To what extent do you think ~unenlightenment in an individual is caused by the need to fit in socially?
I’d guess to a very significant extent, though I think there are also actual developmental stages that are distinct from social constraints. E.g. one axis of development in “enlightenment” involves taking more and more things as object, coming to experience them as mental constructs rather than as intrinsic aspects of reality. I think this involves the development of something like additional neuronal circuitry that provides increasingly meta levels of awareness into your mind, separate from any social considerations. (Social considerations might very well act as blockers for developing some of that awareness, however.)
Q2: Do you think people benefit from being ~unenlightened or spiritually unskilled? Precisely how so?
Fitting in socially is quite important! We wouldn’t have evolved to do that if it wasn’t useful, and as I mentioned in the dialogue, some Buddhist lineages that didn’t were likely wiped out because they started making too much trouble.
Also depends on how you define “benefit”, but if spiritual development makes you e.g. care less about money and status, then you’ll probably end up having less money and status. Even if that makes you happier, it might make you worse off in terms of external conditions, and more likely to be hurt by people who do have that money and status.
Someone like Stalin seems to have been quite spiritually unskillful, but his paranoia and desire for power got him to the position of being a dictator and killing off quite a few other people. On some measure of “better off”, it might have been better for some of those others to also be equally unenlightened and more power-hungry, so one of them would have become the ruler instead and survived.
I’d guess to a very significant extent, though I think there are also actual developmental stages that are distinct from social constraints. E.g. one axis of development in “enlightenment” involves taking more and more things as object, coming to experience them as mental constructs rather than as intrinsic aspects of reality. I think this involves the development of something like additional neuronal circuitry that provides increasingly meta levels of awareness into your mind, separate from any social considerations. (Social considerations might very well act as blockers for developing some of that awareness, however.)
Fitting in socially is quite important! We wouldn’t have evolved to do that if it wasn’t useful, and as I mentioned in the dialogue, some Buddhist lineages that didn’t were likely wiped out because they started making too much trouble.
Also depends on how you define “benefit”, but if spiritual development makes you e.g. care less about money and status, then you’ll probably end up having less money and status. Even if that makes you happier, it might make you worse off in terms of external conditions, and more likely to be hurt by people who do have that money and status.
Someone like Stalin seems to have been quite spiritually unskillful, but his paranoia and desire for power got him to the position of being a dictator and killing off quite a few other people. On some measure of “better off”, it might have been better for some of those others to also be equally unenlightened and more power-hungry, so one of them would have become the ruler instead and survived.