Thumbs up: Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion. Hedges writes about how Americans are delusional in their beliefs about how wonderful their country is and how rich and powerful they are. One of his targets is academia, which he says turns out graduates who are far too respectful of authority. (He doesn’t mention molecular biologists, but they’re another example.)
Thumbs down: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. Two words: runaway serfs.
I have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, have even had a conversation with him in a private audience. I like a lot of his ideas, but I think a lot of the nuances and subtleties are lost in translation. As a result, his messages often feel watered down and simplistic.
With that said, I remember reading the Art of Happiness. I kept thinking to myself, “won’t this psychologist just shut the hell up?” (The book was written by the psychologist Howard Cutler, though half the text is quotations from the DL from a series of private conversations between the two–nevertheless, Cutler is barely a scientist, certainly no philosopher, and has no sense of artful subtlety).
Thumbs down indeed.
The post you direct to in giving thumbs down to the book “The Art of Happiness” does not offer an explanation of what you find wrong with the content of the book — can you clarify what you intended with this post? Why are you giving the book a thumbs down and why the cryptic reference to an earlier post, which seems to be a critique of people making judgments about situations they are poorly informed (or misinformed) on?
MT, the Dalai Lama — in pre-Chinese-takeover Tibet — was at the top of a system that rested on a great deal of human slavery. For someone like that to be telling the rest of us how to be happy or anything else (except how to be good at public relations) is absurd. Regardless of what that advice is.
Jeff, thanks for your comment. I never read The Art of Happiness but I heard other people talk about it. When you know the Dalai Lama’s slave-holding past one quote I heard — “you choose your own happiness” — has a very unpleasant tinge to it. As if his slaves chose to be slaves.
Seth Roberts. Culturally revolutionized.
The dalai lama inherited his societal system when he was a kid. He didn’t create it for his people.
Buddhism teaches that freedom is in the mind. There are plenty of people in the world that are slaves to debt, their families, their jobs, their governments, the weather, their mothers, ther wives, their schools, etc. The quesion is what you do in those circumstances.
And the commnists were more likely to round you up and kill you.
What does thinking slavery is awful — and indefensible — have to do with the Cultural Revolution? “He didn’t create it for his people.” True. What did he do to get rid of it?
Seth, I don’t know the details of the issue, but you sound like a propagandist (i.e. as opposed to an informed person giving a balanced opinion).
It is no better to pillory the Dalai Lama without knowing his record, simply to feel subversive, than it is to laud him without knowing his record. Both are misplaced expressions of moral superiority. Your position seems to be that Tibet=Slavery=Evil=Dalai Lama. This is fallacious reasoning.
The feudal history of Tibet does not justify the blanket condemnation of the Dalai Lama, and it is disingenuous to try to equate him with slavery — he is on public record denouncing Tibet’s feudal history, denouncing slavery, supporting human rights, etc.
Among the considerations you ignore in arriving at your judgment are what his thoughts on this subject were at the time he held power – did he support or approve of this system? Did he try to change it? Were there constraints on his power or was it unlimited?
Even if he supported those traditions at the time (and please provide evidence for it if you have it) does that mean he supports them now? He was told he had divine right to rule Tibet since he was four years old — yet he advocates for democracy in Tibet and elsewhere. That suggests as much intellectual independence from his culture as Weston Price had for American nutritional culture – they both rejected the traditions they were raised in.
Your criticism is conflating the flaws of historical Tibet and flaws of poorly informed pro-Tibet spokespeople with personal shortcomings of the Dalai Lama. They are not the same thing.
A litany of the horrors of Tibet by Michael Parenti can be found here:
https://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Hitchens’ critiques (also critiquable) of the Dalai Lama are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens'_critiques_of_specific_individuals#Tenzin_Gyatso.2C_the_14th_Dalai_Lama
The Dalai Lama has recognised the horrors of Tibet’s past and condemned them, acknowledged the hypocrisy in some of those who claim to be Buddhist, and works tirelessly to champion compassion and human rights in his contemporary work. He is not perfect, but on balance he is trying to improve the world and deserves his reputation as a moral authority more than most public figures.
MT, you ask: What were his thoughts when he was in power? Thoughts? I’d like to know what his actions were. To be anti-slavery now costs him nothing. He had ten years in power when he could have done something about it, as far as I can tell. What did he do? How many slaves did he free?
As far as I can tell, the answers are: Nothing and Zero. Because I am in China, it isn’t easy to research this. If I am missing something, please let me know.
To be fair to the Dalai Lama, he is merely the personification of a system much larger than him. He didn’t invent what he now teaches. The larger point is that in Tibet, the monasteries were built on slavery. Their high-minded religious ideals were drastically contradicted by their vast numbers of slaves. Their statements that “you choose your happiness” — as if their slaves chose to be slaves — are nauseating. That saying that religion is the opium of the masses? In this case it was the opium of the elites.
What’s the chronology here? According to Wikipedia, the Dalai Lama was born in 1935 and proclaimed the next “Dalai Lama” at age 2. He became the head of Tibet’s government on November 17, 1950, at the age of 15, in the midst of a war with China. China won that war and took over Tibet in the agreement signed on May 23, 1951, but Tibet was supposed to retain a high degree of autonomy. China left the Dalai Lama in power, with authority over central Tibet, but the Chinese continued to occupy Tibet and they peeled off some of its territory, where they instituted reforms including land redistribution. There were violent Tibetan uprisings against the Chinese, and after a major uprising was put down in March 1959, the Dalai Lama fled into exile at age 23. Then there was more violence and China started changing things throughout Tibet.
So he was never really in charge before the Chinese came in, but I guess we’re judging the Dalai Lama based on what he did from 1950-1959, when the Chinese basically left him in charge of part of Tibet. Wikipedia doesn’t give much detail about that decade, and I’d want to know a lot more before judging him too harshly for what he did or failed to do then, given his age and the circumstances*. But, at least according to this interview, he claims to have instituted some major reforms, including abolishing inheritable debt and establishing an independent judiciary.
*For example: how much power did he have at that age or was he more of a figurehead? Would the Chinese have let him transform society or would they have prevented him from rocking the boat? How feasible was it to institute dramatic changes in the midst of the occupation/insurrection? Did the fact that China was instituting its own reforms in parts of what had been Tibet limit his ability to pursue his reforms?
Vince, those are good points. I agree that a 21-year-old surrounded by older advisors, not to mention the Chinese government, is probably not very powerful. But I have a funny feeling he could have freed a few slaves, had he wanted to. And his supporters are curiously quiet about what he did during that decade. As I said earlier, my complaint is really about Tibet Buddhism being considered a wonderful source of wisdom when its main practitioners lived as they did — on the backs of thousands of slaves. Who somehow, according to their overlords, chose to be slaves. In the interview you link to the Dalai Lama says that disabled children are being punished for past sins (“of course”). At which point an advisor ends the interview. As the interviewer is leaving, the Dalai Lama calls him fat.
More than being influenced by advisors when he took power, he was isolated from early childhood and raised exclusively by people who taught him that he was a god-like reincarnation with divine right to rule Tibet, and further that Tibet was a perfect system. His physical and intellectual isolation continued, for the most part, until he left Tibet. If he failed to transcend the beliefs of his society under such conditions it would not be surprising.
What is more relevant is how he has conducted himself since, and what his thinking has been in the interim, when he has had intellectual freedom to a greater extent. If you read his books and other public statements it is clear that he has transcended many of these beliefs. It seems he still believes in reincarnation. Other people believe an invisible, ominpotent being created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. While I reject both of those beliefs, I don’t need to dismiss everything else that they say, do, or write.
You express the position that the Dalai Lama did not free any slaves during his reign — and presumably you also hold the opinion that he didn’t make comparable improvements in the conditions of slaves — where are you getting this information from?
I am afraid that apart from cultural revolutionized, there is also a bit of cultural blindness here. Seth is looking at the 21- year old Dalai Lama from a western perspective which is not fair to the man.
In many parts of Asia, what you call slavery was very commonplace. But it wasnt a physical bondage in most place. Eg in India, the lower castes were completely beholden to the upper castes in many places because of a sort of brainwashing of their place on earth. I suspect something similar to that in Tibet than an outright physical slavery. So from where do you think the reforms to that should have come. It seems a bit strange to accuse the 21 year old Dalai of not having condemned slavery when that would have looked like the only possible system in the world.
@milieu and @seth,
The moral judgment against slavery is easy, given today’s political landscape. Many people who advocated slavery in the past believed it a good, though, given the options. Most slavery in history wasn’t like the slavery of U.S. blacks. Even there, mistaken or not, many people argued in favor of that kind of slavery because they thought blacks would be worse off if freed. They might have been wrong, but they were doing what they thought was the moral thing.
It’s easy to make anachronistic judgments that lack context about this issue.
MT, I am getting my info from him and his supporters — who fail to mention it. And justify slave-holding because the slaves were happy. Or, if they weren’t happy, had done something bad in a past life — there are multiple justifications. For example, see that interview linked to by Vince.
The interview directly counters your criticisms — he describes himself as an ignorant child when he took power, says “there were many things wrong with our society” and that he wouldn’t want to return to it, says he eliminated inheritable debt (the source of the “slavery” you say he did nothing about) because it was “the scourge of the peasant and rural community”, notes that he freed the state’s prisoners while still in power (perhaps he freed slaves as well, possible though I don’t know), says he wants to renounce his temporal powers (not mentioned here is that he established an elected parliament — I think in 1960), and says that he and the Tibetan people are karmically being “punished for feudalism,” meaning that feudalism and its sins (like having serfs) was a cosmic wrong.
You suggest the Dalai Lama has said that slave-holding is justified (either because the slaves were happy or because they had done something bad in a past life) — please supply a link or reference as this is in striking contrast to anything I’ve read.
Quite possibly, you have misunderstood the principles of Karmic Law he is presenting (which I don’t believe in, incidentally). In the Buddhist Karmic view, current circumstances are explained by past actions — and in this view, we are all suffering on earth because we have all transgressed in past lives. Accordingly we must not judge others, but extend compassion both to them, and to ourselves. But not compassion in thought only, compassion through deeds. Compassion not only to our loved ones, or those we perceive as innocent, but even to our enemies or those we may feel morally superior to.
Which explains why he is critical of the slave-holding past of Tibet, and openly comments on the changes it required and which he has made — as he does in the linked article you suggested.
Seth,
Several points:
1. While I don’t have access to sufficient information to critique the DL about his rule from 1950 to 1959, what he has said and done since that time is relevant. Speech is a form of action.
2. I am not sure, but not all forms of slavery are equal, although I would endorse no form! For instance, as I recall from my undergraduate days (so long ago!), American chattel slavery was a much harsher institution than the contemporary slavery in Latin America. What was the nature of the slavery in Tibet?
3. What do you make of Hedges’ critique of psychology (Seligman, et al.) in Empire of Illusions? My sense is that he inputs greater claims to this perspective than it claims for itself.
Being an *employee* in certain situations would qualify as a form of slavery.
“Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion. Hedges writes about how Americans are delusional in their beliefs about how wonderful their country is and how rich and powerful they are.”
The United States is mind-blowingly rich. The state of California has a GDP roughly equal to France with only half the population.
It’s just not distributed well.
Uggghhhh. Hedges book sounds sort of apocalyptic. Will the WWF really cause the downfall of society? Most people today don’t read Moby Dick. Will that bring us down?
Tyler Cowen counters such arguments in “Create Your Own Economy”.
Here’s the product description which just makes Hedges sound paranoid:
Product Description
Pulitzer prize—winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion.
Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.