth preserving, but at least we should be clear about why that “civilization”, or to use more neutral terms, that society, collapsed and fell. It did not collapse because of Christianity – in fact, what both Augustinian misinterpretations of Christianity and Stoic religion were, one after the other, viewed by the ruling elite as being essential to the Empire.
Religion can be a source of strength, or of languishing and decay, but it is like technology, or science, or philosophy, in that sense: it depends entirely on how we relate to them. They can be opiates that blind, or beacons that illuminate and inspire. Don’t blame religion if people sometimes, in some places and some eras, relate to it foolishly. Science, technology and philosophy have been used foolishly many times, but we would be fools to reject them carte blanch and in their entirety, just as we would be foolish to reject all of religion in the same way.
Religion can give us luminary figures such as Jesus, the Buddha, Shankara, Lao Tzu, Moses and Mohammed, Gandhi, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Francis, Tommy Douglas, Archbishop Romero and Martin Luther King; or it can just as easily give us jaundiced, neurotic, scraping and groveling, boot-licking apologists for empire and preachers of the virtues of apathy, fatalism and grim, pious resignation, such as Augustine. Philosophy can offer us beacons of light and basic sanity, such as Socrates, Spinoza, Emerson, Thoreau, Montaigne and Thomas Paine; or it can lead us into a rotting bog, as it has done with Machiavelli, Spencer and Hobbes, and with the Stoics, the Sophists (nihilists, is a better and more accurate term), and the new Sophists, who are called post-modernists. And science and technology can bring us the telescope, Galileo and Einstein, or just as easily bring us thalidomide, Monsanto, Agent Orange, nuclear weapons and DDT. The problem lies not in religion, philosophy or science per se, but in how we relate to them. To dismiss any of the three – religion, philosophy or science – in their entirety, would be foolish in the extreme, and very highly self-defeating and self-injuring, if not outright madness, since it would be an act of self-blinding, and the gouging out of our own eyes.
As to the fall of the Roman Empire causing a dark age, to meander and return to an earlier thread, as all good thinking and all good conversations do, we should note that the Roman Empire could in no reasonable way be called civilized, since it was an imperialist project and a slave-based society that enjoyed blood sports and venerated itself on the self-indulgence, hubris, insularity and oppressiveness of its rulng elite. The Roman Empire was part of a longer dark age, as the ancient people of Greece, India, China and Tibet all knew very well, but we moderns in our “sophistication” have forgotten. If the collapse of the Roman Empire led to a temporary further darkening, prior to a rebirth and renaissance, which was also due in large measure to its fall, then that new temporary darker dark age was due to the collapse of a system – not, emphatically, a civilization. We should be perfectly and absolutely clear, or at least as clear as possible, in our thinking, and in the terms which both reflect and shape, and often constrain our thoughts.
Another aside, but a profoundly important one, is this. Who were the real barbarians? The Celts, for example, who have been called barbarians, or the Roman aristocracy and the Empire it created? I am not trying to idealize Celtic society, but to simply correct a 2,000 year old bias, prejudice, and deep confusion. Unless we worship power as a value in itself, which is a spiritually, morally and intellectually bankrupt attitude to take, or place an absurd and greatly excessive value on mere engineering and legalistic bureaucracy, which would be equally vacuous, blinding, and spiritually and intellectually bereft, we should view the Roman elite and their empire as the real barbarians. When the Roman Army, after centuries of attempts, finally subdued and conquered the Celts, there were an estimated three million Celtic people in Europe. The Roman Legion slaughtered an estimated one million, and enslaved another million. How is that in any remote sense something that can be called civilized, and not barbaric? Empires always corrupt the people, the society, and the elite in particular. We should not venerate them, if we have any sanity or sense at all.
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More side notes, I offer you, the reader, in this unusually meandering essay, on what began as an essay on Stoic philosophy, and expanded to include its historical and religious context, and now, other, broader points of philosophy as well. But that is fine. We will return to our more narrow focus momentarily. It is good to broaden our minds, and our scope, from time to time.
Listening to history and philosophy podcasts, which are sometimes excellent, and far more often mediocre to abysmal, a point on tone and deliver, aside from content, comes to mind. (And yes, there is no replacement for books, however valuable a very small minority of podcasts and video documentaries may be.) We should note here the wide divergence and great difference in speaking, listening and dialogue between a fairly representative Brit of the older generations, such as Rupert Sheldrake, who never rushes in his speech, nor, presumably, in his thought, and hence communicates, and thinks, with uncommon clarity; and on the other hand, what has become the norm in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and especially in North America, which is to rush through everything, talking as if on crack, speed, crystal meth, or simply too much caffeine, or more often, simply a habit of rushing through everything at all times, as if the goal were to reach the end, which is death, and not to enjoy the journey, or to learn something along the way. If you value learning, teaching, communicating effectively, or you value life, slow down. Unless your objective is a frenzied intellectual entertainment merely – which is useless and only clutters and clouds the mind – and not thinking, learning, communication or truth, slow down.
Thoughts, readings, conversations and discussions, as with life and its events, should be fully present to us, and we to them, and they should be digested and reflected upon, and not simply fly past us in a blur. It may seem impressive to talk fast or to read fast, or to live in a perpetual frenzied rush, but we are only fooling ourselves, for it is foolish and self-defeating. Slow down.
As Thoreau and Trungpa both said, the first thing to do is to cut the speed. Slow down. It cannot be emphasized enough.
The French have said of the Americans that they are so perpetually in a mad rush, and so unduly venerating of action over reflection, that they fling themselves into what they think is a solution before they have properly examined or understood the problem. This, of course, is a recipe for disastrous solutions, which compound the problems many times over, rather than solving them. And this too, is exactly what is happening now, and not just in the United States, but around the world. Slow down. Pause to reflect. Otherwise, our solutions will be the death of us all. Our safety measures in particular are killing us, and are killing our democracy, freedom, human rights, and common sense. Such solutions deserve scorn and firm rejection, not praise and pious self-congratulation. Slow down, pause, and reflect, or it is a true dark age ahead for us all.
But we have digressed…or rather, not digressed, but we have widened our scope beyond the initial focus of this short essay. To return to Stoicism….
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That grim philosophy of fatalism, determinism and powerlessness which Stoicism represents, has captured the minds of many recently, just as it did roughly 2,000 years ago, as the Roman Empire was beginning to collapse. It is as foolish and addle-minded now as it was then. It is the rationalization of despair, and the turning of a cult of impotence, into a virtue.
In its determinism, or the view that all things are predetermined, Stoicism echoes Augustine, or rather, was echoed by Augustine, the deeply neurotic and deeply jaundiced “philosopher” who the new imperial “Christian” church adopted, foolishly, as its primary and over-arching patron saint and guide – sadly displacing Jesus and the prophets in the process.
Augustine held that all things are predetermined. Not surprisingly, he viewed the world, nature, human beings and all life, as futile as well as utterly degraded, wicked and vile, and essentially pushed a philosophy of fatalistic resignation and of powerlessness.
Both Stoicism and the Augustinian heresy, as it should be called, worked wonderfully for the empire, and for the new, hierarchical church powers that were lining their pockets, while aligning themselves with the Empire. It is the same now as then. Demoralize your enemy, is principle number one, according to Sun Tzu and the Art of War, the unrivalled master of strategy, and his major work. Tell them they have no power, and convince them of that, and the war is won before it begins.
“Shut up and know your place, and do as you’re told, because you have no power, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.” This is Stoic philosophy, in its brainless, or for emeror’s use, deceitful, core.
Stoicism is very much akin to Confucianism, which, unsurprisingly, is linked deeply to authoritarian neo-Maoist/Leninist/corporatist technocratic and totalitarian contemporary Communist China. Stoicism is also akin to the caste system of India. Both say, is essence, “Know your place, do what you are told, and shut up.” Except that Stoicism and Augustinian philosophy are vastly darker than either Confucianism or Hinduism, which look beatific and pure geius by comparison.
In any event, either one, Stoicism or Augustinian “Christianity”, suited the Empire perfectly. And yes, Stoicism and Augustine’s “Christianity” are not only deeply linked, but are almost interchangeable – because both told people that everything is predetermined, and therefore they have no power, and therefore told them resign themselves to obedience, and taught them that obedience is virtue, and that believing you are powerless is a virtue. It is madness, of course, but the emperors and bishops and popes loved it.
Marcus Aurelius, who is considered a “good emperor” (which is an absurd oxymoron, suitable only for morons) even considered Stoicism as politically essential to the empire, and said so. A short time later, its mirror image in Agustinian “christianity” would likewise be considered as indispensable to the empire: because both fostered conformity, obedience, and illusions of powerlessness among the plebes and slaves and conquered peoples, and even among the landed aristocracy and the patricians. The Empire is the natural and inevitable, heaven-sanctified, unalterable order of things, and resistance is futile. Of course emperors love that sort of thing. But saner minds should not, and should reject it entirely.
So, when someone advocates Stoicism, tell them you don’t want a philosophy of fatalism, powerlessness, repression, submission and servility, thank you very much.
I could think of worse philosophies than Stoicism – fascism, nihilism, cynicism, totalitarianism, for example… but then again, both Stoicism and Augustinian philosophy both, feed into all of these dark states of mind, ideology and world view, perfectly well, like hand to glove.
Stoicism offers some glittering nuggets of sound advice, but it is fool’s gold, because it comes as the outer wrapper and pretty packaging for a dark seed within, which is the philosophy of futility, powerlessness and despair. Reaching for Stoicism, therefore, from all the many philosophies we could choose from, is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. It is the dregs of the Western mind. We can do much, much better.
Here are thoughts on a short video linked below, but I would frankly assert that the thoughts presented here in this reflection or meditation are more interesting and more useful than the talk that they are commenting on.
This seems to me an unnecessarily obscure talk (linked below), even though the subject is admittedly challenging.
The question is, or one of the central questions is, what is the relationship between our perception of reality, and reality itself. It is extremely useful to state the problem, and the subject, clearly from the outset.
And we should remember what the brilliant philosopher Alan Watts said: “Most metaphysics are unconscious metaphysics, and unconscious metaphysics are bad metaphysics.”
Then you may, at some point, explicitly state what you are definitely not saying, or not intending to say, at least. That is, I would say, for myself, I am not asserting a philosophical position or world view of nihilism, eternalism, dualism, materialist-reductionism, atomism, or a mechanistic view, nor solipsism, Skepticism, Sophism, Interactionism or Idealism.
What that leaves is non-dualism, or some other cruder approximations to it, such as an ecological world view, a systems theory world view, or pantheism, panpsychism or monism. I am asserting non-dualism is the reality, to be clear and precise.
But then you must clarify further.
Here Chomsky seems to agrees with the dominant view in science, which is to take Hume’s challenge to our assumption of a correct, accurate or valid relationship between our thoughts, mental constructs or perceptions of reality and reality itself, seriously enough to refuse to say anything about reality, but to speak only of our perceptions of reality. Of course, that is solipsism, or radical Skepticism, and is unlivable in the real world of daily life. So in practice, we pay lip service to Hume, if we pay any attention to him at all, but then disregard him completely. That utterly anti-empirical and anti-science, utterly unfounded mode of thining and of relating to the world, is what we erroneously call science, philosophy, and common sense.
In short, neither science, in general, though there are some scientists who differ, nor philosophy, nor the common view of life and reality, has any firm basis in reality. Who answers Hume adequately? Only Nagarjuna, the preeminent philosopher of Buddhism, and the Middle Way view of Buddhist philosophy, I would strongly suggest, and state flatly.
Chomsky is brilliant in political analysis, though not infallible, brilliant in political philosophy, and brilliant in linguistics. He does not seem so brilliant in terms, of metaphysics or the philosophy of science, but more run of the mill, and mistaken.
We have confused wisdom with power, and quality of life with quantity of money and material goods. Until we correct that deep confusion, modern industrial society will be, and will remain, doomed to destroy itself. Cutting through illusion, therefore, is not a luxury for philosophers, scientists, monks and mystics alone. It is an urgent necessity for us all.
As Plato said, everyone has opinions, but few have knowledge. It is important that we keep that in the back of our minds, if not the fore.
Two levels, there are, in everything: there is the question of how to live, and how to construct a society that is just, good, or intelligent, which is the worldly aspect, pertaining to moral, social and political philosophy; then there is the ultimate question of the true nature of being and reality. Extremely few people do a good job in addressing either one, only a handful have done a good job in addressing both. This is an important thing to realize and to bear in mind.
In terms of moral, social and political philosophy:
No man is an island, as Martin Luther King Jr. said. That means, we are all interconnected and interdependent. That means that kindness, compassion and mutual aid are not only virtuous, but also a matter of basic intelligence, or enlightened self-interest.
From that flows an ethos of compassion, community, solidarity, cooperation or mutual aid. And from that flows an ethos, a value of, and a profound respect for, liberty or freedom, since it is certainly experienced to be a violence, an act of aggression, and a cruelty and great suffering to be made someone else’s slave, or to have our freedom unduly constrained, and to be dominated by any man, woman, or system.
Taking compassion and freedom as our core founding values, or community and freedom, or liberty, equality, solidarity, the founding values of the Enlightenment, however you may prefer to say it, will produce a just, equitable, and eminently sane society, and in the relative sense of the term, an enlightened democracy. That is all we need to know and to remember in order to build a better world, and to resolve the great social, economic, political and environmental crises which we face now. But we will have to be bold about it, and swift. Remember that Jesus did not drive the money changers from the temple with a limp piece of leaf lettuce, but with a whip. Remove the money changers from power. Only then can we seriously begin to address the urgent problems confronting us.
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As to enlightenment, in the absolute or ultimate sense, or the nature of knowledge vs opinion, and the true nature of being and reality, we can say this.
In short, and to put the matter as succinctly as possible, we are born, as Kant rightly said, with innate frameworks of thought, an innate latticework or architecture of inborn thought constructs, through which we view and experience the world. As Descartes and Locke rightly said, we know that we are thinking, and we believe we are accurately percieving things as they truly are, but the accuracy of our perceptions is radically in question.
Thought relates to thought, and while we believe we are directly relating to things in the world, when we examine our minds closely, we see that we are relating directly, only to our own ideas about things, and not directly to phenomena or things themselves. That is, everything we percieve, think or experience, is filtered through an unconscious and habitual set of mental constructs, a set of filters and lenses, as well as social conditioning and indoctrination. We do not, therefore, relate to anything directly, but only to our own unconscious mental architecture of preconceived thought constructs, lenses and filters.
To put it in Buddhist terms, all phenomena (beings, things and events) are viewed by our minds with an unrecognized mental imputation. We think we see separate, concrete, divided beings and things; but while being exists, and Descartes was right on that, the “I” is imputed, and has no valid basis in reality. We impute or project a separation, permanence and division to phenomena, beings and things, where none exists in reality. As Einstein said, “The field is everything.”
Remember what Alan Watts said. “Most metaphysics are unconscious metaphysics. And unconscious metaphysics are bad metaphysics.” Question everything.
Descartes famously began modern philosophy, 400 years ago, by trying to go back to first principles, trying to make zero assumptions or unsupported premises (philosophy and science both are riddled with unconscious and unsupported assumptions) to see what we can know for certain, and then to build a coherent philosophy on that firm ground or foundation. He did not assume that any given authority is 100% certain in its reliability, nor was he willing to assume that any idea, theory, philosophy, ideology or theology is necessarily 100% reliable. That left only radical empiricism (and let us not fetishize an obsession with numbers and measurement, solely, any longer). In short, we must examine things for ourselves: that is, as the Buddha also urged, to not resort to simply taking someone’s word on things, as being the infallible truth.
Descartes said, What if I am dreaming? When I dream, things in the dream seem real, but when I awake, I realize I was only dreaming. How do I know I am not dreaming now? How do I know my perceptions of reality are accurate? Maybe they are 100% accurate, or 90%, or 1%, or completely illusory and delusional? How do I verify what is actially real or true?
Without seriously addressing this question of perception vs reality, and the problem of imputing realities to reality – as Hume asked, in his landmark work which radically transformed the entire landscape of Western philosophy, in 1776, and which no one yet has satisfactorily answered, in the West at least – there can be no sound foundation for either science or philosophy, and we will be wildly speculating, and completely unscientific and anti-empirical, without even knowing it.
And we are!
(Most scientists have never seriously addressed Hume, or this question, the problem of inference or imputation, which is foundational to any true, genuine, or valid empiricism, or any truly scientific or philosophical approach; and hence, do not really merit being called scientists. The same goes for great majority of philosophers, religious leaders, politicians, pundits, scholars, and social or political commentators: their words and views rest on thin air. They have all the reliability of quacking ducks, and so, their statements should be taken with a train load of salt.)
Descartes then realized, I am thinking, therefore I know, at least, that I exist. Cogito ergo sum. But he was mistaken, and radically so. And to my knowledge, no one has yet realized or pointed out his error – until now.
If there is thinking, and we do directly experience thinking, so we can confirm that much, then there must be consciousness, and existence or being, of some kind. The “I” in Descartes’ famous, “I think therefore I am”, however, is simply a habitual, unexamined, and utterly unsupported assumption – an unconscious mental imputation or projection, with no valid basis in reality, and no sound evidence to support it.
We then have:
A. Thinking is present
B. Therefore:
i, consciousness of some kind is present;
and
ii, being or existence of some kind is present.
We know therefore that there exists consciousness and its contents, being or existence of some kind, and space. There is no basis for presuming or imputing duality, permanence or division of any kind, however. And we should remember, distinction is not the same as division. The crests and troughs of waves on the ocean are distinct, but there is no real division between crest and trough, or between waves. The waves are a formation or movement of the ocean, but the ocean while ever changing, remains essentially unchanged, and one. Reflect deeply on this, and the nature of all phenomena will become clear.
The assumption or imputation of a separate self, an “I”, a self that is a separate island in a vast cosmos, is wholly unsupported, and pure, anti-empirical and unscientific conjecture, speculation, or mere superstition – no matter how firmly or habitually we may believe it, and no matter how many others may believe it. The imputation or assumption of a duality between self and other, or any kind of duality of being, is similarly unsubstantiated mental flotsam, without any sound basis or empirical support whatsoever. The burden of proof rests on those who assert a positive claim of some entity, attribute or thing, by the way, and not on those who deny it, for lack of evidence. (See Bertrand Russell’s teapot analogy.)
Remember, it was only yesterday, in the long view of human history, that everyone “knew”, and was absolutely certain, that the Earth was the centre of the universe. It just so happened that everyone was wrong.
Not long ago, slavery was thought to be natural, normal, ethical, and just. Virtually everyone, from Aristotle and emperors, to popes, priests, “learned men”, scholars, scientists and the common people, knew that slavery was natural, normal and just. But everyone was wrong.
In both cases, what was assumed by everyone to be unquestionably true, turned out to be flatly and completely mistaken and wrong. It is the same with the nearly universal belief in duality. We are, as Plato said, dwellers in a cave of shadows. But enlightenment, or waking up to reality, is entirely within our reach.
Enlightenment, it should be added, does not mean floating off into space, on some mystical cloud. It means, quite simply, waking up. It means seeing reality clearly, for the first time, and abiding in that awareness of the non-dual nature of emptiness and form, being and reality, with universal compassion, indestructible peace, and natural, spontaneous, intelligent responsiveness, as the naturally arising result, of simply being fully and truly awake.
*
Does this mean nothing exists? No, that is nihilism, and it is a delusion, as the Buddhists have also made clear – and a dangerous delusion. Does that mean everything exists in the mind, and that only the mind exists? No, that is philosophical idealism, or in Buddhist terminology, the Mind Only school; and that, while closer to the truth than nihilism, is also a misperception with regards to the true nature of reality.
Does that mean that the dualism of Descartes, and his materialist bias, along with Newton’s mechanistic view of the universe, should be rejected? Yes.
Newtonian mechanics still work, as crude approximations which have their uses in technology, for example, but the non-dualist view of Spinoza turns out to be far more accurate as a theory, paradigm or world view, and will lead us to better experiments, new discoveries, and most importantly, better judgement and better actions and policies, leading to a better society, and a better world.
Does it then mean we should adopt an interactionist view of mind and body, consciousness and matter? No. That would be vastly superior to the dualistic, mechanistic, materialist-reductionist world view which we now accept as “knowledge”, as “scientific”, “empirical”, as “educated” opinion, or as common sense. But that would be an ecological view, a holistic or organic view, which is vastly superior, more accurate and more sane, but still subtly imprecise.
No, it means that a non-dualistic view is the only view supported by either a radical empiricism, a thorough-going empiricism, a genuine empiricism, an authentically scientific approach; or by the philosophers and sages who wrote, spoke and elaborated the view of non-duality, in what has been called the Perennial Philosophy.
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Note that quantum physics – if we are not unscientific about it, and anti-intellectual, or irrationally averse to drawning conclusions, based on clear and unequivocal evidence (a few “scientists” fit that description, and a very few “philosophers”) – demonstrated over a century ago, that the atomistic, mechanistic, dualistic, materialist-reductionism which we fell into, as in a bog, along with Netwon and Descartes, a mere four centuries ago, is a radically mistaken paradigm, theory, ideology, philosophy, or view of reality. What modern physics shows us, is not that elaborate conjectures of multiple universes or dimensions (all speculative conjecture) are necessarily the reality, but more pointedly, and of profoundly more importance, that the imagined duality, separation or division between subject and object, self and other, mind and body, and consciousness and “matter”, is entirely fictional, and does not exist.
As Enstein said, “The perception of a division between self and other is a kind of optical delusion.” “We must stop talking about the particle and field. The field is everything.”
Or as Schrodinger, the godfather of quantum mathematics, said, perhaps even more strikingly, “The number of minds in the universe is one.”
Note that Einstein said he believed in Spinoza’s view of God. That is, there is only one substance in existence, and you can call it God, or you call it nature, but it is One.
As the last of the ancient philosophers, Plotinus said: the many are One; the One manifests as many.
Or as the Tao Te Ching says, “Naming is the mother of the ten thousand things.”
Or as the Heart Sutra, the Heart of the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom, says:
“Form is emptiness; emptiness is form.
Form is not other than emptiness; emptiness is not other than form.”
This is explicitly stated to be a refutation and a denial of both nihilism and eternalism. The true nature of reality lies in the middle way between those two extremes, both of which are delusional.
How do we come, to first conceptually, and then experientially, and deeply, understand and then directly see and realize the non-duality of being and reality? Begin with reflecting deeply and often on the interdependence of all beings, things and phenomena. That will lead to higher awareness, liberation and enlightenment, and will avoid the terrible rotting bog, which is the mental prison, of nihilism.
Then examine the labelling process of the mind. That will finish the job of removing all remaining traces of doubt and dualistic delusion.
*
Spinoza and Plotinus, in the West, along with Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Mathew Fox, Ken Wilber, Joseph Campbell, Joanna Macy, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Allan Wallace, Einstein, Shrodinger, Wheeler, Bohm, and myself; and Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Shankara and the Buddha in the East, to make a very incomplete list, have all expressed the perennial philosophy of non-duality. We would be wise to at least look into it, and to keep an open mind.
But above all, think for yourself. Question everything. And as the Buddha said, examine things for yourself, see for yourself.
As Shakespeare said, “There is more to heaven and earth than is contained in your philosophy.” “Life is rounded by a little sleep.”
And as Thoreau said,
“There is more day yet to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
We are not smaller or lesser than we had imagined, but infinitely more. Being and reality is basically good. The world is in a dark and terrible state because it is ruled by illusions. Illusion is the root of our problems. Uproot that, and we can live in peace, and in lives, and a world, more beautiful than we dare to imagine.
Compassion, and the unceasing search for truth: these are our best guides, and our sole concerns, if we are aware enough to live in ways that are truly sensible and intelligent. With compassion and the pursuit of truth (not the dogmatic presumption of truth) as our beacons, the future is brighter than our dreams. Without them, we are lost.
The choice, as always, is ours to make.
J. Todd Ring,
March 28, 2021
Post-Script:
It has become the fashionable norm in Western philosophy, in the past few centuries, for philosophers to write great tomes of books, often hundreds of pages long, and in the most arcane and obscure language possible. There is a good reason for this. It is to hide the fact that most philosophers have little or nothing to say. (The fetish is also for maximum footnotes, since ideas are not judged on their own merits, as all good science or philosophy does, but are judged by how well they can be entangled upon the architecture of presumed authority. We are thoroughly scholastic as a result, pre-Enlightenment, and more medieval than the medievalists.) In fact, aside from Socrates, Spinoza, Plotinus and Hume, and a handful of others, most of Western philosophy is the finger-painting of preschoolers. It is not worth the paper it is written on. That certainly includes all of post-modernism, which has virtually lobotomized intellectuals for the past fifty years. (Replace all the post-modernists, existentialists and phenomenologists with a study of Emerson, Blake and Thoreau, and we would be getting somewhere – beyond our present state, which is parked in a cul de sac.) In a few short words, we have said here what thousands of books on philosophy and politics have not, and could not, because they lacked the clarity, and the depth, to be able to do so. The importance of a work is not measured by its volume of words. The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the UN Charter of Human Rights, the Magna Carta, and Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience, are short, pithy works, of unsurpassed importance. Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience is just fifteen pages, and the Heart Sutra is just two pages; but they are the most important political and philosophical tracts, respectively, ever written. Do not be fooled by wordiness and verbosity, or by esoteric and arcane language. Most of it is nothing but hot air – a tale full of sound and fury, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.
See also:
The Hero With A Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell
World As Lover, World As Self – Joanna Macy
Choosing Reality – Allan Wallace
The Holographic Universe – Michael Talbot
Mysticism and The New Physics – Michael Talbot
Dialogues With Scientists and Sages – Rene Weber
Dreamtime and Inner Space – Holgar Kalweit
The Way of Zen – Alan Watts
Tao: The Watercourse Way – Alan Watts
The Mother Of The Buddhas – Lex Hixon
The Perennial Philosophy – Aldous Huxley
No Boundary – Ken Wilber
Stolen Continents – Ronald Wright
A Short History of Progress – Ronald Wright
Year 501: The Conquest Continues – Noam Chomsky
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control In Democratic Societies – Noam Chomsky
The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
A Game As Old As Empire – John Perkins
Class Warfare – Noam Chomsky
The Power Elite – C. Wright Mills
Giants: The Global Power Elite – Peter Phillips
The New Rulers Of The World – John Pilger
Ancient Futures – Helena Norberg-Hodge
From The Ground Up – Helena Norberg-Hodge
The Chalice and The Blade – Rianne Eisler
The Ecology of Freedom – Murray Bookchin
Mutual Aid – Peter Kropotkin
The Empathic Civilization – Jeremy Rifkin
Elders’ Wisdom – David Suzuki
The Wayfinders – Wade Davis
The Great Turning – David C. Korten
Oneness vs The 1% – Vandana Shiva
Enlightened Democracy – J. Todd Ring
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Here is a good introduction to epistemology, ontology and metaphysics, or the question of what is the true nature of appearances versus reality, in the short video below. It is only an introduction, however. Russell does not answer the question here, but merely sets the stage for the investigation, which is itself important, though incomplete. See Plato’s Parable of the Cave, Descartes, Spinoza, and finally, the Buddha and Nagarjuna.
Note that BR is among the best in terms of political philosophy, and among the worst for metaphysics. But he at least introduces the question of perception vs reality well.
Or start with my book, Enlightened Democracy, which synthesizes the best of East and West, North and South, ancient and modern, science and spirituality, the philosophical and the political, long term vision and immediate action. Then read Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Allan Wallace, Joanna Macy, Ken Wilber, Murray Bookchin, and the other major figures listed above.
People are beginning to realize that we need a different attitude and view with regards to how we see nature, life, humanity, and ourselves. Very few get past rudimentary first steps, however. Since this shift in paradigms and consciousness is essential and urgently needed, I would urge you to consider the following thoughts, which I just penned.
In short, what we need to do is two-fold: 1. Unite the people, inspire them to embrace their power, take the power back from the billionaire usurpers, and restore and renew constitutional democracy. No positive change is possible until that first step is done. 2. Rediscover the interconnectedness and interdependence, and kinship and unity, of all beings and things; which means, rediscover the Perennial Philosophy, of the non-dual nature of being and reality. It is simpler and easier than that sounds, by the way, in terms of both steps, which are not sequential, but are most powerful when brought together. The gist is, as John Donne said, and Martin Luther King Jr. quoted: “No man is an island.”
When the finger painting of preschoolers is no longer satisfying, we may decide to look more deeply. If you want to know what is, as opposed to what appears to be, look into the Perennial Philosophy. Plotinus, Spinoza, Shankara, Lao Tzu, Pico della Mirandola, the Kabbahla, Meister Eckhart, Nagarjuna and the Buddha expressed it. Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Ken Wilber, Joanna Macy, Allan Wallace and Joseph Campbell all corroborated, espoused and wrote about it. My own writings have conveyed it in pith and elaboration as well, and expressed the implications and concrete applications in terms of social and political philosophy, and in terms of specific actions and a concrete policy platform, and vision, for real, substantive, positive social change, and the healing of our world.
(See my first two books: Enlightened Democracy, and, The People vs The Elite, and watch for my new book: From Bankers Ruling The World, To The People Ruling The Bankers; And Rebuilding and Healing Our World In The Process, coming this spring.)
Writings of J. Todd Ring 
On Puritan-Capitalism: Money As The Measure Of All Things
Posted in Uncategorized with tags anthropology, capitalism, environmental philosophy, history, mass psychology, money, moral philosophy, philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, police state, political economy, political philosophy, political science, political theory, psychology, Puritan, religious philosophy, social analysis, social change, social commentary, social philosophy, social psychology, social theory, sociology, success, values, work on August 20, 2021 by jtoddringThe mechanistic materialist world view, which the West, beginning with Europe, adopted a mere 400 years ago, and then exported through economic, financial, military and cultural colonialism and neocolonialism to the rest of the world, has been nothing short of a cultural, sociological, political, economic, ecological, spiritual, public health and psychological disaster; and it has led to to a global tyranny of neofeudal corporate-state oligarchy and technocratic scientific fascism.
Part of its logic, is to view all things, all of nature, human beings and all living beings, as mere objects: to be exploited, used up, and discarded at will. The natural result of its logic is to view all things, ecosystems, living beings and people as mere resources for wealth extraction.
We human beings are viewed, at least by the business elite, as cattle, to be milked for money, or yoked for sevitude, for money and power, or disposed of – or slaughtered.
Extrinsic value is the only value recognized: people, nature, living beings, and all things, only have value for their usefulness. It is a world view that is nihilistic and utilitarian by nature, and must, if its logic is consistent, degrade and destroy all other values, such as the systemic value of ecosystems and living beings, and the intrinsic value of ecosystems, nature and living beings. (I am borrowing here from one of my brilliant mentors, Professor Robert E. Carter – not the novelist, but the polymath scholar.) Money therefore becomes the measure of all things, including the measure work, the measure of social status, the measure of respectability, and the measure of human worth – or the worth of anything, or any living being.
When we examine closely the mechanistic materialist world view and its consequences, we can see and understand how and why it has been a truly catastrophic error, and one which must be quickly overcome, before it destroys us all, by destroying all life on Earth – and before it enslaves all of humanity, on its way to total ecocide, and collective self-annihilation.
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Anecdotes and personal stories are things I generally avoid, but the following is enlightening, I believe.
When I was a younger man, in my late teens, I decided in a flash, after reading Plato’s parable of the cave, in my first year of university, that I wanted to become a philosopher, a political theorist, and a writer. When I soon afterward announced to my parents that I was switching from studying science, to studying philosophy, my father, at least, thought I must be mad, or at least, drastically foolish. What money can you make as a philosopher? That was the only question that mattered, to his mind. That was the only measure of my studies, to his mind: does it make money? Of course, his view was, and is, the nearly universal view in modern society. But I was utterly resolved. Nothing would budge me.
As Margaret Atwood said, “This society doesn’t respect writing. It respects success. I could have been a used car salesman, and if I was successful, I’d be respected.”
Or as Emerson said, in his essay on The Poet, by which he meant the writer in the broad sense: “Every profession has its sacrifices. For the poet (or the writer), it is that for a long time, he will be considered a churl (a bum) and a fool, and will be understood only by his peers.”
Or as Thoreau said (and I am paraphrasing from memory), “Men are concerned, not with what is respectable, but what is respected.” “Such men deserve as much respect as wooden men, or clumps of earth.”
Nietzche was insane, and from what I can tell, his philosophy was insane; but he was right in one observation, when he remarked, “The ego – our last article of faith.” This is what mechanistic materialism, and the Puritan-capitalist psychology that arises from it, does to men’s and womens’ minds: they profess all sorts of values, but when you look more closely, their true values are money, status, and their reputation. Their true and over-riding concerns, thus, are comfort and ego. “What would other people think?” This is the thought that secretly haunts them, and it is both their prison, and the source of their moral bankruptcy and spiritual degeneration.
Thoreau also observed, “Most men would feel ashamed if their work consisted of throwing dirt over a fence, and throwing it back again; but most men are employed in no higher purpose that this.” We are obsessively busy, but what are we busy with?
(Kindred spirits, I have many. I have no need of false friends, nor of the trappings of worldly success. As Thoreau said (I am once again paraphrasing here), “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” I could not agree more. To thine own self be true.)
Furthermore, when automation and robotics are poised to eliminate 90% of jobs, and make most people, in the words of Yuval Harari, “useless”, we clearly and urgently must re-think the nature of work.
Some years later, as a young writer, intellectual, activist and philosopher, my father said to my sister, “Todd’s on permanent vacation.” As far as he was concerned, any activity that did not make money, was not work – therefore, since your activities do not make money, you do not work; which, of course, in the prevailing culture and psychology of Puritan-capitalism, means you are a useless fool, and a worthless bum.
I thought to myself, and maybe I said it to him – probably so, since I was anxiety-ridden and depressed but also paradoxically fearless: I could work 40 hours a week, or 60, or 100, helping the sick, the poor and the dying with Mother Theresa, and you would consider me a bum who didn’t work, because I did it for free, and received no money for it. (His values seemed deranged to me, so I immediately disregarded his opinion, as itself being worthless.)
*
That story shows the sheer insanity of what I call the Puritan-capitalist psychology, sociology, or world view. It is truly insane. To take it further, we could say that, if I, or anyone else, worked in the arms industry, dealing in weapons and tools for mass murder and killing, or in the pesticide or chemical industry, poisoning the people and the planet, I would be a respected member of society, and viewed as a hard worker, and praised, so long as I was paid well for my evil actions, and made a good income from it.
Puritan-capitalist ethics and psychology revolve around two central premises: busyness is always good; and more importantly, money is the measure of all things. If I work 100 hours a week saving the planet, or raising children, or healing the Earth, that is nice, but I am a fool and a bum, in the eyes of the grimly delusional great majority, who are literally brainwashed into the Puritan-capitalist psychology – and blinded and enslaved by it. But they will defend their chains to the death, and decry anyone who tries to liberate them, or who even points out the chains, as a dangerous heretic and a madman.
What madness is this? This, as Erich Fromm and Henry David Thoreau, and many others have realized, is sheer insanity.
*
Artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, philosophers, activists, parents and care-givers, are generally all viewed as worthless and useless bums, and their work is invisible and discounted – unless they find a way to acquire money, wealth, status, fame or power, which are the great redeemers, and the only things the great majority of people seem to truly value in modern, nihilistic, materialist, Puritan-capitalist society: in which case, they are super-stars, and greatly loved, respected, and admired celebrities.
When, in practice, rhetoric aside, we value money, material goods, comfort, entertainment, status, wealth, power and fame above all else, then there is no room for justice, ethics, morality, virtue, nobility, wisdom, compassion, human decency, or even basic sanity. This has become the profoundly abnormal norm of our modern corporate-industrial society. Clearly, something needs to change.
When human beings are being systematically degraded, exploited, oppressed, indoctrinated, deluded, blinded, imprisoned and enslaved, and all life on Earth is being destroyed, and both as a result of our materialist mechanistic world view, and by our Puritan-capitalist psychology, it is clearly time to reassess and to change our world view and our pyschology. That, by now, should be undeniable. If it is not, then we are truly and deeply, profoundly delusional.
I am no cynic, nor am I a jaundiced, jaded misanthrope. Cynicism, fatalism and misanthropy are pathologies of the mind, and delusions to be overcome. The long term for humanity is promising, to put it mildly; but the near term and present are looking undeniably dark. What we make of our present, and our future, however, is up to us.
Noam Chomsky is right: “The great majority of people have basically decent impulses.” It is true, as science has confirmed (see Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, and Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization): human beings have a natural empathy and compassion, and we have survived, and thrived, because we have a deeply seated instinct for solidarity, community, cooperation and mutual assistance. But our good nature is being systematically degraded, twisted and deranged, by a society which is truly, deeply dehumanizing, and frankly, crazy. And that is before the soma kicks in.
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Our modern society, as I have said, is thoroughly insane. Re-evaluating our concepts of money, work, status, respectability, success, development and growth, and the values and psychology which underly them, is now critical. Without that, we are doomed to a madhouse – and one that is on wheels, travelling as fast as possible toward dystopia, and the cliff that lies just beyond it.
JTR,
August 20, 2021
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