Friday, March 29, AD 2024 4:29am

The Wisdom of Deepak

Evidently Deepak Chopra has gone from writing insipid self-help schlock to becoming a political pundit.  He isn’t much better in his second career, but he is good for a laugh.

Chopra’s argument is that the President is doing the right thing by being a mature adult, rising above the partisan fray, refusing to engage in verbal warfare with the right.  No, seriously, he really believes this.

Maybe it’s possible to raise the level of the discussion. One way is to see that the level of the solution isn’t found on the same as the level of the problem. Obama has taken that view as his long-term strategy. His position is that acrimonious divisions in government, the problem, can’t be solved by being even more acrimonious. His call for compromise, balance and a reasoned approach to our difficult challenges is a sane adult’s way of rising above the level of the problem.

Read that paragraph.  Soak it in.  Let Deepak’s words register with you for a moment.  Now that you’re done laughing, let’s think about this for a moment.  We have a president who, far from being a dispassionate non-partisan just looking for an honest solution to our country’s woes, is probably the most deeply partisan chief executive this country has seen at least since Richard Nixon.  Smug condescension just drips from every policy address that this man has made.  He draws from the same playbook every time.  First, discuss the divisions that are hampering progress on a given issue.  Then, sarcastically and smugly dismiss your opponent’s ideas, often by glibly mischaracterizing what they actually want.  The template is usually something like this: “Now my opponents don’t see it that way.  They want to cut taxes for billionaire jet owners while relegating the middle class to a life of perpetual servitude.  They think that it’s fine if people slave away in the coal mines with no mask 20 hours a day making fifteen cents an hour, just so long as billionaire jet owners are left alone.  Well, they can stand up for the billionaire jet owner, but I will continue to fight on behalf of the middle class.  By the way, did I mention that Republicans are all billionaire jet owners?”

So having described Republicans as Dickensian characters who relish the thought of feasting on the entrails of hard working Americans while flying on their corporate jets – fueled either by oil or by the burned up carcasses of the lower classes – he will then make some pronouncement about how we all have to work together as Americans to develop solutions for tomorrow.  Just ignore the fact that the ultimate solution to whatever problem under discussion always seems to involve spending lots and lots and lots of money while expanding an already bloated bureaucracy.  You see, it’s all about compromise.  Deepak said so.

Deepak continues.

His adversaries on the right love this strategy because they have succeeded with distortion and demagoguery for a long time.

Again, he is presumably not writing satire.  I can’t be sure of this.  For all I know Deepak Chopra is the greatest satirist in the history of the world, and everything he has said and written up to this point is a put-on.  Hey, I’m trying to be charitable here.

Now, having wasted precious minutes of all our lives talking about how Barack Obama is the only sane adult in the room and rising above the partisan fray, he writes this:

An intolerant faction like the Tea Party cannot be tolerated. They must be stopped with harsh, combative measures. A crazy minority is running rough shod over the executive branch and shows no sign of relenting. Fighting for your principles is more honorable than compromise with immorality and injustice. Reason is a foolish, impotent guide when you are under constant attack. The bad guys should be named in public and opposed with all necessary force. Compromise is a nice word for lack of leadership, and lack of leadership will sink us all.

Charming.  Admittedly Chopra is arguing what the position of those opposed to Obama’s tendency to “compromise” should be, and he dismisses this.  No, we shouldn’t mock our enemies like this.

While branding the Tea Party as villains may provide some emotional satisfaction to the left, it is not clear it would lead to a better functioning Congress, without which we are well and truly sunk. The villains of the piece are part of our social fabric, and the right course is to try and make no one a villain, I think. Even if its edges are frayed, “we are all in this together,” is the right story.

Ah, such deep and meaningful insight.  I can see why the man is world famous.  Funny though, because not too long ago he didn’t seem so hestitant about making a leading figure a villainous figure.

Since Wall Street’s recklessness plunged us into a national nightmare from which we are trying to awaken, it’s hurtful to say, as some do, that Sarah is the national nightmare. Not true. She is historically inevitable. First there was Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party, now there is Sarah’s Shoot Moose Party. And she’s amazingly cheerful about this recession (of course, her own checkbook has fattened, but she has spread the wealth by buying a free shotgun shell reloader for every voter in Alaska).

I have some personal atonement to perform, because in the 2008 election I posted an article saying that Sarah Palin stood for our collective shadow, the pent-up bigotry, hatred, and anger that was suddenly being vented. She was Joe the Plumber’s calendar girl. She was the secret hero of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose slogan is that you can’t recover until you hit rock bottom. President Palin would show us that we haven’t remotely hit bottom yet.

The mistake was mine, though. Sarah would smile her way into the presidency and then show pointy-head critics the error of their ways. Not that she would ask Americans to turn on one another in vicious divisiveness — been there, done that. With 70% of the public so misguided as to consider her unqualified to be president, she has a bigger job to do than fomenting discord and calling anyone who disagrees with the Tea Party a socialist.

And on and on and on.  Hmmm, if I didn’t know any better it sure sounds like Deepak is engaging in a cathartic venting in an effort to provide himself some emotional satisfaction.  I must be mistaken, because he just said that we shouldn’t treat those whom we disagree with as villains.  Maybe he just had an off day when he wrote that Huffington Post piece, or he forgot a couple of those spiritual laws of success.

Anyway, I look forward to President Obama and Deepak Chopra continuing to lead us in more adult conversations – so long as the people they disagree with never actually get a chance to speak.

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Paul W Primavera
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 9:59am

What Deepak wrote is exactly the kind of treatment anyone on the right will get when trying to engage in “dailogue” with the left. It almost seems as though there are two intractable, irreconciliable sides in America today, and I suspect there really are.

🙁

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 10:34am

Deepak “that standing rebuke to all that is sentient” Chopra’s political philosophy was well summed up by Orwell in Animal Farm: “Four legs good! Two legs bad!”

SixPak F'Shure
SixPak F'Shure
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 12:00pm

Truth is lie. Lie is truth.

A. B. Hinkle: “So far, none of those who call peaceful Tea Party activists terrorists have flung the same accusation at British rioters who have inflicted genuine terror.”
Or, for that matter US Obama flash rioters.

If Obama were a leader, he would have responded to Tea Party hecklers, “You are not ‘terrorists’.” Instead, your low-life-street-hustler-in-charge said, “I didn’t say they you is terrorists.”

Anyhow, Dipchit is just another OWN: Obama Worshiping Nitwit.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:00pm

Deepak Chopra was always off his rocker. But he went from spirituality to politics; he can continue his damage on a more practical level. The most central issue as I see it is that of sin. If sin is not recognized, people will seek out government for answers. If sin is recognized, they will fear government. The answers government gives assume that people are victims, not sinners. And victims are helplessly caught up in something they didn’t contribute to. Yet as sinners we are all a part of it. We must all take ownership for the mess we find ourselves in. We must accept that we are sinners and that God, not government, is the answer. Government is simply a structure made up of more people who are sinners just like us. And if their faith is in themselves and our faith as a people is in them, we will falter.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:00pm

Really, Paul, was it necessary to consume valuable bandwidth for new-age kooks like Deepfried Chopra? Oh vey!

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:03pm

Ah, Deepak Chopra: the one Coast-to-Coast guest that is too strange for me to listen to….

Foxfier
Admin
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:05pm

(Digressing: the first time I heard of the fellow, the radio guy said it as “De-pack Oprah.” Had a mental association between the fellow and the TV host since….)

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:05pm

Well, a false prophet gives his stamp of approval to a political leviathan. What else is new? And he caused all to bow down to the image, great and small……sounds familiar. I think this has happened before.

LarryD
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:06pm

It’s impossible for me to take someone seriously whose name sounds like a Thai restaurant dish.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:06pm

thought it was deepfried okra–the vegetable

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:08pm

Ever since gthe Beatles, or Swami Vivikenanda at the World’s Fair in 1898, this business of Indian gurus advising us has been viewed as some kind of a rare treat.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:09pm

Larry, lol. Then again, Barack Hussein Obama sounds like a Taliban leader.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:12pm

We have a love affair with Indian visionaries. They appear unwashed and crazy, and we fall down at their feet and seek their wisdom.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:13pm

pat, who can forget the Maharishi Yoga, who used to ride around in a Rolls Royce and became the symbol of the 60s counterculture by inveighing against materialism? Again, oh vey!

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:13pm

I meant Yogi, of course….I didn’t want to confuse him with Yogi Berra, who also was a great philosopher.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:20pm

Yeah, these Indian guys have become a real celebrity. But they’ve gone from wild eyes and long matted hair to the corporate look.

Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:23pm

Joe, don’t even confuse him with Yogi Bear, who’s smarter than the average yogi! LOL!

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:25pm

There was a time when I seriously investigated Eastern religions and actually read portions of the Baghadavita. But when I learned some Indian prime ministers were drinking their own urine, that kind of put a crimp into things, so to speak.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:28pm

I’ve been told Ghandi did that. He drank his own urine. Just like that.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:31pm

But Chopra’s gone corporate. He’s clean-cut, wears a suit, gets hair cuts, etc. He doesn’t look the part of the earlier guru. He was wild-eyed, with matted wavy hair, and usually let himself go all around. Chopra has a further reach, I think, because he’s Americanized in his appearance.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:31pm

pat, apparently ignored signs that stated: “Void where prohibited” : )

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:36pm

Joe, if he had the audacity to do such a thing, he must have been just a little removed from reality. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you don’t drink urine. It just doens’t take that much mental capability. Yet people look back on Ghandi as someone who had a lot of sense in his head. Lol.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:38pm

I’ve read accounts of severely dehydrated POWs drinking sea water in desperation and even urine but both can be lethal.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:39pm

Yes, but Ghandi wasn’t out of water. He should have known: urine was drunk; you don’t drink it.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:42pm

Stream of consciousness, Paul?

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:49pm

Well, getting back to the subject, Chopra is a Maharishi gone corporate. People look East these days for advice. Either that or they turn on Dr. Phil. Christianity, on the other hand, requires an about face turn. Fortunately, with God all things are possible, which is why I believe that conversion is initiated by God.

Paul W Primavera
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:56pm

For a nit wit new age pagan guru (is there any other kind?), Deepak Chopra certainly has garnered a lot of comments in the space of mere hours.

So Ghandi drank his own urine? Mehercule!

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 1:59pm

Well yes, after Christianity, anything new is really old (in a new guise). Chopra’s philosophy is very old and stale. But people love him because such philsophy doens’t ask much. It doesn’t require much faith or effort or sacrifice. It’s rather comfortable like the Rolls Royce that Maharishi drove.

Gail Finke
Gail Finke
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 2:07pm

Reminds me of yet another Deepak Chopra political essay, which I addressed in this blog post: http://sonrisemorningshow.blogspot.com/2011/06/preachers-and-deep-ends.html (the title refers to his little missive coming out the same time that Fr. Corapi made his bizarre switch to being a sort of low-rent Glenn Beck). I did a lot of digging before I wrote that because it sounded more like a hoax than a real essay, but apparently he has written plenty just like it.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 2:12pm

There is a Christian apologist named Ravi Zacharias. He’s argued against Eastern philosophies and points to their inconsistencies and failures. He does so in a convincing and throrough manner. I’d seriously recommend his site to anyone interested in why Christianity makes sense and how Eastern thought is in reality an absurd dead-end.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 2:13pm

Intersetingly, Zacharias is an Indian by birth, and formerly an Eastern thinker. He knows its bankruptcy. I’d like to see Zacharias go head to head with Chopra.

Paul W Primavera
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 2:30pm

Ravi Zacharias is a Protestant Evangelical. Obviously God is raising up sons to Abraham from the stones themselves. And I mean that sincerely and with all respect to Rev. Zacharias.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 4:36pm

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”
[…]
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

Depak and Obama make as much sense the temple-bells . . . in a typhoon.

Donald R. McClarey
Admin
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 5:18pm

I would like to thank all involved in this thread. Bringing up the drinking of urine allows me to enter this thread into the TAC record book as one of the top ten most bizarre discussion threads. Huzzah! Release the dove of Triumph!

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 6:57pm

Urine indeed! A bizarre topic for discussion. Yes, Zacharias is an Evangelical Protestant. But I hope you won’t hold that against him. He realizes that a marriage of East and West (eastern religion and western technology) is not the answer to our spiritual disease.

pat
pat
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 6:59pm

T SHaw, I’d rather expect you to quote Rudyard Kipling: east and west, never the twain shall meet.

Paul Primavera
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 7:31pm

“But I hope you won’t hold that against him.”

Nope, Pat, I don’t. In fact, the Protestant Pentecostals and Evangelicals are doing precisely what we Catholics have failed to do. In spite of all their theological errors, they KNOW that it’s the Gospel of repentance and conversion, not this insipid worthless horse manure that passes for social justice, the common good and peace at any price that has been preached from Catholic pulpits all across this nation for the past 40 years. For decades we have accomodated this worthless, mindless culture of “it’s not her fault she’s pregnant” and “he can’t help it he’s gay”. I am sick and tired of this yellow bellied, cowardly, gutless, spineless, craven, effeminate idiocy that pretends to be open mindedness and tolerance. It’s time to get intolerant and point out what sin really is and what its consequences are. Deepak Chopra and his godless liberal idiocy are but symptoms of the deeper problem – SIN. It’s time to tell Satan where he can go. And it’s time to start preaching the truth so people can be rescued from his demonic grip.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, August 16, AD 2011 9:45pm

Pat,

Actually, I thought of E-W but “Mandalay” made less rational sense and thus is more appropriate for this discussion.

The left is unadulterated emotion and lies. Those people hate facts and truth which are not susceptible to their whining.

Hey! Ho!

Occult hydration habits are another issue . . . I will not touch it.

pat
pat
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 12:02am

Yes, when they were wild-eyed and unwashed they seemed demonic. Now they look so well put together with their suits and haircuts. But the Devil can disguise himself as an angel of light. He’s alive and working as always.

The Occult has a long history of misusing human waste ritualistically. They did it during the Mau Mau uprising. It was a real treat for people stationed there at the time, of course. Lol.

pat
pat
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 1:08am

Mr. Primavera, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The more traditional Evangelicals are far apart from Pentecostalism. The gap is not perhaps as wide as that between Catholics and Protestants generally, but one nevertheless exists. Zacharias, to my knowledge, is a more traditional Evangelical, and would probably be as wary of Pentecostals as of drinking urine.

Paul Primavera
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 5:42am

Pat,

My immediate family (mother and siblings) are all devout Assemblies of God Pentecostals. My boss and his family are all Baptists. Other than the charismatic nature of AG adherents, and the Calvinist tendencies of some Baptists, the differences aren’t as great as you figure. I agree that Zacharias is perhaps a more “traditional” Evangelical. I don’t know where he stands on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. BTW, there is a charismatic, tongue speaking segment in the Catholic Church: http://www.nsc-chariscenter.org/.

Paul Primavera
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 6:03am

One other thing, Pat.

Bishop Burbidge of the Diocese of Raleigh and Dr. Cecil Robeck had a seven day meeting at the vatican on Pentecostal / Catholic International Dialogue. More here:

http://www.dioceseofraleigh.org/news/view.aspx?id=1151

I don’t know how I could have forgotten that since Bishop Burbidge had been my bishop.

So the next time you want to be condenscending and let me on a little secret, please ensure you do a little research first. I have been with Baptists and Pentecostals my whole life. Baptists don’t like Pentecostals because of tongue speaking. Pentecostals don’t like Baptists because they don’t speak in tongues, and because most Baptists believe in the doctrine of eternal salvation. There are other differences, of course, but those are the main ones. That being said, the Pentecostals are every bit as Evangelical as the Baptists other Evenaglical denomination. I hold less hope for the Presbyterians, Methodists and Lutherans who claim to be evangelical because they have been infiltrated with modernism and liberalism. I make the exception of the vice president at my place of work who is a devout Evangelical Presbyterian. We have had several interesting Bible discussions, focusing on Genesis 1 and 2 (evolution and creation are an interest of his – he shared with me some fascinating things about changes in light speed over time that he says supports the diea of a short Earth history – but that’s a conversation for a different time).

Oh, I forgot – the four main Pentecostal denominations are AG, Church of God, Aime Sempleton’s Church of the Four Square Gospel (now hers is a real story that would make anyone blush!) and Pentecostal Holiness. I have variously attended the first three as well as Baptist and other Evangelicals. Never had the chance to attend the fourth. And my vice president invited me to attend his Presbyterian Church at some time; just haven’t had the chance yet. Not much difference in the preaching, that’s for sure. But unlike most Catholic priests, they can and do preach repentance and conversion. Sad. We are supposed to be the example.

Gail F
Gail F
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 6:47am

Paul P: I live near a VERY “evangelical” Presbyterian church. You never can tell with Presbyterians. Shortly after I moved here they split over abortion — the folks who said abortion was okay left, but the rest of them split again, some of them forming their own non-Presbyterian church. The two churches work together on projects and charities now, and I don’t really know what the difference between them is. I have asked but the answers I get are (to me) vague, although I’m sure they are clear as day to those familiar with all the people and the differences in what they profess. It is endlessly interesting to work and deal with Protestant churches. It seems to me that a lot of them seize on to one great part of Christianity that properly belongs to the Church, and run with it — but make up the rest. They are often very, very, VERY good examples of the one part they seize on. The Presbyterian folks I know are good and faithful people, very zealous. They do a lot of work with the poor, a lot of outreach, a lot of evangelizing. They LOVE God. But they remain pretty much all one demographic, education level, and size. There is nothing universal about them.

Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 7:28am

Yes, Gail, I agree with your observations. I did a little more digging on Ravi Zacharias and discovered he was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Its statement of faith at ( http://www.cmalliance.org/about/beliefs/doctrine ) isn’t all that different that what I remember from my youth in the AG (the main difference being the AG emphasis on speaking in tongues as evidence of the infilling of the Holy Spirit). But I am sure there are differences that each denomination considers significant enough to keep intact the division that divides them.

I also found it interesting that Zacharias had once spoken at a Mormon Temple:

http://ldstalk.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/ravi-zacharias-at-the-mormon-tabernacle/

You can view the entire video at the web link above. My impression is that Zacharias does go out of his way to reach out without compromising the Gospel of Conversion and Repentance. Of course, the “nuances” of his Protestant theology are a different matter, but I find I have more in common with what little I know about him than I have with any liberal democrat pseudo-Catholic “Christian” espousing that social justice nonsense which murders unborn babies and sanctifies homosexual filth.

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 12:04pm

I thought Deepak Chopra was some mediocre rap “singer.” Am I confusing him with someone else? Maybe if he put his ramblings to rap music he would get a bigger audience.

pat
pat
Wednesday, August 17, AD 2011 5:05pm

I apologize if I sounded condescending before. Pentecostalism isn’t Protestant or Evangelical according to their own classification. It is not a denomination either, from what I’ve been told by one. It’s an organization.

Zacharias is a great apologist, I think. He knows that Christianity resonates with one’s totality. It reaches our hearts and minds and goes to the very center of our being.

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