lotusinthemud

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition

By Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk

  

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It’s delicate confronting these priests of the golden bull
They preach from the pulpit of the bottom line
Their minds rustle with million dollar bills
You say Silver burns a hole in your pocket
And Gold burns a hole in your soul
Well, uranium burns a hole in forever
It just gets out of control.
– Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Priests of the Golden Bull”¹

What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if we went on to say that this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating, according to the laws of cultural evolution, and that it remains so clandestine in our psyches that most hosts will, as a condition of their infected state, vehemently deny that they are infected? What if we then told you that this ‘mind virus’ can be described as a form of cannibalism. Yes, cannibalism. Not necessarily in the literal flesh-eating sense but rather the idea of consuming others – human and non-human – as a means of securing personal wealth and supremacy.

You may dismiss this line of thinking as New Age woo-woo or, worse, a leftist conspiracy theory. But this approach of viewing the transmission of ideas as a key determinant of the emergent reality is increasingly validated by various branches of science, including evolutionary theory, quantum physics, cognitive linguistics, and epigenetics.

The history of this infection is long, strange, and dark. But it leads to hope.

Viruses of the Mind

The New World fell not to a sword but to a meme.
– Daniel Quinn²

One of the most well-accepted scientific theories that helps explain the power of idea-spreading is memetics.

Memes are to culture what genes are to biology: the base unit of evolution. The term was originally coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins writes, “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged . . . It is still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind.” He goes on, “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”³

Dharmavidya's Buddhist Podcasts and Zoom groups

Dharmavidya writes, on issuing today's podcast:

A full list of podcasts in June is :: here

To receive the podcasts  :: contact Dharmavidya


GROUPS NEWS

There are  three "friendship, support and learning" zoom groups.. All three meetings are 90 minutes long.  Do come and join in.

Amida Shu Interest Group
On Sunday at 11am Rome time (11.00)
This group is open to anybody, but will be most relevant to people who receive these podcasts.  There is often a talk about a topic related to one of the recent podcasts, plus time for discussion in break-out groups and for questions and sharing in the whole group. This group meets each week at the same time.

Amida Shu Friendship Group
On Sunday at 8pm Rome time (20.00)
A similarly open group with a more conversational style.  Topics include podcast themes, current affairs and Pureland practice. This group meets each week at the same time.

Amida Shu Refuge Group
On alternate Saturdays and Mondays at 2pm Rome time (14.00)
This group is for Amida Shu members and others who have taken refuge and is primarily a sangha building group.  This group meets on Saturdays once per fortnight and on Mondays in the intervening week.

If you would like to attend any of these groups (or to receive the podcasts) :: let Dharmavidya know and he will send you the join code if you don't already have it.

There is now an Amida Interest Group meeting on Thursdays at 6pm (Rome) in Italian!  Contact  Angela Romani or myself for details.  And if you prefer Dutch, do contact Vajrapala, or I can put you in touch.  Also I'm still trying to find a few more people in the east (Asia/Australia) who might be interested in a fortnightly Buddhist Psychology interest group.

OTHER STUFF
On the ecological problem and how to solve the dilemmas that this creates for society, there are some good ideas in this little film from BBC
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08hppxt/how-the-dutch-are-reshaping-their-post-pandemic-utopia
As she says, the "Doughnut idea" only really defines the problem; it does not, in itself, provide the answers.  Nonetheless, changing goals and changing the way we think about things can yield results eventually and help policy makers.

Namo Amida Bu
Dharmavidya

Stay Home!

For those that are still breaking quarantine, stay at HOME! You are undermining every single one of us.

By Jonahan Smith a lecturer in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases and Global Health at Yale University School of Public Health. Credentials at the end of the article.

“As an infectious disease epidemiologist, at this point I feel morally obligated to provide some information on what we are seeing from a transmission dynamic perspective and how they apply to the social distancing measures.

Like any good scientist I have noticed two things that are either not being articulated or not present in the “literature” of social media. I have also relied on my much smarter infectious disease epidemiologist friends for peer review of this post; any edits are from that peer review. Specifically, I want to make two aspects of these measures very clear and unambiguous.

First, we are in the beginng of this epidemic’s trajectory. That means even with these distancing measures we will see cases and deaths continue to rise globally, nationally, and in our own communities in the coming weeks. This may lead some people to think that the social distancing measures are not working. They are. They may feel futile. They aren’t. You will feel discouraged. You should. This is normal in chaos. But this is normal epidemic trajectory. Stay calm. This enemy that we are facing is very good at what it does; we are not failing.

Eightfold Path In Times Of Pandemic ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya: 

1. Right view: This too shall pass.  

2. Right thought: Compassion for those who suffer.  Gratitude for simple things.

3. Right speech: Don’t spread alarm.  Stay calm. Keep in touch with friends and loved ones by wifi.

4. Right action: Do good for others or use this time for retreat.  Consider what is essential and meaningful. Social distance.  Frugality.

5. Right livelihood: Volunteer if you can.  Stay home if you can’t. 

6. Right effort: Be patient with those with whom one is locked down.  Be content if you are alone.  Have fortitude if you are ill.

7. Right mindfulness:  Remember the Dharma in all that you do.  Namo Amitabhaya.  

8. Right samadhi:  Let love pervade.

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Faith in the Midst of the Fire ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

PAIN IN A BOMBU WORLD

In the on-line order meeting this past Saturday I said that in relation to the current world crisis caused by the arrival of a virus for which, as yet, we have no cure, I am a happy pessimist.  I’ll say a little more on this subject.

Firstly, the pessimist.  Clearly, in the present situation, there are large numbers of heroic individuals who are doing everything they can to ease the suffering of others.  Most of these are ordinary people doing relatively ordinary jobs.  Stocking shelves in a supermarket or sitting at the till was not, until this eventuality, widely regarded as a heroic activity.  Then there are nurses and doctors who, in many cases, are in serious danger.  Yesterday a doctor died here in France from the virus contracted by contact with a patient. 

The suffering is real.  To die in this way is no picnic.  Furthermore, those who are in hospital are often elderly people, already frail, and they have the added misfortune that their younger relatives are prohibited from coming to comfort them.  A miserable situation indeed.  And it may come to any of us. I myself must be in one of the risk categories due to my age and existing lung damage, but even people much younger and fitter are sometimes falling foul of the most terrible effects.  The fatal element in the illness is caused by one’s own body’s defensive reaction to the virus that, as it struggles against the invader, inflames the inside of the lungs making it impossible to breathe.

The Buddha spoke of eight afflictions - birth, aging, disease and death, loss, association with what we hate, failure, and the skandhas. In this epidemic many of these are conspiring to make our existence one big heap of dukkha.

Now I have been following events and reading commentaries in the media and there are a number of essays expressing the sincere wish that this will be the kind of shock that will lead us into a better world once the crisis is over.  The examples of heroism may become the norm for us all.  A new era of love and kindness may dawn.  There are also items suggesting what needs to be done in terms of international cooperation, restoring faith in ethical leadership, and trusting the good sense of the honest citizen.  All of these accounts are inspiring and often wise.  However, I have no expectation that they shall come to pass.  This is my pessimism.

There were hurricanes and we did not heed.  There were fires in the great forests and we did not heed. There were floods.  Now there is a pestilence.  Will this turn the hearts of the rich to help the poor, the profiteers to share their gains, the warmongers to turn to pacifism - probably not.

I am not so sanguine about human nature.  I recognise that we are all bombu.  What will actually happen will not be a function of wise collective human decision making nor of responsible citizens having confidence in virtuous governments. It will, rather, be a function of decisions made on the hop with little thought for the long term consequences.  This is partly because we do not have the prescience to know what those consequences are going to be.  There undoubtedly will be many, but predicting them is not at all easy.  Some projections can be made on the basis of what is already happening, but it is of the essence of situations like this that the unexpected will triumph.

The scourge will probably last longer than governments are currently assuming.  To have it all over by mid-summer is probably wildly optimistic.  There will obviously be a massive economic effect from the measures already in place.  It will take a long time to get "back to normal" if that ever happens, and along the way a lot of the capital that civilisation depends upon will have simply disappeared.  Governments will almost certainly have to start printing money as the only way of getting out of the huge debts they are currently running up. and this will probably fuel a sudden surge of inflation  The USA will be in a fair degree of chaos because it does not have the systems of social control that exist in the Old World, and as it is the leading economy that chaos spells trouble for everybody else on top of the damage that will already have been done directly by the virus.  So we may well be on the cusp of a descent into a period of considerable disorder.  This is my pessimism.

DHARMA-VINAYA

How does one remain happy, or at least sanguine, in the midst?  By faith and practice.  The Buddha has given us the Dharma-vinaya.  It may be a bit old and rusty after all these centuries.  It may have degenerated somewhat.  We may even be in the Kali Yuga - Mappo - the Dharma ending age; but even in Mappo it is possible for there to be upwellings of faith and practice (which is what Dharma-vinaya originally meant).  In fact, in the history of the world, it has often been in the Dark Ages that the finest spirit has shone light in the gloom.  The Dharma given by Buddha is a recipe for a noble life in the very midst of the realm of poison.  Like the proverbial peacock, it transforms the poison into nourishment.

Furthermore, even if one is the last person on the planet in possession of this precious Dharma treasure, it alone is enough to carry one through the fires at the end of the universe.  Therefore, I am not afraid.  Death has no sting.  The test of one’s Dharma practice is the manner in which one faces death.  If I ask my Japanese friends what Pureland Buddhism is all about they are likely to say that it is about “the one great moment”.  The one great moment is the one that we shall all pass through - the moment of death.  So the question is, are you ready?  When something like this plague comes along, we are all called to think of our death and of the deaths of those around us.  How we meet this determines the whole tenor of our lives.   

None of us knows exactly how the nembutsu works, how the grace of Amida unfolds, how the Pure Land will appear, but we can have faith.  We can have absolute confidence that at that great moment we are going home, and that beyond that going home other destinies shall unfold.  Those who live with faith in the prayers of Buddha shall all be Buddhas one day and those who entrust to the heart to heart bond that supports us in the sangha shall meet in the Pure Land one way of another.

When I sat by the bedside of my mother in the last week of her life, I was inspired by her calm acceptance.  She had me describe the Buddhist teaching on the afterlife and there was a great peace between us.  Those who are close to death participate in a spirit that is often completely occluded in the hubbub of everyday, supposedly healthy, life.  I place my faith in that spirit.  Whether the precise descriptions that one reads in the great texts are exact or not matters not one whit. An iota of such faith will carry one through.  Therefore, I am happy.

And if one has such spiritual confidence, then, if one is granted more years, that joy and ease cannot help but spread, like a positive virus, infecting those who are not inoculated against it.  They may be few - those with but little dust - but they will be a leaven and through them the Dharma of Buddha will continue to inspire, the grace of compassion shall continue to be transmitted, and there will be a light in the world, not withstanding that the majority retain a herd immunity to accepting it.

Do not be dismayed by the greed, hate and delusion that is around - the hoarding and the negligence of sane instructions - even the pessimistic prospect.  People find it difficult to change and when they are frightened they often act in ways that multiply the dukkha rather than making it a spring-board for awakening.  We are all such foolish beings.  Do not expect too much, but have faith.  Though the world be all on fire, the Dharma enables one to walk through that fire to help the one in need.  Trust. Namo Amida Bu.

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Shock and Grace ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

Humans press on forward.  It is like an automatic car.  The basic state of such a car is to move slowly forward.  To get it to stand still while the engine is running one actually has to apply a brake.  It will not come to a stop of its own accord.  Humans are the same.  When you learn to drive a car, the first thing to learn is how to apply the brake.  The spiritual life is the same, first learn to apply the brake.

For a long time in psychology it was thought that a person’s instincts were always trying to bring the person to a halt.  Needs were met in order to end the state of neediness and this end of neediness would be a halt. 

Then some people decided to test this out.  If there is a basic instinctive need to return to rest, total rest should be blissful.  Experiments were done using sensory deprivation.  Subjects were put into float tanks where they received minimal sensory input.  This was as near to complete stasis as can be contrived.  Subjects were paid to stay in the tank.  They had a button they could press when they wanted to get out.  The vast majority of subjects found it intolerable after a short time.  Even though they were being paid to spend time doing absolutely nothing they soon asked to be let out.  Returning to zero is not bliss for most people.  They are all itching to complicate their lives.

The Buddha realised this.  If you are to simplify your life and discover real bliss, this will not happen by just indulging your feelings.  If one goes with the flow, life gradually becomes more and more complicated until something breaks down.  If people have capacity - time, space, money, attention - they get a hankering to use it.  

You can see this operating in many areas of life.  For instance, it causes economic cycles.  When times are good people invest.  In order to invest they borrow.  Others lend.  Lending is one simple way of investing.  Demand grows.  Lenders gradually make more and more risky investments.  As people push for more and more the whole structure becomes increasingly fragile. Eventually some shock to the system tips the balance.  Some borrowers fail to pay their debts.  This leads to a “loss of liquidity” - in other words, the people that they borrowed from now do not have the money to pay their debts either.  There is a general loss of confidence that anything will get paid.  Investment dries up.  The crisis ripples through the whole system very quickly and there is a crash. Then it all starts all over again.

These kinds of cycles involve pain.  One can see that it is all rather unnecessary, but it is not so easy to avoid.  On top of one’s own tendency to get involved in things one does not need, there is the fact that everybody else is doing it too, so we egg each other on.  Surveys have suggested that most people think that they would be happy and content if they just had 25-30% more income than they currently have.  This stays true however big the income is.  It is thus apparent that whatever they currently think, they will never actually be happy.  They will always want that next increment.  Many career structures have increments built in.  On the one hand, this means that people have an incentive to stay in the job. On the other hand, it also means that the cost of keeping them gets higher each year.  Organisations that use such a system - and most big bureaucracies do - thus have to have a “restructuring” - an artificial crisis - every so often so as to get rid of the staff who are now costing more than they are worth.

Although it is easier to see these cycles and their effects when we look at large scale social structures, the same is true in individual lives.  When life becomes simpler it is more blissful, but there arises also the hankering to complicate it - a new relationship, a bigger car, a new house, a better job, or, simply, get a dog - there is always an urge for more, an incessant irritation.

So the Buddha said that unless there arises a revulsion for this aspect of oneself, one will stay tied to the cycle.  Samsara will just keep going round and round.  The key to liberation is restraint.  If your relationship has ended, don’t immediately go onto a dating site and find a new one - enjoy the liberation of having some space in your life.  If your events cancel, don’t immediately fill up the time with new commitments - enjoy the free time.  If you have this kind of attitude, nothing is a disaster.  If the car breaks down and you have to walk, enjoy the exercise.

It has all become worse since we increasingly live in urban environments.  Most people no longer live close to nature.  If you do, cherish it.  Take time to stop and stare.  Smell the flowers, listen to the birdsong, hug a tree.  Observe the cycles of nature.  You will see that they have a similar pattern, but you can stand outside of it and watch.  In an urban environment one is surrounded by things that advert toward complication.  Buy this.  Get one of those.  Don't miss out.  Don't be late.  And so on and on, endlessly until the crash. Birth, old age, disease and death.     

At the present time, we are at a point in the cycle where quite a lot is breaking down due to the arrival of the corona19 virus.  People are staying at home rather than going out.  Many are obliged to “self-isolate”.  This is like sending half the population on a religious retreat.  Some people find it hard to bear, though it means that they are living much as I do most of the time.  Sartre said "Hell is other people," but many find it a kind of hell just to be on their own.  Yet what could be easier?

Eventually the crisis will pass and things will “return to normal”, but normal is not a steady state. Normal is a constant pushing forward - shop til you drop.  For sure, when the present crisis is over, there will be some kind of rebound.  Not everything will be the same as before.  During the crisis people will have learnt new ways of doing things and some of these will stick.  But the point to notice is that the crisis creates space and the rebound fills it up again.  Better to keep some of the space free. 

Spiritual teachers teach restraint - he who does not know contentment will never have enough.  Do not complicate your life unnecessarily.  Enjoy the freedom that you have and hold back from filling it up with new stressful commitments.  Every loss is also a freedom regained; don’t squander it.

To do this there has to be some countervailing force to the urge to ever press on.  This force has two components.  The first is paravritti - the revulsion for the samsaric hamster wheel.  The second is grace - allowing the bliss of spiritual sustenance in.  Amida’s light is always everywhere if we will allow it.  To fulfil the spiritual life, both of these elements need to be present.  Commonly this means that enlightenment arrives when shock and inspiration coincide.  Right now we are in a time of shock, but will one allow the inspiration to enter or is the itch to get back to "normal" irresistible?

:: link to original post on La Ville au Roi (Eleusis)

What Keeps Buddhist Activists Sane?

Satya writes:

In January, I co-facilitated a weekend retreat for Buddhists from different traditions who are involved in eco-activism. Various themes and questions emerged during our time together. There were questions about how arising anger could be used in the service of activism, and how this fitted with Buddhist ethics. There was frustration about Buddhist colleagues who were in denial about the climate and ecological crises, and how they might be skilfully influenced. There was a lot of despair and grief.

One of the themes that arose repeatedly was the immensity of the task ahead and the inadequacy of our efforts. One colleague came up with a beautiful metaphor for this. He described himself as a drop of water, surveying a vast lake. The lake had been whipped up into fierce waves and he was trying to decide exactly where to add his drop of water in order to calm the whole thing.

This struck me very deeply as I have been wrestling with a similar dilemma. My life is already quite full. I run a Buddhist temple with my husband, which involves wearing various hats: landlord, celebrant, marketing executive, accountant, gardener. I work as a psychotherapist to earn my living, and I make space for writing books as a way to feed my soul. How can I fit my new role as an eco-activist into this busy schedule without overloading myself and becoming useless as a holder-of-space and as a guide for others. In the precious time I do have available, exactly what should I be doing? The fate we are facing is so terrifying, I also wonder why I don’t just relinquish all of my other roles, as some of my friends have done, and sign up for full-time work with Extinction Rebellion.

We sat with these questions as they swirled inside us. It was helpful to know that others sat with them too. It was also helpful to study a beautiful text by Akuppa* on how to be a Shambhala warrior, with sage advice for Buddhist eco-activists including simplifying our lives, remembering we can’t save the world on our own, and balancing outer activity with inner sustenance. Still, I was left feeling daunted and overwhelmed by the task ahead.

On the second morning I offered a piece of our liturgy to the group. As a Pureland Buddhist, my primary relationship is with Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. Amitabha (or Amida) is flanked by two attendant bodhisattvas—Quan Shi Yin, also known as Guanyin, Avalokiteshvara, or Kannon, and Tai Shi Chih, also known as Mahasthamaprapta. The piece I shared was the Tai Shi Chih Prayer, written by our teacher Dharmavidya David Brazier, and set to a very simple melody.**

Against Racism ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

Buddha came from a “yellow” race, Jesus and Mahommet from a “brown” one. Nobody who claims to follow in the footsteps of these great teachers should be making decisions based on a hierarchy of skin colour. They didn’t. They gave teachings that were universal and gave openly to all.

That there are powerful countries in the world that seem substantially to be basing their policies on racist considerations is appalling and a blight upon our world. The most powerful should be giving a good example, not using rhetoric that encourages fascistic ideas or implies there is a master race or that land belong to people only of one colour. Countries whose history has been built on slavery and genocide should atone and become deeply conscious of their past sin so that the ancestors may be redeemed.

That the Brexit decision seems to have been in part based on a rejection of East European people is pathetic, especially so since it was Britain that campaigned strongly for the countries of East Europe to be included in the European Union. That we hear that antisemitism is on the rise in UK and in certain political groupings is deeply disappointing and makes one feel dismayed. Are we going backwards?

Bhikkhu Bodhi addresses the Climate Crisis at the UN (Video)

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Watch below as Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi addresses the UN on the climate crisis. According to scientists, we have only a matter of years to prevent widespread ecological collapse, and every day new reports suggest that the window of opportunity might be even smaller than anticipated. As Bhikkhu Bodhi points out, much of this gets little attention by mainstream media, “A symptom of how we can seal from ourselves, the real perils that lie just before us.”

Indeed, delusion, often self-delusion, is at the root of, well, most everything in Buddhism. And as such it is incumbent upon Buddhists to seek out the roots of that delusion and see the reality of the climate crisis as it is.

Four years ago, Bhikkhu Bodhi was a signature on the “Call to Action for U.S. and World Leaders to Proactively Address the Adverse Psychological and Social Impacts of Climate Disruption” (see link below), and he has continued his steadfast work to raise awareness about this pressing concern. As he says in the address:

The discourses of the Buddha speak of the causal origins of suffering primarily in the framework of the individual quest for liberation. They show how the mental afflictions damage our personal lives and how was individuals. We can free ourselves from them today. However, as the world has been integrated into a single interdependent global order, we have to examine how this process of causation operates at a collective level and then based on this investigation we must determine the kind of changes we must make in our societies, political institutions, and global policies to avoid the adversities we face as an international community. We can call this a global application of sati sampajañña, of mindfulness and clear comprehension of all the dangers we face together today, the most formidable, the most all-embracing, and the most threatening is the one usually called climate change, but which perhaps might be more accurately called climate destabilization or climate disorientation.

As William Edelglass astutely argued recently:

“Buddhism offers a vast tradition of philosophical and moral reflection. But traditions endure only to the degree to which they address the experience and concerns of each new generation. Our contemporary concerns include justice and inequality, navigating difference in multicultural societies, climate change, and the pervasiveness of information technology. Discerning how to speak, act, and think skillfully in our contemporary context requires us to engage with these concerns. As Buddhists, we should not be afraid of drawing on Western thought when it can help with this engagement.”

Indeed, as Bhikkhu Bodhi says:

Above all, we have to turn away from a social system driven by greed, by the quest for limitless profits, by competition, exploitation, and violence against other people and the natural world, social systems that allow a few to flourish while millions, even billions, live on the edge of survival. Instead, we need to envision new collective systems of global integration that give priority to cooperation and collaboration, to living in harmony with each other and with nature, systems that will enable all people to flourish economically, socially, and spiritually.

Can we do this before it is too late?

Buddhist leaders: sign to raise awareness of the psychological, spiritual, and moral effects of climate change

 

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New Regime in America ~ What is on the way? ~ Dharmavidya

In world politics it is evident that some countries are more powerful than others and that, in various ways, the powerful dominate the weak. However, this is not as simplistically true as it at first seems. In my lifetime I have seen Vietnam, one of the weakest nations, defeat the USA. Dominance is not automatic and much depends upon the strength of motivation of opponents. The British empire was substantially made possible by the ability of the colonial power to recruit sections of the local population in countries that were colonised. Every ruler needs at least some friends.

It can be advanced as a reasonable hypothesis that an empire will persist for a length of time that is inversely proportional to the selfishness of the imperial power. When the dominant country is solely concerned about its own interests and sees the dominated countries simply as resources to be plundered, then the motivation of those who oppose it will become strong. When, on the other hand, the imperial power has some ethos of service toward its vassals, at least some of the population of those vassal countries will see it as a privilege to be associated with the dominant country. Some hegemonies last longer than others. 

In the postwar period I think we have seen a gradual change - with some exceptions - in the attitude expressed by the leaders of the currently most dominant country. There was a time when America regarded itself as having a responsibility toward the rest of the world. More recently, the strongest note has been that America must look after itself and only be concerned with its own best interest. 

The basic drama of world politics in the current century is bound to revolve around the question of whether America can manage to retain its position as the most powerful country on the planet. It seems to me that there is no single country that has the capacity alone to challenge that position, but that American dominance could come to an end if it found itself faced with a consortium of opposition from other countries acting in concert.

Insofar as America becomes more and more blatantly self-seeking, the likelihood of other countries overtly or tacitly uniting against it must become greater. The new regime now taking office is unprecedentedly strident in its America-first attitude. This has already been enough to bring cries of alarm even from some long standing allies and one can imagine that, behind closed doors, leading politicians in many countries are now making contingency plans.

It is a Buddhist principle and even more so a Taoist one that the person who just thinks of himself is least likely to get what he wants in the long run, and sometimes even in the short one. America will be judged by its actions more than its words, but words are not nothing. It is possible that the days of American dominance are numbered. It is impossible to tell exactly how the downfall will work out. Much depends upon adventitious circumstances that cannot be foreseen. However, on the basis of first principles, it is not unreasonable to imagine that some large scale changes are not that far away.

When we think in a purely utilitarian manner, we are liable to be blind to the factors that r[e]ally move people's hearts and minds. The single action that probably most tellingly accounted for America losing in Vietnam was the decision of Lindon Johnson to bomb Hanoi. One might think - probably LBJ did think - that increasing pressure on the enemy will advance one's cause. However, what it did do was to harden the resolve of the Vietnamese to get rid of the foreign power. Penalising European industries that want to do business with Mexico might go down well with certain sections of American home opinion, but, as a German industrialist commented, Europe also has ways of putting pressure on America. When your former friends start to talk like your enemies, it is time to worry. We are not yet in a trade war, but it might be on the way and if it happens it is certainly not obvious that America would win it.

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