I’ve been reading a few comments, and, frankly this has inspired me to write an addendum to The Value of Nothing and the Wisdom of the Bodhisattvas. One of my favorite movies is Oh God You Devil staring George Burns who plays both God and the Devil. One scene where someone is interviewing the devil goes like this…

Interviewer: What is your greatest invention?

The Devil: Language

Another approach to that concept was provided by on of my teachers who said, “Modern man has lost the ability to distinguish reality from symbolic abstractions.” Let me provide an example.

Most people would say that a flower is a real thing. Yet, if you get a room full of people together and ask them to write down a description of a flower you will get some that say “a plant”, others that say “a rose”, others that say “a tulip”, and so forth. So really, flower is really an abstraction for a category of things. It is not a real thing itself. What about a “rose”? If you go through the same exercise you will get “red roses”, “yellow roses”, “bush roses”, “climbing roses”, and so forth. So rose, as real as it sounds, is another symbolic abstraction. Well, you can keep taking this to the next level and the next level until it starts to drive you crazy. What about things like love, freedom, conservative, liberal, and all the other similar abstractions we find in our language. I suspect that no two people agree on precisely what any of those terms mean.

Let’s shift for a moment to human beings. When you think about it, all human beings have the same real concerns. They want to eat, they want to have a place to sleep, they want to feel safe, they want to have companionship. Whether you are liberal, conservative, American, Russian, Arabic, Christian, Jew, Socialist, Lawyer, Doctor, or Indian Chief, your basic needs are the same as other the needs of other people. That is what is real and that’s an extremely important to point. When it comes to the realities of living, all people — past, present, and future — face the same issues.

Yet, throughout history certain individuals have discovered that they can promote their own self interests by creating linguistic abstractions that obscure the sameness of all people and, instead create divisions. By creating the abstractions that mentally create the “good guys” and the “bad guys” somebody ends up with more money or power. Yet, that is precisely the illusion that many religions talk about.

So, the question is whether it is a higher value for everyone to focus on the abstract divisiveness in order to get what’s yours or to focus on the sameness and try to ensure that all people get their real human needs met.

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Blessed are the peacemakers

Jesus clearly gives us the commandment to focus on the sameness of our neighbors and not on imagined diversity. That is our challenge in making the word better because it’s critical for us to understand that can only happen if it’s better for everyone. It is, again, the Bodhisattva Vow. Returning to the so-called “free market” value system, keep in mind that our cultural moral ideal overturned the tables of the money changers and said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Enough said.

Please share with your friends

Hide Sites