Dualism

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."
Anaïs Nin

The Western world is undoubtedly a world of duality.
It is the world of God vs. Satan, good vs. evil, man vs. nature, us vs. them, etcetera.

Some where on the life’s path we might change our polarized views.
The good cake and the bad broccoli, will eventually become the not so good cake and the no so bad broccoli, drinking whine in moderation seems to be good for your health now days, and greed once taught as good as once again fell from favor.

But generally speaking even if we change our views on a particular subject we keep pretty much a dualistic point of view on reality.
So if we speak of global warming, abortion, same sex marriage, guns, drugs, religion, internet, democrats or republicans, we will automatically attach them a value – positive or negative – according to our personal beliefs and preferences.

But for every person pro something, there is another con something.
The democrats are blaming the republicans and the republicans are blaming the democrats, the Christians are blaming the Muslims, the Muslims are blaming the Jews, but always WE are right and THEY are wrong, who ever they might be.

Here is a novel point of view – familiar to most of you students of Eastern philosophy.
The world’s duality is just an illusion and in essence reality is one.
So dualism is a doctrine that exists only in our mind and even if we see the two sides of a problem as different they are in fact one and the same.
The coin has truly two sides but two sides are not making two coins.

So to pick up on the last post’s question. - Is the internet good or bad?
Depending on your point of view it could be either, or.
According to the Buddhist philosophy is neither, nor.

According to the Buddhist doctrine things have no intrinsic moral value.
It is the use and the abuse that gives the good or bad value to things.

I use the internet for banking, I just bought an MP3 player on line, I check my daughter’s school reports on line and of course without the internet I couldn’t have my blog.
But on the other hand computers and the internet can be a pain too.

The spam, the sensory overloads, the time waste, the consumerism, the viruses and nasty people all of that and more can turn the internet into a bad experience.
But that is not the internet – that is us!
We had good and bad experiences before the internet and we still have them off line.

It is what we do that has moral value, everything else are just props.