A Tibetan Monk (two stories) - You decide

[The Straight Story]

when I was younger I spent a lot of time studying psychology, religion, math, science, computers, and chess.

During one trip to the library I picked up some books on Buddhism and learned a lot from them.

Earlier today I posted this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2954677

which discusses psychiatrist's and so on.

Story 1:

Now this one monk I read about - he sat in his small hut for years without ever coming out. He meditated for years, and the local villagers would bring him food and slide it under his door.

He was revered by the people.

Story 2:
The Dali Llama talked about the people of the lake, a place near Tibet. The people there believed that there were spirits in the lake - and even though he did not believe the same he remarked that the spirits did exist because they exerted an influence on the people of the lake on everything from daily life to trade with others.


----------------------

In our society, the monk from story 1 would probably be seen as mentally ill (some guy who does not work and spends all day meditating on life and such) and the people of the lake from story 2 would been seen as just plain silly (if not mentally ill).

And yet, those same people lived in peace for many years with each other, while us 'more sensible' folks have lived in war and created nuclear weapons.

So who is the more mentally ill - the people I mentioned above, or the more 'sensible' people who have waged war with others (over oil) , created chemical and nuclear weapons, and spend trillions to build more and more weapons - or the people who believe in spirits in a lake (or spend years in a hut) and don't harm anyone?

We have some of the greatest scientists in the world here, and what has it gotten us? A better way to wage war, a better way to kill others from afar with drones and cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and so on.

Who is mentally ill? The guy sitting in his hut and practicing Buddhism and not consuming, or us with our rage to consume, pay taxes, and wage war on others?

It is all about power and perception. And those in power determine who is mentally ill and who is not - all relevant to their own value judgments.

Maybe those in the majority are the crazy ones :)

Just because someone is not like us, does not mean they need our help. Maybe we need theirs.

[Me.]

1. Awakening To Your Life's Purpose

by E. Tolle

He talks about societal insanity

[gateley]

2. "Societal Insanity"

Haven't read the book, but boy, that phrase sure seems to paint an accurate picture.

We've lost our way and forgotten who we are.

[Me.]

18. His Basic Premise Is That We Are All Insane

and that it is inbred and has been for centuries, it is from this that we need to awaken.

[hfojvt]

3. the sane society

Was it Mark or Kurt Vonnegut who told a story about a guy who was going crazy in Nazi Germany? He goes to a psychiatrist and gets 'cured' and the doctor tells him 'if you had not been treated in time, you might have even tried to kill Hitler.'

Mark, son of Kurt, actually did go crazy and then wrote about that experience in "The Eden Express".

However, you did not tell the details of these two villages. Do they actually manage to live without harming anything? Do they have no bullies? No liars? No thieves? No mooches?

If so, how do they manage such a feat?

How much of the murdering and abusing are necessary to our way of life? Ideally, our way of life consists of a) graduating from high school with abilities to read, do basic math, and with rudimentary knowledge of science, history, civics, economics, etc. Then going on to further education or training in whatever field a person decides. Then getting a series of jobs and moving on a career path.

Things like spouse abuse, child abuse, rape, stealing, killing, etc. are part of our society that we cannot seem to get rid of, but are they really part of our 'system'? Do they result from the pressure or fear or the abuse of power by the hierarchy? Or is it the evil of our history that takes a long time for its effects to dampen out?

Both war and prison do seem to be violent parts of our society. Why do we have them and what are the alternatives?

[The Straight Story]

4. An excellent reply

you bring up a lot of questions worth looking into, which I do not have the answers to I might add :)

The core questions though remain - who decides who is mentally ill, and do we trust them with that power....

[hfojvt]

8. I used Fromm's title

http://www.amazon.com/Sane-Society-Erich-Fromm/dp/0805014020/ref=pd_bbs_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204615824&sr=8-7

He also wrote a book called "The anatomy of Human destructiveness" which I have not got around to reading. In "the parable of the tribes" Andrew Bard Schmookler waxes poetic about hunter-gatherer societies, says that they seem to have been the best for human satisfaction and peace. Then tells his parable. Take four tribes A, B, C, and D. Suppose one becomes war-like, tribe A. What are the alternatives? Tribe B does nothing and is conquered and exterminated. Tribe C is conquered and assimilated. Tribe D fights back and manages to hold their own. The only way they are likely to succeed at that is by becoming just as militaristic and war-like as Tribe A. Thus an evolutionary model suggests that the war-like tribe is more likely to survive and expand. As it has, over almost the entire globe. Only pockets remain, isolated places like Tibet where it is possible to live a more traditional hunter-gathering way.

Wendell Berry suggests that the agricultural way of life, as we practice it, is really "war on the soil" or "war on the biosphere". The Native Americans thought of plowing the soil as being the moral equivalent of raping the earth. Wendell makes the comment that when a sword is beaten into a ploughshare, that only converts one weapon into another weapon.

But those fundamental changes in either society or even personal outlook or lifestyle are not that easy to make.

[canetoad]

9. Why did Tribe A become warlike

and not the others?

I like the way you posed the question, as there is no room for the 'chicken and egg' defence. Given the premise that the four hunter-gatherer tribes were relatively self-sufficient and peaceful, what prompted Tribe A to forsake its relatively trouble-free existence and make the decision to wage war on its neighbours.

Did B,C and D have something that A didn't? They must have, as societies don't generally start wars because they enjoy inflicting and receiving pain and suffering. More importantly, did A THINK that the others had something and what caused and fuelled this misconception?

[hfojvt]

11. I think his key was agriculture

agriculture produced more food, albeit with more work, and this created a population pressure forcing the group to expand. What the other groups had was "lebensraum" - like the Native Americans, they had a bunch of land that was sparsely populated by hunter-gatherer societies whereas the city/farming/industrial society had too many people and not enough land.

[canetoad]

12. In the 80s

I was early 30s, and spent three months living in a tent in very remote central Queensland. I became friendly with a group of Aboriginal park rangers who travelled around to (among other things) give talks to tourists staying in national parks about Aboriginal culture.

This has stayed with me all those years: An Aboriginal man would see a big old gum tree that was perfect for making bark canoes. He could cut this tree down and get six, maybe eight good canoes out of it, but he could only use one canoe at a time. If he only took one bark canoe, next year he could come back for another, then another.......

[Kitty Herder]

24. Probably because tribe A experienced some kind of stress such as unsustainable population

growth(likely brought on by the development of agriculture), a natural disaster, bad hunting, drought, or something which threatened their survival. So they began to make war with their neighbors in order to steal their goods. Also, I think chronic stress (especially as children) changes how we react to events in our lives, so perhaps that in and of itself caused them to become more warlike.

[Blue_Tires]

17. good points....

[Hannah Bell]

19. "How much of the murdering and abusing are necessary to our way of life?"

It's foundational: US wealth ultimately derived from the "original sins":

Theft of land
Murder of people
Enslavement & indenturement of people
Conquest of resources abroad
Fraud

& it didn't stop in 1776.

"Behind every great fortune is a crime."

[hfojvt]

23. that's external, and also over-stated and seemingly far away in time

or space. I was talking about the 20,000 homicides and 30,000 suicides that happened in the last year. Are those necessary to our way of life? Somehow an integral part of it? It's not typically European is it? The homicide rate in the US is 3.5 times what it is in England, and 4.8 times Germany's, but only 32% of Mexico's. So how is that internal death a part of our way of life?

I have also read Chomsky's "Year 501" but unless that external violence somehow karmically comes back into the internal society I am not sure how the one relates to the other.

[99th_Monkey]

5. Excellent post - Enthusiastically Recommended

This is one of our societal elephants in the living room .. how we treat those who appear "different", or have a "different" perspective or who seem to not "fit in".

It explains our being the most incarcerated population on the planet. It explains much of the homelessness phenomenon. It explains why conventional psychiatric therapy overlay ed with big pharma making big bucks in futile attempts to force feed "normalcy" to those who are "differ nt", etc., etc.

These crimes against humanity we all are complicit in to one degree or another, unless we are resisting and creatively collaborating to snap consensus "reality" out of its spell of self-deception and self-destruction.

[canetoad]

6. Spot on, TSS

That infernal white noise of demands, moneymaking, life, it bores a hole in your skull and most people don't even know where the knob is to turn it off. If, by chance, they found it, I fear they would feel too lonely and isolated to leave it turned off, because not many people realise that the purpose of life is not necessarily TO DO, it is just TO BE.

Good post, thank you. :bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox:

[OffWithTheirHeads]

7. If that is not the sound of one hand clapping, I have never heard it

not to do, but to be.

[TahitiNut]

16. I guess that depends on whether someone is a human being or a human doodoo.

:silly:

[Matariki]

10. Nice. Very good point you make.

[The Straight Story]

13. that means a lot coming from you - and your website is really cool

it is like hp lovecraft meets a canvas :)

you are a very talented artist ma'am. I envy your skills.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. It doesn't take a Einstein or maybe it does to repeat things again.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."

[Hydra]

15. You're looking in the wrong direction if you want to know why we make war

Hermann Goring was nice enough to let us in on the big secret, but most of us didn't want to believe it.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

I think most working people want peace. Hell, most of us would be happy with eating regularly and having a roof over our heads we can call ours. We have a problem with some of the other members of our society who think it's exciting to kill other people or having a proxy army do it for them.

IMO, that's the real problem.

[The Straight Story]

20. food for thought my friend

But I was not seeking the reason for war here. Goes more into whom we give power to determine who is mentally ill and who is not, and how all that shakes out.

[Hydra]

25. On the mentally ill thing

That's simply a matter of opinion. If I want to talk to a rock and say that it is of some sort of importance, at what point does someone else's opinion gain some weight in saying that such a thing is "wrong"?

Reality is not an objective experience. If a blind man and a sighted man encounter a river, they will perceive it and understand it differently, but neither can be wrong in their experience.

In the same way, the man who spends his whole life meditating or the people who think their are spirits in the lake may simply be seeing something more than we "sophisticated(read: blind)" people. We aren't wrong- we can't see what they see. We ARE wrong for telling them that since we can't see it, it's not there.

Our society has issues with the concept of "can't." We say that things don't exist or can't happen if we don't feel comfortable with the concept, if it doesn't jive with our other beliefs, or just because someone else said so.

[The Straight Story]

27. Awesome reply

Certainly adds more to the pool of things to ponder :)

Perception and reality are words tied to one another through an intricate web, toss in power people have over others to the mix and gets really interesting...

[otherlander]

21. I recommended this thread

because it's awesome.

[The Straight Story]

22. Thank you my friend

I deeply appreciate it.

There are so many in this world not like us, and I am not sure why we are always trying to make them like us or label them as 'god-less natives' if they do not conform.

Diversity is our strength, conformity to the rules of the few is our weakness.

[otherlander]

28. You know something, man?

This thread makes me want to sing the LOGICAL SONG... Watch what you say...be dependable, respectable, a vegetable! Peace. :hi:

[lovuian]

26. War is not the answer

totally agree