Kingmaker Online

Hi

I am publishing the first of my Kingmaker books on-line and for free. You can start reading it here.

Enjoy!

Mat

A New Online Defilement?

I have been thinking lots about how things can get in terms of online communities like forums. They are funny places because they are like amplified societies, where peoples beliefs and efforts to defend their beliefs are much more exercised than in this mundane real world with its physical and temporal restrictions.

There was a show on telly recently where someone killed someone else after an ongoing feud in a Buddhist chartroom, actually, It might have been "World of Warcraft" rather than Buddhism But the point is, how can it get to that point?  From an online chat? Bonkers.

From a Buddhist perspective I think it is it is quite easy to see why. Egos become entwined in some issue/conflict and the more they struggle against each other the more the conflict, the Dukkha, grows. This feedback cycle continues without end, until something external ends it.

In the real world where we have real lives with vastly more important issues than the beliefs of people we will probably never even say hello to, let alone meet. It just doesn’t matter what Francis33 believes about  Cornish Independence in the real world.  But online, with raw and unrestricted egos out,  it all seems different, as if a few words of ASCII text can represent someone’s entire illusionary ego. And once the egos sees itself in action  it attracts more mental attention, it grows because now it is out there, in public, in the primal gladiator pit of self versus others.

Why is this?

As Buddhists we try to break negative mental and moral states into their causes and principles so we can better eradicate  them; this is a part of the dharmic practice.  Since on-line communities have arisen there is at least one new, emergent, mental defilement with a Karmic payload. It is  like greed, sloth, conceit  or jealousy, but only available online.  I am not sure of the Pali Translation but in English it comes out as something like "taking oneself way too seriously online."

Whereas, in the real world, the root of suffering is ignorance, online it is not so much ignorance but "taking oneself way too seriously online." One might be the world’s biggest expert on something, yet still find that online they are  afflicted by "taking oneself way too seriously online."

Typically we can see the dependent origination of this online defilement in Karmic sequences such as:

• You believe x
• Someone online believes y.
• Online, you discuss x and y, because you are interested in the discussion.
• As you argue for x against their arguing for y, your viewpoint, from which you argue, starts to become your current Ego.
• It becomes important to you, and more to your Ego, that they at least understand why you believe x and at least acknowledge your criticisms of y.
• Ideally, if all goes well, you hope that they will end up believing x not y.
• Charged by the debate, invested in the debate, you find yourself afflicted  by "taking oneself way oo seriously online"
• All is Dukka:)

Incidentally, I have never suffered from this online defilement, I suffer from the karmically equivalent  "not taking anyone else seriously online." That's a joke. I love you all!

Peace! +:)=:):):)

What is Dogma?

We encounter dogma lots all over our lives.

Many of us, some without knowing, some with, will also propagate dogma in our interactions.

But what is dogma? And is it really as good as it seems?

A dogma is a doctrine that is professed with certainty when, in fact, there is no such certainty available to profess.

A belief is dogmatic if is is stated and used as a fact, when in fact it is just a belief.

We shouldn't really care about what people belief but rather how they use their beliefs to effect changes outside of their own minds.

Most people are a little dogmatic about some things, some of them mundane, some of them preposterous.

There is always a little bit of uncertainty in all contingent truths.

It is hard to be dogmatic about maths and logic, but even science, at the base, needs a little bit of faith.

But this gap between faith and fact is a leash between reason and dogma, the longer it is, the bigger the dogma.

We should keep our dogmas on the shortest possible leash.

Woof.

What is a Masculine Hegemony? (Takin’ it to the Hedge’)

I have found in various writing and discussions on Buddhism and politics  I often find myself using the term “masculine hegemony”. I use the term lots, eg, when I am facing the yawing void of mean-hearted corporate vacuousity, I am,  “battling the masculine hegemony”.

When I  realise how my liberties to act without harming anyone else are compromised, it’s the same.

Frankly, I think my wife, who is a big feminist and taught me most about hegemonies  is  pretty  bored of it! "Here we go again.. Mat is ranting on about Masculine hegemonies... Babylon... yawn:)"

I never promised her a rose garden... but I think that hegemonies are important to see around us, they are a problematic. They, by definition, will only tend to make more laws and fewer freedoms.

So this little essay is about these masculine hegemomnies.

The Hegemony

A hegemony is a social relationship  where one party dominates the other by enforcing a compromise.

It is a very broad term. A totally totalitarian state is hegemony. It dominates by enforcing a compromise between concession and violence.

An organised religion is a hegemony. It dominates its followers  by enforcing a compromise between salvation and damnation.

Corporate Fast Food is a hegemony, and often a very tasty one.

My belief is that to be an informed citizen one needs to be aware of the hegemonic relationships one partakes  in.  Some hegemonic systems seem absolutely inevitable. Death and Taxes and all that. Others seem trivial and there may be others one doesnt even know exists. Again it is important to see that  there is not one hegemony above us but a vast interwoven complex of hegemonic relationships and some of these may be much more unfair than initially thought.

For example, when you look at the hegemonic equation between the state and the person taxed  I think it appears that  there is an awful disparity between ones wishes as an individual and the emergent wishes of the Taxing society.

As a general rule of thumb, with any such relationship I believe an informed analysis is to ask oneself :

• What am I giving up?
• What am I getting in return?
• What are my options?

These kind of questions will start to highlight that the dominating complexes consists of Hegemonies with particular traits and conditions.

The Masculine Hegemony

A masculine hegemony is a type of hegemony that has a masculine psyche – importantly, I think, this doesn’t mean it would be run by men necessarily, but more like that it, as a whole, behaves like a man would. This is important because we can see how this masculine personality becomes embodied in the laws of our nations and institutions.  If we swapped all the men for women we would stull be dominated by masculine institutions.

The Masculine Psyche isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly distinct from the feminine. For example, in the following list of pairs, it seems clear which are male and which are female traits.

• Competition over cooperation.
• Epic over acute.
• Now over later.
• Profound over specific.
• Big over small.
• Global over local.
• Velour over Chintz.

Note that there are no slights there,I am not saying one gender is more honest or greedy or what have you than the other. These are just natural distinctions of gender that will have their roots in evolutionary advantages between the male and female species... err... I mean genders. The key point is that they are also traits of social systems.

So in and of themselves I don't think masculine hegemonies are necessarily bad. One needs just look to the Space Program to see that, with men in charge and masculine agendas, we certainly seem to get the job done. I am not at all saying that had women been in charge over history we would still not  have  discovered metallurgy but would all have many lovely and neatly arranged  bunches of coconuts in our mud-huts( with the badly parked Ox cart outside). I am not saying that at all!

But the problem is, whereas you do want a man doing the stuff men are good at, like hunting and engineering and fighting  you wouldn’t want them doing the stuff they are bad at, like looking after children, tidying up the house or running a just and fair nation where citizens are protected and conflicts resolved without violence by fair laws and just courts and where personal rights are balanced with social duty, where  petty laws avoided and truth, beauty, love and compassion are prized above an imaginary money that buys empty status as an offerings to an imaginary Phallus god. If ya gets ma drift;)

The Great Later On Con

Some food for thought...

The Good

The Buddha was an ancient Indian prince who gave up his life of luxury to find the cause of human suffering and conflict. Seven years of mystical exploration later he found it, it wasn't mystical but metaphysical, philosophical and scientific. From his understanding of this  discovery he determined the  mental, moral and philosophical path of practice which, when followed, would lead to a reduction of suffering and an increase in truth, peace and happiness.

The Bad

Sadly, like all religious messages, The Buddha's teaching became changed. In part this is due to to the lack of written Buddhist scriptures, translation issues and human errors but also, I believe,  it became corrupted by the dominant masculine hegemony of Asia. This is not a rare thing for religions, it seems all extant world religions have twisted their original doctrine to suit these masculine social conditionings. The engine of this domination are the doctrines that  control people by forcing a compromise between behaviour (think,act, worship, want...) in this life in return for a benefit in some future life. Rebirth, Heaven, Valhalla... every religion relies on this absurd trade off, on this  immeasurable compromise that I call,  "The Great Later On Con."

These are merely my beliefs.

I think The Buddha saw The Great Later On Con and the Middle Path was his suggestion as how to avoid it, but don't take my word for this, as The Buddha says, "Doubt everything, be your own light..."

Babylonian Case Study: BT Broadband

This morning I got a quarterly ISP/Phone bill for £400. Of that, £310 was for “Broadband Usage” as deemed by BT Broadband’s fair use policy. This is an immense and totally unexpected bill for three months’ landline internet usage.

I was sure I was unlimited, apparently not. I made a mistake in that. But that is not my issue.

The issue is that BT Broadband hadn’t tried to contact me at my phone, home or Gmail even though the latter two were regularly spammed with all kinds of offers from them. Surely they should have “warned me” that, after ten years, for the first time, they were going to slap a £300+ charge on me completely out of the blue?

I was shocked and shaking at this corporate  audacity.

I rang BT Broadband up and spoke to someone in India who gave me the first line of fob-off; she told me that it was their “fair use” policy and there was nothing, really, I could do.  She assured me me she thought it was fair. I mentioned  Ofcom and she told me right away that Ofcom was aware of their “fair use” policy – ie don’t bother contacting them. For every protestation and question she had an answer until, in the end, she performed a typical “Babylonian Buck Pass” by giving me another number to call.

I called and spoke to Linda in England.

Linda was in the Fair Use department and seemed almost caring. She told me that she was sorry I was so shocked and upset by the charges but she did insist that they were fair. I explained that I had absolutely no warning about the imminent charges which would have prompted an immediate change of account by me. She insisted that BT sent emails to my BT email address and thus it was fair that I was charged.

In made it very clear to her that I didn’t check that account, nor had I, nor should I.

We agreed that:

• I demonstrably hadn’t checked that email address for years, if at all.
• They had my Gmail account.

But then Linda seemed to make up from nowhere the idea that they could only send warnings to my BT account and not my Gmail account. This fact was not compatible with the fact that BT Broadband regularly send me promotional and other emails to my Gmail account, as I mentioned above.

Linda knew and I knew that there was something unfair here, it was inescapable, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge that as a possibility. It was pretty bizarre, Linda seemed scared of admitting that there was even such a possibility of unfairness, so much so that she reiterated more than once that she thought the BT policy was fair.

As with all things, the truth doesn’t lie and Linda, cornered and seeming  scared, had no rational, reasonable response. She had no options and reached into herself to pull out, and drop on me another Babylonian Buck Pass. Linda told me her manager would call me back at some point that day.

Soon after, Mark rang up.  He seemed very nice. The first thing I asked was, “is this call recorded?”

“No it’s not recorded,” said Mark.

“Can you record it, please?” I asked.  I felt that I was prepared to fight this unfairness and this call recording might be evidence either way.

“No, that’s not possible.” Correct, Mark told me it was not possible to record the call. How can this be? BT who often tells us that they record our calls to them could not, in fact, record this call? Mulder? Skully? Hello?

“It’s because it is an outgoing call,” Mark said.. .

As if I was to go, “Oh yeah, doh! ‘Silly me,’” in my finest Harry Hill or Homer S headvoice. I didn’t.  I asked, “Ok, can I call you so we you record the call?”

Mark said that that wouldn’t be possible either.  This is an aside from the main thrust of this recounting, but I consider the claim that BT cannot record a phone call between one of their staff and one of their customers  to be logically very close to a full on lie. I digress...

With the Call unrecorded I admit I felt my position had weakened. Even if I got him to bask in the righteousness of his righting a wrong because it was the right thing to do, if it wasn’t recorded he could always deny his work-based epiphany. I jest, but you get the point...

I re-explained the situation to Mark. At first his line of defence was the idea that this would not have been my first such charge. He went back through my account and quarter by quarter was forced to agree that, indeed, there had been no such charge. We agreed today’s bill was the first charge of its kind and thus very out of the blue.

Mark was totally in agreement here, all the way through. I was thinking, Mark seems a reasonable man, he is going to do the right thing! It was looking positive, and then Mark said that he needed to go and further check on my account, and thus would need to call me back in ten minutes. We had already done the pertinent account checking as I understood it, and clearly the pertinent fact was as we agreed. But away he went and when he came back ten minutes later... he had the solution.

It seemed a bit inconsistent with why he said he was going, but nonetheless I listened to his offer. They would refund me £60 of the £310 pound charges, but only if I changed my account to their most expensive one, and thus renewed my contract with them.

Think about that in terms of the exchanges involved between the parties, isn’t it kind of weird as a solution to unfairness goes?

The offer was insulting and absurd, it was a fractional token glued to more commitment to  BT Broadband. Once it was clear that his offer wouldn’t be accepted, Mark added the next layer of his tactic. He started apologising and insisting that was all he could do. It was smart: the offer could be accepted as it stood, or if refused,  it could be used as part of a Fob-off apology tactic. So, rather than just saying, “Sorry, but bend over,” Mark was offering the far nicer, “Sorry, but bend over, but it is OK, I will use a little lube.”

This is how hegemonies dominate. It is their oxygen, the idea of getting the dominated to agree to consent to further exploitation because it has greater apparent benefit than zero benefit. Mark didn’t know he was doing this, it is a product of system conditioning.

Once it was clear I wasn’t yet prepared to bite the pillow Mark became more resolute. He started insisting they had sent the emails to my Gmail, even though earlier he wasn’t sure of this, and even earlier Linda said that they could only send it to one account. I kept insisting back that as it wasn’t in spam or anywhere in my Gmail and as I never delete emails, clearly it hadn’t been sent.

This fact was hugely emphasized to Mark when I started reading through the spam emails from BT I had in Gmail. But nothing could change him from his committed path of apologising as he enforced the unfairness.

I asked him if he could actually make the decision to “refund.”   He said he could but he wouldn’t.

Again, as with Linda, it was peculiar. I was clearly in the right, he knew this, I knew this. It was doublespeak. He couldn’t give a reason other than the clearly false reason that the emails were sent.

In the end, with me not backing down, he knew what to do. Escalate. The third Babylonain Buck Pass of the day,  the next carrot on a stick that lead deeper up into BT’s slack and uncaring bowels... you guessed it... Mark told me, “I will have to have my manager call you.”

At this point I was literally chuckling. It was like a Monty Python sketch.

“My manager will call by the end of Monday.”

I gave him some “annoyed Buddhist “ goodbye and that was that. I await Monday’s call, pretty convinced that BT Broadband’s response will be to propagate the unfairness further.

As I see it, BT has unknowingly committed a theft against me: they took something without my consent to which they are not entitled. They are not entitled to it because they simply, and demonstrably, had not contacted me to warn me.

Linda isn’t a thief. Nor is Mark. Nor, I would imagine, is anyone connected with this issue in BT, but this is how Babylon works. It is an Emergent Badness. The system produced an unfair output, with imperfect systems like all systems are, that is bound to happen.  This is to be expected, especially in a corporation as vast and connected as BT.

But the problem is that in order to correct that fairness, as all systems should, specific human decisions need to be made by specific humans and these, by definition, are going against the system. There is a bug in the way institutions work, especially greedy ones.

I am sure Mark and Linda could see this unfairness, but they were too pressurised not to correct it. Correcting it would require “rocking the boat” and this has a risk associated with it that Mark and Linda would need to knowingly or subconsciously consider. For example:

1. Highlighting the work-system’s  imperfection.
2. Subjecting the company to financial loss.
3. Stepping outside the homogenised work culture.
4. Risking criticism for making the wrong decision.
5. Effecting future personal promotion plans
6. Effecting Bonus expectations.
7. ...

These conditions, and conditions like them, are how the Babylonian Hegemony dominates its sub systems and its people.  However it’s wrapped up, its boils down to fear.

I doubt I will get a refund. At some point the value of my efforts in fighting this unfairness will become too great for the value of the refund.   This is another tactic that Babylon has emerged  to prevent the individual from having their rights granted and protected; make it effortful and time consuming to have the wrongs corrected. We see this everywhere in the dominating complexes above us, but I believe it is especially true of the big corporations.

Maybe I could forget the value of the fight and turn it into a moral crusade, but frankly, it’s not that important an issue when we consider the other far graver issues we and others are being forced to gag on. And even if I did get all “Bono” on it and, after twelve years and a UN Tribunal, won my £310 back there is no victory really, save one the ego can enjoy.  I would get a refund, but the system with its inherent, intractable structure of fear wouldn’t change.

The only solution to the problem of Babylonic Domination is to opt out. To stand back as much as possible from the corporatocracy, which is quite hard when you like gadgets and fast broadband.

Oh these modern dilemmas!

Update: The Monday After The Battle Before

Lesley, The Manageress, called as promised. I was fully expecing defeat.

I re-explained the sitiuation at some length, highlighting the kinds of points above, though erring slightly clear of how I saw this issue as a pivotal fulcrum upon which balanced the very core of the battle between me, the neo-fueudal bitch-serf, and her, ambassador for the unholy Messengers of Babylon.

In the end, Lesley agreed to to refund £250 as long as I stayed with them on the new Option for three months. This was a lot more lube than I was ecxpecting and so relaxed and compliant I agreed.

Financially, I was the victor.

Morally, I probably got a little fingered by the Babylonians.

Karmically, its all good for me and Lesley.

Babylon is real, it isn't a hyperbolic conspiracy, its a system that coerces with compromise because it's a system where the fittest survives and the fittest is simply that which returns the biggest buck to the employees and shareholders, of which, kinda ironically, I think I was one once.

Peace be, to all in BT.

(Video) Buddhist Philosophy: Annica, Anataman Dukka

Here are two videos talking about The Three Marks of Existance, The foundations of Buddhist Philosophy. The first video talks about Annica and Anataman and the second talks abot Dukka.

Of special note, these videos now have a text based overlay depicting "salted.net," this Shows just how far video technology has come since  yesterday's video.  I am planning for scrolling text along the bottom some time next year:)

Annica and Anataman

Dukka

Thanks:)

Mat

My Video Response : Buddhism and Rebirth

This is my video response to this video.

Somebody a Fool about de Golden Rule or “Who really makes the rules?”

The Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would be done by", is the moral cornerstone of  all world religions. Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism ,Islam and many more all have this as their prime moral directive, as do Secular humanists, pagans and probably even vegans.

Its a great rule!

Unless you are a psychopath, its like, the Rule of  Rules. Which is why it seems everyone but the psychopaths will follow it at an individual level and every religion will follow it at a foundational  level.

So far... so good...

But there is a mystery in this world about the Golden Rule that that I shall try to capture using the indulgence of the  poetic muse, a muse that certainly dances with doggerel.

Does it matter to Dharma Practice if Rebirth is true or false?

The question “Is rebirth true or false?” can never be answered with absolutely certainty. In the same way as we can never answer with certainty about the existence of heaven or god from within this universe.  The questions are perhaps not meaningless, but they seem close.  At most we can have a faith.

Some faiths are backed up by science and experience and reason, others stand blindly on their own while  all else must stand on them. But they are all faiths, from the extremely scientific and empirical to the mystical and unsupported.

So this fact that we must have some degree of faith in our reasonings about rebirth means there is no certainty. It is a pointless discussion that may be fun and interesting, but in terms of  Dharma Practice  it is just wasting time.

This does not mean  that there are no serious and interesting and relevant questions about the issue of Rebirth in Buddhism. Perhaps , for Buddhists, the important metaphysical question is not “Is there rebirth?” but, “How would it change my life if I knew rebirth was false?”

Consider these two grounding metaphysical personal beliefs:

• A: This is my only life, it is short and rare.
• B: This is one of my countless lives, when I have left this life I will be reborn in the next life.

I don’t think we have to commit to either to see how a belief in one is incompatible with a belief in other.  They are not the same belief, in any sense.

Now you can ask yourself is this Question:

“If I believe  A will my life be morally, mentally and spiritually different than if I believe B?”

If you think that A and B would lead to comparable moral, mental and spiritual lives then it shouldn’t matter to you if Rebirth is true or false. If you think it does matter then it seems sensible that your Dharma practice contains an investigation of your reasons for believing in Rebirth or not, and your understanding of why it is important to you.

Incidentally, Buddhism is different from the Abrhamic religions and antitheists who hold that it matters very much if  followers believe  in A or B.