[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 05:34 -0400, Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> If this were a different kind of email list, we could devote some time to
> enumerating and debunking the ten most common fallacies (or 25 most common,
> or 100 most common) mindlessly and inappropriately reiterated to prevent
> insight and thinking (and blame someone else). I included a few in the last
> message (blame everything on the USA [a fallacy Richard engages in about
> once a week]

There are two flaws with your claim, Dan. First, it is not a fallacy to
see something as a causal factor when in fact it is a causal factor.
Saying that what is arguably the most influential country in the world
has been a factor in a global political situation is not necessarily
fallacious. Secondly, I am quite confident you could not find even one
instance of my blaming anything, let alone everything, on the USA. 

> bin Laden not only has more money than the collective readership of this
> list, but more money than all readers of this list from the three times
> (past, present, and future, i.,e. past subscribers, present subscribers and
> future subscribers) will earn, inherit, collect, steal, borrow, and think
> about for their entire lives, put together. Poverty was never his problem.

Bin Ladin, the last I heard, had never blown himself up. He is not a
terrorist. He is, like George W. Bush, a rich ideologue with
astonishingly simplistic and shallow thinking who manages to talk others
into dying for the causes he imagines are important. OK, OK, I take it
back. Bin Ladin and Bush can both be described as terrorists in the
sense that they are major factors in the continuing practice of
unwarranted violence that makes almost everyone's lives more unstable,
insecure and filled with dukkha. The Buddha, I am quite confident, would
find both of them lacking in wisdom and compassion.
-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"Above all things, take heed in judging one another, 
for in that ye may destroy one another...
and eat out the good of one another."-- George Fox