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Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

nytimes.com

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Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#191

Post by shorttime »

Amezarak wrote: post #92
johnwheeler wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, pretty much in every aspect. If you're living in the U.S. or Europe today, your lifestyle likely surpasses that of the royalty and robber barons of 150 years ago.

What does "better" mean? If we mean that to be afforded more technological luxury is to live better, then sure, no people has ever lived better. Are we happier and more fulfilled than ever before? I don't know, but I doubt it. Also, while the royalty and robber barons didn't have the internet or chemotherapy, they had servants to do all the menial chores most of is still have to do today, so in that respect we haven'…

This is a relatively new problem, finding "happiness". It only becomes a problem after basic needs are met, food, roof over your head, steady income, low debt, healthy. People in the past had very little time to prioritize "happiness" against basic survival. Just to have the problem to begin with is a blessing in disguise, you're not struggling. I see it as a hierarchy of needs, similar to Maslow's.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#192

Post by xherberta »

kordless wrote: post #124
xherberta wrote: post #112

Yes, the poorest among us are materially well-off, by any historical comparison. Yet the article speaks to how we're doing psychologically and spiritually. It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. Trump has gotten this far by stirring up rust belt fears of human obsolescence. Less-educated white males are seeing their place in soci…

> It's a little glib to tell people they'd better get happy and appreciate how much better we have it than ye olde folks of yore. You are speaking for the Dalai Lama's intent with this blaming statement. "Glib" is Germanic and means "slippery". And while only he can speak to whether he is being slippery or not with his words, given the words themselves do not blame I doubt that is the case here. However, the Dalai La…

Sorry, I was speaking in agreement with the article, and in opposition to the idea expressed in the comments that material progress plus Netflix ought to satisfy and fulfil the human heart.

I heartily agree that dissonance is a formidable force in the world with devastating consequences -- I like your name for the concept. I'm saying we can't afford to ignore the painful realities of those who feel disenfranchised. Also, let's be more aware of subtle ways in which technological advances may augment internal dissonance.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#193

Post by ericd »

Amezarak wrote: post #133
johnwheeler wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unlimited free time is better than 40-80 hours a week devoted to keeping yourself employed I just want to touch on this last point. I read the rest of your responses, but I think your philosophy boils down to this single misconception. Unlimited free time doesn't make you any happier than employment. Dissatisfaction is born out of these relative comparisons you're making and not spending your attention on what matt…

As a rule, I don't make relative comparisons - I did here because I wanted to highlight a difference that exists between the allegedly worse lifestyles of robber barons in 1916 compared to average people in 2016. I don't disagree that constant inner growth through learning and challenging myself is important. It's just my learning and challenging has more to do with the relationships I have with my friends, family, a…

You might enjoy it, but many people dislike retirement and return to work.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#194

Post by orasis »

trynumber9 wrote: post #45

"In America today, compared with 50 years ago, three times as many working-age men are completely outside the work" I was taught that work is one of only two uses for a man. That other being a good father. It must be wrong but it is an unshakable thought. I can't imagine how I would hate myself if I couldn't provide. This fear, even though I have no dependents, is far greater than my fear of being unneeded. Maybe it'…

So few men vocalize this fear. I lost a brother-in-law to suicide because of this. Thank you for sharing this.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#195

Post by reddytowns »

jacobolus wrote: post #182
reddytowns wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate court systems, accountable political system, protection of labor rights, they are all examples of things not being corrupt. So the reason for less corruption can't be less corruption. You're talking in circles here.

You’re missing my point, which is that the “cultural factors” are not about individual people being inherently “corrupt”, but more about institutional strength and power distribution in the whole society. The US has a long history of integrating immigrants from a variety of cultural backgrounds, historically including large numbers of rural peasants from quasi-feudal societies, and plenty of people from places domina…

Individual people make up society. If those individuals are mostly corrupt, then society becomes corrupt as well, isn't it? If a judge knows that he won't get in trouble for accepting bribes because the DA won't prosecute, then the "institutional strength and power distribution" would be affected by that. Where is the difference here?

And not to nitpick, but why are you now scare quoting corruption, when before you did not? Do you not think corruption is a real problem?

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#196

Post by alexbecker »

varjag wrote: post #171
imaginology wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's odd, the world is the safest and most stable that it has ever been. Tell that to Mother Earth, who is about to show us all who is boss. Climate change is much worse than most people realise. You may also be unaware of what is going on in Syria, and the fact that NATO has ordered the deployment of thousands of troops to Eastern Europe to put pressure on Russia, a nuclear-armed country.

NATO put the troops in NATO member countries, at request of those NATO countries. I'm sure that's all was just to irritate Russia for no possible reason at all. After all, it's not like Russia, a nuclear armed country has been undergoing moral and intellectual meltdown last couple of years?

I'm not sure the parent is implying that NATO was wrong to deploy said troops. But even if it's the right move, deploying troops to pressure Russia is certainly an unnerving turn of events.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#197

Post by mynameishere »

fao_ wrote: post #129
petre wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no please not Trump again, he's got all the bad press in the Western World. I read a Dalai Lama article to bust into Trump bad press yet again. Someone's gotta build and repair those self driving trucks, ey? And it won't be robots or software developers with a laptop, it's gonna be non educated hard working males of all colors who are not afraid to get their hands dirty. Otherwise your politicians are gonna orches…

The reason Trump has so much hype, is because Trump creates enough bad press without the media having to lift a finger. It's easy for them to stir up controversy and bad press because he makes it easy for them. Almost every statement he makes is geared to generate hype and bad press. Which is working. I've heard more about Trump, what Trump says about Foo, and what Trump says about Hillary, than I have Hillary.

without the media having to lift a finger

The media has been full-court press against Trump for months.

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#198

Post by scythe »

jacobolus wrote: post #175
scythe wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, etc weren't drastically more corrupt than the United States a hundred years ago, were they? Also, "there were not problems" is questionable; this prior flow of migration may have contributed to the infamously low value of labor during the Gilded age. > immigrants [...] commit less (or at least not more) crime For the record I'm agnostic on this issue, but it bothers me that a lot of v…

The idea that immigrants “don’t fit together” with existing Americans is rhetoric pitched toward places where there are few immigrants, making the immigrants a convenient scapegoat / bogeyman because they can’t answer back. The places with substantial immigrant populations are mostly getting along just fine. Jim and Deb Fallows have recently been doing a nice bit of traveling around the US writing about this and simi…

That's nice, but it suffers from a few defects:

- apparently I've committed the sin of having sympathy for the other side, so I must agree with them

- if it's rhetoric then it's also independent invention because I certainly didn't get it anywhere and never meant to imply it; I only expressed a certain possible flaw in a purportedly logical argument, and there are others (eg that higher housing prices specifically cause crime, or that competition for low-skill labor drives down wages at the bottom and causes crime, or...). The point is not one of them but all of them; the flaw is in the structure of the argument

- I'm not utilizing a fear of immigrants in my argument and I originally said that to you, not to a poor person from eastern Colorado, which makes it hard to think I was

* when questioned, you made an about-face from criminological data to sob stories, "how could you awful conservatives hate those cute immigrant faces", which is both annoying because I'm neither conservative nor against immigration, and it torpedoes your rational credibility

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#199

Post by legodt »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #153
cossatot wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's worrisome about the immigration trends? I personally like them, and feel that they're more stabilizing than not: we're less likely to go to war with a nation of whose ethnicities make up some substantial fraction of our populace, and may be treated better in the case of war (look at German-American vs. Japanese-American treatment in WWII). But these are only my views. You can ask Taleb about his views on Middl…

>What's worrisome about the immigration trends? Places like the US and Denmark are incredibly non-corrupt, while places like Russia, Brazil, and Nigeria are highly corrupt. Why some places are corrupt and others aren't is poorly understood magic of some sort. One fairly decent guess is something like "cultural factors" - Danish bureaucrats aren't corrupt because they expect that other non-corrupt Danes would punish t…

"the cultural norms that make our communities excellent places to live"

In case anybody didn't know already, this is what dog whistle racism looks like

Re: Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

#200

Post by legodt »

patricius wrote: post #158
surfmike wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider the US a proven success on acculturating immigrants. Over 200 years of importing people from broken corrupt and broken regimes, creating a prosperous and relatively uncorrupt society.

But those 200 years have been far from peaceful.

Yeah but that wasn't the immigrant's fault. Quite the opposite actually. Ruling white people are a major source of the history of violence.
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