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

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

#271

Post by helloworld11 »

markdown wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overturning abortion More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongs…

Did you just liken abortion to eugenics?

There's certainly a certain relation between them. What's more, as genetic screening of early-term pregnancies becomes more common, the inevitable abortions that result due to real or perceived defects or other random personal reasons are things that many eugenicists of the past would have probably been keenly interested in, and even applauded in certain ways.

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

#272

Post by vkou »

merlincorey wrote: post #269
vkou wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abortion has a millennium-long history that precedes eugenics.

"Recent history" if you would prefer. They say Sparta practiced eugenics with late-term abortions according to legend though we don't have any physical evidence of this to my quick search. Wikipedia offers this quotation as a source[0] Haeckel, Ernst (1876). "The History of Creation, vol. I". New York: D. Appleton. p. 170. "Among the Spartans all newly born children were subject to a careful examination or selection.…

Sparta was a small, barbaric slave city state that after a flash in the sun, quickly faded into obscurity due to its ossified economic and political structures.

There's six orders of magnitude more people who have lived in political, and ethical systems over those thousands of years that had nothing to do with Sparta. I'm not sure why you are cherrypicking needles out of haystacks, but it's as much a fallacy as pointing out that since Ghenghis Khan wore pants, ergo, pants are evil.

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

#273

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overturning abortion More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongs…

Did you just liken abortion to eugenics?

[deleted]

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

#274

Post by Jerrrry »

markdown wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overturning abortion More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongs…

Did you just liken abortion to eugenics?

Are you implying they aren't related at all?

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

#275

Post by mise_en_place »

markdown wrote: post #252
rayiner wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> overturning abortion More accurately, the US Supreme Court returned the situation in the US to the status quo in most advanced countries: regulating abortion as a legislative matter, not a “right.” It did what the EU Court of Human Rights has repeatedly done in declining to recognize a “right” to elective abortions,[1] that can override legislation. A putative right that, 100 years from now, may well be seen alongs…

Did you just liken abortion to eugenics?

Well, what's the data on the types of pregnancies that get aborted? You could then use such data to make the argument that abortion achieves some of the same goals of eugenics, even if only loosely related in the currents that made these ideas mainstream. I predict this will become even more interesting when embryo modification becomes more popular and mainstream.

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

#276

Post by kmeisthax »

throwawayacc2 wrote: post #171
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mater…

A better analogy would be what Disney did to the Brothers Grimm. In fact, Disney is probably the poster child for this shit, given how much they lobbied to extend copyright law so that nobody could do to them what they did to Europe's fairy tales.

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

#277

Post by squabbles »

markdown wrote: post #253
prox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding on the word “appropriate” , “to make it your own.” Basically the more academic wording of “you made this? I made this.” meme. As long as you don’t pretend you created Buddhism or are an infallible authority of Buddhism it’s not appropriation. Personally I find the word not really appropriate with what we are trying to convey which I assume would be something along t…

I think "appropriation" is when you take cultural ideas from colonised places of the world and use them in inappropriate ways. Cultural appreciation = wearing a chinese cheongsam in a culturally appropriate situation because you think it's beautiful and you love the dress. Cultural appropriation = wearing grass skirts and coconut shell brassiers and getting wasted at a "tiki" frat party.

There is no inappropriate way to use clothes you own, unless you're using it to strangle someone. The people who get upset about people wearing things from "their" culture are always deracinated diaspora with no real connection to the culture. People who are healthily embedded in a culture don't get upset about foreigners "misusing" their cultural bric-a-brac, they have real lives to attend to. And if you're getting upset at a party goer wearing a grass skirt then you're in need of psychiatric help.

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

#278

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

_8zc2 wrote: post #210

An entire piece on Buddhism and corporations doesn't use the word "suffering" once.

Because clearly working for our corporation is not suffering! Show gratitude to trading your limited time on earth to be with us. /s

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

#279

Post by lmm »

vkou wrote: post #251
RicoElectrico wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet such a sketch would cause outrage these days. I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society. For all our social progress in this millennium, we regressed in many ways people don't readily notice. This was mostly an American thing in the past; but it spilled into Europe over time.

> I remember the times when people whose pastime was to get offended at stuff were ridiculed by most of the society. Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time…

> Which specific time period are you speaking about? The time period when the existence of gay people (not even speaking about married gay people) was offensive to the point of intolerance? Or perhaps the time period when interracial marriages offended the majority of the United States? Or maybe the time period when half the country was offended by a black person sitting in the front of a bus? Or by a flag hanging upside down?

I came of age in the late '90s. I don't think most people were offended by any of your list. A few churches would complain about gay people, but they were ridiculed for it.

> People taking offense at stuff that does/doesn't affect them isn't some woke 21st century invention.

It isn't, but it's something that we had seemed to be finally moving past. It's frustrating that only a few years after casting off the oppression of religious attitudes we now seem to be diving back into much the same thing.

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

#280

Post by tim333 »

mjfl wrote: post #26
toyg wrote: post #14

In Italy, in the '90s, we had a popular tv program with comedians doing sketches. One of those sketches was written and interpreted a guy who used to work in important advertising agencies. The sketch had a corporate manager who always started as a calm and devout supporter of buddhist-like tranquility in the workplace, all meditation and zen and care for personal wellbeing; by the end of the sketch his schizophrenic…

Is Steve Jobs a great example of this?

Jobs wasn't really like that as in "zen and care for personal wellbeing" at the start and then switching to "angry and materialistic". He seemed to combine a fairly consistent zen like focus, more on great objects like the iPhone rather than care for people, and a fairly consistent edge of angry materialism. It didn't really flip from one thing to the other.

A well known video of him for example on changing the world https://youtu.be/kYfNvmF0Bqw?t=7 He was a complex character

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