[Buddha-l] Jung and Dignaga

[Vicente Gonzalez]

Dan wrote:

DL> This is the standard apologetic, but one has to seriously look behind it and
DL> question what motivates it. That Henry Ford was a raving antisemite doesn't
DL> legitimize Ford; nor that he shared that prejudice with other prominent
DL> people (Lindburgh, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, et al., since you seem to think
DL> listing Americans alongside Swiss and Germans somehow dissipates the
DL> problem).

I'm not trying to absolve or accusing none of them. Just I note those
people were in a different environment in where racialist discourse
was tolerated and academic.

DL> Blaming racism and antisemitism on Darwin... oh, please. Claiming

what I said is the scientific roots of eugenesics as a political tool
are located in Darwin and Galton. Of course the Social Darwinism was
fully formulated years later by other people, rescuing a very few
Darwin words in this topic.

In short, just I note the Western intellectuality was fascinated with
a new, definitive interpretation of the world. Not only Capitalists but
also Marxists. In letters between Marx and Engels, we can read how
Marx was fascinated with Darwin and he tried to establish relations
with his Class Fight. Marx was working in Das Kapital and he wrote
to Lasalle in 1861: "Darwin work is very important, and I use this as
my basis in natural sciences to explain the Class fight across the
history[...]. Despite the hard English style in his development, this
work is a definitive victory against theology in natural sciences".

And he was right. Philosophers, politics... in different tendencies
did efforts to establish parallelisms with Darwin, and in this way
adding the "truth value" to their own formulations. This is not so
different when today most people try to establish an informational and
digital parallelisms of his own theories. It was the intellectual and
social basis to understand the acceptance of racist formulations
inside society and the academic world. From here, the first modern
genocides and also nazism were possible. Nazism was a situation in
were all these fights and energies were fully visible in a open way.


DL> Antisemitism (and ergo ethno-hatred a.k.a. racism) already had 20 centuries
DL> of Church/theological history. Nineteenth c. racial theories (which are not
DL> Darwinian, by the way), just repackaged them in new bottles, using such
DL> dubious disciplines as phrenology to give these ideas the illusion of a
DL> scientific veneer. See http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/index.html
DL> and  http://www.victorianweb.org/science/phrenology/rc3.htm

of course. For this reason I mentioned the morality of genocide in
*modern terms*, meaning the biological implications behind them.
Antisemitism has religious, ethnic or economic factors, but probably
you agree the biological are a new issue in the XX century.
Although we can talk of nazis, etc... the real point is no that, I think.
Only in very recent years some scientific people is trying to polish
the scientific basis of genetic knowledge with social implications.
In example, reconsidering Sociobiology like a scientific field.
Or rescuing some of the Lamarck inspirations, which were hardly
attacked in Darwin times without having enough evidences. E.O.Wilson,
the father of modern Sociobiology. rescues Lamarck in a logical way.

The point is when today we are suffering the same morality of 100
years ago. Grandsons powers are making the same things of their
grandfathers powers. There are 4 billion people death in Congo to sell
mobile phones. Can we imagine the same number of victims in Europe,
USA or Japan?. It will mean a third world war. But when they are
africans, they are infra-humans in terms of legality and international
morality, and nobody cares. A same morality but today applied in
refined ways to protect the power of 2.000 individuals and their
business.  Our progress means playing with clumsy space-ships and
talking about our ridicule knowledge of the Reality however enough
powerful to destroy this human kind. In this point there is no
apparent reason to explain why we are still here. Probably our
destruction is delayed because gods are protecting the ignorants of
this world. Although nobody is innocent when he is born, sure there
are degrees.

DL> I agree with you it is important to try to understand, as fully as possible,
DL> the mentality (or mentalities) at work in Europe in the 1930s-40s, not to
DL> excuse them (Oh, everybody was doing it), but to acquire a clearer
DL> understanding of the dangers and how this works.

so in depth we agree very much. Just I think you are fixed in errors
performed by individuals or political regimes, while I point to a
general error in the morality of an old mechanics.

DL> David Bakan devoted a book to the subject.
DL> http://www.amazon.com/Sigmund-Freud-Jewish-Mystical-Tradition/dp/1853431427
DL> For comment on that, see
DL> http://www.newkabbalah.com/Freud.html
DL> Also see Mathe Robert's _From Oedipus to Moses: Freud's Jewish Identity_,
DL> which is more grounded in Freud's personal history as well as his ideas.

thanks for all this. I will read it with attention. My main purpose
was helping to clarify Jung. For sure he was not a saint but not worse
than Freud or many others. 
Finally, this topic is not related with Buddhism for some people (despite
Equality, Freud and Jung are a frequent presence in Buddhology).
So if you want we can finish this after your eventual reply.

best regards,