Facing the Future With Buddha And St Fransiscus: The Ideology Of Moderation

LESS IS MORE

The Ideology of Moderation

This is not a panic stricken doomsday prophecy. This is a highly personal outlook on the world, my life and the choices I make.

I will address the inevitable changes in social and economic orders which we will face. I have chosen to stop in my track, take in the sayings and predictions of wise women and men who have pointed to the fact that worldly possessions keep the individual captive, even if the illusion of endless freedom keeps the rich man to dedicate his life to slavishly become increasingly richer to an extent that life takes the shape of a compulsive obssessive disorder which alienates the individual from all meaningful social and emotional relations on all levels. A trivial adverse effect of financial bliss...Or?

It is not a question of the poor consoling themselves with pseudomoralism about the misery of the affluent. It is, however, and to an extremely high degree of probability an actual fact that greed and the toxical need for more, more, gradually becomes a psychogene dependency and a chronical ennui which does not allow for enough, letting go and resting.

We are, many of us, taught to believe that we are under the obligation to consume to be a loyal patriote and manipulated to spend way over our actual means by loans with skyrocketing interest rates. We find ourselves in a confusing limbo with the savants screaming stop overspending or the very opposite, to help to get the wheels rolling. Were are we ? How do we solve this absurd contradiction?

We are familiar with holy men such as Buddha and St Fransiscus, who went from riches to rags, Buddha being the more austere of the two but both preaching for a coexistence built on receiving what you are bestowed to function bodily and emotionally, but not more.

More is the capital enemy to St Fransiscus and I do believe he has a point.

Actually, I may believe he is part of the solution when faced with the future. He is in good company. Myriads of Asian, Persian, Egyptian, Native Indian, and other wise women and men have preached modesty, dignity, humbleness (no, not submission) and a sense of validating what we have, what we truly need and that we need each other.

I am not an idealistic idiot who believes in an instant karmaic change and global consensus to accept to survive within the actual means that we do have and turn away from the more. But neither do I fear a dramatical change in consumism, being old enough to see that it seldomly reaches a point where we achieve a sense of ssubstatial and lasting satisfaction. Seems like we are not genetically programmed that way.

And, yet, recent neurological science gives at hand that we really do inherit memories genetically, much like Jung once taught, and the reptile urge is too eat until you explode, based on the socioevolutionary starvation via dolorosa mankind had to suffer for the major part of human history. But, and you may not agree, we also find apparent evidence of people and cultures which have survived for almost all history by adapting to the eco niche, avoiding exploitation and ignoring surplus as long as sufficient means for the reproduction and daily life could sustain everybody within their social conglomerate. And this pattern of life is far, far older than capitalism, if by any chance, you believed the opposite.

When I was a young Social Anthropologist we found ourselves in a heated discussion of how to understand the degree of civilization, quality of life and the conflict between limited resources and the urge to accumalate (Maximization, Frederick Barth).

 Let us briefly look at the results of the two extremes:

Australian aboriginals:                                    British people:

Work, food gathering,transport 15%                           65%

Play, socializing, lovemaking 20%                               10%

Spiritual life, creative activites 25%                              5%

Resting, story telling, cultural consumption 30%   5%

Sleeping 10%                                                                       15%

No conclusive deductions can be made, apart from the input of energy in the ”civilized” nation in order to eat, have some kind of leisure and family time and other ”soft” parameters of what may be interpreted as ”life quality”. However, a Beck´s Depression Inventory test was carried out in the selected groups. The depression rate in the aboriginal population was a mere 1,2 points (25 and over equals clinical depression) whereas the UK rate was 18 points.

Be aware, however, the ”emical” (culturally defined) use of the word ”depression”, ranging from ” It´s Monday morning and really depressing” to catatonic depression, clinically established, which semantically manipulates the results depending in what context the word is used and how the questions with multiple choices are expressed. The Inventory was created and first tried on white Midwestern lower middle class US citizens...

Depression had no actual meaning as a concept in the aboriginal population of the late sixties. It had to be explained in other words or images and still was hard to establish. Sadness and grief is universal but the % of time to cope and process it with relatives and friends differs astonishingly.

Progress in contemporary Australia has led to a depression rate of 25 or higher in 80% of the aboriginal native population in this decade. I leave it to you to ponder on how come...

The aboriginals live in utter poverty, marginalized by the majority population.Poverty per se does not generate a higher quality of life. We are aiming at moderation, not extinction..If we cast a shallow look at the state of affairs in Australia we may easily deduct that consumism and competing markets are the sovereign means to happiness and bliss. Well...Maybe we will have another thought coming..

Personally I am, as mentioned above, not afraid for changes in our mode of living. I fear, however, the violence of the transition, because that may be merciless...By the way, we can see the violence of transition in the Middle East and in Africa. I am afraid we may have to face somethig similar unless we start to reflect on lifestyles and prioritizing...

Too pessimistic? For some, yes. For others, not so much. And then, of course, I can be totally wrong...

Just a thought

Douglas 2o14