<Begin Segment 33>

AI: Well, I was also struck by, you had mentioned about the notion of progress, and that -- I thought you really described and analyzed quite clearly how the emphasis on the Western notion of progress and the, and economic progress in particular, emphasizes material gains and then de-emphasized the value of any other kind of progress, spiritual progress, social equity progress, any other kind of progresses then de-valued.

PJ: Right.

AI: And that really struck me quite a bit.

PJ: Yeah. That's, I mean, I've always, I've always felt that, and now, recently, a lot of the U.N. indices on a country's well-being have been changed to try to incorporate some of that learning. Because what we've seen is tremendous economic progress in the West, for example, and depression, childhood depression, not just adult depression, but... dissatisfaction, people seeking the spiritual. I mean, it's, a lot of the movie stars go to India. I mean, I always, I just found it so fascinating that people would go to India for spiritual learning. I mean, it was the center of spiritual understanding and learning, but it was considered an absolute backwards country. And how, how can that be? And so I thought a lot about, "Well, why is it that some of the world's greatest spiritual leaders have come from India?" And that maybe part of that is actually because there is so much poverty, and there is so much angst, that you are forced -- I talk about this in the book, too -- you are forced to confront those issues constantly. And in doing so, it takes you to a different level of analysis than if everything is going smoothly.

And so sometimes I think that... it's the same thing, I was thinking about this the other day with some of the current events happening in Iraq and the torture of Iraqi prisoners, and, and war and the concept of war. And what if we took war off the table as an option? As Gandhi did, as Nelson Mandela did, as Martin Luther King did. What if you just take it off the table? Maybe that's what actually spurs the creativity of other solutions for your current problem. And I think about that in India as well. That if the material, if there's so much material poverty, maybe it actually pushes you to look at other richness, and to look at where those strengths are, and, and maybe people force themselves to do that, because you have to in order to survive. So I think that there's just so much awareness of the self, and the self's role relative to others, that just doesn't make it into American thinking or Western consciousness, because we're so, it's such a luxurious land. It's the land of plenty and people aren't forced to do that, to look at that.

AI: Right.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.