Comments on: Apres le deluge — Dieu?

By: gkong3

gkong3 — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:07:47 +0000

suek: I’m sure I’m doing Buddhism a slaughter, but that is more or less what their belief structure is. Originally, that is. After that, of course, you got it imported into China, where Buddha, instead of just being the founder and leader, becomes the Ur-God. And then various other deities get imported into the mythological framework. And then it gets exported to Japan, where the locals did an ever greater number on it.
And now, in South East Asia, Buddhism and Taoism are so closely intertwined that it’s just the ‘Chinese religion’.
Disclaimer: I’m a Christian myself. What I know about Buddhism is from secondary sources (namely, people around me).

By: Gringo

Gringo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:17:14 +0000

@ #15 David Foster:
But also, the *owners and managers* of the new industrial facilities often tended to be dissenters from the established church.
According to Darlington in his Evolution of Man and Society, nearly all of the scientific and technological advances in England from 1600-2000 came from religious dissenters. A partial exception would be Isaac Newton, who held unorthodox religious views but still was associated with Cambridge from an early age, at a time when one had to belong to the established church to be associated with either Oxford or Cambridge. Apparently Isaac dissimulated well enough.
I don’t hear any of the libs using this as a talking point. Disclaimer: I am not a churchgoer.

By: suek

suek — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:44:36 +0000

>>after all, if you no longer desire something, then losing it or failing it will not cause you pain anymore)>>

Heh. “Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose”??

By: gkong3

gkong3 — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:01:30 +0000

Charlie (Colorado): I’d argue against Japan being largely Buddhist, simply because Japan is mostly Shinto (which is animist with only a minimal amount of Buddhism sprinkled in for taste), adding pseudo-Christianity for that additional zest. Looking at the manga Inuyasha (which Takahashi Rumiko did without reference to a single Western mythology) and you can see a rich tapestry of religious background that is pretty far removed from any form of Buddhism I’ve ever seen. And as for Tibet, well, it’s got its fair share of bloodshed under Buddhism also.
Also, Japan has a veneer of pseudo-Christianity, let’s not pretend it doesn’t. I think a better example for your argument would be China, which despite its ‘communist’ government and the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (hah! what a euphemism!) had maintained an unbroken and largely unchanged culture and tradition up to fairly recent times.
suek: Buddhism is largely atheistic in nature; Buddha would be providing us with reliable, cheap and perpetual energy now if he could see what the modern Buddhist has done to his teachings. The primary thing behind Buddhism is that man is destined to suffer forever until he realises that desires (all desires, even the ones we call good) cause suffering and loss. When you get that enlightenment, then you realise you need to purge yourself of those desires (after all, if you no longer desire something, then losing it or failing it will not cause you pain anymore). And the way you can hasten that process is through the Eightfold Path, and some other stuff which I was no longer inclined to go into. Let’s just say that your basic Vulcan would find Buddhism quite logical indeed. Except for pon farr but that’s biological and not something Vulcans are very proud of anyway.
withouthavingseen: That is because the very notion of a ‘Protestant’ country is laughable. In no country with a real foreign policy and a real armed force has Protestanism ever really been the State religion long enough for it to seep into the bedrock of the culture. Germany? When there was essentially no Germany during the Thirty Years War? Sweden, where the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus turned Catholic? The UK, which Church of England is actually Catholic-lite (let’s be honest)? And where the State religion changed with every new Queen and King for a fairly long while?
I’ll give the British this much, though – during Empire, they came down hard on any troublemakers… and if the troublemakers were Muslim, they didn’t care.

By: withouthavingseen

withouthavingseen — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:48:54 +0000

Nice article, Bookworm. New to your blog, and appreciative of it so far. I only see one problem with your thoughts on this particular topic. It is this: never in its history has Protestant Christianity made a steadfast resistance to the spread of Islam. Instead, Protestant countries have always preferred to do business with Muslim nations. There are sporadic counter examples, such as the very brief “war” against the Barbary pirates, but their very infrequency and smallness of scale make my point.

By: caribman

caribman — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:51:23 +0000

I keep being surprised by the extent of the knowledge of bloggers of a certain calibre. You aced this one and whenever I am lucky enough to read posts such as this (which mirror my thoughs at some levels) it makes the day all that more instructive. Coming from a Caribbean country which only recently got its Independance from Britian it is so pathetic to see the level to which that once great country has fallen. I was at the UN the other day and listened as a tall Englishman rose and in his stentorian wonderful English tones began to pontificate on some issue. I was surprised at myself as I just looked at him with contempt that these people (whose Queen we still call ours) who produced Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill have so fallen down the civilization slope. May their continent rest in peace at the feet of Allah.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:27:49 +0000

Re the evangelical era in England: the people involved in these movements seemed to come mainly from two groups. First, there was the emerging industrial proletariat--especially workers in the new textile mills. Methodism, IIRC, became particularly popular in this group. But also, the *owners and managers* of the new industrial facilities often tended to be dissenters from the established church. Here's D S Cardwell in his book "Turning Points in Western Technology," discussing the British cotton-processing industry: "The early leaders were often Dissenters who were excluded from the fruits–some might say the corruptions–of office in State and Establishment. They were therefore free to devote themselves to business as their sole professional aim while the laws of England assured them their property and the profits their genius earned." In America in recent decades, it's been possible for a person to succeed in business without being a member of the "established church"--ie, without adopting the political & social opinions of academia, the New York Times, and public television. With the rapid growth of government intervention in all elements of the economy, it is not clear that this will continue to be true. See my (slightly) related post: Innovation and Social Structure http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/10688.html

By: gpc31

gpc31 — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:33:12 +0000

Thank you for such a crystal clear job of explaining and placing developments in their historical contexts. I learned many things from your essay.

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:57:32 +0000

Book, what an utterly, utterly depressing world view on the Brits.
I hope that you are wrong, I fear that you are right.

By: expat

expat — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:56:52 +0000

I don’t know about Tiger, but I think for some Americans Buddhism is just a part of the mix of other beliefs they dabble in. Catholic theology also has to be figured into any prognosis. The more watered down other denominations become, the more some people (Tony Blair) are attracted to the theological framework offered by Catholicism.