Best Of

I've certainly take my fair share of lumps here and elsewhere. Guess that explains why I'm such a lumper. 🤷‍♀️

@Bunks said:

@Jason said:
No, it doesn't, at least not for most working people who are alienated from their labour and forced to work one passionless job or another to survive. It often doesn't support things that give us joy and happiness, such as the free time and resources to learn the things of our choosing, time to devote to spiritual pursuits, or anything else. In the critique of the sensible, I see a critique of modern society and social relations and a culture focused on productivity and doing sensible things to make a living rather than supporting individual talents and living life to the fullest. We live to work, not live to enjoy the life we have and make the most of it, unless we are lucky enough to be born the right kind of person at the right time in the right place with the right supporting conditions and have our failing business bailed out by our parents until it becomes a corporate behemoth. At least places like Thailand and India have some support structure for monastics and those who seek an alternative lifestyle. But just imagine how better things might be if profit wasn't the primary focus, people had more free time to spend on things they're passionate about, and the resources to achieve that? Without the material conditions in place, it is very difficult for the average person to find and live their passion, let alone look inside themselves and search for truth.

Lucky? How much of a part does luck play in where we are reborn?

You tell me. Maybe Jeff Bezo was Lassie in a previous life and is now a trillionaire because of all the good karma from saving Timmy from all those wells he fell into. And now his good karma gets him shot into space in a dick rocket like nature intended.

On a more serious note, if rebirth is a thing, then I suppose some amount of previous past kamma can translate into a favourable rebirth. But I don't think that past actions alone dictate everything that happens, and other natural laws in conjunction with what we would call luck or happenstance also are also a factor.

Beyond that, even the Buddha notes the importance of material factors in how people behave. When there's poverty, there's privation and crime. When the people are well cared for and have ample resources and opportunities, there is peace and happiness. I think suttas such as DN 5, for example, make the case that, in general, people can't be expected to be happy, law-abiding people when their material needs aren't meant. In the story that the Buddha tells, the king wants to eradicate the thieves and barbarians causing crime and violence within his kingdom by imprisonment, banishment, or death, but his wise advisor says:

Rather, here is a plan, relying on which the barbarian obstacle will be properly uprooted. So let the king provide seed and fodder for those in the realm who work in farming and raising cattle. Let the king provide funding for those who work in trade. Let the king guarantee food and wages for those in government service. Then the people, occupied with their own work, will not harass the realm. The king’s revenues will be great. When the country is secured as a sanctuary, free of being harried and oppressed, the happy people, with joy in their hearts, dancing with children at their breast, will dwell as if their houses were wide open.’

Just something to think about. Even if the king was born a king because of past kamma and those in poverty were born poor due to theirs, the immediate material conditions still matter and influence how they act in the present.

@Kerome said:
You could say they feed on each other, capitalism is a result of sensible thinking towards private property, and then sensible thinking is forced onto you by the structures of capitalism in the world around you.

You could also say that these long-winded blogs on capitalism are completely off-topic, and pure self indulgence by an NB mod who should know better.
And this nonsense is supposed to inspire these fictional new Buddhists who are aoperently queueing up for approval? My arse.
Why would anyone want to join a forum like this?

Capitalism makes me dead inside.