Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation • Hacker News Board

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#171

Post by throwawayacc2 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #164

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing can be said about anything. Judaism appropriated pre existing ideas and disrespected them by insisting on a single god. Christianity appropriated judaism and disrespected it by removing covenant practices such as circumcision and adding new ideas such as the kingdom of heaven being available to anyone not just “the chosen people”. Islam appropriated christianity and disrespected it by demoting Je…

The original communist ideology wasn't original at all. The roots go back at least to the time of the Gracchi in Rome. It's clear hardly anyone commenting here has any idea what appropriation really is. It's not just disrespecting existing cultures. It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable…

> It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable commodity.

Sort of like the monarchies of Europe have been turned into republics in all but name, the culture of “divine right of kings” destroyed but the trappings of monarchy are still used but devoid of meaning. And often used as marketing material.

But, surely you don’t yearn for the return of absolute monarchies ruled by gods appointed ruler, do you?

This is the path of humanity. Some things die off, some things survive and some are transformed beyond all recognition. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad in this. It simply is a phenomenon that happens.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#172

Post by Lutzb » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

eurasiantiger wrote: post #165

Lutzb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. Even with a cursory understanding of buddhist tradition you should know that the many schools accept the existence of god-like beings, but differ on their influence of the buddhist practitioner. You could start to increase your understanding by reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_deities or https://www.learnreligions.com/atheism-and-devotion-in-buddh...

Let’s not start an ecumenical debate that has been settled for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_points_unifying_Theravād... Some traditions do not agree, of course.

You are using broad unsubstantiated statements to make your points:

> Buddhism explicitly denies the existence of gods.

Where does it state that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_points_unifying_Therav%C... says nothing about the denial of the existence of gods.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#173

Post by javajosh » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

prox wrote: post #143

javajosh wrote: post #139

>It feels anti human. Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologist…

While I find some parts of your sympathetic, conflating the left with academia is not really a valid approach. That some (on the left) have picked up on academic usage of some words or models is perhaps more accurate, and the misuse of words and terms. Which is far more prevalent in my experience. There was an interesting article about some social inequalities where when we talk about something more -is actually maki…

>That some (on the left) have picked up on academic usage of some words or models is perhaps more accurate, and the misuse of words and terms.

That is absolutely true. And there has even been some pushback from the academics who coined these terms. But, in the end, words are tools, and tools meet a need, and there was apparently a great need for a new narrative that explained personal feelings of failure and self loathing. So it was inevitable that these terms would be used in this way. These words, as tools, are also potent for those who desire power, and look for any means to win, including invocation of race and gender stereotypes. It is galling for anyone who values liberty to see this, when the goal has always been to deprecate the prejudice function, and not merely to call the same function with different arguments.

It is fascinating, though, how the desire to improve, to be more virtuous than before, can turn out so badly! It's a real slippery slope situation - we made progress, civil rights, women's rights, interracial marriage, gay marriage, sexual identities, gender identities acknowledging the momentum of racist policies in our demographics...but then it turns into: gender is purely a construct, lets modify children's bodies if they think they're trans, lets force people to use certain pronouns, lets have teachers share their sex lives with kindergarteners, lets give women and students of color the power of professional life and death over white teachers, lets teach reverse CBT. And if you try to make this point, you're called a racist and a bigot! Social justice warriors push an insidious form of injustice that harms everyone. Because, as the GGP put it, it's anti-human.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#174

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

Cultural exchange of food and clothes and such is great. I’m a lot more sympathetic to the complaint here, though, which seems to be that people have taken the surface level of Buddhist religious practice while tossing out all the parts that make it meaningful to the interviewee. I’m imagining how I would feel if my company hosted prayer sessions where you speak to your unconscious mind rather than God and the sign of the cross represents the intersection of personal and professional responsibilities, and… yeah, that’d be pretty weird. (Or maybe a better analogy would be some kind of monastic liturgy, since she mentions meditation is uncommon in traditional practice.)

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#175

Post by javajosh » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #145

javajosh wrote: post #139

>It feels anti human. Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologist…

> Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologists, but within the public sphere they function only as a combined virtue signal and rhetorical weapon. This is so true. It’s a very beautifully expressed feeling I had trouble articulating before. Thank you for putting it into words like this. It’s also ridicul…

Thanks. George Orwell made this point well in "Animal Farm". The nuance of the initial revolution was gradually lost, and became "four legs good, two legs bad".

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#176

Post by wrycoder » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #139

>It feels anti human. Because it is. The zeitgeist on the left (so, academia) is consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing, and a great deal of intellectual work has been done to post hoc rationalize these feelings and package them in catchy phrases. Terms like "cultural appropriation" and "privilege" or "systematic racism" or "toxic masculinity", may have some technically useful meanings to anthropologist…

> consumed by personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing

I’d suggest that it’s not about those things for the accusers themselves. It’s simply about gaining power. And they do it by preying upon “personal shame, guilt, and self-loathing” in other well-meaning people. They’ve discovered that yelling “cultural appropriation” works quite well with people who are constantly looking for other people to feel sorry for - which of a kind of projection.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#177

Post by javajosh » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

Fun fact: Buddhist monks, after having given up everything, still fought over "right view". Even during the lifetime of the Buddha. Even though there were many arahants around. The urge to be right, and the antagonism toward those that we perceive as wrong, runs very very deep.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#178

Post by labrador » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

> Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism

Well it works both ways with many Asians appropriating Christianity

/sarcasm

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#179

Post by School-Cotton » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #164

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same thing can be said about anything. Judaism appropriated pre existing ideas and disrespected them by insisting on a single god. Christianity appropriated judaism and disrespected it by removing covenant practices such as circumcision and adding new ideas such as the kingdom of heaven being available to anyone not just “the chosen people”. Islam appropriated christianity and disrespected it by demoting Je…

The original communist ideology wasn't original at all. The roots go back at least to the time of the Gracchi in Rome. It's clear hardly anyone commenting here has any idea what appropriation really is. It's not just disrespecting existing cultures. It's destroying them by removing the meaning from them. And then repackaging the symbols - usually with a vague implication of profundity and exoticism - as a marketable…

How have original Buddhist cultures in Asia been destroyed by “corporate Buddhism” catching on in the West? They haven’t. They are still around.

Re: Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation

#180

Post by rawgabbit » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #151

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #93

I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I was very curious about the article. I am wondering if it treats ideas such as “hire fast fire fast” - In a way a concept related to the Buddhist ideas of detachment, or the opposite, “bing your whole self to work” which in a way seems contradictory - you have attachments, cont…

> I stopped reading upon seeing at the very stop this “ Silicon Valley is the latest player in a history of Western appropriation of Buddhism” I think you jumped the gun. The extended interview with the book author showed that her position is aligned, or even the same as yours (your comment is naturally too brief to tell whether I should have used only “aligned” or “same”). And indeed it’s Buddhism we’re talking abou…

He did jumped the gun. The author Carolyn Chen made some very compelling arguments saying corporatized Buddhism is unrecognizable. Carolyn Chen is arguing corporatized Buddhism is a new religion that celebrates 70+hour work weeks and the celebrity CEO.

"What we see in American religion, even if it is practiced in a corporate setting, is often the question, “How can the group help the individual realize themselves?” Whereas in other cultures this question tends to be reversed: “How can the individual help realize the goals of the group?” Interestingly enough, I think that companies have been able to command great self-sacrifice from Americans in a way that no other institution can today. I would argue that companies or workplaces have become the new faith communities that are replacing organized religion."