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Copyright © 2007-2010 Daniel Marks | beyondthemind.net. All Rights Reserved.
This website went online on November 22, 2007 and is being continually developed.
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(The Collected Works, Volume VI, Banaras, 5th Public Talk, February 20, 1949)
"You see, modern education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to think, not how to think.”
What lies at the very heart of the talks?
Why is the world the way it is? The world does not really have to be the way it is - it is not predestined, despite the apparent, conventional wisdom view.
Why is there constant war? The warring of religious beliefs, the war against fascism, the cold war, the various interminable regional wars like Vietnam, Korea, the Israel/Palestinian conflict, Bosnia, Sudan, Iraq/Afghanistan, now the ongoing 'war on terror'?
Why, with all the knowledge, wealth and technological advances of science and medicine, is there still demonstrable injustice throughout the world; why are there still millions of people in poverty, ill-health and educational ignorance? Why is there such a stark and growing disparity in inequality and wealth; multi-billionaires living alongside homeless people and families struggling daily with debt? Why is the democratic system, now the predominant worldwide ideology, such an authoritarian, hierarchical, elitist system? Why is the world completely hooked on money, power, mass entertainment, celebrity and status? What has caused all this?
A facile explanation, of course, is that the world is what it is because it is what it is. It is human nature. But then the reasonable question to ask is: why is human nature the way it is?
The central premise underlying all the talks - although not definitively spelt out - is clear, simple and logical. In the technological world, if someone goes wrong with your car, for instance, then you immediately set out to determine the cause of the problem. Similarly, if you develop a health problem, the rational and logical approach is, where possible, to determine the cause or seek medical expertise to find this cause so that you can effectively treat it. If one doesn’t take this first simple step one obviously cannot even start to resolve the problem at hand. This is not rocket science.
In the psychological realm however, this first principle, astonishingly, simply does not apply.
Take war as an example. Military conflict is universally regarded as an inevitable activity of man. There are very few people in the world who reject war per se. We adopt a consensual view on this and all other basic subjects. There is great safety in thinking in groups; there are very few people who think (so-called) ‘outside the box’ - which in the actual scheme of things is not thinking outside the group at all, when you really look at it, it’s just an attempt at minor reform around the edges.
Wars are cleverly justified for a range of reasons, which usually boil down in one way or another to ‘national security,’ which is simply individual security on a national scale. As far as its ultimate origins or root cause is concerned, many reasons are put forward as explanations - political, nationalistic, religious, economic reasons. But all these issues themselves have a first cause, yet this first cause is not even discussed by the individual, media organizations, or the public, let alone investigated in depth. It is obvious that the political, economic and religious structures of the world are put together entirely by the human mind. It is the mind that is behind all our actions, which on a relationship level brings on conflict and anger, and on a social, national and global scale brings about war.
Take also climate change. The thrust of current, majority scientific thought states it is caused by human activity (which still has not been definitively proven) - so what is the main cause of that? Obviously, the bulk of CO2 emissions comes from the oil and coal industry and oil is the most profitable business in the world, with a strong historical connection to the coal industry. (The largest oil company, ExxonMobil, is also the world's largest, most profitable, publicly traded corporation.) These global industries, which have over-exploited the Earth’s natural resources, now prop up the entire economic system as it stands at the expense of viable, sustainable, renewable energy resources - solar, wind and geothermal power, amongst others; all this is part of a system of sustainable ecology. (Even if human-caused climate change is incorrect, the fact of rampant exploitation of the world's resources for private profit still stands.) These renewable ecological resources only require policy priority from politicians and businessmen to become the new world standard.
This whole capitalistic system, which underpins all democracies throughout the world, is founded on incentive, which in its essentials amounts to the reward (read money) and punishment (read fear) system upon which society is based. Without sufficient incentive, there is no consequent drive by people to create, to succeed, to build, to reform, and to change. This drive is aggressive and ultimately ruinous competition, both between individuals and between nations. Nothing is done because it is intrinsically right to do it; competitive action is taken only when there is sufficient reward at the end. In democracy, currently the world’s ruling ideology, this incentive is called private profit, and it rules everything, along with the 'National Interest,' which is the never-ending search for state security that doesn't exist.
This overarching private profit principle has demonstrably proved to be vastly inequitable. Capitalism as a social system is essentially founded on comparison, as well as rank exploitation of both human beings and nature. There will always be some more clever at competing and exploiting people than others, more motivated to succeed, more intellectually adept, so social inequity is inevitable if the overarching principle of personal gain rules. Self-interest is, of course, the primary activity of the self, which knows no other way.
This competitive drive for 'progress' and profit is simply human greed, but greed is a subject that is best avoided in polite company. It is a given. So you cannot say that the entire society is founded on greed and fear. The word is cleverly disguised by euphemisms, such as the stockmarket term previously in vogue: ‘irrational exuberance’. Now of course, the results of that greed and fear are to be plainly seen in the current financial ructions, where the lender of last resort - the taxpayer - has to step in to save the financial system from the greed of the bankers and businessmen, in their race for ever greater private profit, at the expense of the sustainability of the overall human race.
In fact, society as a whole regards greed as good: it is the great motivator, the enemy to indolence, poverty and stagnation, as exemplified by the following, portrayed prominently in popular culture, now subtly imbedded in the zeitgeist:
"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed
-- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures
the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money,
for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind."
(These are, of course, the noted lines from the 1987 movie: Wall Street.
Although the film itself is fiction, this passage was derived from an
actual speech given by the noted 1980s Wall Street arbitrageur,
Ivan Boesky, in which he extolled the role of greed in society.)
Like the poor, as the biblical saying goes, greed has always been with us and will always be with us, it is the accepted norm. Being slaves to the ‘herd instinct’ and dutifully conforming to group-think, we condone and justify this greed and the social mores behind it; we accept it uncritically, mostly without even thinking. This mindset blocks any meaningful investigation into possible change in the first instance.
Greed in fact is the underlying principle behind Adam Smith's "hidden hand": the notion that individual self-interest in commerce will be to the overall benefit of society as a whole. This whole treatise, the pre-eminent work even today of all economics, thus condones greed as the beneficial underpinning of all social activity arising from business. Hence a major philosopher has laid out the accepted foundation stone of selfishness and inequality as the paradigm for the following generations of the human race. (This greed now threatens the entire global, financial, economic system of free enterprise - see The Enduring Myth of Leadership.)
Likewise, tradition and experience tells us that the human mind cannot be changed, it was ever thus and it will ever be. There are apparent properties, faculties, traits of the human mind that appear completely intrinsic to it. The term we have for this is, again, human nature. Everyone knows, or assumes, or has been told, or has concluded, that you can’t change human nature. Our parents, our teachers, our peers and our social authorities have all told us this in so many ways; it is an immutable, inviolable reality of life.
It’s a given, it is what it is. That’s why when someone comes along and talks for sixty years about changing our very basic ‘human nature’, which includes radically changing all of society, an inbuilt suspicion subtly arises in our minds. This goes against everything we have been brought up to believe in; it is to our minds, as we term it, ‘counter-intuitive’. Pointedly, there are very few people in the world who actually see that the present society is corrupt and failing, so why change something that is basically functioning correctly, with only a few outstanding problems at the margins?
Moreover, the man had an intention to free everyone from their conditioning, to thus change the world. This made us even more suspicious, sceptical.
Is this deeply ingrained and apparently innate scepticism the first cause to the impediment to actual listening? That is, have we ever actually listened to the talks of this man, without any conclusions, choice, or mindset whatsoever? Or have we been distracted by the knee-jerk reactions and desires of thought, of the "me," based entirely on our memories and experiences of the past?
So then, what is the first cause - that is, the root cause, not an incidental cause - behind all these global issues and all of humanity's problems?
Thought.
Thought that has invented everything: From gods, to religions, and philosophies, beliefs, theories, superstitions, fictional stories, magic, allegories, illusions, fairytales, romantic folklore ... and long-abiding myths.
And its special, grand narrative invention - the supreme, lasting idea of the separate self.
Which is an illusion.
(The Collected Works, Volume VI, Banaras, 5th Public Talk, February 20, 1949)
"You see, modern education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to think, not how to think.”
What lies at the very heart of the talks?
Why is the world the way it is? The world does not really have to be the way it is - it is not predestined, despite the apparent, conventional wisdom view.
Why is there constant war? The warring of religious beliefs, the war against fascism, the cold war, the various interminable regional wars like Vietnam, Korea, the Israel/Palestinian conflict, Bosnia, Sudan, Iraq/Afghanistan, now the ongoing 'war on terror'?
Why, with all the knowledge, wealth and technological advances of science and medicine, is there still demonstrable injustice throughout the world; why are there still millions of people in poverty, ill-health and educational ignorance? Why is there such a stark and growing disparity in inequality and wealth; multi-billionaires living alongside homeless people and families struggling daily with debt? Why is the democratic system, now the predominant worldwide ideology, such an authoritarian, hierarchical, elitist system? Why is the world completely hooked on money, power, mass entertainment, celebrity and status? What has caused all this?
A facile explanation, of course, is that the world is what it is because it is what it is. It is human nature. But then the reasonable question to ask is: why is human nature the way it is?
The central premise underlying all the talks - although not definitively spelt out - is clear, simple and logical. In the technological world, if someone goes wrong with your car, for instance, then you immediately set out to determine the cause of the problem. Similarly, if you develop a health problem, the rational and logical approach is, where possible, to determine the cause or seek medical expertise to find this cause so that you can effectively treat it. If one doesn’t take this first simple step one obviously cannot even start to resolve the problem at hand. This is not rocket science.
In the psychological realm however, this first principle, astonishingly, simply does not apply.
Take war as an example. Military conflict is universally regarded as an inevitable activity of man. There are very few people in the world who reject war per se. We adopt a consensual view on this and all other basic subjects. There is great safety in thinking in groups; there are very few people who think (so-called) ‘outside the box’ - which in the actual scheme of things is not thinking outside the group at all, when you really look at it, it’s just an attempt at minor reform around the edges.
Wars are cleverly justified for a range of reasons, which usually boil down in one way or another to ‘national security,’ which is simply individual security on a national scale. As far as its ultimate origins or root cause is concerned, many reasons are put forward as explanations - political, nationalistic, religious, economic reasons. But all these issues themselves have a first cause, yet this first cause is not even discussed by the individual, media organizations, or the public, let alone investigated in depth. It is obvious that the political, economic and religious structures of the world are put together entirely by the human mind. It is the mind that is behind all our actions, which on a relationship level brings on conflict and anger, and on a social, national and global scale brings about war.
Take also climate change. The thrust of current, majority scientific thought states it is caused by human activity (which still has not been definitively proven) - so what is the main cause of that? Obviously, the bulk of CO2 emissions comes from the oil and coal industry and oil is the most profitable business in the world, with a strong historical connection to the coal industry. (The largest oil company, ExxonMobil, is also the world's largest, most profitable, publicly traded corporation.) These global industries, which have over-exploited the Earth’s natural resources, now prop up the entire economic system as it stands at the expense of viable, sustainable, renewable energy resources - solar, wind and geothermal power, amongst others; all this is part of a system of sustainable ecology. (Even if human-caused climate change is incorrect, the fact of rampant exploitation of the world's resources for private profit still stands.) These renewable ecological resources only require policy priority from politicians and businessmen to become the new world standard.
This whole capitalistic system, which underpins all democracies throughout the world, is founded on incentive, which in its essentials amounts to the reward (read money) and punishment (read fear) system upon which society is based. Without sufficient incentive, there is no consequent drive by people to create, to succeed, to build, to reform, and to change. This drive is aggressive and ultimately ruinous competition, both between individuals and between nations. Nothing is done because it is intrinsically right to do it; competitive action is taken only when there is sufficient reward at the end. In democracy, currently the world’s ruling ideology, this incentive is called private profit, and it rules everything, along with the 'National Interest,' which is the never-ending search for state security that doesn't exist.
This overarching private profit principle has demonstrably proved to be vastly inequitable. Capitalism as a social system is essentially founded on comparison, as well as rank exploitation of both human beings and nature. There will always be some more clever at competing and exploiting people than others, more motivated to succeed, more intellectually adept, so social inequity is inevitable if the overarching principle of personal gain rules. Self-interest is, of course, the primary activity of the self, which knows no other way.
This competitive drive for 'progress' and profit is simply human greed, but greed is a subject that is best avoided in polite company. It is a given. So you cannot say that the entire society is founded on greed and fear. The word is cleverly disguised by euphemisms, such as the stockmarket term previously in vogue: ‘irrational exuberance’. Now of course, the results of that greed and fear are to be plainly seen in the current financial ructions, where the lender of last resort - the taxpayer - has to step in to save the financial system from the greed of the bankers and businessmen, in their race for ever greater private profit, at the expense of the sustainability of the overall human race.
In fact, society as a whole regards greed as good: it is the great motivator, the enemy to indolence, poverty and stagnation, as exemplified by the following, portrayed prominently in popular culture, now subtly imbedded in the zeitgeist:
"The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed
-- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures
the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money,
for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind."
(These are, of course, the noted lines from the 1987 movie: Wall Street.
Although the film itself is fiction, this passage was derived from an
actual speech given by the noted 1980s Wall Street arbitrageur,
Ivan Boesky, in which he extolled the role of greed in society.)
Like the poor, as the biblical saying goes, greed has always been with us and will always be with us, it is the accepted norm. Being slaves to the ‘herd instinct’ and dutifully conforming to group-think, we condone and justify this greed and the social mores behind it; we accept it uncritically, mostly without even thinking. This mindset blocks any meaningful investigation into possible change in the first instance.
Greed in fact is the underlying principle behind Adam Smith's "hidden hand": the notion that individual self-interest in commerce will be to the overall benefit of society as a whole. This whole treatise, the pre-eminent work even today of all economics, thus condones greed as the beneficial underpinning of all social activity arising from business. Hence a major philosopher has laid out the accepted foundation stone of selfishness and inequality as the paradigm for the following generations of the human race. (This greed now threatens the entire global, financial, economic system of free enterprise - see The Enduring Myth of Leadership.)
Likewise, tradition and experience tells us that the human mind cannot be changed, it was ever thus and it will ever be. There are apparent properties, faculties, traits of the human mind that appear completely intrinsic to it. The term we have for this is, again, human nature. Everyone knows, or assumes, or has been told, or has concluded, that you can’t change human nature. Our parents, our teachers, our peers and our social authorities have all told us this in so many ways; it is an immutable, inviolable reality of life.
It’s a given, it is what it is. That’s why when someone comes along and talks for sixty years about changing our very basic ‘human nature’, which includes radically changing all of society, an inbuilt suspicion subtly arises in our minds. This goes against everything we have been brought up to believe in; it is to our minds, as we term it, ‘counter-intuitive’. Pointedly, there are very few people in the world who actually see that the present society is corrupt and failing, so why change something that is basically functioning correctly, with only a few outstanding problems at the margins?
Moreover, the man had an intention to free everyone from their conditioning, to thus change the world. This made us even more suspicious, sceptical.
Is this deeply ingrained and apparently innate scepticism the first cause to the impediment to actual listening? That is, have we ever actually listened to the talks of this man, without any conclusions, choice, or mindset whatsoever? Or have we been distracted by the knee-jerk reactions and desires of thought, of the "me," based entirely on our memories and experiences of the past?
So then, what is the first cause - that is, the root cause, not an incidental cause - behind all these global issues and all of humanity's problems?
Thought.
Thought that has invented everything: From gods, to religions, and philosophies, beliefs, theories, superstitions, fictional stories, magic, allegories, illusions, fairytales, romantic folklore ... and long-abiding myths.
And its special, grand narrative invention - the supreme, lasting idea of the separate self.
Which is an illusion.
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"Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .?"
(Book of Life: 'Sentiment and emotion breed cruelty' - May 5, 2008)
(Book of Life: 'Sentiment and emotion breed cruelty' - May 5, 2008)
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The central premise is that this global society is unsustainable - that to save it, human beings have to change on a fundamental level.
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''The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.'
Karl Marx.
''The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.'
Karl Marx.
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(Page last updated June 26, 2010)
Total site page loads: > 150,000)
Total site page loads: > 150,000)
“We have to create a world government which is radically different, which is not based on nationalism, on ideologies, on force.”
(Education and the Significance of Life: Chapter 4, 'Education and World Peace')
(Education and the Significance of Life: Chapter 4, 'Education and World Peace')
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(Photo courtesy NASA/ESA - the Hubble Space Telescope)
(Photo courtesy NASA/ESA - the Hubble Space Telescope)
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____________________
The Importance of the Individual
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead, anthropologist.
~~~~~~~~~~
The word individual is derived from the Latin and means indivisible. At one with the human race. It is self-centered thought that separates you from the rest of humanity. Without the "I" you are just a human being with your particular creative talent. The urge to conform to the majority however, to fit in with this idea of the separate self, to be thus accepted, is a very powerful one. We are slaves to our modern culture, the zeitgeist of today. There is, of course, great safety in numbers, the more the better. It is the herd instinct in play, with the concomitant fear of being isolated from the group, of being shunned - which is to be avoided at all costs. This mass conformity is mediocrity, the superficiality of the conditioned mind, influenced by all the beliefs, superstitions, rituals, culture and ideas of our imbedded social system.
~~~~~~~~~
We then have this absurd notion in society that this majority we slavishly follow is always right. Everything in society is ultimately judged by how many people adhere to or support a particular cause, opinion or idea. This is the so-called 'will of the people'. Democracy has simply replaced the tyranny of dictatorship with the tyranny of the majority, backed by established 'authorities.' The worth of the individual and his or her creative capacity has been relentlessly devalued in favor of mass economic and social progress. Hence the talks are adjudged a social 'failure,' because of the small numbers who have taken them up.
The reverse is actually true. It is the minority that has always been shown to be right - history has demonstrated it, time and time again. All change has always begun with one person, which then spreads and ripples to a larger group.
The majority is, in fact, always wrong. But they will not accept it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Importance of the Individual
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead, anthropologist.
~~~~~~~~~~
The word individual is derived from the Latin and means indivisible. At one with the human race. It is self-centered thought that separates you from the rest of humanity. Without the "I" you are just a human being with your particular creative talent. The urge to conform to the majority however, to fit in with this idea of the separate self, to be thus accepted, is a very powerful one. We are slaves to our modern culture, the zeitgeist of today. There is, of course, great safety in numbers, the more the better. It is the herd instinct in play, with the concomitant fear of being isolated from the group, of being shunned - which is to be avoided at all costs. This mass conformity is mediocrity, the superficiality of the conditioned mind, influenced by all the beliefs, superstitions, rituals, culture and ideas of our imbedded social system.
~~~~~~~~~
We then have this absurd notion in society that this majority we slavishly follow is always right. Everything in society is ultimately judged by how many people adhere to or support a particular cause, opinion or idea. This is the so-called 'will of the people'. Democracy has simply replaced the tyranny of dictatorship with the tyranny of the majority, backed by established 'authorities.' The worth of the individual and his or her creative capacity has been relentlessly devalued in favor of mass economic and social progress. Hence the talks are adjudged a social 'failure,' because of the small numbers who have taken them up.
The reverse is actually true. It is the minority that has always been shown to be right - history has demonstrated it, time and time again. All change has always begun with one person, which then spreads and ripples to a larger group.
The majority is, in fact, always wrong. But they will not accept it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Essay: 'Too Radical for the World's Good'
