19AR24-23

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AR 24:23 - Unmasking the guru

In this issue:

BIOETHICS - "wanting it all without paying"

SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY - when "fairly infantile longings for salvation and worship" collide with unethical religious leaders

Apologia Report 24:23 (1,431)

June 6, 2019

BIOETHICS

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America, by Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno [1] -- the publisher opens by saying that we've come a long way from "the 1950s when doctors still paid house calls but regularly withheld the truth from their patients." The authors "explore an unprecedented revolution in health care and explain the problem with America's wanting everything that medical science has to offer without debating its merits and its limits. The result: Americans today pay far more for health care while having among the lowest life expectancies and highest infant mortality of any affluent nation. [They also] explain how bioethics came to dominate the national spotlight, leading and responding to a revolution in doctor-patient relations, a burgeoning world of organ transplants, and new reproductive technologies that benefit millions but create a host of legal and ethical challenges. [This book] exposes the American paradox of wanting to have it all without paying the price."

Library Journal (May 1 '19) describes it as "surveying the limitless ethical dilemmas created by modern medicine [and where the authors] discuss specific areas that present individuals and society with ongoing ethical problems, including how we die, patients' rights and privacy, new reproductive technologies, human and animal experimentation, organ transplantation, the use of stem cells, and cloning. In each case they offer concrete examples of some difficult choices and how they are being addressed. The answers are seldom simple. VERDICT Targeting a general audience, this title provides a clear and compassionate presentation of complicated topics and how important it is to confront them."

The LJ Prepub Alert (Feb 4 '19) <www.bit.ly/318uFA2> adds that the focus is on "bioethical issues, e.g., genetic engineering, the escalation of medical research without regard to human rights (testing anthrax vaccines on children?), and the underfunding of mental and public health even as medical research booms. And the authors - University of Pennsylvania president Gutmann and Penn professor Moreno, who both served on President Obama's bioethics commission - carry a big stick."

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SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

"Unmasking the Guru: Our new digital world has made it impossible to believe in infallible teachers. What comes next is up to us." -- from an "Interview with Bernhard Pörksen by Ursula Richard" which is highlighted in the Summer 2019 issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle.

The magazine's editors begin: "Bernhard Pörksen <www.bit.ly/2InUDXt> is a professor of media studies at the University of Tübingen in southwest Germany, with particular research interest in the new media age. His writing regularly appears in both scholarly and popular science publications, and two of his books have been on the bestseller list in Germany. He has written or co-authored books on topics such as journalism, constructivism, and communications and systems theory, and he has received accolades for his direct and engaged appearances as a speaker, talk show guest, interview moderator, and discussion partner on radio and television as well as at conventions and public events.

"In the following interview, Ursula Richard [the former Editor-in-Chief of] the German magazine *Buddhismus aktuell* discusses with Pörksen the exposure and aftermath of scandals in Buddhist communities today and how we can understand the emerging role played by digital media." Some highlights:

Richard: "[Y]ou speak about the end of the era of religious and spiritual heroes. In the past few years, in fact, a number of Buddhist gurus have been unmasked."

Pörksen: "I see it as a media effect. ... Suddenly anyone can compose a petition or post a description on blogs and forums of what has been done to them. What we are experiencing at the moment in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist groups and at the same time in yoga schools and communities around the world is an implosion of spiritual authority."

Richard: "Generally speaking, is this development something good - or not?"

Pörksen: "This kind of transparency, and particularly the empowerment of abuse victims through media access, must be welcomed unconditionally."

Richard: "Do you see recurring patterns in the guru demystification process? And also in the reactions from the organizations those gurus led or where they were harbored and protected, often for many years? ..."

Pörksen: "The ideal of infallibility is disastrous, because spiritual seekers who encounter the master’s failings suddenly face total loss; their very worldview seems threatened. ..."

Richard: "We already knew from Nietzsche that God was dead. If we have no God and are now losing our gurus and heroes, what will we have left? ..."

Pörksen first observes that there are numerous "possible reaction patterns. ...

"I analyze media and scandal; I have no special spiritual qualifications. So I would just say that at present fairly infantile longings for salvation and worship are colliding with the general wish for demystification and the overexposed glare of a world in which any misdeed, large or small, is published immediately. And this collision of the longing for perfection with a wish for disclosure and radical transparency is a formula for certain disappointment and the pulverization of aura, charisma, and authority. ..."

Richard: "We live in a time of outrage, of instant excitement or irritation, a time of scandalization.... And we seem to have become not so much the observers of events as quick judges who proclaim their moral view to be absolute and make it the benchmark for all things. ... I think it is an important and timely task to lift the veil of silence that covers abuse of every kind along with defamatory comments about other religions and their adherents. We need to expose such behavior and take the appropriate measures. But how can we achieve this and avoid hypocrisy and one-dimensionality ourselves? Do we need an ethics of enlightenment for the digital age? What might that look like?"

Pörksen: "My own answer, in short, is this: We need to transform today’s digital society into tomorrow’s editorial society. What do I mean by that? In an editorial society the ideals and maxims of good journalism will be a part of general education. For example: First check, then publish! Be skeptical, even of your own opinions! Scrutinize your sources! Always listen to the other side! Act transparently in dealing with your own mistakes! Pay attention to relevance and proportion: don’t make an incident larger than it is!

"The maxims of good journalism contain an ethics for the community, one that concerns everyone today. It should be taught in schools as a separate subject. Now that we have acquired media power, we must do everything we can to attain media maturity. Seriously, what would be the alternative? State supervision? More elaborate laws? The greatest possible control of communication? ..." <www.bit.ly/2MmqtcK>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die: Bioethics and the Transformation of Health Care in America, by Amy Gutmann and Jonathan D. Moreno (Liveright, August 2019, hardcover: 272 pages) <www.amzn.to/2Xc0uWi>

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