bodom wrote:How any practicing Buddhists can find fault with him while he is helping others is beyond me.
Maybe this article gives a small idea of the "danger", of cause it has to be seen in the context of Dhamma and Dhamma as a cool consume article. We can not easy ignore that it is mostly in this way. Not every kind of help is deep inside meant as help (selfless). As long as we are addicted we use to deal with or objects of addition to maintain our existence.
But its not only the case with Noah, I guess its a general "normal" person as teacher problem.
Marcuse Reconsidered
Herbert Marcuse said advanced society created false needs which intergrate the individual into the system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, and contemporary thought modes.
The result is "one dimensional thought" and behavior of conformity and assimilation.
He promoted the "great refusal" as the only way to adequately respond to the all-encompassing methods of control.
He advocated "negative thinking" as a response to the positivism of consumer society.
Consumerism is a form of social control. We do not live in a free society, he said, except for the freedom to buy happiness.
We work to buy things we do not need, with damaging effects:
1) damaging psychic/spiritual effects.
2) damaging enviornmental effects.
3) we use material objects to mediate social connection (alienation).
The "great refusal" is the protest against unnecessary repression, the struggle for the ultimate form of freedom.
His ideas are presented in his books: Eros and Civilization (1955), and One Dimensional Man (1964).
Today, the desire to be "cool" has been incorporated into consumer culture.
"Cool capitalism is the incorporation of disaffection into capitalism. 'Cool' is the front region of capitalism today for those who are seduced by its cultural appeal and especially also for those who aspire, mostly in frustration, to the greatest fruits of a capitalist civilization. For capitalism to command hearts and minds, it is necessary to mask out its less appealing back regions." [Cool Capitalism, Jim McGuigon]
Cool capitalism incorporates disaffection into capitalism itself, absorbing rebellion and thereby neutralizing opposition to the present system of culture and society.
In the countercultural analysis, simply having fun comes to be seen as the ultimate subversive act. Hedonism is seen as revolutionary doctrine. Is it any wonder that this kind of countercultural rebellion has reinvigorated consumer capitalism?
When ever possible, do not get the message as something political, but just as a psychological fact. Buddha teaches to be cool and many want to be cool. To transport the way between is very difficult and could damage the real coolness easy. So it needs to be pushed to do not fail.
