Charles writes:
> If you don't boil the water somebody who drinks it gets sick and suffers.
Of course, you have thought of this, and I guess you can guess that I'd stay
focussed on human suffering avoidance, not go to the level of avoiding
micro-organism suffering.
Exactly. Which is why I find jks/Rawls proceduralism so tepid. It does nothing to to help clarify the choices that have to be made when considering the issue of suffering. Their approach is also vulnerable to the influence of power and money.
> Capitalism creates appetites that it can't fill,thus suffering.
Exactly. It needs to be replaced with a system that doesn't create appetites and, therefore, reduces suffering.
> All systems are unstable. Buddhism cannot stop change of society.
Buddhism never said it could. In fact, it is a system designed to work in a society in a constant state of flux. That is what is so neat about it.
> Nah. Desire is desirable. Life is struggle. If you are not struggling, you
are dead.
You seem to have conflated two ideas here. Certainly, Buddha would agree that life is struggle. The Buddha also realized that suffering stems from desire, so while desire is an inevitable part of human life, the important matter is the approach one takes to desire.
> There is no escape from all suffering, as Marx taught. To live is to
suffer some.
Buddha taught the same thing. The only ultimate escape is through enlightenemnt and the cessation of the cycle of rebirth.
> Give up your flight from suffering and live!
I live quite nicely (thank you for your concern). I do not flee from suffering, rather I reduce it to the greatest extent that I can. I also cultivate an attitude of non-attachment toward desire, thereby helping to reduce my suffering and the suffering of others.
> You only live once.
Well, that is open to debate. LOL.
jks writes:
> I should also say that the whole point of the constitutional protections
for discrete and insular minorities is that anti-minority legislation has to
pass by a lot more than a supermajority -- basically it requires a
constitutional amendment.
I think all the constitutional amendments passed/proposed so far only needed/need a simple majority. DOMA also needed only a simple majority. When it comes to issues of civil rights, I believe a supermajority should be required.
> I am still unclear about your idea of nondomination.
Nondomination means that I would live in a society where my rights as a minority can be abrogated only after the most arduous of processes and evaluations (one can never guarantee that they would never be violated). Queers are not in control of their own destiny in this country. They live under the whim of heteros. That is domination.
> But, as Rawls emphasizes, you can't base the constitution of society on
your particular conception of the good, even if it seems obvious to you that
reduction of overall suffering is the right thing to do, it's not obvious to
others.
But suffering can be measured -- suffering is not a concept, but an empirical reality. Is there any documented society that was/is organized around the principle of increasing suffering for its people?
> Likewise, you cannot base the fundamental rules of society on a
controversial metaphysical view about the nature of the self.
Agreed. That is why I argue from Buddhism since Buddhism is not metaphysical (though metaphysical beliefs have been added on to the Buddha's teachings over the centuries, I am referring here to the tenets taught by the Buddha). Its tenets are empirically provable.
> That is something about which reasonable people must be free to differ,
and will always disagree about. The basis of a free society must be much
more superficial. If you are, as you say, pragmatic, that should be obvious,
although it is a deep point.
Reasonable people are free to differ all they want. But I do not believe that their differing should be allowed to result in the domination and suffering of others. Being a pragmatist, I take into consideration the end result, not just the procedures leading to the result.
Mike writes:
> The irony is that as a class, we are organized, but not for ourselves.
I never thought of it that way. The problem is that we also organize in order to satisfy the desires of the individual self, which prevents us from organizing for the benefit of the decentered Buddhist self.
> Surely, we are socially interdependent--we useful producers need each
other to survive. We don't need parasites i.e. the ruling class, except as
they become useful producers in a classless society--after the revolution.
The ruling class creates the idee fixe of the individual self to prevent class consciousness from arising. People, in thrall to their desires, are blinded to reality and can never join together in unified action against the elite.
> The indoctrination which you mention is part and parcel of the history of
ideas which dominate our era.
Not just our era, but most of Western thought and civilization. As William James said, we took a wrong turn at Plato and have yet to recover (or find Pismo Beach).
Also, you might add to your reading list The Lost Ones -- my favorite Beckett novel and one of the best depictions of Western society I know of. I reread it at least once a year.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister