[Buddha-l] sam harris at the aspen institute

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Joanna,      

>Justlooked at your blog--you were quoting one of Whitman's productions. He 
>said of his utopian city: 
 
>"Where children are taught to be laws unto themselves, and to depend on 
>themselves; " 
 
>This was already tried back in the fifties and sixties at Summerhill, and in 
>the end was found not to work. Wasn't that idea the basis of the novel, 
>_Lord of the Flies_? 

There seem to be double standards for things that are tried and turn out not to work properly. More non-authoritarian or anarchisticish approaches are tried once and when they turn out "not to work" are abandoned rapidly. The story of its failure will then be cherished and continuously repeated in order to avoid new attempts. Authoritarian systems don't "work" either, but somehow they last. If we apply the same rule to religions, that have been tried for thousands of years then we must conclude they haven't "worked" either. If we compare the number of members and the number of Buddhas and saints or even members living up to their religion, then the result is near to zero, statistically speaking. 

The children of the Lord of the Flies were already conditioned by an authoritarian, competitive society. They simply recreated in more rudimentary and direct ways what they had been taught through example. The society they created is not different from ours as far as I can see (which is hardly beyond my own nose, long as it may be).

Joy