[FutureBuddha] The Coming Upaya

[Tokan]

These are questions for the doctors and researchers, but my gut feeling (pun intended) is that you are right. No neurochemical or other physiological treatment can solve it all.

That said, my intuition is that we can treat effectively some "low hanging fruit" which would, alone, have big positive impact on society and the suffering individuals. For example, I am still hoping for an effective medical approach to alcohol and drug addictions, to cut the addictions even while, simultaneously, therapy and other responses should go hand-in-hand with any pharmacological approach. I think that better medical answers will come on that front, even if not yet.

As well, limiting "rage" in those prone to violence in anger, and limiting sexual urges in true sexual predators, will radically reduce such heinous crimes. Those steps alone will revolutionize life in our towns, in our families, for so many friends suffering in such ways.

Now, as "much higher fruit," I really hope (even if speculative) that increased empathy would also cause people to vote, for example, for leaders who would spend more on social programs, and to themselves volunteer, to do something about many of those social issues. Abusers would be less likely to abuse if they felt more the suffering of the victim. If we saw the homeless person in the street with the same eyes as if it were our their brother or mother homeless in the street, or hungry, and if we got as much pleasure from funding social programs as from video games, sex and ice cream ... well, I think that we would see some big steps in the right direction.

Even then, it would not solve everything, but it would be a great leap in the right direction.

Gassho, J

stlah

To the low, middle, and high-hanging fruit everywhere, watch out, we're coming for you!

Gassho, Tokan

satlah

[RobKen]

Does anyone today understand what Crazy Horse meant when he said photographs steal people's souls; yet alone what pills to change people's hearts do? But maybe people take these pills and they want to find mass alternatives to technology and dismantle their automobiles and televisions except for a new and much wiser definition of necessity. The ancestors might be working thrfough these pills in a positive and very mysterious way. But would there be something repressed in the unconscious that would later manifest dangerously? I liked Jundo's description of the world embodied by people where these medicines were common however negetively i first wrote about them. Then I think of Crazy Horse's famous words. No matter what we decide to do it will be a type of moving question and a living experiment. And I also think that any clear seeing about this science would agree that at its best it is a form of desperation for the world to continue. It is a good day to ask these questions for the benefit of all beings.

Gassho,
sat today

Robert