Tu quoque

Not all of us go goo-goo over the Dalai Lama.  Not all of us aren't racists.  Nor do we really ascribe all that much political import (why, I mean, Buddhism) to the Dalai Lama's religious critics.

Nor, while I'm at it, do all of us equate being adept at increasing generosity, wisdom, and compassion with knowledge of religious texts.

Hey, Mr. Malik.  A lot of us have already said what you did. Pay attention.

Authenticity and Buddhism

Another article was recently published in the NY Times op-ed section on line that deserves an appropriate response, at least from a Zen Buddhist/existentialist perspective. This article is entitled "The Gospel According to Me," by two guys, on of which is a professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and the other is a psychoanalyst.   That should kind of tell you the direction they're going in ...but  let me put some stuff in here to give some context:

The booming self-help industry, not to mention the cash cow of New Age spirituality, has one message: be authentic! Charming as American optimism may be, its 21st-century incarnation as the search for authenticity deserves pause. The power of this new version of the American dream can be felt through the stridency of its imperatives: Live fully! Realize yourself! Be connected! Achieve well-being! 

Despite the frequent claim that we are living in a secular age defined by the death of God, many citizens in rich Western democracies have merely switched one notion of God for another — abandoning their singular, omnipotent (Christian or Judaic or whatever) deity reigning over all humankind and replacing it with a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness. The latter does not make the exorbitant moral demands of traditional religions, which impose bad conscience, guilt, sin, sexual inhibition and the rest. 

Unlike the conversions that transfigure the born-again’s experience of the world in a lightning strike, this one occurred in stages: a postwar existentialist philosophy of personal liberation and “becoming who you are” fed into a 1960s counterculture that mutated into the most selfish conformism, disguising acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion. Traditional forms of morality that required extensive social cooperation in relation to a hard reality defined by scarcity have largely collapsed and been replaced with this New Age therapeutic culture of well-being that does not require obedience or even faith — and certainly not feelings of guilt. Guilt must be shed; alienation, both of body and mind, must be eliminated, most notably through yoga practice after a long day of mind-numbing work. 

Whereas the American dream used to be tied to external reality — say, America as the place where one can openly practice any religion, America as a safe haven from political oppression or America as the land of opportunity where one need not struggle as hard as one’s parents — now, the dream is one of pure psychological transformation. 

This is the phenomenon that one might call, with an appreciative nod to Nietzsche, passive nihilism. Authenticity is its dominant contemporary expression. In a seemingly meaningless, inauthentic world awash in nonstop media reports of war, violence and inequality, we close our eyes and turn ourselves into islands. We may even say a little prayer to an obscure but benign Eastern goddess and feel some weak spiritual energy connecting everything as we listen to some tastefully selected ambient music. Authenticity, needing no reference to anything outside itself, is an evacuation of history. The power of now.

This seems to be written by two guys, two intellectuals, who are so detached from themselves that they don't even realize they are writing about themselves here! (Like much of this type of moral scold literature, it's written in the first person plural, but of course isn't meant to be understood to apply to the authors themselves.)  But yes, it applies obviously to them. I mean, they decry a drive towards authenticity as it leads to a breakdown of the "classical distinction between work and nonwork." Do they expect their readers to put in effort into trying to understand them,  with the hopes of profiting from their efforts? 

But that's not why I'm writing this; I'm not really writing this because these guys don't realize that this stuff applies to them. 

To the guys who wrote the article: I try to practice mindfulness and yes, to be authentic at work not because I expect to succeed as a result of that practice, but because the alternative tends to create greater despair, suffering, and intractability.  I may or may not succeed in what I do; "success" per se is not the issue, any more than mindful practice to help me deal with idiotically created traffic light patterns (or lack thereof) won't do anything to reset the traffic light patterns to give everyone all green lights.

So the rest of their argument to the extent it's coherent, falls apart from there. 

And it's not about a search for authenticity or "becoming who you are," it's about understanding  (悟り) who/what/X is authentically (or, less deeply, seeing one's True Nature)  and then appropriately acting and responding.

There are other critiques that can be made of this article, in particular, that it is absurdly indifferent to millions of underemployed Americans, it's absurdly indifferent to what are global trends in this regard, spanning the globe with the exception of Africa and some of the Islamic regions. 

It's really why media such as the Times seems to be falling on hard times.  Once this stuff could be done credibly; nowadays any ol' blogger who's read a smattering of Buddhist literature can see through this type of stuff.

Let me close with this: if you're not acting according to your conscience, acting authentically what then? You don't evade responsibility, that's for sure. People figured that out in the West kinda sorta after World War II.  You can't use the Nuremberg defense against acting according to your conscience, i.e., acting authentically.

Re-thinking our positions

(In honor of the SOPA blackout, this blog post won't contain any hyperlinks. While I'm confident what  I put here will stand on its own merits without hyperlinking, I think hyperlinking really does enhance the internet's "pinball effect," to use a term I encountered in one of James Burke's books. On the other hand,  I could, of course be telling you any ol' kind of crap, and you'd just have to take my word just as right wing extremists  take Ron Paul's word that he authored every word of his Survival Report because it said so at the time,  and everyone should just wink and nod about that stuff when Ron Paul's trying to get elected president.  Or something like that. Do your homework.  If you want to know what SOPA and PIPA  is - besides the latter being a naughty word in Greek -then look up SOPA & PIPA on the Google and  also please vent on the Facebook page of "Remove Jaime Herrera Beutler,"  or on her own Facebook page because the latter Congressperson is falling way behind in her job performance.  And that's it for today's PSA.)

I recently finally decided to try out Pandora radio's "comedians" feature, possibly as a result of seeing a recent PBS episode of "Make 'em Laugh."  I have been listening, in particular, to Lenny Bruce (described, delicately, by Pandora's "artist info" as having a "Northeastern" sensibility or such.)  I think Mr. Bruce would have demurred: He was a Jew, I think he would have pointed out more accurately.

Mr. Bruce is widely respected by today's comedians, because he was such an artist with his voice; his style was heavily influenced by jazz.  That much you can get from the old Dustin Hoffman movie "Lenny," and from that movie you also get he died of a heroin overdose and that he was hounded by the government for saying naughty words.  The last bit wasn't quite true. He was hounded by the government because he was such an acute critic of their authoritarianism.  One bit left out of the movie was a bit where Bruce is doing a dead-on caricature of a Southern/Southwestern used car salesman, who was selling a WWII era German car that was only used "to drive to the furnace."

You can't say that on TV today.

I bring up this incident - my exposure to Lenny Bruce via Pandora, that is - because it is re-thinking my view of Lenny Bruce, most of whose recorded material I still probably haven't heard, and because it will (eventually) get to a point about Buddhism and everyday life. My "original opinions" about Bruce were largely formed by the aforementioned movie and a Simon and Garfunkel song ("A Simple Desultory Philippic, or How I was Robert McNamara'd into Submission") which contained the line "I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce" sung in sarcasm. My original opinions were formed this way because throught the 60s and early 70s Mr. Bruce's material was effectively blacklisted from mass media, except for whatever LPs were in print at the time.

Simon should repent of that song.  History has shown that he couldn't hold a candle to Bob Dylan, despite Mr. Simon's own considerable talents. 

Lenny Bruce, despite his personal failings, was a craftsman with his voice, and influenced the following generations of comics.  If you go to Sarah Silverman's Youtube website, there's a video of her giving a "confession" which is both hilarious and G-rated. If you think her thing is easy to do, try it; it's not.

Barbara on her Buddhism blog mentioned the fact that the brain "source codes" its information when it stores it, to bring up the fact that we should constantly question what we experience (and memory is an experience).  I thought of this when I was hearing Lenny Bruce and the used car salesman bit. It's amazing how our preconceiving notions and biases seep into everything we do and think and experience.

Paul Simon probably won't read this blog, but it's interesting how I used to have a higher opinion of him than I do now, and for "the other two Jewish folksingers of the era," namely Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, well, the latter two have eclipsed him.

History and perception are funny that way.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself..." and Blogisattva Awards

"-And you are the easiest person to fool," wrote Richard Feynman in "Cargo Cult Science," which I had mentioned earlier, here.  David Brooks, who normally writes political columns that are risible for their lack of depth and disingenuous (his Bobos in Paradise bit has been widely debunked) ,  reports evidence in support of Feynman's maxim.

Classic research has suggested that the more people doubt their own beliefs the more, paradoxically, they are inclined to proselytize in favor of them. David Gal and Derek Rucker published a study in Psychological Science in which they presented some research subjects with evidence that undermined their core convictions. The subjects who were forced to confront the counterevidence went on to more forcefully advocate their original beliefs, thus confirming the earlier findings.  

This explains many things.  Here's Gal and Drucker's own words...

A seminal case study by Festinger found, paradoxically, that evidence that disconfirmed religious beliefs increased individuals’ tendency to proselytize to others. Although this finding is renowned, surprisingly, it has never been subjected to experimental scrutiny and is open to multiple interpretations. We examined a general form of the question first posed by Festinger, namely, how does shaken confidence influence advocacy? Across three experiments, people whose confidence in closely held beliefs was undermined engaged in more advocacy of their beliefs (as measured by both advocacy effort and intention to advocate) than did people whose confidence was not undermined. The effect was attenuated when individuals affirmed their beliefs, and was moderated by both importance of the belief and open-mindedness of a message recipient. These findings not only have implications for the results of Festinger’s seminal study, but also offer new insights into people’s motives for advocating their beliefs. 

 I am very seriously thinking of plunking down $35.00 just to buy this article.  It's interesting that the researchers were talking about religious beliefs here specifically.  I don't know - I haven't read the article - if this falls into the class of "cargo cult science" articles of which Feyman spoke, but I believe he was speaking largely of clinical psychology, not the behavioral work whose importance has increased after Feyman's death.

What I do know is this: I could get this way if I am not mindful of the tendency for this to happen. In a certain sense, we should not trust our beliefs and opinions, but also, we can and should trust that we can question and reevaluate our beliefs and opinions.   The position on questioning beliefs and opinions of course, is a belief and an opinion, but is often supported by the evidence of experience: if one tests a belief or opinion, whether the test confirms or denies the belief or opinion, it confirms the idea that we can and should trust our beliefs and opinions; it seems difficult to falsify except if you life in a Tale of Despereaux  kind of existence, where people want to sanction you for going out of the box and questioning.  For whatever reason, that kind of coercion didn't take with me.  Maybe it had to do with my ancestors and why they left Poland.  I come from a long line of feisty folk.

I see that the Blogisattva Awards finalists are out. I truly congratulate all of them for being recognized by their peers in the Buddhist Blogosphere.  While in the past I had been a finalist in one or two categories, I'm very happy, actually not to be a finalist this year.  It's good to see works from other bloggers, for one thing.  For another thing,  I haven't participated much in that kind of thing.  Also in the back of my mind is I'm thinking of actually meeting some of these folks at the Buddhist Geeks Conference.  I think I could probably provide a perspective they might not have. 

Still, a part of me  - a part I have to question - says, deep down, "How come they didn't recognize me???"   Well, the reason for that, aside form the relatively minor role circumstance plays, is that I simply didn't write the posts that did get recognized.  So what?   I hadn't written the posts to get recognized in the first place; rather, I think - after about 5 years - I'm just starting to get what it means for "me"  to do this Buddhist blogging thing.   And it's to try to promote wisdom, generosity, and compassion in blogging in a way that elicits in the reader's mind a  vast emptiness and no knowing.  And to record how practice infuses my life. And finally, or perhaps as a result of the last bit, how to find practice in the everyday. And in particular, how science and Buddhism really  are reconciled, from an equally rigorous scientific viewpoint and Buddhist viewpoint.    That's the perspective I could probably provide to others, I hope.

And dammit, that's hard; it's a skill!

And I  fail at those kinds of things, and so it's obviously ridiculous of me that other bloggers should hold other bloggers to a standard based on what "I" think is good blogging; it's laughable for me to have that thought.  And I do and I laugh.

 "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool."

Two op-ed pieces worth a comment from NY Times

1. Sean Kelly at the NY Times, in my observation, seems to be missing the mark:

There may be parts of the culture where this destabilizing force [ of "the death of god"]  is not felt.  The Times’s David Brooks argued recently for example, in a column discussing Jonathan Franzen’s novel “Freedom,” that Franzen’s depiction of America as a society of lost and fumbling souls tells us “more about America’s literary culture than about America itself.”  The suburban life full of “quiet desperation,” according to Brooks, is a literary trope that has taken on a life of its own.  It fails to recognize the happiness, and even fulfillment, that is found in the everyday engagements with religion, work, ethnic heritage, military service and any of the other pursuits in life that are “potentially lofty and ennobling”.
There is something right about Brooks’s observation, but he leaves the crucial question unasked.  Has Brooks’s happy, suburban life revealed a new kind of contentment, a happiness that is possible even after the death of God?  Or is the happy suburban world Brooks describes simply self-deceived in its happiness, failing to face up to the effects of the destabilizing force that Franzen and his literary compatriots feel? I won’t pretend to claim which of these options actually prevails in the suburbs today, but let me try at least to lay them out.

It is a pity folks like Kelly - who should know better - marginalize the Buddhist concept of sunyata here by posing  false dichotomy between indecisive, hopeless "nihilism" and commitment to pastimes that in themselves are void at their core.

2.  I can't imagine the mindset of Ross Douthat.  I just can't.