We all lose innocence, only it used to take some time.
Perhaps from age five to twenty, and gradually. Today it seems the young have
no innocence period. In some ways they know more about the world at eight than
we did at eighteen, and that knowing came very quickly. No time to digest and
no way to really appreciate what such worldly knowledge really means.
What will be the cost?
Much of Eastern spiritual thought and practice involves
paradoxes. Not the everyday ones---you can’t be in two places at the same time.
But those that carry a load of complexity and wisdom, resistant to simplistic
“either/or” formulations. “Sometimes the only way to catch your breath is to
lose it completely.” (Tyler Knott Gregson, poet)
What does this statement mean, metaphorically?
Wide-scale societal freedom (liberty) is a relatively
recent development. Arising perhaps only in the last 150 years or so. It is
embodied in the US Constitution: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The French revolution valued things similarly: Liberty, equality, fraternity.
But there is a big difference---equality. Consider: “Freedom means inequality,”
economically and otherwise.
Like it or not, what evidence makes that statement true? Societal
implications?
David R. Loy (A New
Buddhist Path) says: “The Greek experiment with democracy failed for the
same reasons that our modern experiment with democracy is in danger of failing:
unless social reconstruction is accompanied by personal reconstruction,
democracy merely empowers the ego-self.”
What is “personal reconstruction,” and how is it related
to solving social and cultural problems?
“The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost. Part of the second
stanza seems to question why the traveler took one road and not the other.
“Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.”
Why the apparent ambiguity?
From Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard commencement address:
“The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society
as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It’s time, in the West, to
defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”
A telling comment. These days we hear from the media,
politicos, and activists a continuous cry for more rights for this person, that
group.
Why no mention of obligations, responsibilities?
The “no-free-will” crowd says all our behaviors arise
solely from the interaction of genes and environment. Stephen Cave (“The
Atlantic” June 2016) says, “The contemporary scientific image of human behavior
is one of neurons firing, causing other neurons to fire, causing our thoughts
and deeds, in an unbroken chain that stretches back to our birth and beyond.”
We do not make any choices consciously that have not already been made for us
by neurons not under our control. Determinism will not die.
What sustains such a belief, especially among scientists
who understand chaos and complexity?
We argue vociferously about whether there is a grand Truth
(or more than one) or just our own individual truths, which may not be shared
by others. That we all have our unique truths seems evident. A grand Truth
applicable to all can be believed to exist but cannot be proven to exist. God,
for example, or universe-wide oneness.
Notwithstanding, do all societies need one or more shared
grand Truths to function properly?
Ansel Adams said, “There is nothing worse than a sharp
image of a poor concept.” True of course regarding cameras, but also true as a metaphor.
Reality is fluid and complex, with causes and effects unclear, and filled with
unpredictable outcomes. Anxiety over this condition encourages some to
construct illusory worlds, ones substituting for a too-challenging reality.
Political partisans (any stripe) come to mind.
How is Adams’ statement applicable to partisans (really
to anyone who lives even a partial illusory existence)?
From Victor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and
psychiatrist: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space
lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and
freedom.” Few would disagree with this.
So why is there so much unhealthy interpersonal conflict,
even among friends and relatives?
Perhaps the most interesting question of all: “Who do you
think you are?”
