LADDERS FOR MONKEYS, OR THE KEY TO MONKEY MIND?

The common dilemma across the Third World is the irrational expectation that a conventional democratic and human rights framework together with an older post conventional religious doctrine can be supported by pre conventional social skills. Pre-conventional means an emotional stage un-supported by rational thinking. Most animals experience this mode of living. In the conventional stage emotions are tamed by reason but a great deal of anxiety remains due to neurosis where rational thinking goes into overdrive and a healthy balance between reason and emotions is absent. In the final post conventional stage there is great acceptance and peace where the faculties of emotion and reason are both fully developed and support each other. Indian philosophy is really the inspiration for this three-fold division into tamas (animal), rajas (human) and sattva (divine) modes of being. Human beings display all three facets in their behavior.

As the decolonized Third World societies evolved we saw these conventional and post conventional normative frameworks and the systems they maintained being reduced to mere ladders for monkeys. This is the way pre conventional social skills view these frameworks, as opportunities for selfish advancement and nothing more. And so we now have a personal vendetta dressed up as a Constitutional issue. These are all manifestations of a pseudo society. A state of unreality gradually wiping out all glimpses of sanity and intelligence. The question to us is this: How relevant are the supposed normative frameworks and what is their function now? My suggestion is that they function as a distraction from the naked reality of greedy monkeys climbing ladders. Tinkering with the ladder will not serve any purpose any more. It is the monkey we must deal with, or more precisely the monkey mind Most of us are still thinking in terms of a technical solution for what is essentially a moral and existential issue. The normative frameworks subvert our vision of reality and confuse our perception. It allows monkeys to disguise themselves in conventional clothing and titles so that an imaginary and imagined system will continue to provide legitimacy to the status quo. We need to expose all these systems for what they are not. It is not only the locals but also internationals who survive and thrive on the basis of these outdated frameworks. Their thinking and language and whole existence depends on our acceptance of these empty concepts which were relevant in creating the post Enlightenment world order through industrialization and colonization and beyond. That normative system is crumbling and dying out. Its destruction is not really a bad thing because new perceptions, new thinking and a new world order must now come into being. When social skills degenerate the normative frameworks which depend on them collapse. As we develop a new set of social skills in the crucible of the current crisis that engulfs us we will also develop corresponding political and spiritual norms without relying any more on literal impositions of a failed world order. Explanation: [The zoological references are not motivated by any wish to undermine our common human status. In fact our Great Teacher the Buddha on occasion referred to human beings who violate the five precepts as falling below human status; likewise he referred to irrelevant and useless conversation as animal talk. It was felt that the reference to monkeys and monkey minds would serve to emphasize our collective dilemma much better so that the sharp pangs of reality would penetrate our deluded minds.]