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Saturday, December 17, 2016

Buddhist wisdom and Western anti-intellectualism

I think it is fairly accurate to say that the Buddhist environment (aka "Confucian ethic", to indicate the general attitude in Asia) and the Christian environment are different in an important respect (I might comment as an aside that modern Jewry is more like the Asian view).

This is that there is emphasis on learning.  Christians tend to downplay the importance and even value of knowledge, in spite of the fact that they invented science (and it may be this that in part is why -- it was a rebellion against enforced orthodoxy).  Christ taught to be as children, that God puts the wisdom of mankind to shame, even that the ignorant are as worthy as anyone else (not that all are not equal as humans, but they plainly are not in detail).

Wisdom in Buddhism is centered on the monastery.  The general public can believe what it wants, and the monks will smile and say that is true, and do whatever the traditional ritual might happen to be (and get gifts).  Hence they burn fake money for the dead, so that the dead are wealthy in the afterlife, even though everyone also believes that very shortly after death one's spirit occupies (parasitises?) a developing fetus, where surely it has no use for the money.  These contradictions abound, and none are argued with, and they are generally believed, although to someone like myself who has had a course in Greek philosophy and understands Aristotle this just can't be.  Asians don't have heretics.  If they have mutually contradictory beliefs, they are both true in some way that perhaps we don't grasp, and even if not, they are a way.  Hence Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism tolerate each other and a variety of more local animist sects perfectly well.

(Another aside: it was the coming of the Christian heresy -- Communism -- which inherited the idea of heresy from Christianity -- that upset this in China).

The Christian and the Muslim, in their fundamentalist forms (the idea of a "fundamentalist" Buddhist is kinda hard for me to even imagine -- not that Buddhists can't be strong and resistant in defending themselves -- although usually they aren't and usually resort to things like self-immolation in protest) is like the common American high school dropout who creates psychological justification for this failure by downplaying "eggheads" and "nerds."  They won't admit someone might be smarter and therefore have more valid opinions; indeed they foolishly try to deny it, even though hard experience should teach us that there is always someone out there smarter than we are and to whom we should listen and from whom we should learn.

So they reject things of science they don't like or don't understand, such as global warming or, of course, evolutionary theory.  Both are established science, but they are either economically inconvenient or don't fit what they want to believe, and they are incapable of accepting better informed, wiser opinion, so they become something of a laughing-stock.  The Trump approach that he doesn't need CIA briefings because he is "smart" is to me just a manifestation of ignorant, stupid arrogance.

My experience in America included volunteer stints visiting American high schools, where I became convinced Asian methods, where students are not mixed but separated sexually and by achievement, are better, involved the observation that the teacher in America spends a good deal of time just controlling the class from a few under-achievers who are loud and aggressive and egoistic know-nothings, not worthy of a bit of respect, and trying to demand it, or at least its external symbols.  In Asia such are expelled and either go into the army as cannon feed or join the ranks of common workers.

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