Ok, bare with me. I’m going to try and balance out this rant with some productive stuff that hopefully won't bore anyone. This will be rather long, but its purpose is the same as any on this board. Write, observe others opinions and contribute. So with that out of the way...
I do not like this Foundation for Inner Peace and new age bollocks. I feel it plays upon the human desires to be free of pain and struggle. I dislike the concepts of “ascension” and how we should all strive for inner happiness and spread love and compassion all around. You may think this is negative of me, but in actuality I’m about to create a reasonable argument. I argue that we as humans, need pain and struggle in order to survive. Pain reassures us that we are still human, it helps us mature and strengthens our psyche. Struggle inspires creativity to get out of the struggle, it opens us up to compromise and allows us to relate to each other.
There is a lot of bad shit in the World that really shouldn’t be there, but its all happened as a matter of circumstance and its not one person that’s caused it, WE have all caused it and it is only us as a collective that can solve it . Democracy is the only political system that has any evidence of being a success. Even though democracy at its core is a failure, people are happy to remain indifferent to it because it is the lesser of the evils. But I don’t want this to be about politics, this is about my criticism of new schools of thought, playing on human desires.
My motivation for laying waste to this “Foundation for Inner Peace” comes from a night I spent at a friend of a friends house. Throughout the evening he talked about all this nonsense related to his beliefs in what sounded like a cult religion. For every question posed, he had an answer. He brought almost every conversation back to his beliefs, which from a psychologists point of view might suggest classic egotism, however from my point of view it suggested investment into a cult. Unlike most cults, the theories (or should I say definitive’s, from his point of view) being tossed around were scientifically in nature. A lot of theorising about the universe and the classical theory that we are a universe formed inside of a microscopic particle that could be bacteria within a slice of a mouldy cheese in another universe’s, occupant’s fridge.
Several cults adopt science as a basis, quite possibly because those who have rejected conventional religions but are left seeking some fulfilment find a religion based on scientific principles appealing. But its when you really look at it, that you realise that science is only really a minor part of the organisation. These cults are purely ego, they believe that the only thing worth striving for is inner peace. They feel that by spreading love and compassion around and ignoring your natural human negativities that you are getting one step closer to inner peace.
I stated earlier that I believe negative emotions are paramount to survival of the human race. But what I will add is that these negative emotions should be delivered constructively and appropriately. I’m a man and like many men my instinctive urges are to bottle up my emotions for fear of showing weakness. Eventually they will overflow and I will release them all inappropriately in an angry manner. Many women on the other hand have higher emotional intelligence than men, they are accustomed to displaying emotion at appropriate times and not letting them overwhelm them. That is why women as a rule, are usually more psychologically stable than men.
Anyway I’m diverting from the topic here. We as humans desire a lot of things, but we know that many of our desires are just not possible. Some people desire to read minds, others desire to be the happiest person in the World. These are just desires, we cannot attain some of these desires and therefore it is pointless to seek them out, because until there is a practical method of reading minds or the ability to take a pill that makes you the happiest person in the World. These things just won’t happen. I understand and fully subscribe to the notion that its healthy to have such desires, again these desires shape us and help us understand ourselves. What I argue is that we should not be seeking inner peace, because it is not something we can accomplish. Experiencing the negatives is what makes us who we are, we need challenges to survive and by subscribing to the notion that inner peace will allow us to survive is foolish. You may ask me what I think about Buddhism, I think it’s a healthy way of life and a great way for some people to balance out their emotions and learn discipline. But at no point does Buddhism go off the rails and deny the fundamentals of the human condition. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying that “if there was a pill to stop anger, I would be the first to take it”. The religious leader of a religion based on happiness and peace fully accepts he is human and cannot wipe out his negative emotions through any spiritual or mental methods. What many people seem to miss also is that Buddhism is about balance, its not about being a completely happy and peaceful meditator, its about accepting your humanity, balancing it out and striving to be a better person. Whilst it doesn’t appeal to me as something to take on as a way of life, its philosophy is clear and about accepting your humanity as a fundamental principle.
So I think I’ve said enough on this. Everything I’ve said here is my personal opinion and at no point do I want you all to accept it as the truth and admit that I’m right. I want people to form their own opinions and not subscribe to anything I’ve said unless you already believe such things. I’ve always been quite outspoken on cults, even though I’m in my early 20’s its been something that’s perplexed and trouble me from an early age. Whilst maybe I've taken it too far in the respect that I've labeled some of this new age stuff as trying to redefine and perhaps deny humanity, I really think that these ways of thinking can do a lot of damage and take away many of the things that make us human. We need negativity to encourage positivity after all. Its just like a battery, there is no current unless there is opposite balance, yin and yang and all that!
Thoughts?
I do not like this Foundation for Inner Peace and new age bollocks. I feel it plays upon the human desires to be free of pain and struggle. I dislike the concepts of “ascension” and how we should all strive for inner happiness and spread love and compassion all around. You may think this is negative of me, but in actuality I’m about to create a reasonable argument. I argue that we as humans, need pain and struggle in order to survive. Pain reassures us that we are still human, it helps us mature and strengthens our psyche. Struggle inspires creativity to get out of the struggle, it opens us up to compromise and allows us to relate to each other.
There is a lot of bad shit in the World that really shouldn’t be there, but its all happened as a matter of circumstance and its not one person that’s caused it, WE have all caused it and it is only us as a collective that can solve it . Democracy is the only political system that has any evidence of being a success. Even though democracy at its core is a failure, people are happy to remain indifferent to it because it is the lesser of the evils. But I don’t want this to be about politics, this is about my criticism of new schools of thought, playing on human desires.
My motivation for laying waste to this “Foundation for Inner Peace” comes from a night I spent at a friend of a friends house. Throughout the evening he talked about all this nonsense related to his beliefs in what sounded like a cult religion. For every question posed, he had an answer. He brought almost every conversation back to his beliefs, which from a psychologists point of view might suggest classic egotism, however from my point of view it suggested investment into a cult. Unlike most cults, the theories (or should I say definitive’s, from his point of view) being tossed around were scientifically in nature. A lot of theorising about the universe and the classical theory that we are a universe formed inside of a microscopic particle that could be bacteria within a slice of a mouldy cheese in another universe’s, occupant’s fridge.
Several cults adopt science as a basis, quite possibly because those who have rejected conventional religions but are left seeking some fulfilment find a religion based on scientific principles appealing. But its when you really look at it, that you realise that science is only really a minor part of the organisation. These cults are purely ego, they believe that the only thing worth striving for is inner peace. They feel that by spreading love and compassion around and ignoring your natural human negativities that you are getting one step closer to inner peace.
I stated earlier that I believe negative emotions are paramount to survival of the human race. But what I will add is that these negative emotions should be delivered constructively and appropriately. I’m a man and like many men my instinctive urges are to bottle up my emotions for fear of showing weakness. Eventually they will overflow and I will release them all inappropriately in an angry manner. Many women on the other hand have higher emotional intelligence than men, they are accustomed to displaying emotion at appropriate times and not letting them overwhelm them. That is why women as a rule, are usually more psychologically stable than men.
Anyway I’m diverting from the topic here. We as humans desire a lot of things, but we know that many of our desires are just not possible. Some people desire to read minds, others desire to be the happiest person in the World. These are just desires, we cannot attain some of these desires and therefore it is pointless to seek them out, because until there is a practical method of reading minds or the ability to take a pill that makes you the happiest person in the World. These things just won’t happen. I understand and fully subscribe to the notion that its healthy to have such desires, again these desires shape us and help us understand ourselves. What I argue is that we should not be seeking inner peace, because it is not something we can accomplish. Experiencing the negatives is what makes us who we are, we need challenges to survive and by subscribing to the notion that inner peace will allow us to survive is foolish. You may ask me what I think about Buddhism, I think it’s a healthy way of life and a great way for some people to balance out their emotions and learn discipline. But at no point does Buddhism go off the rails and deny the fundamentals of the human condition. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying that “if there was a pill to stop anger, I would be the first to take it”. The religious leader of a religion based on happiness and peace fully accepts he is human and cannot wipe out his negative emotions through any spiritual or mental methods. What many people seem to miss also is that Buddhism is about balance, its not about being a completely happy and peaceful meditator, its about accepting your humanity, balancing it out and striving to be a better person. Whilst it doesn’t appeal to me as something to take on as a way of life, its philosophy is clear and about accepting your humanity as a fundamental principle.
So I think I’ve said enough on this. Everything I’ve said here is my personal opinion and at no point do I want you all to accept it as the truth and admit that I’m right. I want people to form their own opinions and not subscribe to anything I’ve said unless you already believe such things. I’ve always been quite outspoken on cults, even though I’m in my early 20’s its been something that’s perplexed and trouble me from an early age. Whilst maybe I've taken it too far in the respect that I've labeled some of this new age stuff as trying to redefine and perhaps deny humanity, I really think that these ways of thinking can do a lot of damage and take away many of the things that make us human. We need negativity to encourage positivity after all. Its just like a battery, there is no current unless there is opposite balance, yin and yang and all that!
Thoughts?
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