Next
Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 28 Feb 2023

Taken: 28 Feb 2023

1 favorite     1 comment    23 visits

See also...

Keywords

Remix •
Filter •
Excerpt •
Sweet spot •
Author •
Paul Bloom •
Buddha •

Authorizations, license

Visible by: Everyone
All rights reserved
23 visits

this photo by Dinesh

encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Main_Page

Rosalyn Hilborne has particularly liked this photo

Comments
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Some attempts to heck one’s mind are foolish and immoral. We have evolved to get pleasure from social contact, productive activities, meaningful relationships, and so on, but it is possibel to shortcut this with drugs and alcohol. Maybe in the future, people will have lives of great pleasure that are spent in a blissed-out state, without any of the bad effects that drugs like Heroin have. But this is the wrong goal; it’s a wasted life. Similarly, if there were a psychopath pill, some people would probably take it, pleased to be liberated from their consciences, despite the damage this would do to other people. And a lot of us would be tempted by a pill that would strip away anxiety and sadness, even if, in the long run, this, too, led to be less full life.

But other approaches are more promising. I quoted (Robert Wright en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wright_(journalist) above on who we’re evolved to react in disproportionate ways of what strangers feels towards us. He suggests that Buddhist meditative practices can be a fix for this. More generally, he sees in Buddhism a rebellion against the priorities that natural selection has wired into us. Because of evolution, we are driven by attachments and passions; we worry, obsess, and plan. Our perception of the worlds is colored and clouded by our desires. But meditation kight cure all this we might come to appreciate the worlds as it is, to banish the ego, to rid ourselves of unhealthy attachments.

There is much enthusiasm for this approach these days, in both academic and popular culture, and I agree that it deserves more investigation, including more empirical studies of the effects of meditation. But since nobody else seems to be arguing against, I’ll add a critical remark.

My concern is about our relationships with friends and family. The Buddhist goals of equanimity and nonattachment have great moral appeal. My last book was called ‘Against Empathy,’ and I argued there that emotions such as empathy are too biased and innumerate and parochial to be good moral guides; we are better off, when making important decisions, with a more distanced approach, which I called “rational compassion.” And I drew upon Buddhist ideas to make this argument; in this regard, my book was quite aligned with Buddhist philosophy. ~ Page 211/212

THE SWEET SPOT
15 months ago. Edited 15 months ago.

Sign-in to write a comment.