[Buddha-l] Re: S. Pinker

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sun, 2005-07-03 at 14:19 -0400, Stanley J. Ziobro II wrote:

> I don't share your belief that nobody ever set out to "attack" the family,
> since some people do with undisguised intention, some as a result of
> adopting an ideology the principles of which are antithetical to the well-beng
> of the human person as a being in relation with others

You have seen this in the United States? I'd be interested in knowing
who has made this kind of ideological attack on the family (aside from
Buddhists, of course). I was out the the country for more that thirty-
eight years, so things may have gone on while I was away, but I can't
think of any commonly taught ideology that either deliberately or even
inadvertently has the effects you are describing.

> However, I agree with you that the break up of the family, nuclear and
> extended, primarily for reasons of economic viability, is an important
> factor in analyzing this sociological phenomenon. Whether it is the
> most important one seems to me open to question.  

I'm not a sociologist, and I don't know how to think like one, so I'm
happy to leave it to those who know what they're talking about to answer
this open question.

Actually, one person who does address some of these issues is Steven
Pinker, the man after whom this thread was named. One of these days I'd
like to discuss some of his ideas.

> It may be the case that, in this matter, philosophical persuasion and
> ideologies have followed economic realities, but even that may be open
> to question.  

Admittedly, my principal philosophical interests have been in classical
India, so I don't claim expertise in Western philosophy. I have,
however, worked for my entire adult live in the company of students of
Western philosophy and religion, and I have never heard anything about
philosophical persuasions that pose a serious challenge to the viability
of the family. What I have read in the work of some sociologists are
reflections on why the extended family has ceased to exist. And I do
know some Western Buddhists who have argued, rather convincingly, that
the nuclear family is incapable of providing the sort of nurture that
the old extended family used to provide in my grandparents' generation.
The nuclear family is a very weak social unit, and it is not obvious
what is available to replace what it used to provide, aside from cults
and gangs.

> The present economic realities are the fruit of earlier ideologies,
> and so what is currently the articulation of a present economic
> reality follows from (or responds to) the earlier underlying
> philosophical or ideological suppositions.

True. As early as 1690 the merchants of Boston began making
representation to church elders and complaining of all the ways that the
severe ethical norms of Puritan Christianity were impeding their pursuit
of profitable trade. In a bid not to alienate the merchant class, on
whom the church had already to some extent become dependent, church
regulations were relaxed considerably. This led Cotton Mather to write
"Religion gave birth to prosperity, and then the daughter killed her
mother." Then as now, religion may have guided the American people, but
the traders and money-lenders guided the clergy. There were few
exceptions to this, because exceptions tended not to survive more than a
decade or so.

> I trust that nothing we are discussing here is unimportant for
> Buddhist scholars to consider since, as is obvious, many of them live
> in the USA and are confronted with these realities in their daily
> lives.

Buddhism in America is following all the same patterns as Christianity
in America has followed for the past nearly 375 years. This may not be
of much interest to scholars of Buddhism, but I should think it might be
interesting (in a depressing sort of way) to American Buddhists. For all
the talk of liberation and transcendence, they are stuck on the same
toxic flypaper as their Christian, Jewish and Muslim brothers and
sisters.

> I hang out with some people who positively value tradition and custom, yet
> they espouse causes and ideologies that weaken these same customs and
> traditions.  Why there is this disconnection, I don't know.

Maybe you have bad luck in choosing people to hang around with. I have
not see what you say you have observed.

> I'll continue this in a later post.  I'm now aware of size limits to our
> postings and want to stay within them as much as possible.

You would probably have to write a small book to go over our size limits
if your messages contained nothing but text. What makes a message go
over the size limits is HTML coding. Even a small message accompanied by
HTML coding can easily go over the rather generous size limits. So make
sure you just send messages in plain text or pure ASCII, and you should
be fine. (The recommended size limits, by the way, were designed to make
HTML coding harder to get through, since HTML coding can be a means of
smuggling e-mail viruses onto a public forum such as this.)

-- 
Richard Hayes