--- In [email protected], Rick Archer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > on 8/4/06 5:02 PM, authfriend at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > --- In [email protected] <mailto:FairfieldLife% 40yahoogroups.com> > > , Vaj <vajranatha@> wrote: > >> > > >> > Unless there is some reason you distrust Rick's judgement--and > >> > many firm believers *may not even believe it if they hear it from > >> > one of the women who was subjected to the spiritual incest* > > > > Now, there's a loaded term for ya. > > > An apt one IMO. A guru should be a trusted father/mother figure. At > least that¹s the traditional view.
And MMY, as we all know, is certainly a traditional guru. <snort> No, sorry. The term invokes the very powerful incest taboo to make sexual activity between a spiritual teacher and a follower seem especially loathesome. Teachers in general, clergy, therapists, bosses in the workplace, and political leaders are all "father/ mother figures" in the same sense to those who have close personal associations with them, yet you don't hear anybody metaphorically referring to the equivalent sexual activity as "incest." For that matter, one's spouse or lover may be a "father/mother figure" (older men seduce younger women, and vice versa, all the time), and nobody calls that kind of sexual relationship "incest." As I wrote on alt.m.t awhile back when Vaj attempted to introduce the term there: ----- There are two aspects to the incest taboo: one is biological, the fact that the offspring of incest are more likely to have defective genes, which they then pass down to their own offspring. In that sense, the incest taboo is a species survival trait; we're hardwired to react negatively to it. The other aspect is purely social and has nothing *whatsoever* to do with the biological aspect. The social aspect involves the exploitation of an unequal power relationship for selfish purposes and its negative psychological consequences. As such, of course, it is by no means unique to incestuous relationships. The notion of "spiritual incest" obviously trades only on this second aspect, but it deceptively invokes the instinctive biological revulsion of the first aspect, when in fact that is completely unrelated to the nature of the misbehavior. It's just deeply, deeply intellectually dishonest. ----- The effect of this kind of misuse of terms is to reduce words that characterize a very specific and particularly horrible kind of misbehavior to mean "behavior I don't like." It *borrows* the horror of the specific misbehavior in an attempt to legitimize rabid condemnation of a very different level of misbehavior--usually because one is primarily interested in condemning the *individual* rather than the behavior itself. It's a thoroughly dishonest thought-stopper, in other words, which in this case aims to elicit the extreme level of outrage associated with the incest taboo and direct it at an individual who has not committed incest at all, bypassing judicious critical thinking about the actual behavior involved. Such behavior is reprehensible enough on its own terms. Why the need to "borrow" an additional level of outrage it does not merit? ----- I should point out that Vaj went so far as to claim MMY was a "pervert" on the basis that he engaged in "spiritual incest." That's even more intellectually dishonest. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
