The “utility monster” has ceased to be a utility monster because it no longer gets everything.
Can this be resolved by adding more monsters? I.e., instead of having just one utility monster on Earth, we could have a million or even 6 billion monsters (as many as there are humans). This would allow the monsters to fully benefit from consuming “everything” or at least close enough to “everything” to raise the dilemma.
I don’t see why there would be more demand and less supply of labour after such a catastrophe. Why do you think that? (Or was it a joke? I cannot tell.)
I would rather say that the bright side is that a societal collapse brought on by a pandemic might at least delay the climate change collapse a bit.
I see. Thanks!
There is one aspect which you almost completely ignore in your post and which I believe is vital: WHY is stagnation bad? WHY is progress good? You make it sound as though you just want fancy gadgets for the sake of having fancy gadgets.
You have a “quantitative” section, but what exactly are you trying to quantify? Why is economic growth good?
You should spend more time pondering: What (quantifiable) factors are valuable in and of themselves? And have these factors improved or stagnated?
For example, I believe there is less famine and fewer people living in extreme poverty worldwide. Lifespans may have stagnated in the developed world, but how about in the developing world? If poor people are less poor and live longer, that is extremely important progress. They need the progress way more than we do.
Conversely, climate change and other looming environmental disasters may make poverty and suffering skyrocket again and make the world a much worse place, even if our gadgets grow ever fancier.
There are other agents in the population than humans.
(I apologize for the late reply. I didn’t check my notifications.)
What does “Asia” refer to here? As far as I can see your excerpts mention only one country in Asia, namely China. Do these findings about “Asia” apply only to China (and countries culturally related to China, such as Japan)? Or do some of them also apply to other countries in Asia such as India?
Similarly, does “the West” mean specifically “the United States of America”, or were any other Western countries considered?
And they use the term “Asia” but talk about people from China.
On the other hand, the woman who fought back against the alien might also be less submissive to the man that reclaims her. That may be a virtue or a flaw depending on what he values in women.
As far as I understand, “the (mistaken) belief in a permanent self or soul” is one of the Ten Fetters that one must break free of in order to achieve the stages of enlightenment.
I hope you are still reading replies here. 🙂
This was a very thought-provoking post. But I don’t fully understand what you are trying to say.
You say that Buddhist meditation developed in a context of severe inequality and poverty—which are obviously not good things. Then you say that Buddhist meditation should not be divorced from its cultural context. I did not understand exactly what context you believe we need to preserve. Could you please elaborate on that?
Outside view: data suggests that conscientiousness is the least impacted of the big 5 by meditation (neither up nor down).
Interesting! Can you recommend me any good reading about how meditation interacts with the Big 5 personality traits?
Expert meditators have been known to sometimes ignore extreme physical pain that should have caused them to seek medical aid. And they probably would have sought help, if not for their ability to drop their resistance to pain and experience it with extreme equanimity.
Interesting. Can you cite any examples of this?
In her book “Get Off Your Cushion”, Li-Anne Tang cites one anecdote with Culadasa a year before his death where he did something like this. But that’s the only example I know of.
This was a great post!
You included some speculation about the stages of TMI. May I ask you what stage of TMI you were in at the time when you wrote this? (If you’ve been doing enough TMI practice that the question makes sense.)
And in case you’ve mastered more of the stages since the time you wrote this, do you still believe your speculation in this article was correct?
What is your sample size here? How many “enlightened” people have you examined for cognitive bias?
What article or book is that quote from?
ask them if they think that’s really fair given everyone else is paying $20. What makes them different/special such that they should only pay $5?
This might be effective social pressure, but it doesn’t seem particularly rational. If someone else volunteers to pay you more than they need—and more than YOU need—then why should that obligate me to do the same?
This response makes it sound as though you are trying to win a fight rather than interested in understanding something.
Which book is that? I tried to search and found several authors with that name and variants of it.
I think “most people in time and space” have lived in the industrial age. Am I wrong?