| by Ishara de Silva
( March 22, 2013, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a previous article in the Sri Lanka Guardian, not so long ago, I said that a You-value movement in South Asia, just like the Non-Aligned Movement, there, would be good for the region and prove to be a leadership success that tallies with the strength of religions in South Asia like Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention Islam, but not ruling out other, western, religions, too.
“You-Valuism” is a term I’ve coined to describe You-value ethics like compassion and altruistic love but in a political context, not just religious. It is a step after Existentialism’s “anything goes” attitude, Capitalism’s “Me-value” approach of getting what I can for me, Socialism’s “Us-value” credentials of collective action, nationalisation and other “communal” endeavours – to the You-value form of selfless giving.
Karl Marx, in part, came to his views by studying the Paris Commune which was a more primitive form of Communism which he said resembled the basis for a global Communism in future where the technological forces of mankind would be unleashed in a way that benefits all.
Whatever! The question is: Can we see an even higher form of society based on studying the religious forms, primitive and modern, rather than the Paris Commune, to see an even higher foundation for the progress of societies, world-wide, in time to come? And can, or will it take, a political form also? – including in the West.
Despite their divisions, the You-value ethics of all pure religions is what binds them despite their differences into a common bond, something, virtue that is, that virtually all leading philosophers recommended as the source of happiness in this life – in both east and west.
I have wrote, in a previous article, which can be found by searching “Ishara de Silva Magic Zero” into Google, that mind may be evolving from binary good/bad, to unitary just good, and finally to Zero: emptiness, peace and the knowers mind (self-realisation), and that this evolution may reveal how we might get there – to a stage of You-Valuism, that is.
So, could You-Valuist political movements exist or develop, just like the other socialist or capitalist parties – either in South Asia, or internationally? What would this mean, economically? Is generosity the real cause of wealth as at least one religion insists? Who would they represent? Everyone, or not? What would be their methodology?: democracy, revolution, or, as I think, Compassion.
As one religion once, to paraphrase, said: “Those who commit suffering on you do so because they themselves are suffering. What they need is help, not punishment.”
So is You-Valuism a valid alternative? I think so.
Virtue and politics can mix.
The need for wisdom in the world is self-evident. As Ajahn Sumedho, retired abbot of Amaravati Buddhist monastery, in Hemel Hempstead, England, has explained: “We cannot really create a true democracy or a true communism or a true socialism – we cannot create that because we are still deluded by a sense of self. So it ends up in tyranny and in selfishness, fear and suspicion.”
You-Valuism, on the other hand, is liberation from the “normal” sense of Self and so leans towards the cultivation of a truly selfless politics and attitude to the world.
I’ll leave it there……
About the author: Ishara de Silva is the former Asian Times Editor (UK) and a former member of the Opinion Leader panel (UK) (2002-3003)
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