“another direction is possible”
Author Heather Havrilesky in What If This Were Enough? (2018) describes American culture as “its ‘enforced cheer,’ its rampant materialism, its frenetic pace, its inauthenticity … our national ‘poison,’ ‘sickness,’ ‘lies,’ ‘delusions,’ ‘false narratives’ and ‘shared hallucinations.’”[i]
In some countries populations “converge in a worldwide culture of ‘sharing;’ and diversity and connectedness join equality and freedom as the shibboleths of Western liberalism. Where, at the same time, [in the U.S.] legislation struggles to keep pace with technological change; capitalism and consumerism destroy even as they enrich; and nationalism, racism and xenophobia poison the public discourse, threatening disaster.”[ii]
“It seems clear that what we [the U.S.] have come to think of as ‘late capitalism’—that is, not just the economic system, but all its attendant inequalities, indignities, opportunities and absurdities—has become hostile to reproduction. Around the world, economic, social and environmental conditions function as a diffuse, barely perceptible contraceptive.”[iii]
“We Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump [2020], but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at the highest rate since World War II; one child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse; a baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids.”[iv]
Various reports in late 2021 stated that nearly 100,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdose. More than 70% of those deaths involved opioids such as fentanyl. There was a 50% increase in suicides in the 10-to-24 age group between 2007-2020. These are frightening statistics for America, but a year later they are worse.
In late 2022 reports find that we are now losing 300,000 Americans a year to drugs, alcohol and suicide; one in seven prime-age men (ages 25-54) are not working but it’s not because jobs don’t exist; life expectancy for a newborn in Mississippi is shorter than in Bangladesh; every 19 minutes a child is born with an opioid addiction and one in eight has a parent with a substance use disorder.[v]
Eckhart Tolle says: “There are people on this planet who live virtually in hell and on the same planet there are people who live a relatively peaceful life. The ones who are at peace inside will still experience the polarities, but in a much more benign way, not the extreme way in which many humans still experience them.[vi] Simple Reality provides the foundation for a life of peace that Tolle refers to.
Insight # 85 comes to us from Matthieu Ricard (b. 1946) a French writer, photographer, translator and Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal. He received a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the Pasteur Institute in 1972.
“The culture is training people’s minds in one direction right now. They need to see that another direction is possible.”[vii]
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Additional Reading:
- Culture, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
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[i] Eakin, Emily. “Matters of Faith.” The New York Times Book Review. December 9, 2018, p. 18.
[ii] Weber, Caroline. “Eurovision.” The New York Times Book Review. December 8, 2019, p. 36.
[iii] Sussman, Anne Louie. “The End of Babies.” The New York Times Sunday Review. November 17, 2019, p. 6.
[iv] Kristof, Nicholas and Sheryl WuDunn. “Hard Times.” The New York Times Book Review. January 12, 2019, p. 4.
[v] Kristof, Nicholas. “Trump Flails. America is Still Feverish.” The New York Times. December 11, 2022, p. SR-2.
[vi] Tolle, Eckhart. https:/www.eckharttolle.com/article/Relationships-true-love-and-the-transcendence-of-duality
[vii] Boyce, Barry. “Two Sciences of Mind.” Shambhala Sun, Boulder, Colorado, September 2005, p. 43.
