Good post. Not a lot of space for Buddhism in the modern west. Buddhists have no political influence in the West, unlike Hindus and Jews. Buddhism is too alien from Christianity to offer an olive branch to Western Conservatives, but at the same time it finds itself fighting the same Islamic civilization that the Western Left will defend to the bitter end. JuBu is no longer necessary for hippies because they have completed he Cult of Psychoanalysis that was still a work in progress in the 1970s. Also, a lot of Hippies went anti-woke, and are now anti-vax "Orthodox Christian Mystic" conspiracy theorists. And as a cherry on top, the Kung Fu genre is completely dead. A lot of Americans actually believed that Kung Fu could give you superhuman combat abilities until MMA became popular (albeit, I think MMA is not really that accurate a representation of the "best" fighting style)
There are many problems with contemporary therapy, both practically and culturally. But psychoanalysis is not one of them. Just about every therapist today regards Sigmund Freud as a quack, and your session with them will at most only loosely resemble psychoanalysis. Nobody remotely reputable is gonna tell you your problems are because you secretly want to kill your own father and fuck your own mother. Nowadays, therapists don't even sit out of sight of you jotting on a notepad anymore, or evdn jot on a notepad during your session at all.
The only shame is that it didn't happen sooner. Freud's pernicious influence wasted and corrupted generations of efforts. Leo Kanner, like Hans Asperger, actually caught on to autism being hereditary, but felt forced by peer pressure, and also felt it would be more popular with the public, to blame it on refrigerator mothers. If psychiatry had been popularized by someone who wasn't a quack, who actually accepted the importance of hereditarianism rather than seeing everything as part of some coke-fueled incest fantasy, such a climate might never have existed. I can't imagine how much further ahead we'd be on treatment.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that modern therapists still use Freudian psychoanalysis. I more meant that the ideas behind the psychoanalysis of the early 20th century, that suggest our issues are due to repressed "trauma" that we aren't cognizant of, became cemented in the culture. Sort of what you mean in that second paragraph.
Good piece. Close parallels with its cousin Hinduism and its changing reception in the west. From yoga, meditation and Upanishads to cow worship and casteism as India and the Indian diaspora’s politics has changed. Indeed, it’s the NatCons who’re willing to see actually-existing political Hinduism as it is. That being said, the Tibetans do have every right to craft their own path to modernity. The argument against ‘theocracy’ (a common Chinese argument that you seem to echo) is real, but not the one against Tibetan sovereignty and self-determination.
I sidestepped the question of border changes here, but I favor individual sovereignty and voluntary associations. Carving up land by ethnic membership, as nationalists propose, strikes me as oppressive. That applies whether it’s Tibet, Palestine, or anywhere else.
When I first heard about Tibet in the 1990’s I remember it being told to me as a story of a peaceful people who were attacked and subjugated by Chinese communists. It was just another sort of Cold War narrative among many. Honestly, that’s still how I think about it but I have not spent a lot of time studying it.
That narrative is bogus on multiple levels, and anyone well-informed on the subject knows it. I wasted way too much time arguing about this when I was younger (gay marriage was my other big issue), and the main thing I learned is that a more accurate understanding of the facts rarely changes anyone’s stance—or motivates them politically.
I mean I grew up in the Deep South, racist shit was pretty common depending on where you were. I just never heard the race argument put forward any anyone, it was always “communism bad, religious freedom good”.
It was still a naked act of imperialism by the part of the Chinese, and they absolutely waged war in genocidal fashion. Tibet's population was decimated by Mao's goons, and they remain among the least free peoples in the world today, right up there with the people of Xingiang, and surpassed only by the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. They are unfree even by Chinese standards, and have been deeply corrupted by generations of Marxist rule, which everywhere in the world makes people crueler, more racist, and more chauvinistic tgan they would've been otherwise.
Is Palestinian nationalism not a "minority nationalism" though? Anyway, perhaps when Palestinian nationalism drops below replacement we'll stop hearing about them.
We agree more than we disagree. I already noted that Vajrayana’s violent imagery is framed as inner transformation—same as jihad in Islam. Muslims call Islam a religion of peace; outsiders, looking at history, tend to disagree. Same with Tibetan ‘pacifism.’ And I focused cautiously on the European side of the Nazi contacts, but those weren’t one-sided. Non-Buddhists did instrumentalize these cultural contacts, I agree. Part of what drove my curiosity was to understand why neonazi imagery often mixes mandalas with black suns—obviously, it isn’t a mainstream part of Vajrayana.
Maybe you meant to write this comment on another post? Or if you think what I wrote here is ‘plausible sounding nonsense’ then address specific points without making personal attacks.
Good post. Not a lot of space for Buddhism in the modern west. Buddhists have no political influence in the West, unlike Hindus and Jews. Buddhism is too alien from Christianity to offer an olive branch to Western Conservatives, but at the same time it finds itself fighting the same Islamic civilization that the Western Left will defend to the bitter end. JuBu is no longer necessary for hippies because they have completed he Cult of Psychoanalysis that was still a work in progress in the 1970s. Also, a lot of Hippies went anti-woke, and are now anti-vax "Orthodox Christian Mystic" conspiracy theorists. And as a cherry on top, the Kung Fu genre is completely dead. A lot of Americans actually believed that Kung Fu could give you superhuman combat abilities until MMA became popular (albeit, I think MMA is not really that accurate a representation of the "best" fighting style)
There are many problems with contemporary therapy, both practically and culturally. But psychoanalysis is not one of them. Just about every therapist today regards Sigmund Freud as a quack, and your session with them will at most only loosely resemble psychoanalysis. Nobody remotely reputable is gonna tell you your problems are because you secretly want to kill your own father and fuck your own mother. Nowadays, therapists don't even sit out of sight of you jotting on a notepad anymore, or evdn jot on a notepad during your session at all.
The only shame is that it didn't happen sooner. Freud's pernicious influence wasted and corrupted generations of efforts. Leo Kanner, like Hans Asperger, actually caught on to autism being hereditary, but felt forced by peer pressure, and also felt it would be more popular with the public, to blame it on refrigerator mothers. If psychiatry had been popularized by someone who wasn't a quack, who actually accepted the importance of hereditarianism rather than seeing everything as part of some coke-fueled incest fantasy, such a climate might never have existed. I can't imagine how much further ahead we'd be on treatment.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that modern therapists still use Freudian psychoanalysis. I more meant that the ideas behind the psychoanalysis of the early 20th century, that suggest our issues are due to repressed "trauma" that we aren't cognizant of, became cemented in the culture. Sort of what you mean in that second paragraph.
Fair point. I hadn't thought of it like that. You're right, that sadly does have an embarrassing amount of popular appeal.
Good piece. Close parallels with its cousin Hinduism and its changing reception in the west. From yoga, meditation and Upanishads to cow worship and casteism as India and the Indian diaspora’s politics has changed. Indeed, it’s the NatCons who’re willing to see actually-existing political Hinduism as it is. That being said, the Tibetans do have every right to craft their own path to modernity. The argument against ‘theocracy’ (a common Chinese argument that you seem to echo) is real, but not the one against Tibetan sovereignty and self-determination.
I sidestepped the question of border changes here, but I favor individual sovereignty and voluntary associations. Carving up land by ethnic membership, as nationalists propose, strikes me as oppressive. That applies whether it’s Tibet, Palestine, or anywhere else.
When I first heard about Tibet in the 1990’s I remember it being told to me as a story of a peaceful people who were attacked and subjugated by Chinese communists. It was just another sort of Cold War narrative among many. Honestly, that’s still how I think about it but I have not spent a lot of time studying it.
That narrative is bogus on multiple levels, and anyone well-informed on the subject knows it. I wasted way too much time arguing about this when I was younger (gay marriage was my other big issue), and the main thing I learned is that a more accurate understanding of the facts rarely changes anyone’s stance—or motivates them politically.
I mean I grew up in the Deep South, racist shit was pretty common depending on where you were. I just never heard the race argument put forward any anyone, it was always “communism bad, religious freedom good”.
It was still a naked act of imperialism by the part of the Chinese, and they absolutely waged war in genocidal fashion. Tibet's population was decimated by Mao's goons, and they remain among the least free peoples in the world today, right up there with the people of Xingiang, and surpassed only by the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. They are unfree even by Chinese standards, and have been deeply corrupted by generations of Marxist rule, which everywhere in the world makes people crueler, more racist, and more chauvinistic tgan they would've been otherwise.
Is Palestinian nationalism not a "minority nationalism" though? Anyway, perhaps when Palestinian nationalism drops below replacement we'll stop hearing about them.
We agree more than we disagree. I already noted that Vajrayana’s violent imagery is framed as inner transformation—same as jihad in Islam. Muslims call Islam a religion of peace; outsiders, looking at history, tend to disagree. Same with Tibetan ‘pacifism.’ And I focused cautiously on the European side of the Nazi contacts, but those weren’t one-sided. Non-Buddhists did instrumentalize these cultural contacts, I agree. Part of what drove my curiosity was to understand why neonazi imagery often mixes mandalas with black suns—obviously, it isn’t a mainstream part of Vajrayana.
Maybe you meant to write this comment on another post? Or if you think what I wrote here is ‘plausible sounding nonsense’ then address specific points without making personal attacks.