SPIRITUALITY, WAR AND SOCIETY

[Jack]

 
True experience of the Self is the unawareness of even "I am". Can the world persist after such unawareness?
--Tripura Rihasya

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.  One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

You may not want war; but war wants you.
--Leon Trotsky

     This spring we find ourselves on several verges.  The student debt level will soon cross the one trillion dollar line.  The USA is preparing to launch another "humanitarian war"; this time to rescue the peoples of Syria by intense bombing of their nation.  We might want to remember the valuable bombing we did in Libya.  And last but certainly not least Professor Bernanke and his global associates are working away at bringing about a global financial collapse. 
     Eleanor Roosevelt's quote seems especially relevant at this time.  Never in the world's history has so much knowledge been available.  So much indeed that one can barely see either the forest or the trees.  I wonder if America's educational system is also on the verge of collapse?  The number of persons having advanced degrees is stagering.  Many military officers have PhD's.  The number of JD's and MD's is legion.  And yet the judiciary is a nightmare.  Health and health care in the USA is the world's most expensive and yet the worse among developed nations.  11% of the population is now using psychiatric medication--up a percent from last year!  And finally and ironically education is not providing young people with a way to make a living.  People are better off skipping college and finding a trade that can not be off shored.  E.g. plumber or electrician.
      I think the USA is now in the worst condition it has ever been in.  So the standard type of education has failed.  American parenting has failed.  I had a mother tell me a few days ago that even day care had become competative.  We have three and four year olds competing . . .  Children before they have been intimidated out of it have the ability as a rule to detect the inner feelings of others.  The can spot a lie immediately.  How many adults can do that?  Oliver Sachs recounts in one of his books how people with certain brain problems are also able to detect a liar.  Though he did not mention whom, I believe these patients of his were listening to a speech by Ronald Reagan.  And they began to laugh.  The single patient who had a different sort of problem was able to tell from the words used and their arrangement that Reagan was lying.  Two different approaches, but they both worked!
      How do we lose that ability?  And shouldn't education help us regain it?  Well, the answer to the last question is clearly no.  The academic world is where people develop skepticism and doubt to the point where they actually believe nothing.  That's the intellect.  The doubter.  Let's see a proof.  More footnotes.  Etc.  I happened to know a university professor some years ago who taught at the University of CO.  In one of our talks I mentioned the book CROWDS AND POWER.  Later on I discovered he had to run off and check with others whether the book were any good.  It was written by Elias Canetti-- winner of a Nobel Prize in literature.  He was in his sixties.  He could not tell from the feel or vibration.  He needed other authorities.  He could have simply picked up a copy and read a few pages.  Wouldn't that be enough for a professor in the humanities department.  Well, no.
      So America's universities are more like mortuaries  and cemetaries.  Ultra conservative.  Some time back I received a response to a letter I had sent to Stanford University regarding the warm welcome back given by the administration to Condi Rice.  Was someone who almost certainly was guilty of war crimes the wrong sort of person to be teaching political science?  Some students thought so and am emeritus profesor of political science that I had myself taken a course from thought so--and a few other professors.  The administrator who wrote me had formerly taught in the Stanford philosophy department.  Presumably they get the best of the best there.  But here was a man devoting himself to rationalizing what could not be rationalized.  So he finally said, she had a legal right to take up her position again.  The Stanford President whom I questioned talked about a diversity of ideas.  And they want me to donate to the university!!
      My thesis is that the combination of American parenting and American education places a veil in front of the higher nature and blinds people not just to the Truth but to the everyday truths.  The end product is an opinionated person with little in the way of ethics.  Such a person is fearful and doubt ridden and pursues money for protection.  Not much of a citizen emerges.  Not much of a business or governmental leader.  In fact we have highly educated liars.  Last night on BBC one of these sorts was interviewed.  He lied about Syria.  He was pretty obvious.  The bottom line was simply, we need to bomb Syria to save Syria.
      I definitely believe in the value of education.  I like learning things.  But that kind of education is difficult in a universtiy.  And without ethics and morals education is very dangerous.  Our current government at best is incompetent. They throw money everywhere and get little in return.  One could go mad following the government day to day.  We could now say that all American institutions have reached a point of corruption where they are dysfunctional.  I can not think of one that is working properly.  When some years back Noam Chomsky was critquing the universities he mentioned the hard sciences and mathematics as more or less exempt.  I would have to differ.  Look at what happened to Hugh Everett.  And that was back when things were rather better.  We could simply say that in America apart from money there is really nothing of value.  Money is King and money is God.  Fear and desire working together have accomplished this.  Just notice how often safety is mentioned these days in America.  Is safety now the supreme value in life?  Maybe.

 
"The instant you wake up you will know
that waking is better than this dream."

---Ellam Ondre

--ENDRELELLAM  ONDRELAM 
ELLAM  ONDRE