[Buddha-l] Withdrawal of the senses

[jkirk]

...... And they tell a story of sin and salvation. They expose the devil. For liberals (we call them socialists) the devil is money, because people who deal with money lose their natural innocence and solidarity, became greedy, get burn-outs, become bosses who sack and expolite people. For conservatives (we call them liberals) the sin is laziness and money is salvation if the devil of governement doesn't get in the way. Both sides take these stories for absolute truth, as a bible. 
Yes, and this split in the body politic is indeed the stuff of political discourse here as well, as you noted. Joanna

.... And the truth is nobody (exept the politicians) cares! We want good education and we don't care how it is done, by private entrepreneurs or the state or both, because we have moved to a postmodern sitatution.
In pre-christian times friendship or philia was one of the most importanta virtues and political guiding principals (called homonoia).  The opposite and so the equivalent of a disaster strategy was envy. Envy leads to competition, which leads to war and destruction. Now in our times destruction has become exploitation and economics = politcal economics = war with other means. So the motivation that money stimulates is envy, not philia, which gives way to competiton and the anonymous brothel of the open market.The hidden supposition is of course that economic capital can easily be converted into knowledge (cultural capital) and (virtues and) recognition (social capital). Erik

Well, envy is actually the motive of "losers" in the winner takes all 
economy. 
I'd say that greed is really the motive that drives capitalism, it was in modern times and still is in post-modern/contemporary times (am not ever sure what postmodern means,  but maybe someone can elucidate it for me).
Today's "corporate culture,"  in addition to lectures from economic gurus, partakes of courses on meditation (often taught under some sort of Buddhist or Zen auspices) to make the employees and bosses "better" at business and management; they often offer yoga classes in the fitness areas of their gigantic headquarters (I wonder if Enron had a yoga room), all the while enforcing and promoting greed dressed as something else: success and self-esteem--those two eminent virtues of our times.
Joanna
 



www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
weblog http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950




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