Western philosophy vs eastern philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I am returning to a study of Eastern philosophy…
After having spent quite a while studying western philosophy…
and the one thing that strikes one in doing so, is
how abstract Western philosophy is… take the concept
of Justice for example… in the West, the concept of Justice
would be covered intellectually, by definition, and how it works
theoretically… and in the east, the concept would be discussed
as a far more practical matter… Buddhism for example has its
‘‘Noble Eightfold Path’’ and one is supposed to govern their
lives within these Noble truths… it is a practical matter in the
east, not a theoretically matter as it is in the west…

The Noble Eightfold Path:

  1. right views
  2. right resolution
  3. right speech
  4. right action
  5. right livelihood
  6. right effort
  7. right mindfulness
  8. right concentration…

and whereas the first three, views, resolution and speech
are the wisdom aspect of the path

the second group is the conduct aspect of the path

and the third group is the mental discipline aspect…

No where in the West do we have anything like this…
a practical application of our philosophical ideas…
how do we engage with the practical application
of Justice, for example? What does practicing Justice look
like? How does one go about practicing Justice? To engage
in Justice, what must I actually do as a practice, not just
as a theoretical idea…

The East does something the West would never engage in,
that is engage in philosophy as a practical matter…
as a ‘‘way of life’’… for the East believes in philosophy
as a ‘‘way of life’’, as a protocol for us to live our lives
in a practical matter… for example, to use one of the
Noble Truths as a starting point…

The right action… which is part of the conduct part
of the Eightfold path…which is another way of saying
morals, ethics… what actions should we take to be
moral, ethical? The East presents this as a course of
action to avoid suffering… and the West presents this
as a theory… we should avoid the wrong action because
… it is wrong? It doesn’t bring about happiness, in fact,
what justifications does the West use to engage in
the ‘‘right action’’ or its justification to avoid the ''wrong
action?"…this weakness of western philosophy,
the practical application of our philosophy, is exactly
the strength of the East… and the West is stronger in
theoretical applying philosophy… but not so good
in the practical applying of philosophy…

So, what can we learn from this? That the west, that’s us,
is good at theoretical philosophy, but not so good at
a practical application… so, we can better learn
apply our philosophy in terms of actions taken…
make our philosophy as a ''way of life"… like
the East does…

Kropotkin

2

The question becomes a simple one…
as Buddhism is designed to solve a problem,
that of suffering, and both religions
and philosophy are meant to solve a certain
problem or problems…

Hegel wrote his philosophy in an attempt to solve
certain problems caused by Kant and Kant wrote
his philosophy to solve the problem created by Hume,
and Hume wrote his books attempting to solve other
problems…

That is the nature of both philosophy and religions,
they are meant to solve problems current at
the time of the writer…

So, what problem does Capitalism solve?
or what problem does Democracy solve
and what problem does Buddhism solve?
So, given this line of thought, what problems do
the IQ45 administration solve by going the
dictatorship route? The answer is none…
for his pretend solutions to pretend problems…
for example, his false belief that America is not great…
actually his ‘‘solutions’’ to this pretend problem are
creating greater and greater problems, not solving them…
and his pretending that one of the great problems of
America is illegal Aliens… another pretend problem…
his solution is basically the equivalent of finding a dirty
cop and then killing all the cops in that police department…
punishing an entire group of people for the actions of
a small set of individuals… There is no moderation in
his response… or said another way, throwing out
the baby with the bath water… which is exactly what
IQ45 is doing…

to think about illegals as IQ45 and the MAGA party does,
is to negate all illegals… devalue them, which is insane,
as illegals provide a vast range of services that are
incredible useful to all of us… for example, it is
clear from study after study that illegals contribute
far more tax money then they use… to get rid of illegals
is to remove billions in tax dollars from reaching the government…
to get rid of illegals is to quickly close down ranches,
farms, restaurants, factories, to name a few jobs that illegals
do that no one else wants to do… millions of dollars of
crops are wasting away on farms because there is no
one to pick them… Restaurants are suffering from
a lack of workers, factories are also suffering because
of a lack of workers… I work in retail, a grocery store
and we can’t keep anyone who starts working there…
The ‘‘Gen Z’’ workers won’t/don’t want to work at all…
older workers get such shitty hours and pay that its
not worth it to them to get into retail… and we have people
who work for a day or even two, and then they quit…
out of every 10 workers we hire, maybe, maybe one will
last the month before quitting… and that is in the front end,
where the pay is the highest in the store… I make more
money than those who work in the produce or the deli
department… because I am constantly dealing with
customers and money… screw your front end workers
and they will cost you big time… for it is incredible
easy, as a front-end checker, to screw over a business…
we simple don’t charge people the full price or we don’t
scan some items, like expensive wine, and we can cost
a company thousands of dollars a day… even if, even
if security was paying attention to a specific checker,
it is very hard to prove that missing scanning a product,
like a bottle of wine, is on purpose… mistakes
can be made scanning stuff… I have done it myself,
even after working 25 years in retail…
and you can’t prove shit given that mistakes
can happen…

So, what problems do this immigration witch hunt
solves? Not a one…and in fact, it creates a vast
number of problems… including who is going to
wash your dishes at a restaurant or pick the crops
you need for dinner?

Kropotkin