Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

Post by Kim O'Hara »

Queequeg wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 5:23 pm ...That was a bit of a mind dump...
But a good one. :smile:

Two extra aspects you could have tossed in:

Christianity, in spite of all its hypocrisy, did contribute encourage philanthropy and "good works" from the ruling class, until it collapsed under the weight of rationalist attacks.

The difference between reasonably-benign capitalism and completely toxic capitalism is neoliberalism, which has had a stranglehold on economic theory in the West since the late 1970s.

:namaste:
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Kim O'Hara wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:04 am Christianity, in spite of all its hypocrisy, did contribute encourage philanthropy and "good works" from the ruling class, until it collapsed under the weight of rationalist attacks.
Ah, yes. That was also a central part of the WASP world view... the "P" for Protestant. I guess I took that part of it for granted and forgot to mention that.

The critical posture in the colleges I was referring to, that I would associate with the rationalist attacks, revel in discovering the weaknesses of the given subject, but what often is forgotten is that every creed has its blind spots and weaknesses. Buddhism is no exception, at least in some social and in its intellectual build out, and certainly also secular humanism that has come to replace Christianity in many place where good will prevails.One thing that I found matters over the years is what is the general gist of the creed? What sort of behavior and thought patterns does it tend to? Even if there are logical inconsistencies? If the message you hear on Sundays (or at least in Sunday school as a child and high holy days later in life) is a message of love and inclusiveness - I would argue that message takes hold at some level and will figure into the equation.

The decline of Christianity in the West has to be mourned to an extent, even if one finds the specifics lacking, as it provided moral guidance for centuries. In its absence, all sorts of ad hoc organizing principles have been tried, but they have not been up to the challenge. At least with regard to the impulses toward love and kindness fostered by the Christian thought system, its decline is all of our loss, I think.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Queequeg wrote: Tue Jan 07, 2020 5:23 pm
futerko wrote: Wed Jan 01, 2020 7:22 am
Nemo wrote: Tue Dec 31, 2019 3:23 am What a dense and interesting talk. Personally I think capitalism is a Gyalpo now. One of the demons of materialism that Padmasambhava warned would possess at least half of the population.

For decades some of my employers murdered anyone who spoke against the demon in dozens of countries. In 1599 it was simply namtok, but I think it is something more now. The ways it protects itself and infects others is disturbingly organic. Being poor is now illegal in many places. Literally walking around without sufficient symbols of the demon on bits of paper can get you beaten and jailed. Capitalism is the thing that fulfills our desires while destroying the environment and eventually us. Textbook Gyalpo behavior.
I agree completely.

What is interesting to me is the way it manifests, not as a romanticist conception of an evil entity which thinks and acts with malicious intent, but rather the opposite. It has all the hallmarks of mind but without the very thing which could make it volitional - in maintaining a consistent view of merely putative objects it gives rise to a viewpoint which can only be held by a metaphysical entity - and by contrast the grounded view is one where such consistency is lost, along with the putative 'reality' which accompanies it.
I don't know if I am completely convinced, but at least in the United States, there is an argument that the ruling WASPS who were once educated in the private schools and liberal arts colleges of the Northeast have basically abdicated both real and moral power in the last two to three generations. Its a shaky argument, but I'll lay out overview as best I can.

1. Basically, the culture of the WASPS with their sort of patrician reserve have been displaced in the leadership of large segments of of the business and finance communities by a more aggressive MBA, profit maximizing ethos. That's not to say it wasn't always there - Carnegie setting Pinkertons on unionizers is as much a part of America as FDR's aristocratic leadership of civic renewal. Bush Sr. was the last hurrah of that patrician class, replaced by the technocrats of the Clinton and Obama administrations. (Reagan and W represent a different base of power - a kind of putative nationalism, which Trump took (arguably in drag only) full populist.)

2. The education that WASPS gave their children at the elite boarding schools and liberal arts colleges was critical in instilling a sort of "Classic" Largesse Noblige, Liberal morality. Students were steeped in Greek and Roman philosophers and historians, and what is now characterized as the Pantheon of Dead White Men. They might still turn into grubby banksters on Wall Street, but at least they had a little shame and endeavored to hide their greed and feint toward higher ideals. It was an education of elites from the perspective of comfortable elites who had the security to be charitable from high. That education is now on one hand looked down on as a waste of time - students should study practical things like STEM and Business. History, Literature, Philosophy - that's for the "betas" who are just leeches on the body of commercial vigor and technological advancement. On another hand, in a good faith effort to address the critiques of its elitism and become more inclusive and representative of the diversity of voices, it has lost that confidence in its basic morality, replaced by critical studies which, in my perhaps biased view, offers little more than a reactionary posture to anything that even sniffs of power.

The world of those WASPS was an illusion - a narrative with all kinds of holes in it - but it was a widely accepted narrative that informed the decision making of several generations of American leadership. In the luxury of the pseudo aristocracy, there was a solid vantage from which to take a more generous, longer term view. I don't think we have any long term thinking prevailing at all in the US. We have a 24 hour news cycle and perpetual political campaigning where every event and issue is a battle for public opinion. It doesn't build out a logical intellectual world view, but at this point is just basically and anything goes popularity contest in which informed opinion is replaced by cultivating a more basic tribal affinity or aversion as the case may be.

Political campaigns are, at least in the freewheeling American style, traumatic experiences. Candidates are getting up their and prodding our insecurities because they've found that is the most effective way to get people to turn out and vote. When people are comfortable, they don't feel compelled to vote. When made to fear that their life is at risk in some manner, they will turn out and vote for the candidate they think will best protect them.

That was a bit of a mind dump.
Any attempt to undermine it is perceived as an attack on the integrity of reality itself - this is perhaps why the debate appears to be happening in backwards land, because in stepping over an invisible boundary we find ourselves literally through the looking glass. The response that, surely as Buddhists we do not advocate for suffering, has become the defence of the gyalpo itself insofar as the very consistency of this entity is dependent upon our energetic investment in this disembodied viewpoint. The very thing that is usually referred to by the term "being grounded" i.e. in reality - is precisely an entirely putative reality which has acquired a life of its own in opposition to any actual viewpoint we could take (unless of course we elected a world leader... now that is dangerous territory!).
This grounded view point you describe - this is basically the same view proposed in the scientific method, isn't it? In fact, we probably could trace it to the development of the scientific method.
You are describing the world according to over educated WASPS. The liberal class sold out the working class ages ago. The times of them being a safety valve for incremental change died before I was born. That is why they are so rightly despised now. They pushed neoliberal austerity down our throats as the only way to run a society. The joke is on them as the oligarchs have now decided they have outlived their usefulness. There was no noblese obilge. There were communists and socialists in America. Many of whom were combat vets. Roosevelt had no choice. He told the rich we either give in to some demands or they will remove us by force. He turned half the rich against the other half out of self preservation. McCarthyism rewrote that history after making socialist ideals a literal thought crime. After they killed the only alternative narrative progressive momentum died and the system reverted. What will work now is what worked then. Grassroots movements not aligned with political parties that become blocks of power disrupting the system. The oligarchs have no better nature to appeal to nor have such appeals ever worked. The fatal flaw last time was thinking capitalism could be reformed. Clearly it cannot. We need a different system.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 12:54 pm You are describing the world according to over educated WASPS. The liberal class sold out the working class ages ago. The times of them being a safety valve for incremental change died before I was born. That is why they are so rightly despised now. They pushed neoliberal austerity down our throats as the only way to run a society. The joke is on them as the oligarchs have now decided they have outlived their usefulness. There was no noblese obilge. There were communists and socialists in America. Many of whom were combat vets. Roosevelt had no choice. He told the rich we either give in to some demands or they will remove us by force. He turned half the rich against the other half out of self preservation. McCarthyism rewrote that history after making socialist ideals a literal thought crime. After they killed the only alternative narrative progressive momentum died and the system reverted. What will work now is what worked then. Grassroots movements not aligned with political parties that become blocks of power disrupting the system. The oligarchs have no better nature to appeal to nor have such appeals ever worked. The fatal flaw last time was thinking capitalism could be reformed. Clearly it cannot. We need a different system.
I agree with some of your analysis, and disagree with a bunch.

I'm not so sure WASPS are the driving force behind neoliberal austerity. I think its more rightly identified as the technocrats who rose with the "meritocracy" we have now. Originally, the technocrats were brought on as the help, and then they took over. They started to come into power with JFK - who was not a WASP and was distrusted because of that.

There certainly was a sense of noblesse oblige. Go listen to old time Northeast liberals. Whether they were effective or not - well, they moved only when their asses were on the line - twice led by Roosevelts, one a Republican, one a Democrat. In my reading of it, it wasn't entirely as cynical as you make it. Sure - no one shares unless they're compelled, but once the decision was made, there was a lot of progress and good will. I don't think Eleanor Roosevelt was a phony, and she was not just an aberration.

Is capitalism reformable? To be honest, I have little idea what people generally mean when they use that term. Its applicable to so many different systems. Its basically the human capacity to make trades and accommodations in exchange for advantages. We could no better abolish that than any other idealistic movement that has sought to deny some aspect of human nature. What you are talking about is the commercial codification that we have now. Yeah - its bull shit. Its rigged by statute.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Most of the working class of the U.K. are WASPS.* And they made in clear in the latest General Election they are tired of being patronised by the left. Perhaps American WASPs are different.

* Including all of my ancestors of the last 1500 years. I am the first non “p” for hundreds of years.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Simon E. wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:16 pm Most of the working class of the U.K. are WASPS. And they made in clear in the latest General Election they are tired of being patronised by the left. Perhaps American WASPs are different.
Totally different. They were the founders and the leadership of the country with a few exceptions here and there until JFK. Some exceptions were Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln... After JFK, Bill Clinton and obviously, Obama. Trump is not a WASP. His relationship with the WASP upper class is a whole dissertation itself.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Even the nomenclature tells you that Brit WASPS are different. The ruling elite of the U.K. are descendants of the Normans. They subjugated the Anglo Saxons. That ruling elite of largely Norman ancestry form most of the current U.K. government.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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It's interesting that the working class can't take down the oligarchs yet, but they can delegitimize the liberal class. Once McCarthyism had purged the socialists from academia those remaining were given a choice. Become a mouthpiece for the powerful or be ostracized. They stopped speaking truth to power. It's kinda fun watching these traitors convinced of their innate superiority and superior intelligence being fed the same the shit sandwich they fed to workers. Just deserts indeed. They still think they are essential, but the only essential thing they did was speak truth to power and act as a safety valve for incremental change. They haven't done that in over 40 years. Good riddance.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Simon E. wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:16 pm Most of the working class of the U.K. are WASPS.* And they made in clear in the latest General Election they are tired of being patronised by the left. Perhaps American WASPs are different.
Most of the people in the places where votes mattered in 2016, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc., are not populated by Wasps. They are mostly populated by descendants of Germans, Scandinavians, and Eastern Europeans. The so-called WASPS are mainly in New England and the Northeast. We really don't count southerners as WASPS at all.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Malcolm wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 4:45 pm Most of the people in the places where votes mattered in 2016, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc., are not populated by Wasps. They are mostly populated by descendants of Germans, Scandinavians, and Eastern Europeans.
Ah, that's a good point. I just made the connection between Drumpf and the people there, particularly the Germans. He's one of their people. His family came over with their migration.
We really don't count southerners as WASPS at all.
Aside from the Southern aristocrats, most of the whites in the South are Scotch-Irish descent, IIRC. And they're Southern Baptists. shudder
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 4:24 pm It's interesting that the working class can't take down the oligarchs yet, but they can delegitimize the liberal class. Once McCarthyism had purged the socialists from academia those remaining were given a choice. Become a mouthpiece for the powerful or be ostracized. They stopped speaking truth to power. It's kinda fun watching these traitors convinced of their innate superiority and superior intelligence being fed the same the shit sandwich they fed to workers. Just deserts indeed. They still think they are essential, but the only essential thing they did was speak truth to power and act as a safety valve for incremental change. They haven't done that in over 40 years. Good riddance.
Well, and right there you have a microcosm as to why labor and the intellectual community have not been able to get synced up.

I think you over simplify and in the process you miss the fact that one of labor's best allies is found in the Academy. At some point, discontent needs to evolve from being a grunt into an articulatable argument - both to explain what that grunt means and to channel the energy of that grunt. That's where the intellectuals in the Academy come in. Granted, intellectuals have failed in being able to make strides in bridging the divide. It was one of the failures I saw in Occupy Wall Street - it came so close. When the striking Verizon workers showed up at Zucotti, that was huge. And then the moment was lost because the stinking hippies can't talk football.

There is the what I'll call the technical and professional training segments of the Academy that serve the neo-liberal order - STEM, business, accounting, law. And then there are the Liberal Arts where you'll still find plenty of communists and crypto-communists, socialists, and lately, democratic socialists. In fact, in most liberal arts faculties, I'd argue that they predominantly occupy the left to deep left part of the political spectrum. I had one history professor who was a registered Republican, and it was a point of disrepute - and I went to a pretty milquetoast, middle of the road university.

Labor in the US has been taught for two generations, at least, to distrust education and intellectuals mainly through the dynamics of the culture wars. The Academy, as a whole, has exacerbated it by playing its part as the opposition. They call those wedge issues. Bernie is doing the best job so far at tiptoeing around the issues that divide labor and intellectuals (immigration, abortion) and emphasizing the ones that unite (healthcare, inequality).
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 5:41 pm
Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 4:24 pm It's interesting that the working class can't take down the oligarchs yet, but they can delegitimize the liberal class. Once McCarthyism had purged the socialists from academia those remaining were given a choice. Become a mouthpiece for the powerful or be ostracized. They stopped speaking truth to power. It's kinda fun watching these traitors convinced of their innate superiority and superior intelligence being fed the same the shit sandwich they fed to workers. Just deserts indeed. They still think they are essential, but the only essential thing they did was speak truth to power and act as a safety valve for incremental change. They haven't done that in over 40 years. Good riddance.
Well, and right there you have a microcosm as to why labor and the intellectual community have not been able to get synced up.

I think you over simplify and in the process you miss the fact that one of labor's best allies is found in the Academy. At some point, discontent needs to evolve from being a grunt into an articulatable argument - both to explain what that grunt means and to channel the energy of that grunt. That's where the intellectuals in the Academy come in. Granted, intellectuals have failed in being able to make strides in bridging the divide. It was one of the failures I saw in Occupy Wall Street - it came so close. When the striking Verizon workers showed up at Zucotti, that was huge. And then the moment was lost because the stinking hippies can't talk football.

There is the what I'll call the technical and professional training segments of the Academy that serve the neo-liberal order - STEM, business, accounting, law. And then there are the Liberal Arts where you'll still find plenty of communists and crypto-communists, socialists, and lately, democratic socialists. In fact, in most liberal arts faculties, I'd argue that they predominantly occupy the left to deep left part of the political spectrum. I had one history professor who was a registered Republican, and it was a point of disrepute - and I went to a pretty milquetoast, middle of the road university.

Labor in the US has been taught for two generations, at least, to distrust education and intellectuals mainly through the dynamics of the culture wars. The Academy, as a whole, has exacerbated it by playing its part as the opposition. They call those wedge issues. Bernie is doing the best job so far at tiptoeing around the issues that divide labor and intellectuals (immigration, abortion) and emphasizing the ones that unite (healthcare, inequality).
This narrative that those without proper education are grunting animals. How is that working out for you? Academia betrayed labour to save their cushy positions in what became neutered academia. It was those technical and professional trained middle managers that downsized the working class for efficiency. They clearly chose the side of the billionaires. That betrayal was a mistake as the billionaires don't need them and don't listen to them once they lost the ear of labour. Many are just regular guys now with tons of student debt. The life boat seats to escape precarious economic circumstances become fewer every year. It wasn't the workers that needed academia. That is completely backwards. It was academia that needed labour. They mistook their cruel Masters for benefactors and threw out the only thing keeping them in a position of power. It's fun to watch that arrogant veneer of prestige grind off as they use endless circular arguments about their indispensability. It's no more academia today than Vichy France was the legitimate government.

And I get it. People make morally questionable choices for their own benefit. I was unemployed and ended up joining the army during the first GWOT and turned it into a comfortable pension. It's just the hypocrisy that bugs me.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 6:30 pm This narrative that those without proper education are grunting animals.
I didn't say anyone was an animal. But, please, tell me what the grunts, "TRUMP!", "MAGA!", "BREXIT!" actually mean, because that's what a large segment of former union members are grunting these days. If I take their explanations at face value, "Mexicans are f'in everything up." "Leave those animals in the ghettos to shoot each other", that is no path forward, for them or anyone else. And I can't believe that they really want to live in the prison of that kind of misanthropic malevolence. I know they have dreams, want their kids to have a better life, etc. etc. "Beings want to be happy. They don't want to suffer." If only the Democrats had adapted to the changing economic circumstances to address the tsunami that was hitting labor back in the 70s and 80s instead of embracing the technocrats with their Third Way bull shit. Maybe we could have steered policy in a direction that would not have left blue collar to languish in dying cities and towns. But that whole culture war thing drove a wedge, and we haven't been able to get over that since. To find a constructive meaning to grunts of discontent, we need to articulate it in a way that connects to a constructive policy, especially when we're aiming at addressing something relatively intangible like the greed of the 1%. HEY, WAIT, THAT "1%" rhetoric has been working! Where did that come from? ("OWS")
How is that working out for you? Academia betrayed labour to save their cushy positions in what became neutered academia. It was those technical and professional trained middle managers that downsized the working class for efficiency. They clearly chose the side of the billionaires.
You didn't catch that part where I pointed out the Academy has different segments, huh? There are indeed those parts of the academy nurtured by the 1%ers. I was talking recently with a fund raiser who used to work in an art history department, and now works for the neuroscience department. Give an art historian $100K in funding, and they are thrilled that they can now digitize their database and fund a grad student on an archeological dig. For the neuroscience department, $100K is the budget to decorate the office of the rock star professor they just hired. We're not even talking about outfitting their lab. I take it, you don't hang out with libaeral arts faculty and grad students much. They're not your enemy.
Many are just regular guys now with tons of student debt. The life boat seats to escape precarious economic circumstances become fewer every year. It wasn't the workers that needed academia.
Again, in your rush to generalize, you don't see what's happening.

Get a STEM degree, or a professional degree - you'll do just fine in this system. Even academic jobs are there, and the pay is upper middle class, and unless you were a complete idiot about it, the education was well funded and student debt is manageable.

If you are in the humanities, then yes, the squeeze is on, precisely because that education is devalued. And contrary to what you're insisting, those faculties are hardly bastions of neo-liberal thought. They're the same bunch of well meaning egg heads they've always been, trying to educate their students and advance their fields. They consistently vote left, supporting liberal candidates.

You're just disappointed that they don't drop everything and become vocal critics of the system?

Agenda driven research and writing has its place, but that's simply not what most academics do. Its not their job.

Well, Nemo, certainly not going to build a coalition with your approach. And where does that leave us?

Bitching into the ether on Dharma Wheel.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

Post by Nemo »

That is the big question now. Is it better to let it burn down as quickly as possible so that there is a sliver of ecological capacity left in the planet to rebuild or simply hold on as long as possible until our inevitable demise. I'm an optimist so I am hoping for maximum social dislocation. I think we need more chaos in the short term. Then maybe future generations can survive.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktak ... s-continue
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:10 pm That is the big question now. Is it better to let it burn down as quickly as possible so that there is a sliver of ecological capacity left in the planet to rebuild or simply hold on as long as possible until our inevitable demise. I'm an optimist so I am hoping for maximum social dislocation. I think we need more chaos in the short term. Then maybe future generations can survive.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktak ... s-continue
That sure is optimistic to think there will be anything left of the environment after this civilization disintegrates.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:10 pm I'm an optimist so I am hoping for maximum social dislocation. I think we need more chaos in the short term. Then maybe future generations can survive.
The "Save the Planet. Kill yourself." approach.
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

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Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:23 pm
Nemo wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:10 pm I'm an optimist so I am hoping for maximum social dislocation. I think we need more chaos in the short term. Then maybe future generations can survive.
The "Save the Planet. Kill yourself." approach.
I don't think the existing power structures that destroyed the world can fix it. Maybe we need something new, but that can't happen until we admit the old ways are broken. There is no time to keep pretending. Do you really think the existing hierarchy can correct itself? The thing that created the problems and then killed people trying to present alternative narratives to protect the existing order. Even I'm not that optimistic. At least we have a chance if we try something new.
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

Post by Queequeg »

LOL.

And even if your worst case scenario comes about, there is nothing that would suggest that anyone should do anything different. We still have to try and fix the dam, even if its likely to break, because there is no other choice. If its going to break, it will take everything with it. There won't be any option but to run and take cover. Doomsday prepping might offer a minor advantage when that happens, but I'd bet that it would be like Mike Tyson said - "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the f'in mouth." Whatever order comes out of that is so far down the line and there will be so much time and so many events transpiring that there is no point in planning anything.

And so, this sage advice about life in the degenerate age rings true to me -

"Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life, and continue chanting Namu-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter what happens. How could this be anything other than the boundless joy of the Dharma?"
There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
Malcolm
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

Post by Malcolm »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 7:03 pm If only the Democrats had adapted to the changing economic circumstances to address the tsunami that was hitting labor back in the 70s and 80s
The Democrats lost precisely because they were backing the unions, which were wholly undermined by GOP "right to work" laws aimed at undermining unions. This was deliberate, since the GOP understood that unions were the main constituency of the Democrats:

"By weakening the relationship between Democrats and unions, we anticipate that RTW laws will drive state policy—including, but not restricted to labor policies—in a rightward direction. We hypothesize that this will be a product of the direct electoral effects of RTW laws: by favoring the election of GOP candidates to state legislatures and governorships, states with RTW laws in place will be more likely to have partially or fully Republican- controlled governments. But RTW laws should also move policy to the right even when states are fully or partially controlled by Democrats. With labor unions a less central member of the Democratic party coalition, we expect that Democrats will have less reason to pursue the left-leaning economic policies favored by labor unions (e.g. Bawn et al. (2012)). And to the extent that RTW laws make it harder for working class state legislative candidates to win office, that should also move state policy to the right."

And:


"The anti-tax political activist Grover Norquist recently declared that while President Trump may be historically unpopular, the GOP could still “win big” in 2020. The secret to the Republican party’s long-term success, Norquist argued, involved state-level initiatives to weaken the power of labor unions. As Norquist explained it, if union reforms cutting the power of labor unions to recruit and retain members—like RTW laws—“are enacted in a dozen more states, the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.” A weaker labor movement, Norquist reasoned, would not just have economic consequences. It would also have significant political repercussions, meaning that Democrats would have substantially less of a grassroots presence on the ground during elections and less money to invest in politics."

And:

"Working class candidates—politicians most likely to be backed by the labor movement—are less likely to hold office in states fol- lowing the passage of RTW laws. State policy as a whole, moreover, moved sharply to the ideological right in RTW states following the passage of those laws."


https://businessinnovation.berkeley.edu ... ct2017.pdf

Ergo, what we need in the USA is a broad, renewed labor movement, and Bernie Sanders is the only person who can lead this movement. The reason the voice of the working class in America has been muted has everything to do with GOP successes in state legislatures, and nothing at all to do with some imagined abandonment of the working class by left-wing intelligentsia.
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Nemo
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Re: Why Greta Thunberg Should Be Time’s Person of the Year

Post by Nemo »

Queequeg wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 9:14 pm LOL.

And even if your worst case scenario comes about, there is nothing that would suggest that anyone should do anything different. We still have to try and fix the dam, even if its likely to break, because there is no other choice. If its going to break, it will take everything with it. There won't be any option but to run and take cover. Doomsday prepping might offer a minor advantage when that happens, but I'd bet that it would be like Mike Tyson said - "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the f'in mouth." Whatever order comes out of that is so far down the line and there will be so much time and so many events transpiring that there is no point in planning anything.

And so, this sage advice about life in the degenerate age rings true to me -

"Suffer what there is to suffer, enjoy what there is to enjoy. Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life, and continue chanting Namu-myoho-renge-kyo, no matter what happens. How could this be anything other than the boundless joy of the Dharma?"
I don't mind hedging for multiple outcomes. Dismantling the current hierarchy is my favourite, but it's very unlikely. Eventually the rich will retreat into their gated communities and we will be left on our own. A small environmentally sustainable home in the city with public transport is one good option. A plot of arable land in one of the few areas deemed lifeboats that will survive the most violent scenarios is a great longer term choice. I live where there is everything. Arable land, highly defensible mountains, strong communities and massive amounts of hydro electric power. Some of the most desirable places to live like Australia or Southern Cali are pretty much doomed at 2C let alone 4C. Occupy was crushed by Obama in a coordinated assault on all the camps at once. It didn't break up on it's own out of a lack of inspiration. I don't think people understand what they are up against or how they inadvertently support the system that prevents the changes needed for survival.
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