The irony of "Common Sense" - Why don't people think any more?!

Hello, and welcome, to the brand-new Dharma-Farmer page! I am delighted that you have decided to join us. We appear to be a growing crowd, which gives me some small measure of hope. I trust you are well, but if not, then I am sorry to hear that. Fear not, you are in safe hands and good company. We look after each other here. Firstly, I must start by confessing that this is not the article I was originally planning to write. Not at all. Whilst meditating on meditation (as it were) and common misconceptions, so rich a vein did I strike that I thought it prudent to allocate an entire article to it. I'm glad I did. It matters. A Lot!

I was reflecting on thinking itself, the investigation of mental events (Dhamma-Vicaya, pronounced Da-Ma-Vi-Chi-Ya) and I noticed that asking Google the question "Why don't people think any more?" yielded pretty much ZERO results. Clearly the situation is much worse than I'd feared: Not only are most people leading increasingly reactive lives and not used to pausing to apply reason and logic to a given situation, but generally speaking, people in the world today aren't even questioning why this may be so, which I find terrifying, and unsurprisingly this got me thinking some more. I've always been told by friends that I need to 'stop over-analysing everything', but I enjoy the incisive nature of mind, and relish any given opportunity to work on 'Vipassana', or 'Insight'. As the Buddha insisted, we have to learn to think for ourselves, and without learning to think more clearly, no Insight will arise. Without the penetrative quality of luminescent rationale, we shall lack the revolutionary flashes of Insight, the glimpses of Perfect Vision (the first 'step' on The Noble Eight-fold Path)  to which we later aspire to bring our lives into accordance with. In short, without the ability to clearly think things through for ourselves, we won't get very far at all, and one cannot muster the full weight of one's emotional convictions to effect lasting change. Something to reflect on, should you feel inclined...

Many people have a misconception that 'the Dharma Life' or 'a Buddhist life' is all about constantly exuding a kind of mindless, imperturbable equanimity, about spending your time in some fuzzy, warm, blissed-out utopian state, never experiencing anything other than radiant cosmic love and 'oneness' with all Life. Sorry to break it to you folks, but that is clearly nonsense. H.H. The Dalai Lama freely admits that sometimes, for no real reason, he wakes up in a bad mood, or he loses his temper and snaps at people. Why? Because he is a human being, albeit a highly evolved one. The capacity to be self-aware is that which makes us truly human in the first place, and with that comes the sense that we can become something more, something better. We can learn to use mindfulness and awareness to try and think clearly, allowing us to separate fact from value, truth from opinion (see video below). This will eradicate much suffering from our lives. Try it - it really works, and makes life so much easier. The fact is we don't have angry thoughts - we have thoughts which make us angry, or more correctly; thoughts arise upon conditions, and we make value judgements based on our emotional responses to them. WE make ourselves angry. WE do this to ourselves, and it's completely unnecessary! "I am tired and it feels unpleasant" is a fact. "It's a bad thing and not fair because it's Saturday night" is the value judgement. You see what I mean? A huge part of the Higher Evolution of Man involves bringing awareness to our emotional states. With radiant clarity we can perceive them for what they are, seeing through them and growing beyond them, beyond our habitual fixed views, beyond ourselves. 

As we all know, we can love someone very much, but that doesn't stop them doing things that cause feelings of irritation and anger to arise. I love all beings, and not in a idealistic cartoony kind of way, and sometimes we have to rely on those that love us to point out our faults in order for us to consciously evolve into better, more peaceful, more 'Enlightened' people. The Buddha describes a true friend as someone who isn't scared to point out one's shortcomings, and suggested these friends be seen as akin to "a treasure-map pointing us towards the real path of peace." It is with that in mind, it is with an attitude of loving-kindness that we proceed today, whereby I found myself reflecting on the simple fact that these days many people seem to lack initiative and have gradually lost the capacity to think, not just for themselves, but at all. This isn't necessarily their fault either. Our economy is founded on two greats 'pulls': greed for that which we want but don't have, and aversion to that which we have but don't want (as well as not having our every whim and desires instantly met). These two mental states are both expressions of a fundamental ignorance to the true nature of life, of reality. It's our job to see through our own delusions. No-one else can do it for us.

In reality there are NO safe refuges in the material world, no guarantees, nothing in which we can eternally rely on. If you can think of something as a support for your happiness, it isn't. Everything in the world is impermanent, and whilst some things last for a long time, they cannot provide states of eternal gratification and joy. Not cars, not jobs and certainly not houses. Not a partner, not a child, not even an economy can be relied on forever. Nothing can. It's just unrealistic, isn't it? We all know these things as rationally true, but how lamentably quickly we all forget this, and act as though life were somehow otherwise? 

We live in an age whereby we are so constantly distracted from out direct experience, what we are feeling, thinking etc, that not unlike a drug addict, we need increasingly greater stimulation to feel anything at all. Never before has a society had so much and yet been so comfortably numb, as the song goes. The machinations of our reductionist, materialist society constantly dangle the shiny baubles of bogus gratification just out of reach, and the marketing executives, bless 'em, understandably want to perpetuate this state ignorance and intellectual sedation. They themselves are only marginally less self aware, and hence we find ourselves in a time of spiritual impoverishment. It's important to recognise why. Tempting as it is, we must judge others not and working together, move forward with a sense of emotional positivity beyond a system which clearly doesn't have all the answers. One thing is for certain though - there is a crisis looming, and be it social, economic, environmental or spiritual, we need all the thinkers we can get. I'm not here to make value judgements, just point out the facts. Logic is no longer taught in schools, and nowadays, ironically, even common sense appears to be a tragic rarity. I should know; I work for the police.

It's hardly surprising, but most people don't actually know what irony is or how to use it in conversation. For those people, fear not, you are not alone, and I admit I had to double check, ironically. To be clear on the matter, it is a mode of speech in which the words are the opposite of what the author intends; the literal meaning being counter to the figurative. Alternatively, situational irony is where the outcome is the opposite of what we would normally assume to occur e.g. a man needing medical attention gets run over by the ambulance, the police station gets robbed etc. The fact that common sense is such an uncommon thing means that it is an example of both, and we can now use the phrase ironically. Irony is a form of sarcasm, if that helps. And we all know what sarcasm it, right?

Confucius (552-479 B.C.E):
"The superior person makes the difficulty to be overcome their first concern. Success only comes later."

A disinclination to clarify and rectify terms like 'irony' isn't just a recent problem, by the way. A Chinese contemporary of the Buddha, Confucius, knew this well, saying it was the first step on the path to social harmony. Unbeknownst to most, the 1995 hit by Alanis Morrisette of that title doesn't actually give any examples of irony, which IS ironic, and hence the title. She's a very smart woman, and of the few people who spotted that her examples were flawed, even fewer got the joke. "An old man turns 98, he won the lottery, and died the next day." That's not ironic, it's just unfortunate and really sad. A traffic jam when you are already late? It can be irritating as hell (or not), but it's NOT ironic.  A song entitled "Ironic' which doesn't give any examples of irony - now THAT's ironic. I was 12. I got it - why did no-one else? It seems to have gotten worse since then, too.

Is it any wonder that even today, nearly 20 years later, so few people get the joke when you consider how completely acclimatised we are to taking everything unquestioningly at face value? Add to this the advent of smart phones and widespread internet access in most of the developed world, knowledge become rather disposable. "Jus'googleit" is in danger of becoming a word (or technically speaking a contraction) in it's own right. Even my Mum uses "J.F.G.I" regularly. The 'F' stands for 'flipping', honest. Spellcheckers and autocorrect software mean that we never have to pay much attention to our spelling. Calculators in maths lessons/examinations have long be criticised and has arguably lead to reduced numeracy levels with each successive generation. I'm not going to criticise predictive text per se (although heaven knows I've sent some genuinely bizarre messages whilst inebriated in my time) but my point is simply that nowadays we live in an age where most of the time we no longer have to think much for ourselves and as a result initiative appears to be going out of fashion. In the UK, as in most places, we are told how to dress, which musical artists are 'hot', which celebrities are cool, and which TV shows to watch. The more insidious marketing geniuses can sometimes combine all of the above in one fell swoop. We are continuously bombarded by advertisers who couldn't care less if purchasing their designer sports watch, studded with diamonds and still water-resistant at the bottom of the Marina trench, renders you unable to afford to do any actual diving! There's not even any sunlight seven miles below the surface by which to see the damn thing, but no-one notices because it sounds good and most importantly, it sells. 

Gemma Worrall,  20, a beauty salon receptionist from Blackpool made the headlines recently with her incomprehensibly misinformed tweet. Apparently she has 17 GCSEs. It's good to know that the British education system is working, and that exams aren't just getting easier as many of us feared... Oh, and she is now being offered a TV career.

When did we switch off? When did we transition into a culture and society which at best celebrates mediocrity and at worst applauds stupidity? TV shows with no obviously redeemable features, such as "The Only Way Is Essex" (or "T.O.W.I.E" as infinitely cooler people than me call it) and "I'm (Barely) a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here" seek out, encourage and and make superstars (for five minutes) out of people who 200 years ago would have been killed at birth or died in the streets, such is the severity of their mental and emotional deficiencies. I'm serious. Opinion, as always, is far from unanimous, but many people believe that the gene pool is getting both shallower and more overcrowded, and a scientific paper has been published by Stamford University confirming that as a species we are regressing genetically. I'm willing to believe this, provisionally. 

I am a commited Buddhist, and I have in my heart a sincere and profound wish for all beings to experience health, happiness and harmony, including you, dear reader. I mean that. There is not a living being that I would wish to suffer. However, Joey "Essex" is a man of such low intelligence that he once confessed "I don't know how to blow my nose." When I heard that, I nearly shat blood. "No-one ever showed me how" he lamented sadly, possibly imagining whole realms of cosmic nasal pleasure, forever closed to him. Who knows? I happen to think it is disgraceful the way these 'stars' are treated. I wan't Joey to be well, I want him to have a long and happy life, but I fear that the choices others have made for him will render him unable to experience either professional longevity or deep-seated contentment. Let's call a spade a spade folks: The producers of these 'reality' shows pay very clever scouts/agents lots of money to seek out people with crippling emotional problems, learning difficulties and exceptionally low intelligence in order to put them all in front of a few cameras. The producers simply sit back and watch the cash pour in. And pour in it does. These people don't need photo-shoots and 'vajazzles', they need professional help, and in some instances, plastic cutlery.

In the history of humanity, the last 20 years have been without precedent, as for the first time we see clever, self-aware people are being marginalised in popular culture. For several millennia, societies across the globe placed extraordinary stock in the capacity to think clearly, or at all. People lived and sacrificed their lives for ideas such as reason, and democracy. Now we live in the age of egalitarianism, the absurd idea that all people are completely equal, irrespective of pre-determined genetic factors such as age, race, gender, IQ etc and this in turn is destroying the respect we once had for teachers and leaders. Mind you, those same leaders are hardly helping the situation. On the morning prior to announcing the new budget, UK Chancellor and 'money-man' George Osbourne choses to promote the occasion by 'tweeting' and tagging popular boy-band "One-Direction" in order to...  To do what exactly, George?!. You see my point? This is hardly surprising though, coming from a man who, we aught to remind ourselves, has NO qualifications in international trade, commerce, mathematics or economics. Not even home economics! I wouldn't trust him with a toaster, much less the economy of a country on the verge of a double-dip recession and financial ruin. In fact, let us be absolutely clear, this is the first real job the man has had of this nature, unless you count his few years prior in the shadow cabinet, where the British taxpayer paid for him to pretend to be running the country's finances, and criticise genuine economists over their decisions. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't want the my surgeon's training to consist of a period whereby he pretended to be a surgeon, mocking the genuine article holding the scalpel. Why then do we tolerate it in our country's leaders? 

Chancellor of The Exchequer, holder of the purse strings, Ladies and Gentlemen... George Osbourne!
How does a man with no credentials or professional experience in the field of economics manage an economy?
History will judge the man, but here he resembles a strategically shaved ape holding a bomb... 

This shift from meritocracy to idocracy has been recent and dramatic, as I have said. At one end of the spectrum of human endeavours, my father can still recall with absolute clarity the miraculous 1953 conquering of Everest by Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay et al. This is unsurprising as the news broke the day before a 27 year old Queen Elisabeth was crowned Queen of England, but even so. A sprightly, skinny ten year old he may have been, but he still wells up with pride (we will overlook for now that Hilary was originally from New Zealand) when he recalls the sense of achievement which swept the world. It was a achievement for all to rejoice in: It had been done - Man had finally conquered the Roof of the World! Upon their return, they were both knighted immediately, and rightly so. Nowadays, people 'conquer' Everest with 'nothing more at their disposal' than several thousand pounds worth of equipment, ropes pre-cut into the slopes to "ease congestion",  and a vale of sherpas with GPS. After all, one shouldn't be expected to carry one's own tent and oxygen, heaven forbid! This season, around 800 teams (each team has between 15 and 40 support staff) will be attempting to 'go for it'. I'm surprised that people aren't made to queue patiently with a ticket like at their local deli, sampling free hummus at Base Camp. It might make them feel more at home. Wealthy students do it on their gap year, en route to boogie-bording down a Hawaiian mountain on a dolphin, naked. It makes me shudder, then weep, and then shudder again, and only the fact so many have lost their lives attempting it and that a few brave or attention-starved folk insist on doing it without oxygen masks stops me from mercilessly rubbishing the entire enterprise altogether.

Closer to home, the banality is more palpable. A good friend of mine was a be-mulleted teenager in 1980 when The Jam became the first band in history to top the UK charts and go straight to pole position in their first week of sales. The track, ironically (and yes, it is ironic), was "Going Underground", in case you were wondering, and in order to do this, the band managed to sell a jaw-dropping 3 MILLION-plus copies in a week. That's over 428,571 a DAY, or 53,571 an HOUR. My friend bought several of those. Everyone did. Music lovers clubbed together, radio DJs were talking about it as if it were the Second Coming, and that Sunday night, gathered around the radio, a nation waited with baited breath. When the news broke, house parties erupted spontaneously across the length and breadth of this fair isle. "The next morning, when we all got to school... well... You would have thought England had won the world cup! Mods and rockers were hugging and giving each other high fives, kids were dancing in the playground, even football rivalries were put aside... Well, until lunch time at least!" he japes as a misty-eyed fondness descends. Nowadays, dear old Justin Bieber need only shift a pathetic 20,000 copies/downloads to achieve the same feat, and in fact it's considered yet another nail in the coffin of his career if he fails to do so. As a musician, this makes me very sad indeed, for all of us, including young Justin, who as it happens is an absurdly talented guitarist and drummer, and will no doubt be carved up, chewed through and spat out once he has lost his flavour. I hear that Lady Gaga, again one of the greatest artists of her generation, has just been dropped by her record label. Her first album sold 15m records. Five years later, her latest offering sells less than 2m copies. That's still a LOT more than I've sold, mind you, but you see my point. Same artist, same person, but people are no longer being told to go and buy her records. She is a human being, and the indignation and suffering she is going through right now must be quite literally unimaginable. It breaks my heart, and I wish I could give her a hug. She deserves better than this. They all do.

Meet Stefani Germanotta, 28 years old today, by coincidence! Two years ago she was listed by 'Forbes' magazine in the Worlds Top 100 Most Powerful Women. Today her career is in free-fall. Happy Birthday hun, may you be well. 

Not only do we celebrate non-achievement, stupidity and botox'd superficiality, those who wish to be a lamp unto themselves are considered weird, erratic, and possibly a danger to others. I see no signs of this changing either, regrettably. Thank goodness for comedians and their inability to suffer fools gladly! For example, Bill Hicks detested people talking about the 'miracle' of childbirth, suggesting that whilst we can be happy for someone, it's rarely an achievement worthy of praise, as such: "It's no more a miracle than eating food and a turd coming out of your ass! It's a chemical reaction, that's all it is, and I have some good news for you, folks - the 'miracle' is spreading like WILDFIRE... Hallelujah! I tell you what would be a real miracle,what would be praiseworthy; raising a kid that doesn't talk in cinemas! There's your miracle, right there..." He is not wrong, on several points, 

Firstly, ALL of life is a miracle to be savoured and appreciated, not just one part of it. How people can claim to sanctify life and pontificate about the sacred duty of parenthood when there already too many humans on this planet is utterly beyond me. If you want to have a child simply to scratch the biological itch, or because you and your partner kinda want the attention then just SAY IT! It's ok to want to start  family, it's natural and normal, and were it not for conception, half the people alive wouldn't be here today.* It's healthy to be honest, so be honest with yourself. If you think it will bring you and your beloved closer together then just say it! Please though, don't speak of the sanctity of life when people are starving and dying in the streets less than 10 miles from most of our doors. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Perhaps we should try ask ourselves every day, as often we you can remember to, no matter what we are doing - "Why am I doing this?"

Secondly, I think we do, as individuals and a collective, need to reassess our capacity to discern that which is genuinely praise-worthy from the mundane. The word 'celebrity' comes from the word 'celebrate'. For what are we celebrating most of these people on TV and in magazines? What have they actually done to deserve and earn our admiration? I have been writing this article, without pause, for 9 hours now (NOT an achievement - I love writing) and I've just ordered a take-away curry, deliverable to my door, at the click of a button - now THAT is a technological miracle, and one dear Bill sadly never got to experience. The gift of language, of communication and connection, that oft overlooked capacity to convey one's heartfelt desires, aspirations and thoughts, mediating between emotions and the rational mind, bridging our inner worlds and the outer - THAT is an evolutionary miracle. The central nervous system is a miracle. The fragility of life on this planet and the utter implausibility of our own existence - THAT is a miracle of improbability. 

Perception too is a miracle, but more miraculous than any of these is the simple fact that many years ago in India, someone had a realisation which still holds the key to setting Mankind free from the servitude of our own minds, forever ending all suffering. That people think I'm weird for wanting to help them sunder the bonds which bind shows the real state of affairs. In terms of human endeavours, within a social context of mediocrity, ignorance and greed, I write with a longing in my heart. I pray you may reflect on and find inspiration in these words of his:

"Better than a thousand meaningless words collected together 

is a single meaningful word on hearing which one becomes tranquil.

        

Though one should conquer in battle thousands upon thousands of men, 
yet he who conquers himself is truly the greatest in battle.

 

It is indeed far better to conquer oneself than to conquer other people..."

We must find our own path through life, and doing no harm, lead by example.
Pictured is one of the daily school visits to the Manchester Buddhist Centre, and a dear friend doing his bit.

If you conquer your own mind, you conquer the world. It just takes some clear and methodical thought, that's all. Some people may well have gotten out of the habit of thinking, period. Their aspirations may have been reduced to looking pretty and finding a wealthy sexual partner who can placate their neurotic need for affirmation, caused by their own ignorance and misguided beliefs. But hey, we all have to start somewhere, right? I personally think there is more to life than endless, thankless, ultimately futile reactive cycles, oscillating between insatiable cravings and painful aversion, but that's just me. I am not interested in judging those who thinks differently. By their own admission, and with pride I hear people freely admit to being fake and shallow, but our 'civilised' materialist and hedonistic societies collude and condone anything which serves their own endless self-substantiation. People are explicitly told that it's ok to live this way (fake is fab, innit?), because 'they have good heart'. They ain't doin' nobody no harm, are they? But what about the harm they are doing to themselves? That's what upsets me. Many millions of people, through the actions and conditioning dictated to them by others, have been reduced to little more than consumers, units, margin and profit, mannequins and wage-slaves. It takes on average nearly £250,000 to raise, clothe, feed and educate a child to post-graduate level in the West. The marketing people are fine with that. It keep the cogs in their system nicely oiled, and them in expensive timepieces. 

It's so predictable, isn't it? It's as if there is some kind of media recipe for this sad perpetual money-spinning cycle: Check bank balance. Create a magazine, then create celebrities, and put those celebrities in it.  Sell lots of magazines. Check bank balance. Build up those celebrities in a way which maximises their earning potential (for you) and then tear them down, exposing them as 'charlatans' all along. Check bank balance. Publish the photos of the Marbella-meltdown, get a few close ups of the cellulite and the streaky mascara (and that's just the guys), and hound into rehab, cameras flashing every tearful step of the way. Again, check the bank balance, and ensure that readers are introduced to the next big thing. Ensure next big thing is more overtly sexualised and attention grabbing than the last big thing. Repeat. WARNING!! Keep creative, intelligent, free-thinking individuals marginalised, uncool and and outnumbered for the sake of aforementioned bank balance - we can't allow these types to start spoiling the party now, can we?*  

 Yours, pissing in their punch, mindfully,

The Dharma-Farmer xx

May any merit gained in my acting thus be dedicated to the benefit of all beings in their quest for truth.

May all beings be happy, healthy and in harmony with what is alive in their hearts.

*May all beings be able to spot my repeated ironic tone in certain comments.

May none be offended by my empty words, born out of frustration at the society which normalised banality and make the development of the true individual so hard. For those individuals wishing to march the their own drum, 

I am with you every step of the way!

May we all find peace, may we never think it's too late to change!