RE: [Futurework] NYT Article: Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Me, twenty five words or less?  Surely, you jest.   Globalization is a natural evolutionary pattern.  Broadening horizons, removing provincial barriers, as trading with others tends to do over time (the moral equation of the formula).  We will succeed or fail together and this is a healthy attribute.  However, if the cross-cultural and the big guys vs little guys issues are not acknowledged and addressed, it comes unbalanced.  As we know.   54 words.  Nothing new there except perhaps the direct morality issue?  Isn’t that also a theme of Buddhism, that we all part of a greater mysterious whole?  Note I did not comment directly on his foreign policy/manifest destiny comments.  Although, as a Buddhist might suggest, someone needs to be listening to the universe better. - KWC   Karen I have read and re-read the NYT article "Two years later....."   What is he saying in 25 words or less? [Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]   Maybe Chris had already read of this research previously, as it has been widely reported in other venues.  I don't try to walk and read as Keith does on his dogwalks, but I'm off to do my morning meditative walking now.  It helps to clear my mind and keeps me sane, for the most part, depending on whom you ask.  I am walking due east into the countryside towards Mt Hood, on a blue sky, chill is in the air morning. - KWC   I guess this is the post by Chris to which you were referring.  I would argue that Chris's comment indicates that he didn't read the article.  Selma   Chris wrote: Oh yeah.  The exploiters will be laughing all the way to the bank if the cannon fodder (corporate and military) will "learn to smile" and accept every new stress, wage cut, layoff etc. with a thank-you.  Religion as the opium for the people...  "NYT -- all the news that fit the printers."   Chris, I think I understand where you are coming from in deriding religion, but it is not just the opiate of the (nonthinking) masses.  It is also a coping and order mechanism, and can be an inspiration that encourages people to live at the best of their human potential, to care for one another, to overcome human greed and despair.  Unfortunately, there are enough examples of the opposite of that to assure that hypocrites and liars are never on an endangered species list. I will continue to make myself highly unpopular with some of my relatives by pointing out hypocrisy and lies that are generated by VRP (very religious people), who have quit thinking about humanity and just got lazy, relying on memorized and digested-whole mandates, which they largely do not understand or have historical knowledge about, that have nothing to do with listening to the universe, celebrating life, love and brotherhood and the best of what we can give each other.  Let us be less than kind in exposing religiosity but patient and accepting that religions do answer questions for many, and it is the practionner often at fault, not entirely the belief system.  I tend to agree with Jung that we have a "god gene" in us.  Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth and Man of a Thousand Faces contributed to my personal appreciation of belief systems, and I tend to view most religious sacred texts as literary attempts to explain the unknown and the mysterious.  Some do a better job than others.  That reminds me, during a channel change last weekend I saw Sean Haggerty or Hannity, the current conservative trash mouth du jour, mock and deride and continually interrupt a former Congressman, a Protestant minister wearing his collar, who was trying to say that education was also a weapon in the war against terrorism.  These people are "of the devil" as far as I'm concerned, deliberately rude who must resort to shouting over others so that the weakness of their argument and philosophy is hidden.  Maybe this is a good point for me to post an OpEd by Robert Wright, the author of NonZero: the logic of human destiny, who writes that humans will gravitate towards global governance out of mutual self-preservation and because it is human nature.  He also makes some points about evolutionary economics and that globalization is ancient and leads us to greater morality with each other.  Does this mean that globalization is a secularist humanist religion?   It is long for reading on screen, so I would normally attach it, but it exceeds the 40 KB that I have deduced will successfully clear FW's filter.  I anyone wants a word copy, please contact me.  Would love to have that information confirmed about attachment size, by the way.  Regards, KWC   Two Years Later, a Thousand Years Ago By Robert Wright, NYT OpEd, September 11, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/opinion/11WRIG.html   Among the ideas that seemed to collapse along with the twin towers two years ago was a view of globalization as a kind of manifest destiny. Unlike the 19th-century version of manifest destiny, this vision didn't involve expanding America's borders. Rather, America's values - notably economic and political liberty - would spread beyond those borders, covering the planet. And this time around America's mission didn't have the widely assumed blessing of God. But it had the next best thing: the force of history. Globalization was seen by some as a nearly inevitable climax of the human story - destiny of a secular sort.   In some versions of this scenario, like neoconservative ones, tough American guidance might be needed - coercing China, say, toward democracy. In other versions, international economic competition would do the coercing. After all, microelectronics was making free markets a more essential ingredient in prosperity, and free markets work best with free minds. As some libertarians saw things, all you had to do was end trade barriers and then sit back and enjoy the show.   Some show. As commentators started noting around Sept. 12, 2001, the terrorists had turned the tools of globalization - cellphones, e-mail, international banking - against the system. What's more, their grievances had grown partly out of globalization, with its jarringly modern values. It started to seem as if globalization, far from being a benign culmination of history, had carried the seeds of its own destruction all along.   Two years later, that view is still defensible. Though the United States has been free from serious terrorism, anti-American terrorist networks are intact - and the war in Iraq has given them both a new rallying cry and conveniently located targets. Further, Islamist terrorism is assuming more global form; one can imagine a chain of attacks setting off a worldwide economic tailspin. With biotechnology and nuclear materials emphatically not under control, out-and-out collapse in some future decade is possible.   Still, viewed against the backdrop of history, the case for a kind of manifest destiny is stronger than ever. In this version, America's mission is different from the ones libertarians and neoconservatives have in mind - passive role model or aggressive evangelizer, respectively. It is in some ways a grander mission, carrying a deep and subtle moral challenge. Indeed, the challenge is so deep, and so natural an outgrowth of history, that the idea of destiny in some nonsecular sense isn't beyond the pale. In any event, Sept. 11, 2001, illustrates the challenge in painfully vivid form.   Is Buddhism Good for Your Health? September 14, 2003  By STEPHEN S. HALL , NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14BUDDHISM.html?ex=1064460784&ei=1&en=53ee2e3211b005bb   In the spring of 1992, out of the blue, the fax machine in Richard Davidson's office at the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison spit out a letter from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Davidson, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, was making a name for himself studying the nature of positive emotion, and word of his accomplishments had made it to northern India. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists was writing to offer the minds of his monks -- in particular, their meditative prowess -- for scientific research. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework