[Buddha-l] Aung San Suu Kyi and the latest Burmese prosecutions

[Richard Hayes]

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Joanna Kirkpatrick <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

>
>  Weren't all the ancient Asian teachers authoritarian?
>

Authoritarianism was just about the only game on the planet until a few
centuries ago. There have been a few tiny, short-lived, largely unsuccessful
experiments in non-authoritarian institutions. They usually fail, because
all but a few people lack the ability to cope with uncertainty and
open-endedness.


> Putting it another way--all the polities of ancient Asia (and
> still today for most of them) were both patriarchal and
> authoritarian.


Every now and then one finds a society that is a refreshing departure from
that generalization. Mohawk and Cherokee cultures, for example, are
authoritarian and matriarchal.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes