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culture

March 1, 2019

In the context of animitta.org, “culture” refers to its role in kamma, that is, the process by which the moral & psychological effects of our actions spread among people: as individuals, both horizontally (in the present) & vertically (through time, into the future). This is linked to how these actions become shared habits. Cultures provide behaviors & words (language being a form of behavior) through which we learn the habitual ways of reacting to experience used by parents, peers, & society. These are ideas like religions, ethnic beliefs (those that are not religions, as such), political & economic ideas (democracy, free markets, forms of government), roles of institutions (e.g., media). This network of habits reinforces mistaken understandings of what “I” am, what “we” are, & so on. Together they reinforce the illusion of reality from which we must wake up. Terror management psychology is a deeply rooted energy that drives much of the creation of culture, since terror management relies on the largest possible group of people who share a psychological strategy for managing their fear of death, and the cognitive dissonance these cultural beliefs create.

cognitive dissonance • dukkha • kamma • terror management

Filed Under: facets Tagged With: culture, kamma

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