The social fallout of political disagreements—umpteenth version
As you might expect, when I saw the headline “Don’t get divorced because of Trump. The tough work of settling America’s political differences,” I immediately clicked on it, because it sounded as though it would deal with one of my major interests.
That’s not because I’m trying not to get divorced; I’m already long-divorced. And I didn’t get divorced because my husband (now my ex-husband) and I disagree on politics or ever disagreed on politics; strangely enough, we’ve been on the same page pretty much right along. But I know that political differences can be a big problem in marriages, and I’ve certainly experienced the problem in other relationships with friends and family.
But the article doesn’t deal with marriages at all. And it deals with the general topic in a rather surface way, and seems to be trying to balance things out with a “both sides are qually hateful and angry” point of view interspersed with a subtle skew towards blaming Trump.
In my experience—and I have a lot of experience—there is indeed hatred on both sides, but the hatred is far more virulent and widespread left to right. And although it has exacerbated during Trump’s presidency—and although Trump himself is anything but a conciliatory figure—I most definitely do not see this phenomenon as his fault. I see the press as having had an enormous role to play in the escalating hatred, as well as social media—predominantly Twitter, which the nearly-worthless article doesn’t mention at all.
I say “nearly worthless” because the article does have one potentially helpful part in which the author mentions groups such as Better Angels and the Listen First Project, which try to promote more meaningful and less abusive discourse between the two sides. I’m not all that sure how much such movements actually help, however, because they appeal mostly to people who are interested in such civil discourse in the first place, as the article states. My guess is that most of the people doing all the flaming of others don’t really want to give up the excitement and the venting of bile.
At the moment I’m not very hopeful about all of this. As the 2020 election approaches, I see the prospects getting worse. And I don’t see the problem as a mere lack of civility, although there certainly is a dearth of civility. I see it as a huge divide involving very basic political assumptions that are quite fundamental, and I see the lack of civility as a byproduct of that, exacerbated by the hypocritical bias of the press, the general coarsening of our culture, and the amplification caused by social media,
In addition to the general coarsening of our culture, and the amplification caused by social media (two unfortunate trends which no intelligent person could dispute), there exists the problem of algorithmic manipulation for ideological ends, not to mention the de-monetizing and de-platforming of bloggers and vloggers, with Big Tech likely to leverage its unprecedented power over voters in order to affect next year’s election.
Taking a 30,000 foot view, what we have taking place in our country is an attempt—and a pretty successful one so far—at Revolution, as the people of older generations, the “old order”—with their different mindsets, value systems, and world-view—decline in number and their influence over ideas, institutions, and events wanes, while Leftists pursue a very deliberate, all-spectrum campaign to propagandize and shape, to “fundamentally transform” the mindsets, value systems, and world views of younger, upcoming generations, and the architecture, functioning, and the objectives of all the key institutions and instruments of the State.
The problem is, I do not see that this is an organic change but that it is, instead, forcing the situation; a deliberate, ideology driven Revolution.
In essence, what is happening is something akin to a Mutiny, as those on the Left seek to shoulder their way into the cockpit, wrest control over the Ship of State’s steering wheel, and steer the Ship in an entirely new direction, far out of sight of the safe harbor from which our Ship of State sailed some two and a half centuries ago, leaving their former officers, crew, and us passengers with little or no say over the new change of course.
As the din of division increases just remember that the lefty voices are amplified by leftist ownership shares of the media and resultant ability to define and spin people and ideas. Most people do not agree with their conclusions.
Also:
-Polls are suspect;
-Don’t engage in reverse identity politics; win hearts and minds and friends by treating people as individuals not as members of a tribe or race or gender or any other made-up “community”;
-Trump makes some people completely crazy because he embodies everything they have been taught to hate but he’s much more successful than they are even at stuff they spent their whole stupid lives learning to do;
-Encourage people to read outside their comfort zones, not just to confirm their own biases;
-If your friend/spouse/so rejects you because you’re conservative then you’re probably better off without them.
My hot take is I’ve seen a lot of articles which purport to offering solutions or at least suggestions on how the American left and right can talk to each other, but almost always these are biased against the right and the authors don’t seem to notice.
I take a more pessimistic view: the fundamental assumptions guiding and animating Left and Right are so diametrically opposed, we are not longer speaking the same language. Therefore, in all honesty, there is much of a “conversation” to be had.
I will gladly admit to being wrong on this, but after many years of trying to have these “conversations” they rarely end well or end with any increase of enlightenment.
There is really no way of “settling political differences” right now in America. The ballot box used to, but the Left didn’t respect the ballot in 2016 and they have uniformly declared that socialist Stacey Abrams, a fat fraud here in Georgia, had the governorship stolen from her, despite losing by 60,000 votes. How to reason with these people? Answer: you can’t.
Some typos: we are *no longer* speaking the same language and there is *not* much of a conversation to be had. My apologies.
I take a more pessimistic view: the fundamental assumptions guiding and animating Left and Right are so diametrically opposed, we are not longer speaking the same language. Therefore, in all honesty, there is much of a “conversation” to be had.
Michael Towns: My impression too. Both sides, though the left far more than the right, are talking past each other.
The only way forward I can see, beyond settling it at the ballot box or with civil war, is to stop trying to convince each other and instead start trying to understand each other:
Oh, so when you say A, it’s because of your principles, B and C, plus your facts, D, E, and F. Have I got that straight?
Like that’s going to happen!
Michael Towns; huxley:
My last paragraph in the post is essentially in agreement with you that it’s a pretty glum situation.
I agree, huxley, that convincing someone to change his/her mind comes after understanding why a person thinks that way in the first place. Even the latter has become very difficult, because too many people get so angry (or start out so angry) that they will not listen to the other person trying to explain.
One thing I’ve learned in the past couple of years is that, anytime someone asks me, “How do you feel about Trump”, 99.9% of the time they are anti-Trump. Unfortunately, those like me that favor him and his accomplishments, decided long ago to not ask that question. In my opinion, and it might be a broad generalization, if you like Trump, it’s better to keep it to myself. Especially with my heavily Democrat family. Love them all more than anything but it’s easier. Cowardly, but easier.
It might be well to remember that we are coming out of a 60-year period of unusual cultural conformity and ideological hegemony, which started about 1940 and continued until about 1990 – 2000.
America used to be a land of incredible violence, hard to imagine today. And elections were always acrimonious.
What follows is from Mark Twain regarding the 1884 Presidential election:
“On election day we went to the polls and consummated our hellish design. At that time the voting was public. Any spectator could see how a man was voting–and straightway this crime was known to the whole community. This double crime–in the eyes of the community. To withhold a vote from Blaine was bad enough, but to add to that iniquity by actually voting for the Democratic candidate was criminal to a degree for which there was no adequate language discoverable in the dictionary.
From that day forth, for a good while to come, Twichell’s life was a good deal of a burden to him. To use a common expression, his congregation “soured” on him and he found small pleasure in the exercise of his clerical office–unless, perhaps, he got some healing for his hurts, now and then, through the privilege of burying some of those people of his. It would have been a benevolence to bury the whole of them, I think, and a profit to the community. But if that was Twichell’s feeling about it, he was too charitable in his nature and too kindly to expose it. He never said it to me, and I think that if he would have said it to anyone, I should have been the one.
Twichell had most seriously damaged himself with his congregation. He had a young family to support. It was a large family already, and it was growing. It was becoming a heavier and heavier burden every year–but his salary remained always the same. It became less and less competent to keep up with the domestic drain upon it, and if there had ever been any prospect of increasing this salary, that prospect was gone now. It was not much of a salary. It was four thousand dollars. He had not asked for more, and it had not occurred to the congregation to offer it. Therefore his vote for Cleveland was a distinct disaster to him. That exercise of his ostensible great American privilege of being free and independent in his political opinions and actions proved a heavy calamity. But the Rev. Francis Goodwin continued to be respected as before–that is, publicly; privately he was damned. But publicly he had suffered no harm. Perhaps it was because the public approval was not a necessity in his case. His father was worth seven millions, and was old. The Rev. Francis was in the line of promotion and would soon inherit.
As far as I was myself concerned, I did not need to worry. I did not draw my living from Hartford. It was quite sufficient for my needs. Hartford’s opinion of me could not affect it, and besides it had long been known among my friends that I had never voted a straight ticket, and was therefore so accustomed to crime that it was unlikely that disapproval of my conduct could reform me–and maybe I wasn’t worth the trouble, anyway.”
Brainwashing works. If enough people repeat a lie over and over again for enough time it will eventually become the truth. With the left owning the education system, the press and the popular media I see very little chance of them failing to come into power.
When they do come into power they will overreach and try such things as gun control/confiscation which will cause the non-coastal population to refuse to comply. Excuse my pessimism but I’m afraid that this will only be resolved by a new civil war.
I really, really, really hope I’m wrong, but I just can’t see any other possible resolution to the coming crisis. Please convince me that I’m wrong.
America used to be a land of incredible violence, hard to imagine today. And elections were always acrimonious.
The peak homicide rate during the early 20th c was reached around 1930 and was hardly any different than the peaks registered in the late 20th c, around about 1980 and 1990.
It might be well to remember that we are coming out of a 60-year period of unusual cultural conformity and ideological hegemony, which started about 1940 and continued until about 1990 – 2000.
We get it. You weren’t reading newspapers during the Reagan Administration.
What follows is from Mark Twain regarding the 1884 Presidential election:
NB, humor pieces are not read by most people with the same sense you read an inter-office memorandum. Nor are they intended to be read that way.
In time, the Left’s determined and ongoing attempts to force and compel the changes they insist must happen is going to lead to a terrible retribution.
There are now “summer camps” for 4th-8th graders, the ‘curriculum’ of which is in training to be antifa style SJWs… future Red Guards?
It’s going to come down to armed conflict because the Left won’t have it any other way. They really believe that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. Proven by the historical fact that collectivist governments have never voluntarily transfered power while still able to prevent it.
It’s never been about “the greater good”, it’s always been about using that slogan to gain absolute power.
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-great-awokening-conspiracy-theory/
convincing someone to change his/her mind comes after understanding why a person thinks that way in the first place.
I have five kids. Three are lefties. The oldest, a trial lawyer, is having disastrous family issues. The next, also a lawyer, told me in 2016 that she would NOT vote for Hillary, which I took as a smidgen of common sense. The middle one is pregnant.
We don’t talk about politics. I’m just sort of watching from afar,.
Trey,
Should the commissars ever come for you, don’t expect anyone in your heavily democrat family to fight to prevent it. They’ve embraced what leads to tyranny but their moral cowardice won’t allow them to face it. When reality forces them to face it they’ll refuse to take responsibility for their part in it.
When misplaced love prevents us from expressing truth, it’s an indication of a lack of wisdom, not cowardice.
Irv,
You might be persuaded otherwise but truth, reason and logic will not prove sufficient to the task.
Proven by the historical fact that collectivist governments have never voluntarily transferred power while still able to prevent it.
See Velvet Revolution…
@Art Deco: I don’t understand why you have the snark turned up so high but whatever.
The peak homicide rate during the early 20th c was reached around 1930
“Used to be” isn’t limited to 20th century, early or otherwise. The 18th and 19th centuries were in my thoughts, as my later reference to a 19th century election shows.
We get it. You weren’t reading newspapers during the Reagan Administration.
Which party controlled the House during the Reagan Administration and for how many years had that been true? 1955-1993 wasn’t it? Who was reading the nightly news during the Reagan Administration and what was their party loyalty? I was reading the newspapers then, and the big ones then had the same ideological slant they have now, but they didn’t have blogs or talk radio or Drudge as competitors.
NB, humor pieces are not read by most people with the same sense you read an inter-office memorandum. Nor are they intended to be read that way.
That wasn’t a “humor piece” and wasn’t intended to be. Mark Twain wasn’t writing humor 100% of the time, and if he has jokes in his narrative that doesn’t make it a “humor piece”.
From Twain’s biography, which wasn’t a humor piece, this description of the 1884 election is substantially the same as what I previously posted:
Most of those assembled declared that when a party’s representatives chose a man one must stand by him. They might choose unwisely, but the party support must be maintained. Clemens said:
“No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.”
There was a good deal of talk back and forth, and, in the end, most of those there present remained loyal to Blaine. General Hawley and his paper stood by Blaine. Warner withdrew from his editorship of the Courant and remained neutral. Twichell stood with Clemens and came near losing his pulpit by it. Open letters were published in the newspapers about him. It was a campaign when politics divided neighbors, families, and congregations. If we except the Civil War period, there never had been a more rancorous political warfare than that waged between the parties of James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland in 1884.
That Howells remained true to Blaine was a grief to Clemens. He had gone to the farm with Howells on his political conscience and had written fervent and imploring letters on the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uig3HWNMg5I
A different view on the Red vs Blue, Cabal vs Alliance *Trum*. It’s almost like a Star Wars script.
There are now “summer camps” for 4th-8th graders, the ‘curriculum’ of which is in training to be antifa style SJWs… future Red Guards?
A couple of years ago, I remember telling people here we needed to get the high school kids and down below, in the schools, or else.
People seemed to think this wasn’t necessary or that it would be too difficult because of the Leftist alliance. Well, use it or lose it.
Now we counter them with Flat Earth Theory, which is doing better than the conservative old foggies and parents who funded public education and universities.
Geoffrey Britain on June 12, 2019 at 5:45 pm said:
In time, the Left’s determined and ongoing attempts to force and compel the changes they insist must happen is going to lead to a terrible retribution.
Self fulfilled prophecies work and exist. The more you humans repeat this, the more likely it will happen, if only because the Red become the Blue. You become the enemy you keep fighting and obsessing over.
Black turns to white. But white can also turn to black. Light to darkness. Darkness to light. Evil to good. And good back to evil.
Michael Towns: My impression too. Both sides, though the left far more than the right, are talking past each other.
The only way forward I can see, beyond settling it at the ballot box or with civil war, is to stop trying to convince each other and instead start trying to understand each other:
Same thing happens here.
The more humans talk about something being real, the more power they give to manifesting the reality.
It is the knowledge of an art beyond your ken, currently, and mostly forgotten by now. Except the Deep State and the “Alliance” have preserved some of it.
It’s also in quantum physics.
Yes, it is an unbridgeable chasm dividing incompatible and antithetical life-ways and choices; the most profound, or perhaps far reaching and deep, having to do with just what legitimate limits there are to claims placed against your life energies and time by others so as to soften their fates, or to compensate them for their deficits. After all, that is the core notion of progressive fairness. God, or nature, did not make men equal, therefore the progressive will lift up and hew down in the name of “love”. Because, as we have been informed, mere tolerance (and property rights) and indifferent treatment before the bar, are just not enough any more, thank you little lord Obama.
So, Pajama Boy, like any run-of-the-mill soy swilling Marxist Borg-thing, automatically assumes that there are no limits, and that you exist as a resource for his convenience.
Progressives also imagine, when they even bother to try to think rather than feel, that they can leap from the premise that “everybody needs somebody sometime”, to the cosmically distant conclusion that you need (or morally owe) them particularly and/or distributively for ever more, amen. As if human beings were a network of fungible elements in a super-organism which constituted the real existential locus; of which they were the somehow anointed mouthpieces.
Hell, you can even see some of them proudly refer to themselves in their giddier moments of rhetorical climax, as members of a “swarm”.
Does their well-known penchant for subjective fantasizing contradict their loony interchangeable-part moral monism? Yes. But when did they ever let a contradiction bother them?
They just yammer complacently on about non-discretionary obligations (as that Lerner person did recently) or the like, as if the terms were self-evidently established moral imperatives which expand to cover whatever case they wished to drape it over.
The progressive answer then, is that there are no limits, and nothing is off limits.
How can you reason with, or compromise with, that?
Sadly, I’m not hopeful either.
Just yesterday, we had a meeting with a small select group of employees (I think we were all chosen because we are new to the company) and one of the managers (third down from the CEO). This is an international company which employs tens of thousands worldwide. So, that we were chosen was something of an honor; even though I understand that this manager does this quarterly to engage employees to get a feel for how things are. Sounds all fair and well – and a great idea!
This manager started by stating that we were free to ask any questions and we would discuss anything – except politics this manager joked! While we all laughed at the joke about not discussing politics I secretly smiled because I thought it was a wise decision.
But then, wow! this manager launched into a 5-minute barrage about everything wrong with Trump and what an idiot he is! Seriously, this manager really said that “Trump thinks countries pay tariffs and not consumers because he thinks Mexico will pay the tariffs and look avocadoes have already gone up in price! He just doesn’t get it.”
My heart sank; this was suppose to be a business meeting about the company, meet and greet one of the top managers and this was how the meeting started. And it wasn’t just another employee going off on a political rank – it was one of the top managers.
Of course, I kept my mouth shut because I don’t want to lose my job or even just be an outcast. But, I wonder how someone so high up in management just can’t see the damage done to employee moral by saying things so stupid.
BTW, I’d feel the same if it was about Obama (whom I detest) and not Trump; such political bashing doesn’t belong in a situation where one side is essentially a captive audience.
I now hate my job.
I decided to take DNW’s word that I am actually a Buddhist. Over the weekend I visited the ABQ Zen Center and attended their monthly introduction for newbies.
As it happened, the Center was having a community potluck later that evening. I cooked a chicken dish and came on down. It was nice. Buddhists on Buddhist turf are low-key and blandly friendly. That’s OK.
I only mention it because of the dog that didn’t bark. I am sure most of the Zen folks I met were progressive to the bone but, get this, not one of them made a virtual signaling put-down of conservatives, which I found typical of liberal Christian and New Age groups in the Bay Area. As well as American Buddhists I have dealt with online.
There is an old French saying: “This dog is vicious, If attacked it will fight back.” Apparently, President Trump has not learned the lesson that restrained his Republican predecessors, namely, that when Democrats and their allies in the press vilify you, you must take it on the chin and not respond. In the past 2-1/2 years Trump has been called a traitor, a puppet of Putin, a Russian agent, a homophobe, an anti-Semite, a dictator, a misogynist , an idiot, a clown, etc. Numerous celebrities have called for his death and have ridiculed his wife. Later-night comics constantly heap scorn on him. And now, Trump has dared to use the word “disaster” in reference to the sainted Nancy Pelosi. How dare he? This cannot stand.
It’s highly amusing when I find out people suffer from TDS via social media. I tend to look at them a little differently.
I have been relatively successful in discussing politics. Plus it’s become fun. I used to stay silent and not say anything. In 2016 I just couldn’t sit still as people casually said the most awful things about Trump and just expected that everyone agreed with them. After a lot of thought this is how I decided to handle it. At the first nasty comment I smile really bigly and say, “I LOVE Trump.” Often I have to repeat myself because of the utter disbelief. It’s an emotional response that matches the emotion of the negative comment and it slows people down. However folks respond, I say, “Scott Adams says we’re watching 2 movies at the same time on the same screen.” Whatever argument is made I use as proof that we really are watching 2 different movies as I give my view. The discussion becomes fun (for me) and seems to really put people off balance. And it makes them think. They are so sure that their view is 100% correct at the same time that popular culture has made them very receptive to the idea of multiple universes and alternate realities. I always end with a plug for Scott’s podcast. I don’t agree with a lot of his views but he is up beat about the state of the world and antiTrumpers could use some of his optimism.
Given what happened in 2016, I suspect 2020 will be another year of primary/election insanity. Where people here will refuse to read the comments, go to Breitbart to chill and hang with the in crowd, and all manner of other emotional insanities.
I notice just by reading their emotional field and words here, that those peeps that left for Breitbart so many years ago because they just couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance here, have regained their sanity more or less. Well, they will lose it again, soon enough.
It’s an emotional response that matches the emotion of the negative comment and it slows people down.
That’s an interesting method, to fight darkness with light. Sometimes intensely evil and negative emotions can only be countered with the direct opposite polarity.
You might want to read A Course in Miracles.
The coarsening of the culture and social media doesn’t help but I think the main problem is the same as in most bad marriages, a lack of respect and a surplus of contempt. And it’s less a Left-Right thing and more a top down thing.
Mike
Tangential to this discussion, but germane.
I just finished watching Paddy Chayefsky’s Network(1975). I hadn’t seen it since its original release and was amazed at how relevant and prophetic it remains forty-four years later.
Written as an intense criticism of the television news industry at that time, almost nothing seems to have changed.
1) The early Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is an ancestral version of Trump replete with populistic appeal (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”).
2) The media’s primary concern was monetizing Beale as they now monetize Trump through unrelenting coverage and carefully crafted headlines and “news” stories.
3) The television execs sit in secret deciding how to deal with Beale when he eventually turns against them (think Clapper, Comey, Brennan and company).
4) The great Jeremiad of CEO Jensen (Ned Beatty) is the global deep state demanding fealty and penance (“There is only one holistic system of systems . . . . And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!).
I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it recently. Let me know if you agree.
“And I don’t see the problem as a mere lack of civility, although there certainly is a dearth of civility. I see it as a huge divide involving very basic political assumptions that are quite fundamental, and I see the lack of civility as a byproduct of that, exacerbated by the hypocritical bias of the press, the general coarsening of our culture, and the amplification caused by social media,” – Neo
Neither French nor Ahmari, but somewhere in between?
T – absolutely right about Network. One of my all-time favorite movies on its own terms but at the time of the 2016 election I saw the same things you saw – Trump as Howard Beale, and Beatty’s speech as the global deep state. One of the most brilliant screenplays ever, by Paddy Chayefsky who ironically also wrote the deeply sentimental and affecting Marty. It is chock full of references to then-current events and should have become rapidly dated but instead is still chillingly relevant decades later.
“…stolen…”
Well, um, to be fair to Ms. Abrams (who, in the interests of propriety, if not mercy, should really be described as “a generously proportioned con artiste”), the election WAS stolen from her…by all those “racists” who insisted on passing—and enforcing—voter registration laws that prevented her from stealing it in the first place. (Wouldn’t you be angry?)
Similarly, Ms. Clinton should have been POTUS except that she was so self-confidant about winning—what was rightfully hers—that she didn’t, poor woman, bother to cheat as much as she could have. It simply wasn’t necessary…. (Oops)
In both cases, oh, the agony: so close, so close….
(Or maybe Clinton just didn’t have the strength after having spent all her energy shafting Bernie Sanders at the DNC…. Well, one might sympathize….)
AesopFan—You talk of a fundamental divide, and I believe that you are correct.
The fork in the road occurs at the crossroad named Human Nature.
Believe that humans are innately good and that it is just their circumstances that make them misbehave—do bad things, and you travel down one of the two forks—everything thereafter—your view of the world, your value system, your view of the purpose and role of government, and the solutions to those “circumstances” you propose—are all based on that fundamental assumption about human nature.
That road terminates at Socialism and dictatorship, in less and less Freedom—as you try (or claim to try)—in vain—to arrange “circumstances” to create a perfected man.
Believe that human beings are fallible, and tend to get into trouble is left to their own devices—are what they are and are not “perfectible”—and you travel down the other fork—and everything thereafter—your view of the world, your value system, your view of the purpose and role of government, and the solutions to that “misbehavior” you propose—are all based on that fundamental understanding of human nature, how to take it into account, and to plan government and public policy around it.
That road leads to more Freedom and, among other destinations, to Capitalism.
Starting at that fundamental divide, each road diverges more and more from the other, getting further and further apart, until the people traveling each road can no longer even see or easily communicate with each other.
“My guess is that most of the people doing all the flaming of others don’t really want to give up the excitement and the venting of bile.” Neo
Anecdotally, we have a very limited presence on Facebook and one family member who became a leftist posts daily rants. He happens to be the only person any of us (our immediate family members, 3 kids and their spouses, all Trump supporters) know who actually speaks out in the very fashion he claims to abhor in our President. When this family member was a Republican (pre-3rd marriage to a non-practicing Jewish leftist with a large pension) we never heard one political diatribe of any sort. Sadly after a couple of years of his fog-horn shares/rants, he has taken that behavior socially. A recent family issue resulted in his poking several of us in the eye with snark…plain meanness. I believe he has gotten a kick out of his social media posts (the excitement Neo posits) and sadly it has resulted in debasing his character.
Not on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform, and very deliberately so.
The media’s primary concern was monetizing Beale as they now monetize Trump through unrelenting coverage and carefully crafted headlines and “news” stories.
Good insight. He is a creation of the media that left the safe space they thought they had him locked in. His real estate empire is based a lot on branding. However, Conrad Black’s book about him points out that he is also a competent builder of large projects. Black writes that he was suspicious at first but the project came in on time and on budget.
Starting at that fundamental divide, each road diverges more and more from the other, getting further and further apart, until the people traveling each road can no longer even see or easily communicate with each other.
Snow on Pine: Is this so? From what I can tell, it’s more that people become less interested in communication. It is more trouble to communicate with people outside one’s worldview, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
I’ve always taken an interest in people and worldviews different from myself and my own. Of course there is the risk one may be changed in the process and lose the pleasant feeling of superiority over one’s opponents or discover the defects of one’s own position.
I would say this is more a problem for the left these days. They now avoid debate and prefer instead to shout down or “deplatform” their opponents.
LOL Trust me. I have only your best interests at heart.
The one interesting thing about Zen Buddhism is the practice of quietness and non-thinking or not labeling; and what it might reveal about our being in the world as it is in itself, and without all our presuppositional baggage – well, so far as our perceptual apparatus and self-disciplines and inextricable status as an element of the “it itself”, allow.
I guess this is viewed by serious Buddhists as a mere technique on the way to something else, an insight maybe, which is much more “vast”
But … you know … who can take that Buddha mind stuff seriously. Look what a clown/fool/tool the Dalai Lama is. Some, “Buddha mind”.
Not on topic, but I couldn’t resist this list of words that describe things that there are not words for in English at https://getpocket.com/explore/item/38-wonderful-words-with-no-english-equivalent?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I herewith contribute another useful word I’ve recently discovered, the Japanese word “Tsundoku,” which means books you have bought (and fill your bookshelves with, pile up on coffee tables, or create stacks of on the floor) but haven’t yet read, see http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/tsundoku-should-enter-the-english-language.html
Sorry.
DNW –I, too, am really disappointed at the “Dalai.”
Met him once at a reception, looked into his eyes and and shook his hand, but I detected no particular “aura” of holiness surrounding a person who is supposedly a Bodhisattva, the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion) on Earth and, from outward appearances, a very happy person.
My disappointment stems from various statements that the Dalai has made over the years about the ideology and ultimate goals of Islam, and about the behavior of the Chinese towards Tibet.
DNW: Well, as I said before, I am not a Buddhist. I like meditation and I find Buddhists interesting. Buddhism is a great part of humanity’s spiritual heritage. However, I don’t care about enlightenment, whatever that might be. Much of what Buddhists say about oneness sounds like another rap to me. A nice rap, but … a rap.
As a long-time Leonard Cohen fan, I am also interested in Zen for understanding Cohen’s later work. Turns out, the ABQ Zen Center is of the Rinzai tradition and its senior monk studied under the same teacher as Cohen did, Joshu Sasaki Roshi.
As I understand it, ABQ Zen Center’s lineage is now up for grabs as they broke away from Sasaki’s group of schools after his sexual scandals were finally recognized. There has been a fair amount of that with the top Zen teachers in America and American Buddhists are taking it seriously.
Must be those private lesson breathing exercises, and posture adjustments they are administering.
Oh, wait … that’s Yoga, isn’t it.
I see and hear a lot of folks spewing hate that ironically have the “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in their yards. Their lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling.
Yes, exactly.
I’m not even sure that Tibetan Buddhism, whatever it is, is “real” Buddhism; as what little reading on Siddhartha’s project I have done, presented it as originally being basically a-thiestic, or non-theistic (as Westerners would understand theism) in its ostensibly “original” insight or achievement.
By the way, the word list was great.
As charles mentioned above the worst TDS occurs at work or work related functions. A couple of months ago I attended a work related social event with about 30 or 40 people from a friends work of whom I only knew a couple. Was talking in a small group including her supervisor when this guy out of nowhere went on a five minute anti-Trump rant. It was the same old crap we’ve all heard a thousand times but since this was a person important to her job I just had to stand there and take it until I could drift away. God I hate that kind of thing.
Been a few others over the last few years like the client who somehow morphed a question about how the Seahawks were going to do into a Trump rant which I had to just sit there and take.
NEVER had that happen in the Obama years and believe me I knew a few people who hated him. The whole thing is so depressing sometimes.
Nowadays I often express that due to a few mischievous Muslims’ acts we should not consider all Muslims as something bad. That is very unfair.
–Dalai Lama (2006)
That finished my respect for the Dalai Lama as an honest or careful thinker.
Which is not to say all Muslims are bad, but there is something horrific about a religion in which Bin Laden can issue a fatwa to his co-religionists:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies–civilians and military–is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…
…then go kill thousands of Americans with the 9/11 attacks and not be absolutely reviled by the vast majority of Muslims. Indeed, a Pew poll in 2005 measured 2-60% of those in Muslim countries said they had “Confidence in Bin Laden as a World Leader.”
The Dalai Lama’s remark about a “few mischievous Muslims” betrays a massive ignorance or a peculiar morality.
I’ll go for “peculiar morality”.
After all, if you’ve been around for umpteen different lifetimes, you probably DO see things a bit differently….
Disclaimer: I have a great respect for the Dalai Lama. Maybe it’s due to what I perceive to be his heroism vis a vis the PRC, given the almost impossible position he’s been placed in. Maybe because “Kim” is one of my favorite novels. Maybe because in spite of the aforementioned off-kilter remark about “mischievous Muslims”, it is clear that he makes an effort to see the good in all things. On the other hand he does not shy away from giving criticism. One’s mileage may vary, of course….
DNW—Tibetan Buddhism is an interesting amalgam.
The original native religion of Tibet was animism and shamanism.
Those who dwelt in the high mountains and were confronted with frequent death, killer snows, fierce, killer winds and their moans and screeches, and bone-chilling cold, worshiped the spirits they saw in these overwhelming natural forces, and, it appears, in certain animal totems.
Then, along came Buddhist missionaries from India, who apparently saw that they couldn’t eliminate the native religion, so that the best way to get Buddhism accepted was to overlay it on the existing animistic beliefs and shamanic practices, remnants of which are still to be found to this day in some Tibetan Buddhist images and practices.
“Tsundoku,” — Snow
Gotta admit you have me on that one.
On my 60th birthday, I set a goal of reading 50 books a year.
By the time I’m 80, I will still have unread books on the shelves, if I don’t acquire any more.
Excuse me while I laugh at myself.
Tom Murin on June 13, 2019 at 12:48 pm said:
I see and hear a lot of folks spewing hate that ironically have the “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in their yards. Their lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling.
* * *
What they feel for the icky right is not “hate” in their view.
It is what we used to call “righteous indignation” and is allowed.
Anything anyone on the right does or says is hateful by definition.
Cue Humpty Dumpty and George Orwell.
Snow on Pine….”In essence, what is happening is something akin to a Mutiny, as those on the Left seek to shoulder their way into the cockpit, wrest control over the Ship of State’s steering wheel, and steer the Ship in an entirely new direction, far out of sight of the safe harbor from which our Ship of State sailed some two and a half centuries ago, leaving their former officers, crew, and us passengers with little or no say over the new change of course.
Your comment reminds me, scarily, of a passage in the memoirs of Sebastian Haffner, who grew up between the wars in Germany. In the spring of 1933, he attended Berlin’s Carnival–an event at which one would find a girlfriend or boyfriend for the night and exchange phone numbers in the morning…”By then you usually know whether it is the start of something that you would like to take further, or whether you have just earned yourself a hangover.” He had a hard time getting into the Carnival mood, however:
“All at once I had a strange, dizzy feeling. I felt as though I was inescapably imprisoned with all these young people in a giant ship that was rolling and pitching. We were dancing on its lowest, narrowest deck, while on the bridge it was being decided to flood that deck and drown every last one of us.”
Charles….”But then, wow! this manager launched into a 5-minute barrage about everything wrong with Trump and what an idiot he is! Seriously, this manager really said that “Trump thinks countries pay tariffs and not consumers because he thinks Mexico will pay the tariffs and look avocadoes have already gone up in price! He just doesn’t get it.”
Just a few days ago, I was talking with the CEO of a company that manufactures a pretty basic but high-volume product in the US…main competition is Chinese imports. He said the intelligence he is getting is that the Chinese providers will swallow about half of the 25% tariff being added to this product…they dare not pass it all on for fear of losing too much market share.
David Foster:
That Haffner book is a masterpiece.
I’m amazed that more people haven’t read it. I think it was your essays that introduced me to it, and I think it’s one of the best things ever written about Nazi Germany.
huxley–The Rinzai Zen sect is a very non-nonsense, a tough one, and during mediation practice proctors smack meditators on their shoulders with a stick, the Keisaku or ”warning stick,” to bring them back to center, if their attention starts to wander or they start to fall asleep—in the beginning stages of practice quite a common occurrence.
In my one experience, the sound of the Keisaku hitting your shoulder sounds a lot worse than it’s bite.
Since the idea of Zen is to discard, to go beyond your discriminating mind, to see Reality directly, and in an unmediated way, having become “enlightened,” you could persuade yourself that, as an “enlightened” being, you are now beyond conventional morality, and no longer constrained by it, so can behave in whatever way you want to.
Thus, it seems, the various sex scandals involving the leaders in some Zen communities.
“..during “meditation”… Not during “mediation.”
Snow on Pine: I’m aware of Rinzai. I asked the ABQ Zen Center people if they used sticks. They said no. I asked about koans and they don’t do that either, though there is a koan teacher who drops in occasionally to do koan work with the more advanced students.
A number of Eastern teachers, not just Buddhist, use the “beyond conventional morality” dodge and many students buy it or at least ignore the transgressions.
There is a marvelous book by a bright, disillusioned seeker titled “Stripping the Gurus” which has great inside dope on this:
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/ebook/download.html
Disclaimer: I have a great respect for the Dalai Lama. Maybe it’s due to what I perceive to be his heroism vis a vis the PRC, given the almost impossible position he’s been placed in. Maybe because “Kim” is one of my favorite novels. Maybe because in spite of the aforementioned off-kilter remark about “mischievous Muslims”, it is clear that he makes an effort to see the good in all things. On the other hand he does not shy away from giving criticism. One’s mileage may vary, of course…
Barry Meislin: I do admire the Dalai Lama for his steadfastness against the PRC and his endeavor to see good in all things. I criticize him as a thinker.
Nonetheless, with his “mischeivous Muslims” remark I would say he is not seeing the good in the millions of Muslim victims who are understandably unhappy with Islam, and diminishing their concerns to “unfair.” Is that fair?
Furthermore, there is a strong element of political posturing here. Would the Dalai Lama similarly defend the Ku Klux Klan for being reviled just because of a few “kooky Ku Klux Klansmen” lynching blacks? I doubt it.
But basically I think the Dalai Lama, as admirable as he is, lives in a serious bubble. My bet is he doesn’t understand how ignorant he was when he spoke of “mischeivous Muslims.”
A funny anecdote, though I’ve forgotten the source. The Dalai Lama was taking questions from some Westerners and a woman started telling him about how much she disliked herself and how bad she felt. The Dalai Lama couldn’t understand what she was saying at all.
Some thought, how marvelous, how enlightened of the Dalai Lama. Another person, wiser IMO, said, of course. People have been treating the Dalai Lama as practically the Son of God since he was eight years-old. What is he going to know about self-loathing?
I see and hear a lot of folks spewing hate that ironically have the “Hate Has No Home Here” sign in their yards. Their lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling.
Well, in their mind,
conservative speech = hate
liberal hate = speech
By the miracle of Amazon my copy of “Matters of Vital Interest: A Forty Year-Old Friendship with Leonard Cohen” by Eric Lerner arrived today. Lerner had been in the Zen trenches with Cohen while studying under Sasaki Roshi. I got the book because I’d read it explained Cohen’s leaving Sasaki.
Cohen: I don’t think [Sasaki] gave a shit one way or another….It was always about him wanting to be the only cock in the barnyard….
He didn’t give a shit about anything anyone else did, as long as he could do what he wanted to do. He liked giving sanzen. He liked fondling girls. And he didn’t like anyone telling him what to do.
Lerner: Who does?
Cohen: My point exactly. No one does, but Roshi was the only guy I ever met who got away with it. He put together a scene where he could do exactly what he wanted to do because everyone wanted something from him. He was a total genius!
…It’s bullshit that Roshi was some kind of self-sacrificing holy man or whatever you want holy men to be. The rest of us pretend we don’t want what we really want, or that we’re acting for some greater good. Roshi never needed to soothe his conscience because he doesn’t have one.