I’ll be speaking at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture tomorrow, October 23. Program starts at 11 am. The topic is a Zen approach to secular ethics. I’ll post the talk eventually.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
I’ll be speaking at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture tomorrow, October 23. Program starts at 11 am. The topic is a Zen approach to secular ethics. I’ll post the talk eventually.
How cool is THAT?!?!?!
I wish I could make it. But it’s way to far for me to go, sadly.
That is cool. I hope you will post it.
From the nature of your posts, which we’ve read for years, and your book (highly recommended) it’s a topic you are an authority on. You should knock it out of the park.
Break a leg, Barbara.
Yup!
From my twenty years as a member of the DC Ethical Society (my pre-Quaker life) I’d say, Good Fit! Goferit! xox
OT:
Tom Hayden, Vietnam Anti-War protest organizer – and advocate for peace everywhere – has died at the age of 76.
What a shitty year because of the deaths of some of this Baby Boomers heroes!
Bowie, Prince, Ali, etc…
So, maha, how did it to?
I’m sure you killed it!
(And yeah, I know I’m not supposed to say that about a Buddhist) 🙂
I liked the talk you gave. The bit about how a lot of morality is “rudimentary emotions and biases” is especially poignant. Several of the science fiction writers I read when younger were pretty conservative (which puts them “way left of center” in today’s world) but many preached the idea from George Bernard Shaw that a person who thinks their “tribal custom” was “natural law” could be excused if, you know, they were a barbarian – uncivilized.
That’s one of the fundamental bases of moral thinking. Another fine quote (whose origin I’m not sure of) is: “The average, the decent moderation of today, will be the least human of things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.”
We’re going to be wrong. And it will be because of our biases, biases we might not be able to see, just as a deep water fish might not understand the concept of “water”.