[Buddha-l] sam harris at the aspen institute

[curt]

Joy Vriens wrote:
>
>
> 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. 

Just this morning on Democracy Now, a speech by Canadian author and 
activist Naomi Klein was played. The speech had been delivered to a 
meeting of sociologists in California. One of the main points of her 
speech was just exactly what Joy is saying above. In particular she 
pointed out how the fall of Soviet style "communism" is now touted as 
"proof" that unrestrained capitalism is the only system that "works". 
This has been taken to mean that all forms of socialistic and/or 
"welfare state" style systems have "failed".

This reasoning is actually very similar to that employed by Sam Harris 
and others who insists that "all religions" have been shown to be forms 
of mental illness and/or mental deficiency. Harris believes that the Mel 
Gibsons, Bin Ladens and Sai Babas of the world "prove" something about 
religion in general - just as people like George Bush believe that the 
evils of Soviet style "communism" prove that guarneteeing universal 
basic medical care for children is a bad idea. The conclusions do not 
follow from the evidence presented - except for those who are already 
convinced (or very very very easily convinced).

- Curt