Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to
a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone
she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a
Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai
Lama had some positive things to say about former
president George W. Bush.
IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to
interject a thought stopper into the conversation.
The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something
good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad,
then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either.
This just days after doing exactly the same thing
when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying
that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness
nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person
posted what was clearly intended to be another thought
stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of
the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds
were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the
author, and think negatively about her.
Add to this a long history of this poster and other
posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers
to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a
liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to
stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos-
sibly having any positive qualities and instead
think of them as something less than human. Call
someone a predator and again the readers are sup-
posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused
person off.
In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who
use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more
than anything else, how quickly their own thought
processes stop working.
They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They
cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush
and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush
is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible
positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual-
ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and
if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what
they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone
like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find
something in him to praise -- anything -- then *he*
must be linked to the bad Bush and be bad
himself.
Same with calling someone a liar. Science tells
us that human beings tell on the average 25 lies
a day. A self-honest person can look at themselves
and realize that they tell lies, too, if only to
themselves. Only an idiot would claim, I never
lie. But some idiots not only claim this, they
attempt to use the epithet Liar! as a thought
stopper. Again, the implication is that by calling
someone a liar, you can make people think of the
person you are attempting to demonize as ALL liar.
If they're a liar, the rationale of the thought-
stopper-hurler goes, they are *complete* liars.
They cannot possibly have any other qualities or
attributes. *Stop thinking* of this person as
human; only think of them as a 'liar.'
Same with the epithet predator. It conjures up
images of child molesters and worse. And it is
*supposed* to. Hurling the term predator at some-
one you don't like is designed to get people to
*stop thinking* about that person as human. They
are supposed to think of them the way YOU do, as
one-dimensional, as ONLY a predator.
Same with invoking Kali Yuga as a catch-all
excuse for why things suck. The idea is that one
can throw that term out and people will stop think-
ing that there is anything they can possibly *do*
to *change* how things suck. You *can't* really
change it, goes the thought stopper rationale,
because it's Kali Yuga. Things *always* suck in
Kali Yuga.
I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of
people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers.
The TM movement was not long on compassion. It
never taught its followers that a person could be
partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was
always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and
the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints
scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no
middle ground. So if a person is characterized as
black, they are ALL black.
As a result IMO, many people who have come out of
such an environment are easy prey for those who use
thought stoppers as a tool of debate. And the people
who *rely* on thought stoppers know this, and use
the thought stoppers as often as they possibly can.
They know that the audience they are talking to
has been taught to *despise* shades of gray and
the possibility of feeling compassion for someone
who has been accused of being bad. They know that
many people coming out of a TM environment will
automatically consider George W. Bush ALL bad
simply because Maharishi once characterized him
as bad. Therefore they can springboard off of
that and suggest that because someone *else* they
want to demonize, like the Dalai Lama, once said
something positive about Bush, he might be ALL
bad, too.
I think that the use of thought stoppers like this
is the sign of a lazy intellect. The person who
uses them
