Much of what we look at, and then imagine sinister forces and people and figures are responsible for, is just human nature.

Ughh, I know - sad, isn't it? But really, it's liberating. Baby rape, wife beating, war, murder, rape, addiction, torture fetish, raw desire, betrayal, will-to-power, the political realism of social Darwinism, the emptiness and failure of Theism - all these things are born from the human mind; from your mind. More often than not, these and other horrors arise from the instinctual habits of human animals, rather than from an evil conspiracy.

Stop looking for scapegoats and face the reality of your part in the shadow-side of humanity. Then, maybe, we can do something for those psychopaths who refuse to develop the healthy, progressive, and vital evolutionary potentials of humanity.

Yours in hopeless optimism,

-tKl

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewt ... sc&start=0 (http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=15079&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0)

chlamor wrote:
"Many of the negative trends we see, such as avarice being prevalent, were the result of massive cultural conditioning, rather than of some natural, evolutionary force beyond our control."

tkl responds:
"No one ever said it was beyond our control.

If avarice is a result of cultural conditioning, as you hold, than why did a certain Siddhartha of the Shakya clan in India identify Avarice as one of the three "pyschospirtual" poisons that are the causes of all suffering?

Prince Siddhartha renounced his family's wealth and power to build one of the largest self-help empires to ever exist. It's called Buddhism and it has been around since some 500 years before the birth of Christ."


chlamor wrote:
"What you are espousing is essentially the narrative of industrial society;"

tkl responds:
"Where did industrial society come from, Mars?"



chlamor wrote:
"Every society tends to place itself at the center of the universe and to view other cultures through its own colored lenses."

tkl responds:
And so do individuals place themselves at the center of the universe. It seems to be a consequence of having subjective awareness.

And individuals also tend to project their beliefs about reality onto everything they encounter. Some call these beliefs "cognitive filters."



chlamor wrote:
"No wonder so many people turn aside any of the larger questions about institutional injustices and power relations and simply foist all the blame, and/or credit, upon the individual. It's more of the same bullshit that says, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" conveniently ignoring that someone took the straps and makes you pay rent for the boots."


tkl responds:
"Well, no doubt people are selfish and seek to ignore the suffering of others. However, any good "self-help" will bring about in individual consciousness empathy leading to compassion leading to "other-helping" behavior. And not out of guilt motivations, either.

You see, if we be individual cells in the mass flesh of humanity on this planet, then it follows that healthy behavior will be analogous to the healthy activity of the cells composing any single organism.

I stand by my position: humanity is sick. Environmental destruction, unjust power relations, the unhealthy circulation and flow of material resources, etc, are not the causes of our unhappiness, but symptoms of a deeper disorder.

It's the poisons in the mindstream, as the Sage of the Shakya clan pointed out a while ago:"

Quote:
The three main disturbing emotions are ignorance, attachment [greed, avarice] and aversion [hate, anger].

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that there are three reasons for believing that the destructive emotions can be eliminated from our minds:

All the destructive emotions and mental states are essentially distorted, whereas the antidotes, such as love, compassion and insight, are undistorted and based on how things really are.

The antidotes have the quality of being strengthened through training and practice.

The essential nature of the mind is pure and undefiled by the destructive emotions.

http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?titl ... g_emotions (http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Disturbing_emotions)

You see, if we be individual cells in the mass flesh of humanity on this planet, then it follows that healthy behavior will be analogous to the healthy activity of the cells composing any single organism.

I stand by my position: humanity is sick. Environmental destruction, unjust power relations, the unhealthy circulation and flow of material resources, etc, are not the causes of our unhappiness, but symptoms of a deeper disorder.

It's the poisons in the mindstream, as the Sage of the Shakya clan pointed out a while ago:"

Quote:
The three main disturbing emotions are ignorance, attachment [greed, avarice] and aversion [hate, anger].

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that there are three reasons for believing that the destructive emotions can be eliminated from our minds:

All the destructive emotions and mental states are essentially distorted, whereas the antidotes, such as love, compassion and insight, are undistorted and based on how things really are.

The antidotes have the quality of being strengthened through training and practice.

The essential nature of the mind is pure and undefiled by the destructive emotions.



His holiness, the Llama seems to have picked up some Protestant shit on one of his spiritual journeys. It ain't slavery which creates the slave and the slavemaster but the mental state of both of them which creates slavery. So, if they can achieve purity of thought and deed, does that mean that they arrive at pure slavery... or does it mean that they don't have slavery any more even though they do? And what if only one of them achieves that purity... does the slavemaster who liberates himself also liberate his slaves, pending their own self-realization? What about the other way around? Is the slave who liberates himself from destructive emotion, no longer a slave, except for the whips and chains part? But then... if there is a co-dependency, then it really isn't in their minds, is it? But what aspect of human existence isn't a co-depenency?

Jesus, I hate these Sunday mornings with all these metaphysical questions...
.

You see, if we be individual cells in the mass flesh of humanity on this planet, then it follows that healthy behavior will be analogous to the healthy activity of the cells composing any single organism.

I stand by my position: humanity is sick. Environmental destruction, unjust power relations, the unhealthy circulation and flow of material resources, etc, are not the causes of our unhappiness, but symptoms of a deeper disorder.

It's the poisons in the mindstream, as the Sage of the Shakya clan pointed out a while ago:"

Quote:
The three main disturbing emotions are ignorance, attachment [greed, avarice] and aversion [hate, anger].

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that there are three reasons for believing that the destructive emotions can be eliminated from our minds:

All the destructive emotions and mental states are essentially distorted, whereas the antidotes, such as love, compassion and insight, are undistorted and based on how things really are.

The antidotes have the quality of being strengthened through training and practice.

The essential nature of the mind is pure and undefiled by the destructive emotions.



His holiness, the Llama seems to have picked up some Protestant shit on one of his spiritual journeys. It ain't slavery which creates the slave and the slavemaster but the mental state of both of them which creates slavery. So, if they can achieve purity of thought and deed, does that mean that they arrive at pure slavery... or does it mean that they don't have slavery any more even though they do? And what if only one of them achieves that purity... does the slavemaster who liberates himself also liberate his slaves, pending their own self-realization? What about the other way around? Is the slave who liberates himself from destructive emotion, no longer a slave, except for the whips and chains part? But then... if there is a co-dependency, then it really isn't in their minds, is it? But what aspect of human existence isn't a co-depenency?

Jesus, I hate these Sunday mornings with all these metaphysical questions...
.

My friend, Andes Andy writes:

"Fer crissakes, would you get it right? A "Llama" is a noble gentle creature from the mountains. A "Lama" is an ignoble gentle human creature from the mountains. You can tell the difference by giving them both money. The one that chews it, THAT'S THE LLAMA."

http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/35490/llama.jpg

Jesus, I hate these Sunday mornings with all these metaphysical questions...
.

December 9, 2007
God Effect, The
By MARINA KRAKOVSKY

Some anthropologists argue that the idea of God first arose in larger societies, for the purpose of curbing selfishness and promoting cooperation. Outside a tightly knit group, the reasoning goes, nobody can keep an eye on everyone’s behavior, so these cultures invented a supernatural agent who could. But does thinking of an omniscient God actually promote altruism? The University of British Columbia psychologist Ara Norenzayan wanted to find out.

In a pair of studies published in Psychological Science, Norenzayan and his student Azim F. Shariff had participants play the so-called “dictator game,” a common way of measuring generosity toward strangers. The game is simple: you’re offered 10 $1 coins and told to take as many as you want and leave the rest for the player in the other room (who is, unbeknown to you, a research confederate). The fair split, of course, is 50-50, but most anonymous “dictators” play selfishly, leaving little or nothing for the other player.

In the control group of Norenzayan’s study, the vast majority of participants kept everything or nearly everything — whether or not they said they were religious. “Religious leaders always complain that people don’t internalize religion, and they’re right,” Norenzayan observes.

But is there a way to induce generosity? In the experimental condition, the researchers prompted thoughts of God using a well-established “priming” technique: participants, who again included both theists and atheists, first had to unscramble sentences containing words such as God, divine and sacred. That way, going into the dictator game, players had God on their minds without being consciously aware of it. Sure enough, the “God prime” worked like a charm, leading to fairer splits. Without the God prime, only 12 percent of the participants split the money evenly, but when primed with the religious words, 52 percent did.

When news of these findings made headlines, some atheists were appalled by the implication that altruism depends heavily on religion. Apparently, they hadn’t heard the whole story. In a second study, the researchers had participants unscramble sentences containing words like civic, contract and police — meant to evoke secular moral institutions. This prime also increased generosity. And unlike the religious prime, it did so consistently for both believers and nonbelievers. Until he conducts further research, Norenzayan can only speculate about the significance: “We need that common denominator that works for everyone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magaz ... ffect.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09_21_godeffect.html)

You see, if we be individual cells in the mass flesh of humanity on this planet, then it follows that healthy behavior will be analogous to the healthy activity of the cells composing any single organism.

I stand by my position: humanity is sick. Environmental destruction, unjust power relations, the unhealthy circulation and flow of material resources, etc, are not the causes of our unhappiness, but symptoms of a deeper disorder.

It's the poisons in the mindstream, as the Sage of the Shakya clan pointed out a while ago:"

Quote:
The three main disturbing emotions are ignorance, attachment [greed, avarice] and aversion [hate, anger].

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that there are three reasons for believing that the destructive emotions can be eliminated from our minds:

All the destructive emotions and mental states are essentially distorted, whereas the antidotes, such as love, compassion and insight, are undistorted and based on how things really are.

The antidotes have the quality of being strengthened through training and practice.

The essential nature of the mind is pure and undefiled by the destructive emotions.



His holiness, the Llama seems to have picked up some Protestant shit on one of his spiritual journeys. It ain't slavery which creates the slave and the slavemaster but the mental state of both of them which creates slavery. So, if they can achieve purity of thought and deed, does that mean that they arrive at pure slavery... or does it mean that they don't have slavery any more even though they do? And what if only one of them achieves that purity... does the slavemaster who liberates himself also liberate his slaves, pending their own self-realization? What about the other way around? Is the slave who liberates himself from destructive emotion, no longer a slave, except for the whips and chains part? But then... if there is a co-dependency, then it really isn't in their minds, is it? But what aspect of human existence isn't a co-depenency?

Jesus, I hate these Sunday mornings with all these metaphysical questions...
.

My friend, Andes Andy writes:

"Fer crissakes, would you get it right? A "Llama" is a noble gentle creature from the mountains. A "Lama" is an ignoble gentle human creature from the mountains. You can tell the difference by giving them both money. The one that chews it, THAT'S THE LLAMA."

http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/35490/llama.jpg

PLEASE tell me Andes Andy is an alpaca..:)

For some reason that poster you are arguing with - theekultleeder - bothers me more than any other poster I have ever encountered.