Thursday, February 24, 2011

This is worrisome ...

... THE OLD ORDER IS BREAKING DOWN.

I must confess that I have lately felt that the world order at present is extremely wobbly.

4 comments:

  1. Eh.

    I'd call it extremely oversimplified.

    Especially about India, about which most of the comments made are clueless. The complex equation between Hinduism and Islam in northern India is WAY more than stated here; as is its as-yet-unknown resolution. Pakistan and the partition were an experiment made after the end of the Raj, which began to fall apart almost immediately.

    Anyway.

    I sort of feel like this is more pornography of despair, and not really anything helpful.

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  2. I hope you're right, Art. But, as I said, I have this center-cannot-hold feeling that I can't quite shake.

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  3. The center cannot hold feeling is just part of the Modern existential crisis. LOL Ever since Yeats and Camus formulated it, it's been around. Some psychological schools call it free-floating anxiety.

    Heck, Modernist art is all about this feeling. (Which is why postmodernism is really Late High Modernism; it's the ultimate fulfillment of the feeling of the rug being pulled out from underneath one, leaving one unsure what to think or believe.)

    Any sensitive, aware person, such as yourself, cannot help but feel this way, sometimes, these days. We're dealing with a lot of global uncertainty and turbulence these days, perhaps more than usual even in these latter days. So it's no wonder. :) I feel this way, too, but my own life has become so fraught with uncertainty these past few years that i've gotten used to it. You learn to not let it stop you from doing what you need to do.

    My favorite Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, has a whole book on the topic, which I highly recommend: "Comfortable With Uncertainty." Believe it or not, it's an actual how-to manual for doing just that, coping with existential uncertainty. You don't have to be Buddhist to get a lot of practical wisdom from the book.

    (One of the reasons I like Pema is she's very practical, not even remotely sectarian. Although her teachings are grounded in her tradition, they're really universal spiritual technology.)

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  4. But I've been blessedly free of anxiety throughout most of my life. On the other hand, I've always had good instincts. I should have noted, by the way, that I don't buy the notion that we're on the verge of another world war (though nobody in 1914 thought they were, either). And I feel quite comfortable with uncertainty (which is what faith is for). Probably just a passing phase.

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