The Secret pt I

The Western Approach to Culture

There is a phenomenon that I have observed in our culture that I rather abhor...  perhaps you have observed it yourself?

Have you ever met a 'buddhist' or a 'hindu' who grew up in a nominal christian home in a middle-class suburb of America, visited India and bought a necklace and came back calling themselves a Hindu?  They don't own a Bhagavad Gita, don't worship in shrines, don't (in point of fact) know the first thing about Hinduism, they just like proclaiming, "namaste," over everyone they meet.  It is the aesthetic of Hinduism that they love.

Our culture predates on others, cannibalizing them for the parts we like and leaving the rest of the carcass to rot.  We then take those parts, devoid of their original intentions and significance, and we use them for our own purposes.  Yoga is perhaps an obvious case of this kind of bastardization, but examples abound.  American Christianity is itself bastardized in this way; a child removed from it's lineage and brought up in another.  We will return to Christianity shortly...

The point is, we refuse to accept a tradition or a culture on its own merits and instead deconstruct it to create our own syncretic hybrid.  This would not be such a problem if we didn't label such things 'Hinduism,' or 'Christianity.'  It is as though we adopt the bastard child, but don't allow her the use of our family name.