THE BUDDHIST ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM

"A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying."

The ultimate postmodern irony is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia. At the moment when European technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, the Judeo-Christian legacy in Europe is threatened by New Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in various forms from "Western Buddhism" to different "Taos," is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. Therein resides the highest speculative identity of the opposites in today's global civilization: although "Western Buddhism" presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideological supplement.

The well-known topic of "future shock" highlights how people today are no longer able to cope with the rapid pace of technological development and accompanying social changes. Things move so fast that before one can adjust to an invention, it is already replaced by a new one, leading to a lack of basic "cognitive mapping." Turning to Taoism or Buddhism offers a way out of this predicament that works better than desperately clinging to old traditions. Instead of trying to cope with the accelerating rhythm of technological progress and social change, one should renounce the effort to control events, rejecting it as an expression of modern domination. Instead, one should "let oneself go," drifting along while maintaining an inner distance and indifference to the frenetic pace of change, based on the insight that all this social and technological upheaval is ultimately a non-substantial proliferation of semblances that do not concern the core of our being.