It ain't on the top three list.

It's not nearly as much fun as listening to Miles Davis,
— FrancisRay

And then again, some of your responses come across as incredibly condescending. — T Clark

One of the many benefits of Zen and the art of 'getting it'.

The topic is an invitation to express our disillusionment with Buddhism and I too wish synth the best of luck with that endeavor.

Pretty evident that I find it stupid, but not worthless, however if you just wanted to get a quick hit-in-run dig to make you feel a little better about yourself I'd understand. — Maw

Laziness and self-indulgence are two of my worst traits.

I think any 'traits' we identify are socially mediated constructions, not features of the psyche that can be 'discovered' by any experimental set-up. So the premise is flawed from the start, but this has been at issue for over twenty years, so the likes of Klein and Haidt are just being disingenuous pretending otherwise. — Isaac

It’s been awhile since I read Righteous Minds but I seem to recall the ‘foundations’ being regarded as social constructs. Constructs that are based on moral intuitions that we all possess. You’re against this intuitionism?

Beating up a “stupid” article, what is it kill the scarecrow day where you live?

The article is worthless. I’m not just saying that because I find foundation theory compelling and given that you also find it worthless there’s no point in bothering to explain.

Well, as I say, we can't all be perfect. But have you read the article I referred to in my other post? I believe it confirms much of what I was saying.

“The Psychology of Politics: How does psychology make sense of the madness of politics?” It's from Psychology Today. — Apollodorus

I’ve only skimmed your posts, and from what I’ve read seem to be all over the place in a futile attempt to promote some ideology rather than seek the truth of the matter. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The article appears to reference moral foundations theory, judging by the snippet you posted. That theory doesn’t support anything I’ve read from you.

The psycologization of politics is a cancer.
— StreetlightX

That was exactly my point. — Apollodorus

Great minds think alike!

It's claptrap that personalizes the political and bypasses questions of coalition building, consensus, material conditions, or systemic analysis. — StreetlightX

Out of your categories it would fit as part of 'systemic analysis', I believe, assuming that minds are part of the system.

Non-intellectual would be, well, literally non-intellectual. Even saying that something does and does not exist is unmistakably intellectual. It has purpose and meaning.

So you work for the Koch bros, @Isaac?

... the reduction of political ideology and attitudes to innate personality traits appeals to non-revolutionary types (i.e. non-Leftists/Socialists etc.) because existing political structures become justified based on "innate traits" and act as a barrier to structural change. — Maw

I can easily imagine this to be real but haven't seen it myself. In any case, it would be designed for a particular audience, an audience that is inclined to maintain the status quo, some because it's beneficial to them personally and others out of mere loyalty to the tribe.

At the hight of my involvement I could be found bowing before a Zen priest in the predawn twilight of an alleyway in Santa Monica. Him saying that I don't need to bow (habitual demonstrations of fealty come later). Though I liked him very much and enjoyed the ritual of it all, it was never really for me. I gradually learned, by myself, that meaning is all around us and within us. To be spoon fed is to be coddled like a child, and a coddled child never grows up.

non-intellectual (Zen does not exist and does not exist). — synthesis

Fixed that for ya.

Knowledge is Realisation. . . . — FrancisRay

I know a lot about Africa but have never been there and haven’t experienced it. For all I know it may not actually exist.
— praxis
Exactly. Knowledge is going there, — FrancisRay

??? I've never gone there. I have a lot of knowledge about Africa.

I don't know what you mean by 'grandiose view'. — FrancisRay

Exactly. There's nothing grand about it.

You can study the mind to explain behavior but you can't study the mind to explain the ends to which that behavior will be put ('behaviour' here being a weasel word meant to capture apparently literally any action at any scale in any circumstance, presumably). — StreetlightX

Behavior to distinguish between feeling or thought and action. For instance, abortion 'feels' wrong to me yet in behavior I support it. Or conversely, I might go to the auto mall intent on buying a safe family car, whatever that might be and because that best suites family needs, and pull into the driveway later with a sports car and various rationalizations for the purchase.

Studying the mind to help explain behavior sounds reasonable to this (me) moron.
— praxis

Well the promise of political psychology is more complex than that. What the OP and the book in question is describing here is a trait-based framework where personal traits such as "authoritarian" or "cooperation" or "openness to change" or "cosmopolitanism", "introversion-extroversion", "agreeableness", "curiosity" and a potpourri of other traits (and in the case of the book in question, narcissism) can explain or predict a person's political orientation, attitudes, or policy preferences. This is bunk. — Maw

Something of a strawman given that I think only Apollodorus takes that book seriously.

I was previously unaware (until fdrake's post above) that studies in openness correlating to progressive/conservative have been somewhat debunked, or rather that evidence shows one does not precede the other, and they may develop in tandem. I first learned of the correlation via Moral Foundations theory, which I find compelling.

Knowledge is Realisation. . . . — FrancisRay

I know a lot about Africa but have never been there and haven’t experienced it. For all I know it may not actually exist.

It's not sensible to have a shallow experience and then form views about how important it is. — FrancisRay

It’s sensible to have a grandiose view of something without any evidence of its grandiosity?

Generally speaking, Zen students are those who are the purists and wish to 'cut to the chase,' that is, if you get it (that meditation IS the path), what's the point of the rest? — synthesis

In a word, meaning. Now try to tell me that zen is meaningless, I haven’t had a good laugh yet today.

Oh to be young and innocent. — StreetlightX

Touché. I was really fishing to see how far our friend Apollo has gone down the rabbit hole, if he’s a Big Lie subscriber.

anyone who looks to psychology to explain politics is a moron — StreetlightX

Studying the mind to help explain behavior sounds reasonable to this (me) moron.

Many serious Zen students (including myself) do not consider themselves Buddhists. — synthesis

... because you don’t subscribe to its teachings, right?

Imagination fueled by paranoia, that's how. — Apollodorus

I’m far less paranoid since Trump was resoundingly rejected by the American people.

If a book is in a regular bookstore, it's on political psychology and has endorsements from psychology professors on the back cover, why the hell would you google the author? — Apollodorus

Oh to be young and innocent.

I'm glad you aren't a communist terrorist although these days one can never know. — Apollodorus

Frank is a Green Party terrorist and pelts people with fruits and vegetables, out of the psychotic belief that they need more fiber.

I have a brother who's two years my senior and who I grew up with. He was always resistant to new experiences and change, and is very much conservative. I'm the opposite.
— praxis

Perhaps older siblings tend to be more resistant to change. This would tend to support what I was saying. — Apollodorus

What you were saying is nonsensical but even if it were not I have another brother who is 10 years my senior and is very much progressive liberal, and at least as open to new experience and change as I am.

In any case, the book I'm reading has absolutely nothing in it about "Nazism", "Odinism" or "anti-semitism". What the author does in his spare time is his business. Maybe he acquired new interests after writing the book. I don't think that's a reason to ban it or try to suppress philosophical debate on a discussion forum. If anything, any such attempts can only serve to confirm the point he's making, i.e. that spurious "scientific" analysis is being used to suppress political opposition. — Apollodorus

Honestly, I thought the book was comedy until I looked it up, which confirmed that it's comedy.

I tend to think of an archetype as a recurring natural pattern. Something that may be recognized in literature but not coined by it. Baby-boomer is a term used to distinquish a particular generation, for the most part, and not even particularly categorical in nature. For instance, no one ever says things like, "Don't be such a baby-boomer."

A baby-boomer could be prototypical or stereotypical but there's no such archetype.

Insisting on change at all costs and no matter what is quite another thing. — Apollodorus

Right, that's what being liberal is all about. Don't let anyone ever let you think otherwise!

Stereotypical, prototypical, and archetypal denote substantially different things.

But what about the "Left", the camp of change? What can we say about it? I doubt that we can say it is "afraid of permanence" or that it "hates permanence". It may hate the status quo, which is why it wants change, but once the change is in place I'm sure the left wants it to be permanent.

It follows that the element of permanence, of conservatism, is dominant in both camps and this seems to suggest that permanence or conservatism comes first as a fundamental predisposition of all human beings and of life in general. — Apollodorus

Nonsense. Some people are more open to new experiences and change than others. Don't we all experience this ourselves? I have a brother who's two years my senior and who I grew up with. He was always resistant to new experiences and change, and is very much conservative. I'm the opposite.

what is more important, permanence or change? — Apollodorus

Obviously, they're both important.

I was reading a book just now that talks about stereotypes and one thing pointed out is that they always contain negative attributes,
— praxis

Maybe that is a negative stereotype of stereotypes..... — Pantagruel

Well, the alternative is apparently suggesting that we intuit some people or things as perfect. That would be a case of excellent drugs, I think, and have noting to do with sterotypes. Stereotypes are necessarily shared culturally and not an individual or esoteric type of categorization.

Stereotypes are of course useful. We can usually get a useful picture of a complete stranger instantly, for example. They can also mislead, however, with disastrous results. They also promote biases, to the detriment of 'out-groups' and can even be self-defeating to ourselves.

In the book I mentioned earlier, Blindspot, by Mahzarin Banaji, it goes over research that shows how IAT (implicit association tests) results correspond to everyday life behavior, affecting everything from law enforcement, the judicial system, medical care, to government policies, and by people who consciously hold no biases.

Pawdagees — Nils Loc

My favorite was the one about a group of kids who were stealing mangos from a neighbors tree. When the neighbor heard something in his backyard and went out to investigate the kids quickly climbed the tree to hide. Looking around by the tree the man saw some branches moving and said, "Hey, any kids take'n mangos gon get cracks!"

Thinking quickly, the Chinese kid hiding in the tree tried to make the man think it was a cat moving the branches by saying, "meow"

Following his lead, the Hawaiian kid went, "chirp chirp"

The Filipino girl squawked like a mynah bird.

The Portuguese kid said, "moo"

mysticism endorses a non-dual description of Reality — FrancisRay

Any description of reality is necessarily dualistic. Mysticism endorses transcendence.

Unless nonduality is the basis of the 'mystical' teachings then the knowledge claims it makes would not be possible. Hence sects that do not endorse the nondual teachings usually stress the need for faith, while those that do stress the importance of replacing faith with knowledge realization of emptiness. — FrancisRay

Fixed that for ya.

I've only had a rather shallow experience of the kind were talking about, but even though whole-hog realization may be something to write home about, it ain't the end-all be-all that it's cracked up to be. After enlightenment, the dishes, as the saying goes. It is certainly not anything worth building an entire religion around, and that is exactly why Buddhism is so unpopular. Not to suggest that religions need to be built around anything of substance.

the metaphysical basis of mysticism — FrancisRay

Emptiness?

The only non-faith based consensus is scientific where this is reduced to a mere brain state, though a beneficial one, in its depatterning affect on the mind and in reducing existential angst. Can jazz do that? There’s no consensus at all on faith based metaphysics like rebirth, karma, department origination, etc etc.

Stereotypes are only bad if they are inaccurate. — Pantagruel

None are completely accurate so they're not all good, on that point. I was reading a book just now that talks about stereotypes and one thing pointed out is that they always contain negative attributes, somewhere in the rang of 30%.

How do you know if you're in an Asian home? The dog is missing and the kids are doing their homework.

The only thing that is well distributed in capitalism is poverty for the majority and violence for the rest of the world.
— praxis

That's false. There will always be a disparity of everything between individuals. It's just the way people are. Capitalism has its issues, no doubt, but look at what it has done to raise people out of poverty. If you don't believe this to be the case, you need to go back and study the history of the 16th-17th-18th-19th centuries. Life was brutal beyond belief. — synthesis

Not entirely false, there's a tendency for government to side with capital, for obvious reasons, and the rights and power of the working class diminishes. Those lifted tend to not be lifted for long because it's an inherently unsustainable model.

The government is taken over by the lobbies. That D. Trump was crowned president says it all. The wolf and the fox guarding the chicken coop. The United States has not even been able to convict a guy who tried to carry out a self-coup or put him behind bars. Alberto Fujimori succeeded and, despite everything, Peru condemned him and remains in the Barbadillo jail. Today's Peruvian democracy is healthier than that of the United States. Is it acceptable?
— praxis

You need to get over the Trump thing. Look at the fool who is president now. This guy was a joke in Delaware 50 years ago. Now he is just pathetic puppet of the left. — synthesis

What has he done as president that is pathetic?

Perhaps you need to get over the Left thing.

Ban rival political parties, suspend civil liberties, ban unions, have thousands of political opponents assassinated and impose martial law ... and make unimaginable to think another thing. This was fascism: the operation of government for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy.
— praxis

Sounds very much like the left's agenda. — synthesis

Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights Rollbacks

Anti-union Actions By The Trump Administration

Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ was bigger than just a stolen election

The Germans of the interwar period, the non-Jews, had the same opinion as you: that capitalism was a magnificent system for doing good & funnies business. The Polish did not think exactly the same. The fun business here is murder there.
This is unacceptable. It is outside of Christianity.
— praxis

You have one narrative and every single thing has to fit into it. You need to open your mind a bit and see that everything is not black and white.

The entire Marxist thing was put in the dumpster a few decades ago. — synthesis

Socialism is alive and well, even in America, though it could stand to be more widely adopted.

It matters because there's a difference between what we actually experience and what we take on faith or intellectualize.
~ praxis

No serious Zen student will speak of their own path. Even if you thought it appropriate, it is not possible to convey because it is non-intellectual (and 100% experience). — synthesis

You mentioned how a “fully enlightened person” can live a life full of suffering but not see this as good or bad, just simply the way it is. Aside from being nonsensical on the face of it — if it were actually experienced as neither good or bad then it would not be categorized as ‘suffering’ — it’s very odd that a person can’t tell if they suffer, particularly if they can see things with any clarity, or that there would be the least bit of hesitation in relating their experience.

Anyone can intellectualize that a life isn’t good or bad and is ‘just the way it is’. What we actually experience, on the other hand, precedes our intellection.

To be ashamed of suffering is itself suffering.

It matters because there's a difference between what we actually experience and what we take on faith or intellectualize.

I think thinking about things and theorising can be thoughtful and thorough. Faith ain't noth'n to tilt your nose up at either. However, if we have an aversion to such things, for whatever odd reason, then what is left to have faith in but our own experiece.

Fully enlightened people have lived brutal lives with all kinds of suffering. They just don't see it that way. For them, it's just the way it is. Not good, not bad. Just is. — synthesis

Either you're fully enlightened or this is one of those theoretical or faith things, which you seem to frequently pooh-pooh.

I am just saying that Buddhism is not about anything in particular, instead, it's about not seeing anything particular as clearly as possible. — synthesis

There, did I fix that for you right?

So the fat-cats at BLM are liv'n large on the white self-haters dime?



Everybody gotta make a living.

#6 isn’t contradictory, and according to studies in social science is also untrue. Absence makes the heart grow indifferent and familiarity breeds attachment.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." ~Seneca, tutor & advisor to a Caesar — 180 Proof

That’s a beauty of a quote.