"It is true that you need to get along reasonably well with your sangha (Buddhist community). However, for Buddhism to be effective, it needs to undercut your basic assumptions about life—your 'reference points'. An excessively comfortable group, which constantly validates your reference points, is an obstacle.
A sangha should be irritating."
#DavidChapman, Vividness
https://vividness.live/approaches-to-religion
IMHO this is true of effective political groups too.
(1/?)
"The quandry of uncertainty is at the heart of Dzogchen. Dzogchen teaches us how to live joyfully and effectively in a world that is 'empty display' —alternately horrifying and perfect, chaotic and crystalline, alienating and supremely meaningful."
#DavidChapman, Vividness
https://vividness.live/certainty
Sounds useful, tell me more ...
"Since ISIS is pretty much the worst thing in the world now ..."
This claim has not aged well. It's pretty obvious that Orange Stalinism is the worst thing in the world right now. But for reasons explained on the linked page, I think its days are numbered, so my claim too has a shelf life. As dies any such claim by its very nature.
"Left behind by modernity, and then by postmodernity, much of the third world never had a working systematic mode, and so now doesn’t understand why that can’t work. As in the West in the 1930s, the obvious response is to try to make eternalism work by force. Fundamentalism and totalitarian nationalism—fused in every third-world version—are attempts. As these fail, they become ever more desperate, and therefore ever more extreme and violent."
https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-modernism
(1/2)
This seems connected to the push to privatise management of health data as an opportunity for corporate profit;
"Everyone can spread the word that companies and government agencies carelessly allowing cybercriminals and hostile states to get access to private personal data is outrageous and unacceptable. Make a point of this on social media. Demand legislation for financial and legal accountability."
#DavidChapman, Better Without AI, 2023
"Surprisingly, vampires have played a significant role in Buddhism, in Asia, for centuries. They are not a Western invention.
And, contemporary vampire fiction—“preternatural romance”—provides tools for presenting aspects of Buddhism that are otherwise difficult to communicate."
@b_cavello
> No one man should have all that power
"It is not intelligence that is dangerous; it is power."
PS "Standing down requires breaking the confusion/fear/anger/aggression cycle."
https://meaningness.com/counterculture-war
This is what I am arguing for.
Strypey
Cop Blaster
