Expedition: Shamatha

The Economist's "Progress and Its Perils: Why is the Modern View So Impoverished?"

The cover article of this week's Economist is a remarkable, landscape-view of Western history, "Progress and its Perils: Why is the Modern View So Impoverished?" 

To quote Alan Wallace: "As a species, we have progressed in two ways, and two ways alone: knowledge and power.  Why has there not been commensurate progress in wisdom and compassion?"  Modernity remains a child of the Enlightenment, and The Economist its pamphlet.  This article feels a lot like a modernity that is wrestling with Wallace's question.  Science, modernity's dominant religion, replete with its own rituals and articles of faith, turns out not to be inherently ethical -- or even wise.  GDP, as it turns out, is not the same thing as well-being -- far from it. Capitalism is only as good as the character of the individuals who constitute its marketplace.  Are we defined by fear and greed, or can we work towards a higher purpose than keeping up with the Joneses (or Chans or Guptas)?

Reflections on Mind and Life XIX: Educating World Citizens for the 21st Century

When Michelle and I went into retreat in 2007 as part of The Shamatha Project, most people reacted as if we'd decided to grow antennae on our heads.  We were surprised, coming out of retreat in 2009, at how attitudes had started to shift.  Case in point: last summer, I went to the Mindfulness in Education conference at the Omega Institute - and was happy to see 300 people from around the country, all

The Economist's Carbon Emissions Figures for the U.S. are Wrong

The Economist just published a chart showing (on the left) annual CO2 equivalent emissions for different nations -- as part of its coverage of upcoming Copenhagen negotiations.

The U.S. looks pretty awful here, leading the world with 24 tonnes (we're #1!  we're #1!) - and unfortunately these numbers are misleading.  Sadly, I'm not helping the U.S.' case out on this one.  These figures (based on U.N. calculations) significantly understate the U.S., and other wealthy nations' emissions on two counts.