[Buddha-l] Enneagram and Buddhism

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 12:31 -0700, jkirk wrote:

> Hmmm---however, Enneatype 3 doesn't deal with the other mass
> Amurrikan phenomenon, the TV-beerslugging couch potato.

The couch potato is usually foaming at the mouth in wild anticipation of
his favorite sports team WINNING. The adoration of victors (and the
correlative contempt of losers) is the mark of a Three and of almost all
American males (except for those who subscribe to buddha-l---we
carefully screen all sport fans out). 

When I think of how many times we Americans had to listen to John McCain
accusing Barack Obama of favoring a policy of "waving the white flag of
surrender" or how many times various people in the Bush administration
said that the US could leave Iraq only when victory had been assured, I
think Rohr's identification of the USA and Israel as predominately Three
cultures is not too wide of the mark. And when I note that my university
pays the football coach every year more than he pays the entire
thirteen-faculty-member philosophy department so that our university can
WIN at football (as if anyone gives a rat's tail who wins a bloody
football game), I think it's possible that our education system is
mostly a factory for cranking out success-addicted Threes.

The cardinal sin to which Threes are prone is said to be deceptiveness.
Richard Rohr gives the example of the American military naming its most
deadly attack missile "The Peacemaker". (Rohr thinks that is deception.
But is it? How better to make it peaceful than to kill everything
alive?)

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico