Asking the Tough Questions

 

Below is something I'd posted in an online Discord server a day or two ago:

How do we harmonize with the discordant strumming of those capitalistic, imperialistic, consumeristic and overall anti-humanistic structures with their over-mic’d and out-of-tune guitar droning on and on demanding us to march? Can a cell in a sick and seemingly dying organism be truly healthy? Are mindfulness practices a luxury of the privileged? Is it a way to pat ourselves on the back and muse about how if we can’t control the chaos around us at least we can control the chaos in our hearts and minds? I’m torn because on one hand I do see the pedestrian Western spiritual path as sort of defunct and hollow - as a self-indulgent productivity tool companies now offer to their workers and private individuals use in order to destress and unwind as a gentle form of self-care. These practices begin to become the opposite of what they were intended to be. They are not a means to escape discomfort, they are a means to confront it. 

The spiritual path, if practiced authentically, is difficult, rife with struggle, yet many practitioners appear averse to discomfort and adversity, instead seeking to retreat into meditation as a reprieve from struggle and pain - be it emotional, physical, psychological or otherwise. Ultimately these practices are tools, and can be misused. 

On the other hand, spiritual practice has tremendous potential to liberate us from our ignorance, to heighten our awareness, to help us realize we are all one and that what we do to others we do to ourselves. These kinds of deep experiential revelations can usher in that more beautiful world we all know is possible™️ and so their value should not be understated. 

The challenge is realized when we consider how to be moral inside an immoral system. How can we purify the accumulated toxins and defilements of capitalism in the modern era? How can we ‘do no harm’ when, as citizens of nation states, our tax dollars go toward funding war, militarization, bombing of civilians, genocides, coups, invasions, forced migrations, fossil fuel subsidies, institutional oppression and the development of nuclear weapons capable of rendering most of life on this planet obsolete?

It isn't easy being greezy. Whether we're just trying to be better people or better citizens, there comes a time when it is necessary to critically examine the world around us. Doing so - assessing the external fabric of the national, social and ecological bubbles in which we all live - should reveal to us insights about our own internal environment. For example, a good Dhamma practitioner might seek to live a moral life. To do so is to be chaste, to abstain from intoxicants and sexual immodesty, to not kill or harm other beings. If this same person were to live in accord with the rules laid out for a 'good' life, is it considered killing to order some steaks from the butcher on her way home from work to feed her family? Sure, she didn't kill a cow, but her participation in the transaction as a consumer of a killed animal makes her complicit, or at least partly responsible, doesn't it? When Charles Manson suggested his family kill the people living in the house at Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, he technically didn't murder anyone. Was he acquitted of his charges?

Most people, if given sufficient time to think, can begin to piece together that something isn't right with the modern world. Things seem off. Pesky questions might arise about why there is so much war, why so much inequality, why so much political corruption, why are so many people homeless and starving, why do there seem to be more natural disasters, heatwaves and species extinctions, why do things keep getting more expensive while the minimum wage remains the same, why is there so much addiction, drug abuse, alienation and suicide? Answers to these questions may not come as readily as the questions themselves. The problem is that many people don't even have the requisite time to look around and reflect on the situation. Worse still, is that many people receive messaging through the media they consume which propagandizes them into channeling their abstract feelings of exploitation and injustice at manufactured scapegoats and boogeymen: immigrants, the poor, minorities, Muslims, each other. 

In his most recent book, entitled Illegitimate Authority, celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky observes:

Both Lippmann and Bernays credited the Creel Committee for demonstrating the power of propaganda in "manufacturing consent" (Lippmann) and "engineering of consent" (Bernays). This "new art in the practice of democracy," Lippmann explained, could be used to keep the " ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" —the general public— passive and obedient while the self-designated "responsible men" will attend to important matters, free from the "trampling and roar of a bewildered herd." Bernays expressed similar views. They were not alone.

The trampling and roar of the bewildered herd has been misdirected, leaving the true enemy unseen and unscathed, with most of us not even noticing a trick has been played; that we've been duped. We're too busy fighting one another. We're too lost in fearful and worried thoughts about violent migrants pouring in over the border with guns and drugs, of swarthy, depraved, blood-thirsty terrorists, plotting, lurking, waiting, hellbent on the destruction of western democracy, threatening the safety of innocents everywhere. A buzzing blitz of macabre mayhem and murder await us in our pockets, reminding us that the threat is constant and unending and that as soon as one major tragedy or concern has waned, a fresh frenzy is ready to take its place. We are made to believe we are always under the threat of imminent destruction; a hostile nuclear submarine armed and ready off the shore, or maybe the next global pandemic. These drummed-up fears are incessantly broadcast on the news and propagated relentlessly across social media, whether they be financial, local, epidemiological or more personal - big-dicked black men ready to steal your woman, critical race theory trying to shame you for your whiteness, debauched liberals eager to reassign the gender of your children, trans people and other sexual miscreants lying in wait in public restrooms to ogle and molest young boys and girls, Mexicans flooding in to take your job, the list goes on - while the real, actual threats go unreported. For example, the climate crisis is the most pressing issue we face as a species, yet it gets scant coverage by comparison. The need for action becomes more urgent by the day yet we see little movement on this topic and, in conservative circles, flat out denial.

In order to liberate ourselves from this litany of false and exaggerated fears and focus on what truly needs our attention, we need the space to reflect - to contemplate our circumstances. This is why mindfulness practices matter now more than ever. How can one be expected to think about saving for their retirement if they can't think about how they're going to survive until the end of the month? 

A lingering observation from my time at the Vipassana retreat hinges on this very idea. I see now how vital it is to be in an environment insulated from the onslaught of worries and distractions that define the everyday default world we live in. Once inside such a space, there is finally the possibility to decompress, to declutter and allow the mind to settle. This is absolutely necessary in order to develop the clarity and focus needed for genuine insight and observation. 

If focus is regularly disrupted and misinformation keeps the mind confused and agitated, then the cogitative climate, rather than being suitable for realization, becomes quite opaque and intractable; the true nature of things remains impenetrable. The more conspiratorial part in me wonders whether this is by design. It would seem prudent to keep the governed throttled and in the dark, snapping at one another and quarreling over scraps, lest they uncover the big secret: there's more herd than shepherds. To quote David Hume:

...nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.