I think it’s fair to start with the observation that our religions have, and still can, play a highly controlling part in society.  This is usually informally and hand in hand with secular rulers (think religious politicians), but often with enough power of their own that these rulers would not provoke them thoughtlessly.  After all, priests could have you executed or banished for arguing with them, and whilst kings have their glamour, priests had a hotline to the ineffable. Of course, as we can see in the West, this power has now shifted heavily towards the secular rulers, to the point that the words of the priests are often disregarded and the police will happily raid a church if they feel they need to (as happened recently in Belgium).

This has, in my opinion, caused a significant move towards faith in a society and its agencies and away from faith in a religion and its agencies.  This tends to have a lot of the same characteristics, including an unquestioning belief for many that their society is always right and better, whatever the actual facts might be.  Of course, we have a lot invested in these things mentally and often physically and financially, thus the world view that stems from a persons faith (or indeed their society) can frame everything for them.  Any challenge to this is highly unwelcome, an observation that leads me onwards.

As in the case of religious faith, questioning this ‘societal faith’ invites swift and harsh criticism from some quarters, which is very understandable in light of my previous paragraph.  After all, any challenge to that faith is more than intellectual, it strikes emotionally as well.  Our answers to life’s questions and problems are found in the framework of our society or faith.  To question that can feel like a very personal attack, it attacks the persons life choices and possibly their sense of who they are.

In religious terms, you’d be a “Heretic”, an “Infidel”, or a “Heathen” and in secular terms you’re a “Commie”, a “Traitor” or a “Subversive”.  Interestingly, all of these are ‘ad hominem’ in that they condemn the person without addressing their ideas.  I think it’s fair to say that these sort of terms are used to put down the ideas of both secular and religious heretics without thought or consideration.  Of course, this is very likely because the faith (whichever that is) can’t afford to have those ideas examined closely.  In each respective system you can be ‘excommunicated’ or ‘ostracised’ and capital punishment has been an option in both systems and still is in many places.

In both secular and religious systems we have competing groups and also sub factions within those groups.  We can call the groups, ‘faiths’ or ‘nations’, it might then also be fair to call the factions ‘sects’ or ‘political parties’.  These groups most often form around a charismatic leader, be it a “Koresh” or a “Stalin”, then power hierarchies form and a dogma is drawn up.  There are always disagreements between groups, which can result in conflicts (armed or verbal) for ideology or practical power or the calving of sub groups.

To wrap up this first part, let me say that I take the view that there are definite parallels between a religion and a society.  I hope I’ve demonstrated this, or at least planted the seeds of further thought, as is my usual aim.  I’m hoping to get more into the ‘Tenets of the Religion’ in Part 2.

Creative Commons Acknowledgement.

The crowd image is by victoriapeckham and is licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic.

I define this as the idea that we should know everything, that to openly confess ignorance is frowned upon.  Not to know is intimated as failure, and there is a feeling that we should have all the facts to hand.

It has the result that people are frightened to ask questions, for fear of seeming foolish.  I’ve seen this in action throughout my life, in school, college and also at work. I’ve seen people seem frozen with the seeming embarrassment of not knowing, but in reality it’s better to admit this than to carry on under false pretences.  I’ve seen managers who expect their staff to have encyclopaedic knowledge of subjects they rarely deal with, and also expect them to waste their time memorising this stuff when a perfectly good reference exists.

Then we have people who consider a particular pet methodology or system (this is prevalent amongst the geek community), if you haven’t heard of it then woe betide you!  Yet, one could easily level the charge back: “I was doing quite well without this, I have many calls on my time, why should I spend it on this?”

It seems as if it could be an ego trip, to expect that either you should be able to command encyclopaedic knowledge but also a way of putting down others when they don’t know, a way to stoke a sense of superiority perhaps?

Speaking personally, having had exposure to Taoist thought on the matter, I find the whole notion quite ridiculous.

Chuang-Tzu [1] is quite explicit, “On Levelling all things”:

“For the Tao which is manifest is not Tao. Speech which argues falls short of its aim. Kindness which has fixed objects loses its scope. Integrity which is obvious is not believed in. Courage which pushes itself forward never accomplishes anything. These five are, as it were, round (mellow) with a strong bias towards squareness (sharpness). Therefore that knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the highest knowledge.”

The Tao Te Ching [2] has it’s own say in Chapter 48:

“Pursue knowledge, daily gain

Pursue Tao, daily loss
Loss and more loss
Until one reaches unattached action
With unattached action, there is nothing one cannot do

Take the world by constantly applying non-interference
The one who interferes is not qualified to take the world”

I prefer to honestly acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers, but if it’s needed, then I’m prepared to make the effort to find out.  It’s not the accumulation of knowledge we should value, but the ability to discover and apply knowledge, this knowledge is worthless without the skills that surround it.

Creative Commons Acknowledgement.

The bookshelf image is by Babblingdweeb and is licensed under by-nc-nd.

References.

[1]. http://mindgazer.org/tao/chtzu_level.htm

[2]. Derek Lin Translation at  http://www.truetao.org/ttc/complete.htm

It’s not just an opposition to those of us who hold the view that a big change is coming, a desire to make us shut up and stop spoiling the party with inconvenient reality.  It’s not just denial, the stuffing of an envelope full of bad news down the back of the sofa to be ignored;  I’ve seen others do it, I’ve done it myself, and I admit this is what our society’s response seems to amount to in some areas.  I also know from bitter experience that it’s not a clever game plan in the long term, not clever at all.

But no, that didn’t seem to quite fit somehow.  Then I thought of celebrity, media, politics, the whole thing and a thought stood up in my mind and waved – “What if, in an increasingly secular society, our society is our surrogate religion?”

Well, I fired up my trusty mind mapping software and started a map.  A little spare time later this is what I have, let me see if I can run with this thought experiment.

In my experience, Religions are based on a series of faith based assumptions that are not to be questioned.  Now it seems to me that in the West there’s an unquestioning assumption, held by many, that Western society is better than any other.  Well, in many areas that’s true; but in others our record is, to say the least, a little shabby.  Those who question this assumption are often labelled “unpatriotic” or worse.  Why not call them “Heretics”?  After all they hold ideas that are in some areas in disagreement with the status quo and that’s what a Heretic does.  It’s OK to play the home team, but not senselessly, we need to admit when we’re wrong.

Exploring further, the world’s religions have tenets that are to be accepted, again on faith.  In the West we have Capitalism, the idea of ‘the bottom line’, the ‘doctrine of unlimited growth’, various economic doctrines and in the UK the idea that ‘house prices only go up’ (that’ll get me lynched if I’m not careful).  These are clung to with a religious fervour, some due to the consequences of following a failed doctrine, others because there is no room in the heads of the faithful for any internal dissent.  Brainwashing, indoctrination, it has to be like this….. we can keep growing…..

Our holy book has the ‘Gospel according to Keynes’, ‘The book of Capitalism’,'The Corporate Handbook’ (though this one varies from place to place).  To question these tenets and books is again to invite charges of heresy, the ‘doctrine of unlimited growth’ especially, as our whole faith is bound up in it.

But what of the priests?  Our society has a priesthood, politicians and corporate leaders provide guidance and leadership, and they’re only arguably doing any better or worse than the clergy managed overall.  In addition we have celebrities, the ranks of our ‘saints’, those whose word and actions many follow adoringly.  We can elevate mere mortals as saints as well, through the medium of Reality TV shows such as ‘Pop Idol’ or ‘Big Brother’, though are they any more seemingly valid than the religious ones?

In summing up, am I trying to say religion came first and is somehow more valid?  No, but what I’m observing is that as religion vacates the lives of so many, other things are moving in to take it’s place.  They’re not necessarily better or worse, but it is certainly going to be interesting to watch.

Attributions

1. The image of New York City is from Wandering The World.  Used under a Creative Commons License.

With each problem, each speed bump along the way, more people get bumped onto the road towards waking up and people already on the road get moved along.  With that said, I know that many people have a colossal investment in Business As Usual, there are many who will fight the coming changes fanatically; even though their position in that of King Canute, their belief in the status quo is almost religious in it’s intensity.

For their part, the Vested Interests; the powers that be, are deploying every while and weapon in their not inconsiderable arsenals to fight this.  Every person whose consciousness is raised and who starts thinking freely is a loss for them, a body blow, and the more people that awaken to our situation the easier it is for others to do so.

For my part, I think the VIs are fighting a losing battle.  Once a person awakens, it’s impossible to unawaken; a consciousness raised cannot truly be lowered.  You may have denial and suppression but that’s all you have, consider that a religion knows that once the conditioning is broken that person is lost to them, it’s the same here.  This is a secular raising of consciousness that goes far beyond anything we’ve seen in religious terms.

But that’s a thought, and I will swing towards religion as my final thought in this post.  Religions hold views that are in some cases counter to the coming reality, those faiths are in for a shock.  For example consider Catholicism and contraception.  The coming population issues will challenge and break that teaching, the faithful believe the Pope is infallible, they are about to see both their leader and their faith shown to be in error.  Where does that lead?

I’ve been pondering this tragedy and am wondering at the scale of it, a dark stygian cloud seeping beneath the water.  Some say it will spread up the Atlantic coastline, indeed, some rumors say it has already begun to.  This has been likened to an American Chernobyl, I think that’s an entirely justified comparison.

The cost in terms of both the environment and economy is well covered elsewhere, the political row echoes across the Atlantic, and reading newspaper website comments I wonder if many people in the UK can empathise with Obama.  I find myself feeling a deep sympathy for the man, and hoping that he can use this to break the stranglehold of Big Oil and move the US towards an alternative energy policy that includes walkable cities and clean efficient rail.

I was also pondering the effects on the mental level.  We’ve been caught out in our greed, as Peter so accurately puts it over at The Buddha Diaries:

“We have known for at least forty years that this dependency was a threat to our well-being and to the natural environment, but have done nothing to address it. Indeed, the reverse, our demand has only increased, our addiction deepened.”

I agree wholeheartedly.  This has been brought on by our greed, grasping for the things we feel entitled to, without realising that our sense of entitlement will be our undoing.  We have grasped and hoarded with no thought and our “solutions” to the World’s financial mess have seen us grasping at the resources of the future, impoverishing future generations to sate our own appetites.

So, are we Preta, hungry ghosts (speaking psychologically) with an insatiable appetite for a substance or object?  Our greed is forcing us recklessly onwards, as evidenced by internal emails from BP.  I’ve observed that the drive for profits, and damn the consequences, has stored up some pretty alarming trouble for us.  But I plan to cover that another time.

Or can we rise above that?  I believe that answer is “yes, we can”.  We will need to rediscover our humility in the face of nature, we have pushed too far thinking we could beat the odds; we couldn’t, you don’t beat Mother Nature.

I can only see only one solution.  That we must grow into a stewardship of this planet, and learn to use it sustainably; after all, it’s not like we have another.  Some vested interests are going to be severely inconvenienced, and will have to learn to restrain their greed but either we do this voluntarily and get a say in how it goes, or we sleep walk into another catastrophe.

Whats our Karma?

The planets are a prime example, originally we were unable to make out any details and had some very odd ideas due to this lack of hard data.  People imagined cities and civilisations on both Venus and Mars, later observations even showed what seemed to be a network of canals on Mars.  Of course, once we were actually able to visit the planets we found that this wasn’t the case and our knowledge grew massively.  Venus is utterly inhospitable, and the Martian canal network was nowhere is sight.

Our methods are not always direct and once it’s explained how we know the things about planets we haven’t even visited, it makes more sense.  For example, we know about the composition of an object by the radio frequencies it reflects when examing with a Radio Telescope, as different elements absorb different frequencies.

This, for me, underlines the reason I walked away from religious explanations of the world; Science can not only explain that it knows, but can explain in detail how it knows.  Whereas the religious explanation is generally either an argument from authority or circular reasoning.  Furthermore, when they are wrong (and they are wrong more often than they will care to admit), they often are incapable of self correcting.  One exception to this (and there may well be others especially Taoism) is Buddhism, to quote the Dalai Lama:

“If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.”

Of course, given the Buddha’s teaching on change, it really shouldn’t be a surprising thing that Buddhism can do this.

You can find it here.

Now, this kind of thing is exactly what the Buddha was talking about.  He pointed out that the reasons we suffer are that we are unwilling to accept the world as it is and prefer our illusions about it.  Note that I don’t say “unable to accept the world as it is”, to say that would be to admit defeat before we start.

I’ve seen a few versions of climate change arguments, it’s becoming more apparent to me that this is the 21st century religious war, with vested interests on both sides and too much shouting.  I find myself agreeing with the implication that this has become more about peoples cherished worldviews and egos and less about the science.  The Buddha tells us that clinging very strongly to our views can cause trouble,  it seems that we need to be reminded of this wise advice with regard to the subject of Climate Change.

For my part, it’s my understanding that the weather is very complex feedback system which we still don’t fully understand.  We’re introducing changes into this sytem and doing the equivalent of throwing mud in the works, and have been for years.  Let’s stop there; we’re taking a very large powerful and complex system; which we don’t fully understand and messing with it in an unco-ordinated manner.

The changes that we have started in the past will have their effect, some already have (anyone remember acid rain?), some no doubt have yet to become apparent.  This comes close to my understanding of Karma; it’s all about knock on effects in a complex system, sometimes unpredictable ones, coming back to bite you.  Remember the “Butterfly Effect”, the principle that small changes could get magnified quite a lot, this could get quite eventful.

When it’s put like this, does any of this strike you as a particularly wise thing to be doing?

Nobody mentions the Elephant in the room, the end of Oil and the limits to growth.  There just seems to be a vague feeling of ‘oh, somebody must do something’, but no sense that business as usual is not possible long term and that certain limits are approaching.

I have spoken to people who see the end of oil, it makes me wonder that if those of us on the ground can see it with a simple common sense, why can’t those in charge?  The technology is there, but maybe because it’s not shiny and new; some kind of shiny impersonal Ithing with no soul, nobody wants to know.

One of the things that made me smile in all this cold weather was the story of a modern diesel locomotive rescued by a steam engine in England.  I’ve been of the opinion for quite some time that newer ways aren’t always better, reading Robert M Pirsig’s view in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that the correct question is not “what is new?” but “what is best?” confirmed my beliefs.

I’ve seen folks arguing that the renewable technologies need huge factories and lots of energy to build and all sorts of things, but windmills and water wheels have been around for centuries, they’re and ancient and time honoured technology and can provide a valuable contribution without all the rare elements and industrial wizardry, what is so hard to understand about that.

Or maybe we’re in denial because it’s not shiny and doesn’t fit our self image?

The author of the article pointed out that, through “Codes of Conduct” and other methods, various organisations can work to exclude people whose views and lifestyles are not the strict majority norm.  A couple of examples he gives are a teacher who got into considerable difficulty for being a pagan and another teacher who posed topless a few years before being a teacher getting into trouble for that.

It’s a question I’ve pondered before with regard to the rows about Anglican clergy, for example, why should a priest’s gender matter?  What matters more is their ability to do the job, though fundamentalists would without a doubt disagree with me, as is their right. So when looking at teaching (which did seem to get singled out a little more in the article), surely what matters is that we have a good teacher, someone who can get the lessons across?  Who gives a damn if they’re pagan?  If you can do the job, the standard of the work’s good and you keep your professional life reasonably seperate from your personal life where’s the problem?  That question, forces us to confront our prejudices and frankly it’s needed.

All of this raises questions about how far employers should be allowed to go in these dictates, at what point do we turn and say “That’s none of your business”? Human Rights legislation is improving in this area in Europe, but it does seem to me as though in some instances employers are (without realising, I hope) working to undermine the human rights of their employees. This is a trend we need to fight and I notice Britain is very slow on the uptake (we have opt outs) with human rights and employment laws.  It is to be hoped we come to our senses.