Our lives are committed to Darwinian fitness which shapes our senses, including our mind (S., manas) to help keep us alive and reproducing.
Next time you go outside look at all the homes. Look at the power lines that go into the various homes which are, in this day and age, necessary. Also, there are water and sewer pipes which are hidden beneath the asphalt road. There are also natural gas pipes. This is human progress from a Darwinian POV.
Life in an average American home is certainly a lot better than life in my dad’s little home in the 1890s which was basically four walls with a wooden floor and a canvas roof. That’s it. No running water, flushing toilet or electricity.
Looking far back into our past when we first began walking on earth, natural selection has always guided us towards useful actions that insured our survival. In fact, it is a huge part of our life if not the main part of our life today.
Turning to religion, there might be an absolute or God beyond the world of Darwinian fitness but in order to contemplate it like Siddhartha did, we must first establish a social order in which Darwinian fitness and contemplative leisure are coordinate, even harmonious like during the time of the Buddha and later periods in China. This is of vital importance if we are to advance our species. Religion cannot be willy-nilly dismissed or secularized.
Capitalism, by any other name, rests upon the foundation of Darwinian fitness. When the foundation of an economic system like capitalism breaks down so that people live in poverty and fear; where, in addition, crime grows, and families breakup (social degeneration), this is not an example of useful actions that insure our survival. If allowed to spread and continue, this would be a modern version of the Dark Ages. In such a time, a religion like Buddhism will have no adequate means to continue its growth. People will become almost barbarians, not understanding the demands of the contemplative life and what the Buddha is teaching.
I studied Zen Buddhism through the 1960s and beyond. I was able to study Zen because there was an abundance of jobs where in three months I could make enough money to last the rest of the year. I could do this because of a successful form of capitalism in which manufacturing had become huge in the United States and good paying jobs were easy to find.
Besides studying a religion like Zen Buddhism it was also a good time to raise a family. Homes and apartments were affordable. Cars were basic like the VW. I had a 59 VW. It didn’t have a radio or a gas gauge but it was easy to take care of. Going to college meant little or no tuition and almost no student debt. For me it was a good time to study the Dharma. But around the 1980s things began to get worse. By the 1990s the places where I once worked were closed; inflation was eating away at gains in wages. Everyone was goin into debt, be it large or small.
I began to see more and more decadence making its way into mainstream culture pushing out the culture that I was used to which allowed me to study Buddhism. Frankly, I would like to see those old days return when simple was also a beautiful life, a life in which it was easy to study religion and raise a family. I saw a happy time and its fall. I met lots of wonderful people but I also met people who were fascinated with evil (for me this means 'excess'). Today, the San Francisco where I used to be hunting for Buddhist books, sometimes walking for miles, or meeting a teacher, has become a horrible place to live if a person is not wealthy. I wish it were not this way but it is. It's seems to be getting worse. Arrogance together with a strange kind of impotence has taken over many minds.
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