Radicalism
RobinH
Europe Explorer
So I feel like I should write about this here, rather than someplace else on social media where it'd just generate a lot of tension and anger. But one of the main reasons I am gravitating towards Buddhism is that I can't tell the difference between political left and right anymore: they all have their points, some I find more valid than others, the left is trying to champion values that are close to my heart and agree with, but lately I'm feeling like everyone who's involved in the slightest bit of activism has turned radical in the sense of "violence is permitted, preferred and justified against my opposition" and it's always played down with things such as "what goes around comes around", "live by the sword, die by the sword", or is derailed in some way. The masses are always interested gender, color, ethnicity, sexuality, motivations, political and religious affiliations of the perpetrator, because whether they judge the act of violence or celebrate it comes down to what narrative the story fits in. Someone who is known to be armed and dangerous walks into a restaurant, an employee reports it to the police and people call her a traitor, because they agree with the assassination committed? Don't get me wrong: I'm no saint, a bunch of people who died a violent death by the hands of someone else do things and say things that make my blood boil. If I'd be desperate enough, I'd feel relieved that they're gone, as if a problem got solved.
But ultimately I feel like the message of peace and tolerance can't be translated to the language of terror and violence. Any meaning it originally had gets distorted and lost. Any martyr we make gets replaced by ten others and we forget what the message was in the first place. And many of the people who get killed have loved ones: families, children, friends who will be devastated. Even if we see it as some trolley problem, we cannot absolve ourselves of the suffering we appropriate by trying to prevent more suffering through violent means. And maybe I'm wrong about all this and I don't mean to upset any one of you people. But I feel like things are getting way out of hand all over the world and if appropriating violence in place of civilized dialogue really is becoming so independent from politics and more like culture, I wish to be part of the counter-culture for as long as I can.
Comments
Violence and Disruption in Society
A Study of the Early Buddhist Texts
by
Elizabeth J. Harris
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/harris/wheel392.html
All tremble at violence,
All fear death;
Comparing oneself with others
One should neither kill nor cause others to kill.
Dhp. v. 129
Victory breeds hatred,
The defeated live in pain.
Happily the peaceful live,
Giving up victory and defeat.
Dhp. v. 201
I hear the word illiberalism used often to describe the sort of mood the world seems to be entering into. In the sense of being opposite of authoritarian sentiment; dialogue, pluralism, secularism, rationality, humanism. And yeah, I agree that it isn't a solely partisan problem, its across the board to some extent or another.
Hm. I came across this quote before. Ironically when I first heard about Jordan Peterson (I used to find him a charismatic intellectual but I find everyone a charismatic intellectual until I hear people poking holes in their arguments). Anyway, the quote reminded me of this:
I also prefer to use the word extremism. The way I think of it as radical is something outside the norm and extremism is taking things too far often to a harmful, destructive way.
That's probably a better way to describe it.
That sounds pretty radical. What form does it take?
For me:
I mean that if violence has a culture I'd rather be known as non-violent. Which, in that way would seem like the radical alternative.
For a radical non-violence, the 20th Century has left us a few good examples. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh. Good company to move in.
In a way, I feel like Buddhism tells me to move inward, and not concern myself so much with the outside world. I have heard, you should be concerned with achieving for yourself the ending of suffering before you try to help others.
But if you look at the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama, they are very much in the world, trying to help people achieve peace. I remember that Thich Nhat Hanh gave a retreat for a mixed group of Palestinians and Israelis, it had a beautiful energy.
Enlightenment first. Lists of Trees to hug afterwards. Got it. On it.
Anyway I am off to save the world. Oh wait my personal world first? Got it. On it.
..."With great irresponsibility, comes spiders"
Thus have I heard : practice itself is the expression of enlightenment, not a means to attain it. In striving to alleviate the suffering of others, we practise enlightenment itself, in its pure and natural form.
I guess you could say I consider myself a radical Buddhist, not “radical” in a violent sense, but radical in that I challenge systems of oppression through peaceful protest, boycotts, and pickets, which on a personal level are part and parcel of my Dharma practice
Certainly you are welcome to practice Dharma as you see fit 🙏
But I think one Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh has an impact far overshadowing most boycotts or pickets, and perhaps it might be worthwhile to write letters to Buddhist worthies calling on them to support the practice of peace in word and deed…
Most people are firmly entrenched in their label-identity and work really hard to defend it, no matter which "side" they might be on. The same people are almost all "guilty" of the same behaviors that they accuse their supposed enemy of. People do so little introspection into their own minds, hearts, and behaviors that they just enjoy accusing someone else of doing something while they do it themselves...and they truly don't see it because they are so entrenched in the importance of their assumed identity labels that they feel justified in defending those labels no matter how hateful they have to be to do it.
I live in MN where our democratic state legislators were attacked and killed in June. People who I know actually said things like "That's what you get for being a liberal." And now when someone says the same thing about Charlie Kirk, they say "You are a horrible person, NO ONE should die for their political beliefs." And they absolutely refuse to see how they are exactly the same thing. And there is no hope to point it out to them, even if you screenshot it side-by-side they do mental gymnastics to convince themselves they are not the same.
What frustrates me the most right now is that our politicians and political activists (on all sides) seem to believe it is ok to say whatever you need to "stick it to" the other person, but that they believe themselves to just be playing a game, that words don't matter, that they are just campaigning and that's how it works. They don't accept that their words have consequences, that they contribute to devaluing people and creating desperation and desperation always breeds violence. Then they say, "Political violence should not exist, people shouldn't die for their beliefs!" As if the games they play during fiery speeches don't have very real world impacts on people's lives.
The older and more curmudgeony I get, the more I think social media is the worst thing to happen to humanity. It allows people to immediately share the diarrhea of their thoughts (most of which do not deserve the power of a voice) and cement it as real. Then they are shown algorithms that reinforce the collective mind diarrhea. The amount of hate hiding in people's minds is astounding.
I am endlessly grateful for my meditation practice and my time spent in Nature, which, as Mary Oliver said, "they save me, and daily."
Can I just say that it’s wonderful to see you post something here again, even if just to say “social media is the worst thing to happen to humanity” 😂 Very happy to see you!
I check in to read pretty often @Jeroen, always good to "see" familiar folks still here!
😂 I'm just finding Facebook frustrating today. I am pretty careful about my friends list, which is limited to family and people I know well. It's hard to have lgbtq loved ones, including one of our kids, and seeing family defend someone as a "good person" who did nothing but harm that community. But at the same time, I don't condone what happened to Kirk and it makes me equally sad to see the amount of hate flung at the shooter's family right now. The world just feels hard a lot these days, and FB seems to exacerbate that. So I come here for some levity and sanity
I agree about FB, I have to say.
A while back I joined a FB group for people who had been resident in Osho’s communes. There are several, and the one I picked came recommended by an acquaintance as a place where a lot of the people who used to be kids in the commune congregated. It was interesting, but it soon became visible to me that the FB algorithms would push to the top posts where people were expressing heated debate, anger, and conflict. Posts which were meant to facilitate reconciliation were quickly sunk, several pages of scrolling down on the ‘rank by relevance’ lists which are the default.
To me that meant that the whole group’s discussion became tainted with unhappiness, a lack of forgiveness, entrenched positions and so on. I spent several months visiting that group daily and searching through the old postings in order to find out what happened to these people, my peers, and in the end hung around for a while until I tried to bring some reconciliation and found out these ‘dark patterns’.
I found that despite the dark stuff that happened in the communes especially to the teenage girls it didn’t happen to me, and it was a relatively happy time of my childhood. I’d like to preserve those memories, and not taint them with the anger that got brought up on the FB group. So I left.
I think the argument that since social media algorithms manipulate what gets seen that makes them an editor and a publisher and responsible for what gets seen on their platforms is right. They hide behind the fact that the posts are user generated content to get away with the enragification of the world.
I do what I do, and what others choose to do is entirely up to them. Some are actively involved, while others choose not to be, and that is their path.
For my part, I attend peaceful solidarity rallies and marches each week and have written numerous letters to my local newspaper. These have been well received by the community, with many readers now actively involved, advocating for an end to the violence and accountability for those responsible.
From what I understand, Thich Nhat Hanh was deeply involved in anti-war activism during the Vietnam War. Through his philosophy of “engaged Buddhism,” he demonstrated that spiritual practice and social action can go hand in hand.
This morning, I, along with hundreds of locals, attended a massive rally and march in the Auckland CBD. The ferry over was full of keffiyeh-wearing, Palestinian flag carrying locals. Thousands came from around the country to join the march for humanity, and no doubt many Buddhists were among the crowd.
@RobinH Happened across this lecture and found it incredibly informative about the state of the political world today. The speaker knows his stuff and is very engaging to listen to.
I can understand the urge to want to do something about the genocide in Gaza, but there is a difference between supporting a peaceful local government in Gaza and supporting the so-called “Palestinian cause”. The Palestinian people seem to be pressurised socially into supporting Hamas, which tries to get its way with violence, hostage-taking and terrorism. There haven’t been free and fair elections in Gaza since Hamas had a conflict with the Fatah party in 2006.
For me, peace is non-negotiable, and violence should stay out of politics. But because Hamas is the only government Gaza has known for nearly 20 years, I don’t feel I can support the Palestinian cause. Until I know that the Palestinian people are going to throw out the war-mongers, you won’t see me at one of these rallies. I’ll be happy to support causes that call for an end to the violence instead, what the Israeli’s are doing is a disgrace.
Too many Westerners, particularly, too many Americans, using Buddhism as a vehicle for their politics. The Biden lead genocide in Gaza in particular blew up (destroyed) the virtue signalling of the Western political left. Buddhism is for and moves a practitioner away from the political world. From a true Buddhist perspective, the current political world is very very dark; super scary dark; and that darkness is very difficult to be at peace with but the Buddhist practice is to try to be at peace with it (while avoiding getting personally involved in it). Buddhist practice is giving up various desires while feeling the painful feelings experienced from this dark political world.
This post, due to its lack of information, is supporting a genocide. Hamas have no relevance to anything under International Law because Israel is an Occupying Power under International Law, which forbids Occupying Powers making war against Occupied Territories and allows Occupied People a right of resistance. Try reading this link: https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204170
As for Hamas, it has always been questionable who they work for because Israel helped place them into power and continued to lobby countries such as Qatar to fund them. But, as i posted, even if Hamas was a genuine resistance group, Israel has no right to take military action against an Occupied Territory under both International Law and Dhamma Law.
Under law, I cannot trespass in your home and, if you try to defend yourself and I kill you, I cannot assert self-defense as an intruder in your home. This is the same as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in WW2. Nazis cannot claim they acted in self-defence.
It is not possible for a Buddhist with Right View to blame Hamas in any way for the genocide. The genocide is contrary to International Law and the perpetrators of the genocide are the Zionists and particularly their primarily supporters, namely, USA. UK, Germany, etc.
We can compare Gaza to what happened with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah started destroying Israeli military facilities in northern Israel in response to Gaza. Israel had a right under International Law to take military action against Lebanon and Hezbollah because Lebanon is not an Occupied Territory of Israel.
Its black & white under International Law; here: https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204170 There is no argument from a Buddhist point of view. Buddhism is clear in the sutta DN 31 that a Buddhist does not act out of prejudice. Israel has breached International Law countless times since its creation and there are no excuses from an unprejudiced point of view.
The elephant in the room you seem to neglect @Jeroen, is that the state European Jewish refugees call Israel was built largely on land stolen from the indigenous Palestinian people, who were a mix of Arab Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Displacement, occupation, and the systematic erasure of Palestinian life did not start yesterday or on 7 October 2023. The conflict we are witnessing today began long before, during the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948. Under the mandate, Britain encouraged large-scale Jewish immigration often at the expense of the local Arab population, imposed land policies that dispossessed Palestinians, and failed to protect their rights. This period planted the seeds for resistance groups such as the PLO, Fatah, and Hamas as Palestinians sought to defend their land and people.
I really do not expect you to attend peaceful rallies or marches calling for an end to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. But turning away from the suffering of millions does not make it any less real. Ordinary Palestinians are trapped under occupation, blockade, and violence while the world debates whether to act.
As long as Israeli governments continue their apartheid policies in Gaza, the West Bank, and inside Israel itself, there will be resistance to oppression. Decades of dispossession and systemic violence cannot erase the Palestinians’ right to defend their land, their communities, and their dignity.
And if Israel ethnically cleanses Gaza and the West Bank, they will turn next to Lebanon and Syria. There will be no peace in the region unless the West stops supporting Israel and forces them to come to the negotiation table with a genuine desire for peace and equality for all. As it stands, Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, envisioned a Greater Israel, and now Netanyahu is working to make that vision a reality regardless of the number of innocent Palestinians the IDF kills.
Thanks, @Shoshin1.
There have in the past been attempts to end the conflict with a so-called two state solution, if both sides had said, enough is enough, we will let go of the past, and live in peace, then it might have worked. But I see extremists on the Israeli side, and extremists on the Palestinian side, and neither side is satisfied with what they have.
What do you mean by "neither side is satisfied with what they have"? That makes it sound like both sides are on equal footing, which is simply not true. Israel already has access to clean water, abundant food, freedom to travel, and the right to work where they choose. Palestinians are denied even the most basic of these rights. Since 1967 Israel has in one form or another occupied Gaza and the West Bank, controlling what goes in and out, controlling the water supply and the electricity, and using them as tools of punishment. For the Palestinian people this has never been an equal playing field.
Well, both sides are perpetuating the conflict. If you watched the videos that came out during the October attack by Hamas, there was a certain triumphalism there, something like “we are striking back at the hated enemy”.
It isn’t a level playing field, you’re right, but neither is either side committed to peace. The IDF keeps retaliating way out of proportion, increasing the oppression, and Hamas keeps adopting the stance of the aggressive resistance fighter, which becomes terrorism from a neutral point of view.
It’s a question of hate, and how that is transmitted to the next generation.
Some people bleat to the beat...
Don't be one of the miscreats. Youse haz me for that
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/14/wirral-to-scrap-90-year-old-ban-on-carpet-beating-and-wanton-singing
To say “both sides are perpetuating the conflict” is to ignore the core truth. Israel is the occupier, Palestinians are the occupied. Yes, some videos in October 2023 showed Hamas fighters celebrating, but one day of violence cannot erase 76 years of dispossession and decades of siege, checkpoints, demolitions, and daily killings.
Some food for thought about the Hannibal Directive, which was also used on October 7. The Hannibal Directive is an Israeli military protocol that prioritises preventing the capture of soldiers, many of whom are reservists, over their own lives. In Gaza, its implementation has led to heavy bombardment in civilian areas, causing deaths of both Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. This shoot-to-kill policy shows that Israel’s own rules of engagement deliberately put human lives at risk.
It is also worth noting the existence of the Israeli military intelligence “legitimisation cell,” reportedly tasked with framing Palestinian journalists and civilians as Hamas operatives to justify attacks. It is possible that your view, which paints both sides as equally culpable, reflects the influence of this kind of propaganda designed to obscure the reality of occupation and civilian suffering.
Calling Israel’s actions “retaliation” is misleading. Gaza has been under blockade for years, with Israel controlling food, water, electricity, and movement. This is collective punishment.
The Lancet, when direct and indirect deaths are included, and taking into account those still missing under rubble, the total death toll in Gaza could exceed 186,000, far beyond any claim of self-defence.
The real cycle is not hate on both sides but apartheid and colonisation on one side, and resistance to it on the other. Palestinians have long said they want peace, peace with dignity, freedom, and equality. That is the truth too often erased.
Yes, the Israeli responses are out of all proportion. But I think if you look at the situation through the lens of real-politik it is necessary to create a solution which accommodates both sides.
I think that given the October attack by Hamas, it was inevitable that there would be a reaction by the IDF, and that it would be harsh. How harsh I don’t think anyone could have predicted, it is like the old Roman practice of decimating, killing every tenth man of a captive army but instead applied to a whole population. Setting back civilisation by two thousand years.
Nevertheless I don’t feel you can leave the Palestinian attitude out of it entirely and just pardon them because of the historical and current wrongs they have suffered. There are still old men in the Palestinian Territories holding on to old ownership papers for land in Israeli villages and hoping and planning for a return — some of them were interviewed for television here. This isn’t feasible and there is no political path for it to happen, the modern state of Israel is just a fact.
Anti-terrorism laws are really strict, both here and in Israel. They are the reason for the checkpoints and fences and travel restrictions. How many cases they really prevent I do not know, and perhaps they are more there to show Palestinians the superiority of Israel. But if they weren’t there, how many young Hamas loyalists might go out and stage a mini-October attack every Saturday night? Without that show of force would Hamas violence increase?
This is not what I’m seeing if I look at events and at the media coverage back then. Support for Hamas remains high among the population, and Hamas planned and carried out the October 2023 attack. It looks to me like the ‘Palestinians want peace’ narrative is a piece of spin fed to the Western media for the express reason of getting the worldwide public to support them. Although perhaps the population of Gaza want peace a lot more now that it’s becoming clear how bad things can get.
At the root of the conflict are Buddhist mental states — greed, desire, hate, anger. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said “the line between good and evil runs through every heart.” And it is education and propaganda that feeds the fire. The lessons of Nazi Germany are still reverberating down the ages.
In order for a solution to have a real chance, the behaviour and embedded education on both sides has to change. And honestly, I don’t hold out much hope for a workable solution. Maybe in another few hundred years people will come to their senses.
To dismiss what Israel is doing is to ignore the reality of settler colonialism unfolding before our eyes. This is not a “conflict” between equals. It is a process where one group, backed by military might, systematically takes land, demolishes homes, builds exclusive settlements, and forces the indigenous people into ever smaller, fragmented spaces. We have seen this pattern before in Aotearoa, in Australia, in the Americas, and in South Africa, and we now recognise those histories for what they were: attempts to erase and replace entire peoples. The difference is that in Palestine it is still happening today. It would seem that you blame the ongoing violence inflicted upon the Palestinian people by Israel on the Palestinian people themselves, rather than recognising it as the outcome of occupation and dispossession.
This was no accident of history. In 1937 David Ben-Gurion wrote to his son, “We must expel Arabs and take their places … and if we have to use force, then we have force at our disposal.” A decade later, in December 1947, he told his party that with 40% of the population in the new state being Arabs, “such a state cannot survive without a decisive Jewish majority.” And in July 1948, as Palestinians fled their homes under fire, he recorded in his diary: “We must do everything to ensure they never do return.” What Israel continues to do today, expanding settlements, blocking refugees from returning, and erasing Palestinian culture, is the direct continuation of that plan. To excuse this is to fall into the same settler colonialist and white supremacist mindset that once justified the dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa, Australia, and the Americas.
Part of the reluctance in the West to criticise Israel comes from a guilt-ridden fear of being labelled anti-Semitic. This is understandable, given the long history of persecution Jews have faced in Europe. For centuries, Jewish communities were subject to pogroms, forced expulsions, and systemic discrimination. Entire populations were confined to ghettos, barred from owning land or practicing many professions, and blamed for societal ills they had no part in. This reached its horrific peak in the Holocaust, where six million Jews were murdered simply for being Jewish. That history of oppression has understandably created deep fear and sensitivity around speaking against anything connected to Jewish communities. However, using that history as a shield to excuse the dispossession, occupation, and violence inflicted on Palestinians today is deeply misguided. Condemning Israel’s policies is not anti-Semitic, just as recognising settler colonialism and defending human rights is not an attack on Jews as a people.
It is also important to note that many Jewish people around the world are actively involved in pro-Palestine movements. Their participation shows that defending Palestinian rights is not about being against Jews, but about standing for justice, human rights, and equality. Criticising Israel’s occupation and settler colonial practices does not equate to anti-Semitism; in fact, many Jewish voices are among the most outspoken against these policies.
To put the situation in simple terms that are easy to get your head around, imagine this: you took someone in out of the kindness of your heart because they had nowhere else to go. One day you come home from work to find the lock on your door has been changed, and the person you sheltered tells you that you are no longer welcome in your own home. How would you feel, and what would you do? Well, this is exactly what happened to the Palestinian people.
Standing for justice is a principle shared across faiths, including Buddhist values of compassion, non-harm, and recognising the suffering of all beings. Supporting Palestinian rights is a practical expression of those values, requiring us to speak out against oppression and act to protect the vulnerable.
You’re not wrong. I love justice. But I’m enough of a realist to see that the ideal is rarely where we end up. The settlement of the Jewish people in Palestine after the Second World War and their dispossession and what the Palestinians call the Nakba are moments of injustice, but I do not see a realistic path to fixing that, given the attitudes that prevail among both groups.
The history of the Jews in Palestine goes back to Roman times and before. To say that they do not have a place there is also not justice. Would a state with free mixing of peoples be better? But now that we have a Jewish state, it does not appear they will let go of this ideal.
So by that logic, if we’re being ‘realistic,’ should the West just let Russia take as much of Ukraine as it wants? Would that be justice?
Russia claims Ukraine based on selective interpretations of history, just as European Zionists used ancient Jewish ties to justify settling in Palestine. In both cases, historical connections are used to legitimise the dispossession of people who have lived there continuously.
Zionism was a European colonial project: European Jews settled in Palestine, bringing European culture, politics, and support, and established a new state on land already inhabited by Palestinians.
Yes, there were Jewish communities living in Palestine long before European Zionists arrived. They were part of the local society, Middle Eastern in culture and daily life. European Jews, by contrast, have been living in Europe for over 2,000 years and are culturally European.
The European Zionists who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought a settler-colonial project, not a “return” of natives. To frame the existence of Israel as simply the continuation of ancient Jewish presence ignores the reality of dispossession, occupation, and ongoing injustice against Palestinians. Justice is not served by pretending that European settlers have an unquestionable right to land they arrived in with backing from foreign powers.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree @Jeroen . I see this through human rights and justice: those committing war crimes and acts of terrorism must be held accountable. Israel is a terrorist state, born from a desire to take over land by displacing the indigenous population. The military wing of Hamas is a terrorist organisation, born out of resistance to that displacement and land grab. You seem to think ‘might makes right’, so let European colonial settlers, calling themselves Jewish, take everything and hope that brings peace. I can’t accept that logic, and I don’t think there will ever be peace as long as Israel continues to disregard international law and human rights. There is, however, a small but growing movement within Israel pushing for genuine peace.
I agree with @person when he said Dr Roy Casagranda knows his stuff and is very engaging to listen to.
My apologise @RobinH we seem to have taken over your thread. You can have it back now.
🙏 namaste @Shoshin1 … I wish you luck and happiness on your quest.
And apologies to @RobinH for derailing the thread.
Non-violence has a long tradition in India and Tibet, for instance. I recall a story about how Tibetans would sweep the ground with soft brushes in front of a gate, in order to not harm ants and small beetles who may be walking there when the wooden gates were opened. The Jains of India have a strict tradition of not eating after dark, because one may not see insects who land on the food and harm them by eating them. This kind of level of respect for ahimsa, non-violence, is rare in the world.
In the Western world we have largely outsourced violence. The butcher slaughters animals for the meat on your dinner table, the police tackle thieves and robbers, the prison service detains jailed criminals, the army defends the country. Violent action is taken on your behalf, and sometimes without your consent.
You can derail it as you wish, it was more of a rant, really. I often hear that pornography is harmful or can be potentially harmful because it can shape the way you see healthy sexual relations in your own life. I think the algorythm does something similar to how we perceive healthy political relations and discussions. We see a lot of bad faith stuff, how people try to win debates instead of learning to find common ground, how the opponents are characterized as evil or inhuman even and that must be contributing a lot to why a lot of people feel like things are inevitably shifting towards a civil war in the US for example. It's not the ability to debate with each other that we've lost, it's just that a good will approach to people with different political beliefs now takes more effort.
The algorythm is a crazy propaganda tool. It also seems so chaotic...
In the sense of, it does not care which rabbit hole you fall through. It just loosens up the selection and tricks you into more and more of these clever punchlines, highly articulated verbosity or just horror shock with intense facts.
I try to feed it good music.
And may all beings affected by war find peace.
I am afraid there is little we can do. What could people do against the Mongolian horde centuries ago? Ah wait, they were not so hyperconnected and engaged in a world system where human rights had achieved this level of awareness and development. This is what I have heard. We could do more now. But this cycle of violence is so prevalent. Reality is dukkha. A constant reminder is war.
What left to do but to cultivate peace and loving-kindness.
It is true that violence has long scarred human history, such as the genocides of Indigenous peoples through colonisation, but that does not mean we are powerless. Being more connected today, with a deeper awareness of human rights, is not insignificant. It gives us the chance to speak out, to organise, and to hold governments accountable in ways that were not possible centuries ago.
Suffering is part of existence, as the Buddha taught, but so too is the potential for compassion and right action. While we may not end all wars, each act of solidarity and each effort for justice can ease suffering and tilt the balance, however slightly, towards a more humane world.
I’d pick out two golden periods of political thought, one which led to the US constitution, which was a time of discourse in letters and papers between learned men, and the second the time after the Second World War, when the United Nations was formed.
There has been a long slide in learned discourse between then and now. Most people who hold forth on political opinions do not have a historical perspective, and have had their heads in the internet bubble chamber for the past ten years.
I saw an interview with the maker of the film Idiocracy not long ago, and he was saying the film was proving to be remarkably prophetic. It’s about an ordinary man who travels into the future, and discovers that most humans have become stupid, and that he is now hailed as a genius who is put forward to rule the country.
To be fair, Futurama already touched on most of what Idiocracy is about, but Mike Judge always finds ways to turn social commentary into comedy.
Information on how to think in the current climate change: