I get my usage of 'dharma' from extensive readings on comparitive religion. If it pleases you, Wikipedia:
It's part of the English language, just like Tao, jihad and kami. I was actually inspired by a Hindu physicists, talking about the dharma of electrons. Hell, my ferret's name is 'Ahimsa Dharma' (the lesson of nonviolence), 'cause ferrets, despite being horribly destructive, don't have a mean or hateful bone in their bodies.
Where are you, right now, in cyberspace? I don't believe in vampires, but I'd never label myself as an avampirist or visit a website devoted to such things. Look at the forum - the one on top, what does it say? 'Community'. That's your tribe, defined by the shared core belief. It unites people from all backgrounds, just like religions do. Look - there are people in the world who form personal relations with blow-up dolls. They groom them, talk to them, live with them, boff them. And they actually love their dolls. Blow up dolls and human beings are nothing alike, but there is a gap in the human psyche, and it can apparently be filled by either.
Get it? When you take away a religion, you don't get an empty slate. You don't just stop believing or having a worldview. There exists in most human mentalities a 'slot' for a dharma. Like the slot for 'significant other' it has baggage, both cultural and sociobiological. Simply put, atheism, as a part of the dharma called 'Secular Humanism', will inevitably take on the characteristics of a religion as it gains widespread acceptance in the developed world. There will be holidays*, hero figures, rituals, canons, dogma, heretics, the lot. Eventually there will be Folk Humanism, a collection of esoteric beliefs devoid of the underlying scientific principles. It's just part of how societies work. Fortunately, mosts of those beliefs will be true and useful, but that's probably just the workings of cultural evolution - if rationalism is actually more useful than superstition, as one would hope, it has to happen.
So here's to the future. People will still live in a world of magic, surrounded by powerful forces that can't begin to comprehend. They will still ritualize their behaviors as a means of dealing with these forces, repeating actions that yield positive results, in the way it's always been. Powerful sorcerer-priests who delve into the deep mysteries will hand down the Law, and the people will accept it on faith.
BTW, I spent three years as a PhD candidate in wildlife epidemiology, which is a hard science. Even though I only had a BA in Japanese, I was admitted to the program and given a two year full ride scholarship based on my post-bacc work and GRE scores. After I left the program, I found a hack that lets me continue to have access to journals, cause I just couldn't function without it. I'm *not* a layman.
*Or we may stick with the Consumer Pagan holidays. We've been adding those steadily, like Valentine's Day.
Quote:Other uses include dharma, normally spelled in transliteration with a small "d" (this differentiation is impossible in the South Asian scripts used to write Sanskrit), which refers to a phenomenon or constituent factor of human experience. This was gradually expanded into a classification of constituents of the entire material and mental world.
It's part of the English language, just like Tao, jihad and kami. I was actually inspired by a Hindu physicists, talking about the dharma of electrons. Hell, my ferret's name is 'Ahimsa Dharma' (the lesson of nonviolence), 'cause ferrets, despite being horribly destructive, don't have a mean or hateful bone in their bodies.
Where are you, right now, in cyberspace? I don't believe in vampires, but I'd never label myself as an avampirist or visit a website devoted to such things. Look at the forum - the one on top, what does it say? 'Community'. That's your tribe, defined by the shared core belief. It unites people from all backgrounds, just like religions do. Look - there are people in the world who form personal relations with blow-up dolls. They groom them, talk to them, live with them, boff them. And they actually love their dolls. Blow up dolls and human beings are nothing alike, but there is a gap in the human psyche, and it can apparently be filled by either.
Get it? When you take away a religion, you don't get an empty slate. You don't just stop believing or having a worldview. There exists in most human mentalities a 'slot' for a dharma. Like the slot for 'significant other' it has baggage, both cultural and sociobiological. Simply put, atheism, as a part of the dharma called 'Secular Humanism', will inevitably take on the characteristics of a religion as it gains widespread acceptance in the developed world. There will be holidays*, hero figures, rituals, canons, dogma, heretics, the lot. Eventually there will be Folk Humanism, a collection of esoteric beliefs devoid of the underlying scientific principles. It's just part of how societies work. Fortunately, mosts of those beliefs will be true and useful, but that's probably just the workings of cultural evolution - if rationalism is actually more useful than superstition, as one would hope, it has to happen.
So here's to the future. People will still live in a world of magic, surrounded by powerful forces that can't begin to comprehend. They will still ritualize their behaviors as a means of dealing with these forces, repeating actions that yield positive results, in the way it's always been. Powerful sorcerer-priests who delve into the deep mysteries will hand down the Law, and the people will accept it on faith.
BTW, I spent three years as a PhD candidate in wildlife epidemiology, which is a hard science. Even though I only had a BA in Japanese, I was admitted to the program and given a two year full ride scholarship based on my post-bacc work and GRE scores. After I left the program, I found a hack that lets me continue to have access to journals, cause I just couldn't function without it. I'm *not* a layman.
*Or we may stick with the Consumer Pagan holidays. We've been adding those steadily, like Valentine's Day.
My book, a setting for fantasy role playing games based on Bantu mythology: Ubantu
