Google [CBS News From Amazon to Garden State] for a story that perfectly exemplifies observations I’ve made on civilization over the last few decades. To be clear, I’m not pro or anti civilization; I simply wish to comprehend its full impact on humanity. Despite the obvious downsides of civilization, we’re never going to turn back the clock. I wouldn’t want to even if I could, so I am not romanticizing our noble savage past. Indeed, chapter 80’s call to Enable the people to again use the knotted rope feels like a Taoist pipedream calling for a return to Eden, so to speak.
Nevertheless, chapter 80 addresses a few of civilization’s downsides. The downsides in the following will be more obvious if you consider these lines from a Symptom’s Point Of View, p.141.
Someday we need to admit that civilization is not God’s gift to humanity, but instead an imperfect means that evolved to enable a tribal species (us) to co-exist relatively peacefully in unnaturally large populations. A realistic and non-apologetic view of the negative consequences of civilization should help us understand and manage civilization better, or at a minimum, not make matters worse by ignorantly blaming scapegoats.
Humanity is just another of Mother Nature’s experiments. Indeed, evolution is a work-in-progress experiment for every species on the planet — period. Buddha said, “Life is sorrowful”. (i.e., “I have taught one thing and one thing only, dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.”) He could have just as easily said, “Life is work”. I mean, keeping entropy at bay takes work for all living things. Work is both pleasurable in the life meaning it offers and painful in the demands it entails. Suffering is just the painful aspects of work from which we seek relief.
The first step on Buddha’s Eight Fold Path is Right Comprehension. This directly parallels chapter 71’s, Realizing I don’t’ know is better; not knowing this knowing is disease. Man alone faults this disease; this so as not to be ill. We aggravate our life-work through misunderstanding, and the ensuing cognitive certainty creates a “disease” unique to our species alone … the suffering (dukkha) that Buddha sought to ameliorate if not cure.
This “disease” of cognitive conviction, assisted by civilization, is the root cause of so-called evil, not a devil or whatever scapegoat we seize upon. Just look around; do you see anything in the natural world that you could call evil? So does that mean humanity is not part of the natural world? No, but we certainly strive hard to shield ourselves from the less benevolent aspects of the natural world. Alas, in shielding ourselves in some ways we increase our burden in other ways. No one escapes the universe as chapter 5 hints, The universe is not benevolent, and all things serve as grass dogs (‘sacrificial lambs’) That takes some cognitive courage to accept. At least “realizing I don’t know” is a step in the right direction.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?
I noticed some inconsistencies when comparing the video story of David Good and his Amazon mother’s first hand account / interview, with a few New York Times articles. After viewing CBS News From Amazon to Garden State, read and consider these articles: google [How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist] and then google [A Yanomamo Romance].
Leave a Reply