Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded

But it's not terribly good for the middle class.

I think we blame "the media" as if the people doing it are bad, ignoring the real structural challenges to being positive.

Could you point me to a quote from the article that tries to make us believe that there is a disaster after disaster?

As far as I know, the article seems to have an objective opinion. It mentions that it's bad, but it's much better than it used to be. Which is basically your point.

Or was your opinion unrelated to the article?

Never before has there been a point in time where:

-A determined individual with the right equipment could shut down the information network our society almost exclusively relies upon.

-Weapons created for war could destroy the conditions for human civilization across the entire planet.

-Everyday consumption keeps people complacent while the artificially low costs contribute to and accelerate the pace of climate change, which could be almost as bad as nuclear Armageddon.

-The speed and scale of travel is such that a disease could reach every corner of the earth and kill millions if not billions of human beings (or our food!) no matter where they live or where the disease came from.

I'm not a pessismist about humanity's future but if you ignore these things you are only fooling yourself.

I find the modern world a bit absurd now. The industrial revolutions have diminishing returns since a few years. We're chasing pokemons instead of dealing with the important things (social structures, education, health). Things are done but still at the surface only.

Economic and quatifiable indicators might be higher than ever, but I'm not sure existences are better.

"Everyone always thinks the world is getting worse, but the world is always getting better."

So, no, this is not the best time to be a human being.

It's just money (power/manipulation/dominance) at work. With increasing intensity, which of course is sick.

We have nukes, very worrying demographic trends in the west with massive migrations, and a declining hegemon. We're comfortable but fragile.

What I want to say is that Taleb seems to have a better handle on things than Pinker.

Families, for example are a lot 'less stable'. So are many communities - at least in the Western world.

On the community level - consider a place like Detroit - which is an example of many, smaller cities esp. in the rust belt. That kind of community blight can wear on people.

Very myopic, first world, privileged view of the world.

Don't listen to those devils."

You can call me a devil if you wish, but to me this is a classic example of a half truth. If you are already inclined to believe it, then you'll see it as the truth. If you're not inclined to believe it, then you won't see it as the truth.

To give some examples of people who are less likely to see it as the truth, go and tell Yemenis and Iraqis and Syrians that life has never been better. I'd imagine you'd be seen as a little bit kooky.

Would you do that, would you tell people who are facing famine that life has never been better? I'd suggest you wouldn't, because deep down you know what you're saying is only half true.

Tell that to Mother Earth, who is about to show us all who is boss. Climate change is much worse than most people realise.

You may also be unaware of what is going on in Syria, and the fact that NATO has ordered the deployment of thousands of troops to Eastern Europe to put pressure on Russia, a nuclear-armed country.

So said the Romans when the Teutons migrated their men, women, and children into Italy and took town after town.

So said the Sasanians when the Mohamaddans swept up from their deserts with swords and zealotry.

So said the Native Americans when the white man brought more and more of his kin to North America.

The Romans averted demographic destruction because they acted before the migrants achieved a sure enough foothold. The Hittites were the mightiest people on Earth at the time (they were the first to work iron). The migrants they took in, first thinking they would prove useful as mercenaries to fight their enemies, destroyed them. The Sasanians ruled the powerful Persian empire. A bunch of fanatical desert nomads relying on brutal Assyrian war strategies wiped them out. Native Americans controlled an entire hemisphere, but ended up all but wiped out of the upper half of that. They had centuries to get rid of their migrants, but instead remained fractured, with parts of them allied with the migrants and others against them.

The most racially diverse nations do go to war with outsiders less; yet, they are also the ones with the most internal crime, distrust, suffering, and injustice. India's Untouchables, South Africa's Apartheid (followed by South Africa's through-the-roof black-on-white rapes and murders after the ending of Apartheid), Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Germans and Jews in Germany.

If you'd prefer science over history, here are 24 studies in Europe, America, and other places on the effects of ethnic and cultural diversity on group cohesion, trust, strife, civility, and harmony:

http://www.truthjustice.net/politics/diversity-proximity-war...

It would be nice if we could all just join hands and get along. Unfortunately, humans compete for resources, and cooperate with each other for those resources against other groups. One of the primary ways we divide ourselves is by relatedness (the selfish gene). The more homogeneous the society, the more it trusts and cooperates; the less homogeneous the society, the more it distrusts and divides.

I understand where you are coming from, because people are brainwashed into "progressive" ideology and globalists "the world always gets better because of globalisation", but they don't really make sense. Human genes don't match modern society, so it is impossible for there to be a better time then when our genes were our closest match to society.

This is an idea that will come as a shock to people, but it is true. I don't really care to debate it because it is obvious. Also, if you just want to take less shocking ideas, you can see that developed countries have declined in the last few decades.

Just like depression is more complicated than "not happy enough", anti-depressants are more complicated than "drugs that make people happier".

You are speaking for the Dalai Lama's intent with this blaming statement. "Glib" is Germanic and means "slippery". And while only he can speak to whether he is being slippery or not with his words, given the words themselves do not blame I doubt that is the case here. However, the Dalai Lama is likely attempting to double bind readers, which means a polarized view of his words will manifest if the readers themselves are deep in dissonance.

In other words, it's your own doing speaking for others and ask leading questions as a result of digesting his "opinion". For example, if prescription and anti-depressants "worked", that would imply we all agree to what "worked" meant together. We don't, which is part of the situation in the US and with comments that blame.

Trump has gotten as far as he has because a good number of people are allowing Trump to speak for them and their own internal dissonance with blanket blaming statements that are in direct conflict with reality and can only be "solved" by breaking reality "out here". America does not need to be great again because being "great" is a transitory trait. Things don't become great because we want them to be great. Great just happens as a result of everything coming together in a holistic (and efficient) solution.

Humans will continue seek to solve their dissonance in a cost effective manner, but ultimately it is on each of us to solve our own dissonance without being judged for our inability to do so OR told how to solve it. We all have dissonance, and it's the internal acceptance of that dissonance, or sin for you Christians, that will allow us to break it.

That's a big challenge today given software makes just about everything more efficient. I think we've found it more convenient to lean on others options with these new found inefficiencies. The Dalai Lama suggestions are wise, given we'll continue to struggle to find meaning in a world with less jobs and more judgement.

BTW, it's my belief that the affects we are seeing with today's societies are related to the ones we experience in architecting private and public cloud services.

Someone's gotta build and repair those self driving trucks, ey? And it won't be robots or software developers with a laptop, it's gonna be non educated hard working males of all colors who are not afraid to get their hands dirty.

Otherwise your politicians are gonna orchestrate WW3 for all the non educated males to participate, because the Pentagon's got all the latest and greatest toys they spent trillions in taxpayer money on and they're dying to try them out.

I hope that the self driving trucks part will work out well. But it's still Silicon Valley vapour, until we've got better batteries and solar powered charging stations in the desert, not to mention Alaska.

it's one, if not the biggest, fear of my life. my wife is a college student and a housewife (college is different in brazil, it's not fulltime like in the us). not being able to provide would mean we would suffer a bit.

i have a recurrent dream where i go look at my bank account/savings and it's zeroed, meaning i can't pay our bills. i always wake up really freaking scared.

Take heart! Plenty of marriages do endure. Community does exist. People can and do find joy and meaning in raising kids on paltry incomes. Friendship is possible!

Relationships can be more satisfying when you drop the expectation that your efforts will be reciprocated. Giving can be its own reward.

Having said that, I think this perspective is worth examining. I usually find an example of the emotional energy and start probing it to see if it holds up -- that is to say, do I really sense a fear whose encoded story is 'to not be needed'? How does that flow? Maybe it is there and maybe it isn't.

This is a different perspective, also interesting and worth examining: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...

I have a feeling industrial based societies will automate themselves out of relevance. Because those who are bored will just find things for themselves to do anyway. Crafts, cooking, gardening etc, stuff people did before the industrial revolution.

In some ways it's the end of the treadmill and we'll be back at square one.

As a gainfully-employed programmer, this doesn't really fit my current life situation (because there is bountiful well-paying work that is fulfilling to me)... but I can understand how people who are not in as fortunate a situation might have to sacrifice a lot of time and energy towards unfulfilling jobs which leave them without the ability to pursue more meaningful goals.

Maybe, maybe not... but certainly worth some experimentation.

Some sort of basic income really doesn't change much at all, besides helping to remove distractions from the destitute to be freer to pursuing meaning.

The most common objection to BI is that people won't be incentivised to work. But as you point out, they still want to feel appreciated.

So people will have to work to find meaning and it will be better than now, because it will have to be meaningful work, not just busy work.

Which "holy books"?

If you generalize Jesus' teachings, they're hard to argue as immoral - be good to your fellow man, abandon your earthly possessions, wash the feet of another because he is your fellow, stuff like that.

Anyway my point is, a tool is just a tool to be used as you will. Religious texts can be used to bring people together or start a war, obviously - just look at the current shitstorm surrounding "radical islamic terrorism." There are over a billion Muslims in the world, 99.99% of whom live peaceful lives - and a small percentage are convinced to turn their religion into an ugly justification for bloodshed. No religion is immune to this.

I believe from a Buddhist perspective, anxiety is a pretty basic thing, i.e. it is considered the normal state of the not-yet-enlightened person.

Your main point is correct, but take in account this, too: So far technology has replaced or created new jobs requiring not much more in terms of skills. To make a very simple example: cars were not extremely more difficult to drive than a cart. And way easier (less physical strength required, for example) than riding a horse.

So if someone was intellectually capable of learning to drive a cart, they could probably manage a truck. People leaving their farm (thanks to increased mechanization of farm labor) could move to the city and work in a plant or in a blue collar job with little training.

Of course, advances in science and technology also created whole new jobs that required a lot of study (I dunno... Engineer, Chemist) but it was not like everyone who was made redundant as a cart driver or a farmer would move to the nearest city and become a scientist.

So the problem seems to be this: assume that half of the truckers will be made redundant in 10 years. How many of them will succesfully "pivot" in something else, like truck AI programmer? 1 in 1000? Of course, they could become ... truck mechanics... but, wait... we already had mechanics working on human-driven trucks, and the fact that some trucks are now autonomous will not require an large amount of extra repair shops to cater for them. So, what will the not-truck-driver-anymore guys do?

If you think most people pay for 100s of apps, you're probably wrong. Get out of the tech bubble, go spend some time with blue collar workers, they probably don't care about that smartphone all that much. The advertisers might've convinced them to buy one, and they might be browsing facebook or news with it, and that's likely the extent of what they know to do with it. And even when they buy apps, or subscribe to netflix, that money is absolutely nothing compared to rent and food and all that. I have a hunch that the thing in their pocket isn't making their life that much better. Look, it's just something people have. And they kinda have to have one. You really might have to get out of the tech bubble to see it.

I think too many people here equate having a job with having a meaningful life or "feeling needed". I truly think we could come up with an infinite amount of bullshit jobs for the entire population, jobs that don't serve any of our basic needs. Jobs you could get kicked out of any time. These jobs are not a gateway to meaningful life, they are a chore people go through so they can afford to pay the bills. These people aren't needed, if they quit, there's always someone else who needs to pay the bills too. If anything, that creates anxiety and makes you feel unneeded.

And if you're unemployed, it's very stigmatising. The society wants to tell that you're a freeloader, a burden, a problem that needs to solve itself. You're unneeded unless you're making money and paying taxes. Up until you're employed, you need to justify your existence to the society at large. You might get enough money to survive, not enough to lead a meaningful life. You can't afford to try and start meaningful endeavors yourself, unless you're a very convincing and charismatic person or willing to take a big risk (or both). Your only hope is getting a job, quite possibly some bullshit job that doesn't really need to be done, and in particular doesn't need to be done by you. If anything, you're the one who has to convince somebody that you're the one who should get to do that job in place of another person. You have to explain the employer why you should be needed (even though they're the ones hiring..).

Telling such a person that he should be happy because he can have mobile apps or netflix or infinite entertainment on youtube is very inconsiderate.

Where are all the four hours or three days a week job opportunities that give people the chance to enjoy more leisure?

I've only read about the experiments, say in Sweden, where some people's day was reduced to six hours, and I remember the workers feeling uncomfortable because other people got envious about it.

You could interpret this line in different ways. One is your interpretation.

Another one would be: Currently, people need work to feed themselves. Why not make thier job meaningful(and good for the human spirit), instead of, say the work at the factory(meaningless and negative for the human spirit), which there are many like it ? In fact , this could be an interesting use of automation.

Or another way: many people do benefit from a good structure in their lives, not everybody is a self motivated entrepreneur or software developer like found here . Why not, together, think of such structures ?