Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

2AC
1) We Meet- We are the governement and the government is us
Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master, poet, Founder of the Engaged Buddhist movement. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by
Martin Luther King Jr. Mindful Politics; edited by Melvin McLeod. 2006 p. 39-41

Many people think they need an enemy. Governments work hard to get us to be afraid and to hate so we will rally behind
them. If they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. Recently I went to Russia with some
American and European friends, and we found that the Russian people are wonderful. For so many years the American
government told their people that the Russians were an evil empire. It is not correct to believe that the worlds situation is
in the hands of the government and that if the presidents would only have the correct policies, there would be peace. Our
daily lives have the most to do with the situation of the world. If we can change our daily lives, we can change our
governments and we can change the world. Our presidents and our governments are us. They reflect our lifestyle and our
way of thinking. The way we hold a cup of tea, pick up a newspaper, and even use toilet paper have to do with peace.

2. Counter interpretation- The resolution is a question to be answered. Our answer is Mu.

We have reasons to prefer our interpretation-

A. Answering the resolution is the most consistant stasis point- every debate is about the
resolution rather than the answer the 1AC provides Solves their predictability disad

B. Best for topic education- focusing on the resolution as the stasis point rather than the 1AC
ensures researching centered around the topic and not arbitrary affs This proves we
prescribe reasonable limits to the topic and that those limits are predictable

C. Best fits debate norms- debate norms dictate the aff only provide an instance of an answer
to the resolution , we are also an instance of an answer to the resolution.

D. Their definitions are flawed- none of their interps justify specific instances of the
resolution being run on the aff, instead they demand a whole res approach to the resolution.
This would make debate impossible because the aff would never be able to beat the PIC
Prefer our interpretation because it captures of all of the beneficial parts of current debate
norms

Our standards for evaluating interpretations-

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3. Fairness is terminally non unique- backfiles, coaches, and monetary privelege makes trying
to regulate debate into a fair space only cause judge intervention without addressing these
structural concerns.

4. Fairness is arbitrary and education outweighs- fairness is determined by norms, which

means there is no objective fairness. This arbitrary nature allows the goalpost to be moved
ensuring we are never fair enough. Education outweighs because its more important to know
how to engage and live in the world than it is to have fair debates This is supported by the
Chodron 01' evidence from the 1AC that talks about why dying happy is key

5. Predictability is terminally non unique- new advantages, Disads, and Counterplans ensure
deabte is never predictable. Make them prove our interp has a significant disad compared to
these alternate causes

6. There is no link to their predictability disads - You don't need to predict our aff, you only
need to provide an answer to the resolution. Unless you read multiple conditional worlds we
dont get perms.

Next is our offense

First is the argumentative echo chamber & liberation Disad---the culture of debate ensures
that the same old things will always be learned about-- only hegemony and economy become
the focus this makes it so what we learn about only becomes a means to these ends and
ensures constant feeling of meaninglessness that prevents liberation
David Loy, Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Japan. A Buddhist History of the West;
Studies in Lack. 2002 p. 186-188

Simmels concern with means-ends teleology derives from a more fundamental paradox or unresolvable conflict that he
believed to characterize all developing cultures. Life always produces cultural forms in which it expresses and realizes itself
these include technologies, institutions, and other social patterns as well as religions and works of art. Such forms provide
the flow of life with content and order. Yet, although arising out of the life process, once objectified these forms no longer
participate so directly in lifes ceaseless rhythm of decay and renewal. They become cages (we are reminded of Webers
iron cage) for the life force that creates them but then transcends them; they remain fixated into identities whose own law
and logic inevitably distance them from the creative process that produced them in the first place.5 a culture evolves, more
such forms are produced and take on an objectified life of their own, which entails a developing relationship between them
and the creative impulse that produces them. Teleological series lengthen and ramify. A rudimentary example is basic tools.
A knife is very useful but it already complicates things. As well as learning how to use it efficiently and safely we must
learn how to make it, which requires further teleological chains to locate and work the right kind of bone or stone. So a
developing culture constructs increasingly complex mechanisms of interlocking preconditions that become necessary to
fulfill each step of the means. A more intellectual example is the difference between Socrates and academic professors of
philosophy today. Socrates wrote nothing, and as far as I know he may have read nothing. In fact, he didnt do philosophy
at all; he talked with people in the marketplace and at dinner parties. How far would he get in a modern philosophy
department? In order to become a professional philosopher today, aspirants must read hundreds of books and scholarly
papers, write scores of essays, pass dozens of tests, obtain three degrees, publish in reputable journals. . . by which time one
has been thoroughly socialized into focusing on certain types of questions using peer-approved methodologies. Simmel was
so impressed by this tendency that he considered it the tragedy of culture: once cultural forms exist, they become the
unavoidable objects by whose assimilation we become acculturated and with whose acculturation we necessarily become
preoccupied, at the cost of a more direct relationship with the creative impulse. For prehistoric societies the terminus a quo
as well as the terminus ad quen of cultural forms usually remained within the lifetime of their creator; the invention of
writing systems constituted evidently the greatest quantum leap outside that boundedness. Today we are all technicians of
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teleologies whose termini are not only unknown but unimaginable. The incalculable abundance of modern artifacts and the
continual ramification of modern teleologies means that in order to play whatever role we may within our own culture, we
must subordinate ourselves more and more to them. Scholars need only reflect on the changes within their own disciplines
during the past generation or two. The flood of noteworthy books and papers threatens to become a tidal wave that will
submerge those who try to keep up with all the developments in their increasingly narrowly defined fields. A theoretical
physicist once told me that specialists whose researches are interrupted for a year may never be able to catch up afterward.
A consequence of this heightened teleological consciousness, and of our own diminishing role within it, is the peculiar
frustration of a life impelled to seek beyond itself for what it suspects will never be found and never be fulfilling. A
developing culture not only increases the demands and tasks of men, but also leads the construction of means for each of
these individual ends even higher, and already often demands merely for the means a manifold mechanism of interlocking
preconditions. Because of this relationship, the abstract notion of ends and means develops only at a higher cultural level.
Only at that level, and because of the numerous purposive sequences striving for some kind of unification, be cause of the
continuous removal of the specific purpose by a larger and larger chain of meansonly then does the question of ultimate
purpose, that lends reason and dignity to the whole effort, and the question of why emerge. The idea of an ultimate purpose
in which everything is again reconciled, but which is dispensable to undifferentiated conditions and men, stands as peace
and salvation in the dis united and fragmentary character of our culture. (Simmel 1907, 360, my italics) This is one of those
insights that encourages us to rethink the way we understand the means-ends problematicand view it more clearly in
terms of lack. Lengthening teleological chains are what lead us to ask about the end, the ultimate purpose of life. What is
distinctive about our situation today, then, is less meansends inversion than our sense that they are increasingly divorced.
Modernity is better defined as the aggravated awareness of a split between them. Then our need for absolute ends and goals
reflects our future-driven tendency to make everything into a means to something else. A yearning for meaning and ultimate
purpose is the other side of our inability to be satisfied with the possibilities our culture offers us, a dissatisfaction caused by
our sense of lack, itself aggravated by our sacrifice of substantial values for instrumental rationality.

8. Next is the 'Storying Disad' - you story a good debate world versus a bad debate world
where we learn about a particularized education. This story is then used as the justification
for oppressive practices inside of debate. A good education only exists when we identify a
topic to be rejected. This is how schisms in debate appear like the shunning of CEDA or the
ADA tournaments. The identification and attack on bad education is a larger internal link
to debate collapse than their framework.

9. Policy making is inherently rooted in a story of creating the world as it should be Loy
8' and loy 15' indicates we can't identify a positive end point to work towards without it's
opposite to work against. It's this dualistic logic that makes war and environmental
destruction karmically inevitable because of the creation of the good bad dualism ---

10. Politics is inherently incapable of making changes because of the national fragmentation
Proves why the starting point of the aff is the only one that doesn't inevitably foreclose the
possibility of liberation Cross apply our try or die claims from the 1AC as to why the aff is
the only choice -- that is Loy 15

11. Partcipation in the system will never solve-- they created the problem and more
importantly ARE The problem-- its important to walk away from the resolution in order to
understand our interdependency and realize human liberation
David Loy, Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Japan. A Buddhist History of the West;
Studies in Lack. 2002 p. 123-124

Yet what is the alternative? If idolatry is inauthentic religion, what does authentic religiosity look like? Again, I think
Becker points the way: The problem of life is how to grow out of our idolatries by expanding our allegiances and
preoccupations: Human beings believe either in God or in idols. There is no third course open. For God is the only object
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who is not a concrete object. . . . God is abstract necessity, the unconditioned, and this is liberating rather than opposing or
confining, even though we submit our energies to it. Humanity achieves its highest freedom when energies are allied with
the unconditioned cosmic process. Free human beings must turn to God as ultimate support for meaning because truly free
people have nowhere else to turn. That is, to God as the highest ground for meanings, as the uncompromising critical
perspective on earthly authority (Becker, in Liechty 59). Buddhism uses a different vocabulary to make much the same
point: all things, including ourselves and Buddhas, are empty (sunya), so we should not be attached to any of them. The
touchstone of authentic spirituality is not whether one believes in God but whether one believes in and works to ground
ones energies in what Becker calls the unconditioned cosmic process. What does this Imply for the modern institutions
whose religious roots have been discussed in this chapter? I think it becomes obvious that we should not look to the
nationstate nor to corporate capitalism nor to the scientific/technological establishments that service their ambitions for
solutions to the problems they have created (e.g.. the environmental crisis, addictive consumerism, increasing social
injustice). This is not just because they have created the problems, but because to a large extent they are the problems.
Instead of appealing to national governments for solutions, we need to work for more decentralized political institutions that
will allow for increasing local selfgovernance and more direct participation. Instead of hoping that transnational
corporations and market mechanisms can be used to solve the problems they themselves have created, we need to rein them
in by rewriting their corporate charters, the legal umbilical cords that could be used to subordinate them to greater social
concerns. And since scientific inquiry is functionally unable to set selflimits on what it tries to discover and how those
discoveries are co be used, scientific ambitions, like corporate ones, must be firmly subordinated co more democratically
determined goals. Today the many ethical issues raised by genetic research, in particular, make this an urgent issue. It will
not be easy to decide how this new knowledge should be developed and used, but it is becoming more evident that the worst
solution may be leaving it to market forces and their political allies and technological servants. This approach to history
through a Buddhist understanding of our lack stands Marx on his head. Instead of reducing a superstructure of philosophical
and religious ideology to some materialist infrastructure, I have argued that an unacknowledged repression of a spiritual
character has played a significant role in the development of modernity. Yet Marx may have been right about something
else. If the approach adumbrated here is valid, it is not enough for us just to understand it. The three roots of evil must be
exposed and challenged, not only personally but structurally in the idolatrous institutions of modernity.

Predictions about how the world are inevitably failthe world is too complex to understand
its empirically proven by war and economic collapse
Kurt Spellmeyer, award-winning teacher and scholar in the English department at Rutgers University and authorized to
teach Zen by Kangan Glenn Webb. Buddha at the Apocalypse; Awakening From a Culture of Destruction. 2010 p. 109-116

Buddhists aren't the only ones to revere some image of a perfect harmony. Eden, remember, was a garden too. In different
ways, perhaps, all of us would like to see an ultimate perfection finally revealed, laid out with mandala-like clarity. Not just
religion but the arts and sciencesaren't they also motivated by this dream? Doesn't our knowledge always aspire to getting
the whole picture right finally? When we say of a thinker that he's written the last word, we've paid him the very highest
complement. Perhaps the last word is a dream we all sharephysicists and poets, chemists and engineers, surgeons,
marketers, and diplomats. And yet no matter how close we might come, the fulfillment of that dream seems to slip away.
Just as we're moving the last piece into place, suddenly everything falls apart again. And when it does, the results can be
catastrophic. Both perfection and catastrophe were the subjects of an essay Paul Krugman wrote for the New York Times a
little more than a year after the financial collapse of 2008. 1 " He asked how his fellow economists had failed to predict the
disaster that took place. Indeed, just before the stock market plunged, most of his colleagues were totally convinced that
their field had spoken the last word on financial stability. In the past, economics was a battlefield of fiercely contesting
opinions, but not long ago the whole discipline achieved what one eminent authority described as a "broad convergence of
vision." Only four years prior to the collapse, a leading figure had addressed their national convention. To loud applause he
boldly declared that they had solved the problem of recurrent depressions. But then, as Krugman noted, it all came undone.
The predictive failure was bad enough, he wrote, but even more destructive was the overconfidence. Economists believed
they simply knew too much. Their knowledge was so perfect it just couldn't fail. In the koan above, the monk asks Chimon
what the lotus flower will be before it rises into the air and light: But Chimon doesn't give the answer we'd expect. He
doesn't say that it will be a lotus bud. Instead he says again that it will be the lotus flower. Perhaps by answering as he did,
Chimon meant to help his student recognize a basic problem with the way the question was framed. Something about
perfection has been overlooked, something the monk might have pushed aside. When Krugman himself tried to explain how
economists had gotten things so wrong, he made a pitch for his own approach, which favors intervention by the government
over unrestricted markets. But for all his brilliance, he seemed to overlook a problem even bigger than an overreliance on a
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single point of view. Every approach, even Krugman's own, achieves its formal consistency by excluding whatever doesn't
fit. Like the perfection of the Japanese garden, the perfection glimpsed by economists was in fact illusory. Nowadays many
cities in the U.S. have Asian gardens where people can go if they want to get a little taste of a Zen. In Seattle where I
trained, members of our sangha would meet every week at the Asian garden for a tea ceremony. We'd sit for hours in the tea
house by the pond, and often on the way out we would stop to admire the perfection of the garden all aroundthe pond
with its lotuses, the overhanging trees, the motionless rhythm of enclosure and space. Sometimes on the weekends the
crowds would grow so large it was hard to maintain the proper mood. But, of course, the crowds were simply seeking what
we'd found. Even visitors who were oblivious to the principles of Asian gardening could be deeply moved by the order they
surveyed. The aesthetics came from half a world away but the garden seemed to speak to everyone. The garden was at its
very best on weekends, when the biggest crowds could be expected to arrive. But as I learned by stopping there on other
days, an entire team of gardeners worked all week just to prepare. If you go on Saturday to the garden in Seattle, it seems to
have existed for eternity in its present, timeless form. That's the message a good garden should convey. But if you visit on a
Wednesday afternoon, you might see the workers cutting grass with their machines. Dead and dying plants have to be
replaced, and plastic pots with fresh plants from the nursery will be brought in by small pickup trucks. And what about that
ancient tree which appears to have been shaped by centuries of wind and snow? If you look carefully you might see the stiff
brown wire, skillfully concealed, that a gardener used to bend some essential limb. It's quite instructive also to watch an
arborist trim away unwanted._ branches. If the job is accomplished properly, with cuts made very close to the trunk, no
marks remain when the next season comes. Like all artifice, when it's done with greatest skill, it seems to be the work of
nature's hand. And then there are unwanted plants. In the middle of the irises lining the pond, which seems to exist outside
of time, loosestrife or phragmites might have taken root, perhaps from seeds dropped by some migrating bird. These
invasive plants have to be pulled up by hand, but in the grass and under the canopy, gardeners use weed-whackers powered
by gas, cutting through the garden's serenity with a ripping, buzzing noise. Once I even watched them spraying herbicides,
toxic chemicals that leach into the streams where they collect in the tissues of fish swimming in the Puget Sound. Needless
to say, they use other chemicalsfertilizers to make the grass bright green, and algaecides to clear the water in the lotus
pond. If the workers were to let the garden go, it wouldn't look at all the way it does. Neglected, the exotics would soon die
awaythe beautiful trees and bushes from Japan. Unwanted species would rapidly invade. Clinging vines would smother
the low-growing maples, which only live about a century at best. Over time, debris would gather in the pond, and gradually
the open water would become a swamp. Chokeberry, milkweed, and thistles would take root, followed by sumac and locust
trees. If you returned in a hundred years, you might not give the spot a second look. The garden would have devolved into a
place without any obvious coherence at all, no beauty, balance, or harmonyan unattractive jumble of this and that, what
you can see by the road every day. And yet, which is really more natural: the well-tended garden or the abandoned patch? I
MAGES OF ORDER VERSUS ORDER ITSELF The garden seems so perfect we can make the same mistake as Krugman's
economists. In such cases what we see are imagesimages of order we ourselves have made. But nature's real order is
something else again. Maybe that's what Chimon was hinting to the monk. We create our images of order by excluding all
the things we can't fit in, things that work against our expectations even though they're part of our world somehow. And
then we mistake these images for the way things really are. In Zen we sometimes speak about the finger and the moon. The
finger pointing at the moon is supposed to steer our eyes to the moon itself. And sometimes, pointing with a finger helps.
But the relationship can get reversed. We start to treat the symbol as though it were real. Of course we do this all the time.
The natural world lacks the balanced harmonies that define the classical Japanese garden. And even if we hike into a forest
or a park, we tend to look for places that will agree with our expectations about the kind of scene we should admire as
"beautiful." But on our way to special places of this kind on our way to images of orderwe overlook countless other
views that seem unimportant or disorderly. Now we've mistaken the finger for the moon: distracted by the mental image, we
ignore the real. What holds true for gardens and forest hikes holds true as well for intellectual life, even though we make a
special effort to deny that any such confusion is at work. We want to believe that our total stock of knowledge keeps
growing larger and more perfect day by day. At the same time, the sum of what we don't know seems to be shrinking
proportionally. In reality, this may not be the case. Even though we know much more than people did only a hundred years
ago, the sum of our ignorance has also increased. We have more uncertainties than they ever did, more questions and new
areas to explore. Indeed, what counts as "knowledge" never ceases to change. Nobody studies Natural Philosophy today.
Scientists no longer look for a cosmic ether or investigate animal magnetism. "Facts" that seemed obvious not so long ago
turn out to depend on beliefs we now dismiss as untrue and absurd. The work of every generation seems to overturn much
that its predecessors struggled to achieve. And yet we don't stop to think about the implications. What we call knowledge
might actually be another example of the images of order we've mistaken for the real. Until the recession of 2008, the
biggest failure of our economy had taken place in 1929, a global collapse that left unemployed about a quarter of all
Americans. The stock market fell almost as far as it could go, and billions of dollars went up in smoke. When we remember
catastrophes like that, we want to believe that people at the time knew much less than we do today. But back in 1928 they
really knew quite a lot. There were many brilliant economists who wrote enormous and sophisticated books filled with
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elaborate theories. If you live near a good library, many of these books are still sitting on the shelves, unread and gathering a
century of dust. But at the time, their knowledge seemed to work. It seemed to show that ignorance was in retreat. And as
for economic instability, it appeared to be a thing of the distant past, a problem that science had resolved. Then one day this
knowledge shattered like glass, and with it the whole world of finance. Around that same time many people believed that a
solution had been found for another problem as well. Almost every educated person in the West was convinced that war had
been overcome by the steady forward march of history.'" There were many books with titles like The End of War, and most
of the worlds leaders were quite confident that modern diplomacy and smarter legislation had created systems that couldnt
fail. Experts could be counted on to know what to do. Unlike the amateurs of ages past, they had the skills and the
knowledge to avoid any sort of large-scale catastrophe. But then in 1914 war broke out. In fact, it was the biggest war the
world had ever seen. All the sophisticated systems designed to keep conflict from happening were quickly retooled to make
the war itself more efficient and well organized. The death toll was the highest in history. And only a few decades after that,
a second conflictWorld War IIbegan. At the time, the Germans were thought to be the best educated nation anywhere.
In many fields of knowledge they were preeminent. Who would have predicted Hitlers rise, or the nightmare of the
Holocaust? The modern era was supposed to leave behind this sort of barbarity. Two world wars, perhaps a hundred million
dead, So much for modem political science and the profession of diplomacy. So much for the value of mass education. I
dont mean to suggest that these are fraudulent, or that they shouldnt be pursued. But theres something here that we
havent under stood. When it comes to the structures we create, are we looking at the finger or the moon? Do we see the
lotus for what it really is, or are we only seeing what we want to see? If you look at economic history, youll notice that
collapses go all the way back to the beginning of civilization. And sadly, the same is true for war. But every time things fall
apart again, people seem absolutely amazed. How could this happen? we ask with disbelief. Maybe it really is the end of the
world. Maybe the Apocalypse is on the way. But our fantasies of the Apocalypse are just the other side of the same coin
the other side of our images of order. We want to believe were getting closer to the truth, to a perfect knowledge that leaves
nothing out. But what if knowledge cant be perfected in this way? Theres something noble about the desire that motivates
those who search for truth, people like Krugmans economists. They look at the markets fluctuations and they say, How
can we prevent the catastrophic collapse that has caused so much suffering? To answer this question they lose a lot of
sleep. They toss and turn on their beds at night. They put in eight hours every week trying to unearth the secrets that will
make the system work impeccably. But economists arent the only ones whose search for order causes them to lose sleep.
Over in the English Department its the same. There, instead of the markets fluctuations, the subject is fiction or poetry.
How can I talk about this novel they ask, How can I explain what the author really meant? When literary critics do this
sort of thing, they struggle with confusion that appears to have no end. You try this approach and it doesnt seem to work.
You try something else and it fails again. But after all the missteps and dead ends, you find something that seems to work a
little bit. And thats like a cup of cool water in a drought. Refreshed, you trudge on until you find another piece that
somehow adds to the overall coherence. Gradually, the pieces assemble to fill in what remains of the puzzle. All this can
take a whole life or many lives, since younger people might pick up where you left off. Scientists know this routine quite
well. Only a small percentage of experiments turn out to have the predicted results. Scientists encounter failure most of the
time. And even their successes are often transient. Past findings get overturned by fresh research. New technologies can
make obsolete the methods used for many years. Yet, despite the setbacks and failures they face, the dream of order keeps
the sciences going. Every once in a while research will cohere in a truly spectacular way, and then someone wins the Nobel
Prize. But the grants and the prizes arent really the goalthe goal is the beauty of the order itself. Searching for such order
is a part of human life. And yet, we might not understand what weve done when weve encountered it. Have we revealed
the way things are, or have we simply made an image of a world thats really too complex for any image to reflect in a
flawless way? That would explain why our knowledge falls apart, Just before the recession of 2008, Americas economists
had gathered to hear the leading figures celebrate the garden theyd made. For just a moment, the lotus opened up and a real
perfection seemed to be achieved. All of us look forward to such moments now and then, and, if were lucky, one comes our
way. When that happens, we might wish that it could last forever And naturally wed like to see it happen again. Then,
when it doesnt, we often blame ourselves. If only we had somehow done things differently, maybe then wed see another
blossoming. This is the way that Krugman seems to think. He says that his colleagues went off the rails simply because of
an omission. Relying too much on the pro-market view, they overlooked the need for government control. More regulations,
instead of less, would have prevented the collapse. But actually this might not be altogether true. Maybe the collapse might
have been forestalled, but more regulations would have brought with them a different set of problemsproblems like slow
growth and higher joblessness. Eventually, both systems would fail in different ways, the one with regulations and the one
with less. Too much control will produce stagnation, but too little breeds the recklessness that nearly destroyed the world
economy. We want to believe that we can finally get it right, and that one last crucial piece of evidence will solve the
mystery once and for all. But no matter how carefully we plan, no matter how we tend our gardens of the mind, some detail
will always get left out. And thats just the one that will catch us by surprise.
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13. State based solutions can only reinforce our sense of lack because it feeds on this very
anxiety to survive Reform only perpetuates this cycle which can only be broken when we
are liberated from our deluded sense of self
David Loy, Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Japan. A Buddhist History of the West;
Studies in Lack. 2002 p. 103-104

With royal charisma replaced by impersonal state power, the religious grounding of civil authority finally disappearedor
did it? Do supposedly secular institutions merely obscure the religious basis of human allegiance even today? My point is
that the nation-state has continued to derive its power over us from our sense of lack, which engenders a need to identify
with and ground ourselves in something greater than ourselves. Each person, says Becker, will knuckle under to some kind
of authority, some source of sustaining and transcending power which gives him the mandate for his lifefor his very
being. Our visits to the moon were commemorated not by leaving shrines or making offerings there, but by planting a
cluster of national flags (Becker 1971, 151, 198). In a world no longer united by any ostensible religious belief, we have
devised other sources of transcendent power to commit ourselves to. In his famous lecture on Politics as a Vocation, Max
Weber said that political entities have an ability shared only with religionsto impart meaning to death; the warriors death
in battle is a consecrated one. The basic problem, however, is that although nation-states have provided a weak substitution
for community (citizenship)and an even weaker solution to the problem of life (patriotism), they are otherwise unable to
fulfill the promise (to satisfy our lack) that Nurtured them. Perhaps this gives us some insight into the type of spiritual
aberration that states are liable to, when they reject bureaucratic utilitarianism in favor of a quest for self-transcendence that
involves surrendering to some higher supraindividual destiny. Since the instrumentalist and impersonal machinery of the
state cannot give us what we unconsciously seek from ita collective solution to our lackone might learn from the
Anabaptists; however, one might conclude instead that the nation needs to be transformed into a purer institution that can
resolve our lack. If states retain the traces of their religious origins, as I am arguing, we can expect periods when its citizens
are tempted to make it into a better religion. The results have been tragic, especially the fascisms and state socialisms of the
twentieth century. Fascism, for example, was an attempt to escape from the disciplines ofstateness, from not only the
emphasis on depersonalization which follows from the states bureaucratic and legal character but also the idea of state and
society as distinct realms (Dyson 59).5 As Friedrich Hlderlin put it, what has always made the state a hell on earth has
been that man has tried to make it his heaven. This failure is not incidental but essential to its unconscious spiritual function
for us. Insofar as we collectively try to become real through the nationstate, it can never become real enough to satisfy us,
because it too is a human construct, empty and ungrounded despite the national origin myths spun to mystify it. In lack
terms, our objectified and depersonalized lack anxiety internally feeds the unresolvable tension between state and civil
society, and externally feeds the incessant competition among nations that constitutes the precarious international order In
short, SO far as the state has become a religious institution forus, it is doomed to be a poor one.

Overview
When confronted with the question of the resolution we answer MU. Mu is not able to be
conceptualized. The inability to conceptualize this in a stable and meaningful way creates
frustration, ultimately foreclosing our ability to rationalize in the manner we normally
default to. This results in there only being Mu. When this happens thoughts are not followed
or clung to and and we can realize non duality in the absolution of clinging to our thoughts.
That is Loy 88' from the 1AC which indicates that voting aff is an endorsement of this
liberatory state.

When our relationship to the world is nondualistic it is the same as one seeing the interdepent
nature of the world This nondualistic positioning allows us to look for ways to improve the
world not only at this exact moment but also within the infinite structures of impermanent
cause and effect . This work is all done without an attachment to results so whatever
happens happens, because you never know what will happen. This prevents burn out and
desire to give up when our vision of the world inevitably falls out of sync with the world as it
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really is. That is Loy 15 from the 1AC as well which indicates that the liberatory state of the
1AC best absolves structures of oppression and prevents the burnout I just mentioned when
we fail in these endeavors.

We Outweigh
This has a few impacts-
First, liberation is to die without regrets- when we are attached to definitions of ideal selves it
causes us to focus on things that can't accompany us when we die. Instead, understanding
that the definition of our selves is constantly in flux ensures we focus on the moment and
our relatioships with others because we no longer feel anxiety over the types of problems that
are 1)Inevitable because of the transient and impermanent nature of all existance and 2)Pull
us out of the present moment to a place of conceptual comparison/evaluation which tarnishes
our emotional state that is Chodron 01' from the 1AC

Second, Our Jones 3' evidence shows that our relationship to death should come first-- Our
deaths are 100% inevitable, this is the only claim that can be made at this level of probability
in the round. Prefer this evidence not only is it comparative on the fact that having an open
relationship with our death is infinitely more important than whether or not it is nuclear, but
it explains the ways these relationships spill over into larger social structures, specifically
through the 'social fallacy' which posits that the solution to our inner turmoil can only be
found 'out there somewhere'

Finally , Extinction is inevitable. As long as we have a seperate sense of self there will never
be a concern about the problems of others. As long as this happens our survival will be at
stake via climate change and war. That is our Loy 15' evidence, as well as the Loy 8' evidence
from the 1AC that talks about the dangers of dualist security logic

We can want something like the ballot, but we cannot be attached to the story that we will
absolutely win it. Instead we accept that the judge may determine that we have lost. I.E. All of us
have been in that round in which we have thought it was a total crush for us, but we ended up
losing. We have felt that anger and suffering when the view of the debate that we had did not
match up with the judges. That is the disconnect which causes the burn out in the Tarrant and
Loy 15 and Manuel cards of the 1AC.

Capitalism 2AC
First, Buddha said pick and choose his philosophy that lets you live better-- No Link
Thubten Chodron, studied and practiced Buddhism in India and Nepal since 1975and resident teacher at Dharma
Friendship Foundation in Seattle. Buddhism for Beginners 2001 p. 17

Must we be a Buddhist to practice what the Buddha taught? No. The Buddha gave a wide variety of instructions, and if
some of them help us live to better, to solve our problems and become kinder, then we are free to practice them. There is no
need to call ourselves Buddhists. The purpose of the Buddha's teachings is to benefit us, and if putting some of them into
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

practice helps us live more peacefully with ourselves and others, that is what's important.

And, East doesn't have possession of Buddhism-- If we all have buddha nature, and
Buddhism is about recognizing that inherent buddha nature then the Eastern Cultures don't
have something that binds all sentient creatures together.

The story of fetishization is an attachment of how the world ought to be, and is questing to
define themselves in certain predefined ways. This is what causes violence, oppression and
prevents liberation when the story we tell doesn't match our reality. That is williams 2000

Even if we include and use western ideals while reading Buddhism that is key to
effectuating real and helpful change in the world
David R. Loy, professor, writer, and teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. A New Buddhist Path;
Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World. 2015 p. 105-107

To UNPACK Gary Snyders insight: the highest ideal of the Western tradition has been the concern to restructure our
societies so that they become more socially just. The most important goal for Buddhism is to awaken and (to use the Zen
phrase) realize ones true nature, which puts an end to dukkha especially that associated with the delusion of a separate
self. Today it has become more obvious that we need both of these aspirations, not just because these ideals complement
each other, but because each project needs the other. The Western conception of justice largely originates with the
Abrahamic traditions, particularly the Hebrew prophets, who fulminated against oppressive rulers for aficting the poor and
powerless. Describ ing Old Testament prophecy, Walter Kaufmann writes that no other sacred scripture contains books
that speak out against social injustice as eloquently, unequivocally, and sensitively as the books of Moses and some of the
prophets. Is there a Buddhist equivalent? Although the doctrine of karma understands something like justice as an
impersonal moral law built into the fabric of the cosmos, historically karma has functioned differently from the Abrahamic
version. Combined with the doctrine of rebirth (a corollary, since evil people sometimes pros per in this life) and the
belief that each of us is now experiencing the consequences of actions in previous lifetimes, the implication seems to be that
we do not need to be concerned about pursuing justice, because sooner or later everyone gets What they deserve. In
practice, this has often encouraged passivity and acceptance of ones situation, rather than a commitment to promote social
justice. Does the Buddhist emphasis on dukkha provide a better parallel with the Western conception of justice? Dukkha is
unquestionably Buddhisms most important concept: according to the Pali Canon, Gautama Buddha said that what he had to
teach was dukkha and how to end it. The bestknown summary of the Buddhas teachings, the four Noble Truths, is all
about dukkha, its cause, its extinction, and how to extinguish it. Historically, Asian Buddhism has focused on individual
dukkha and personal karma, a limitation that may have been necessary in autocratic polities that could and sometimes did
repress Buddhist institutions. Today, however, the globalization of democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech opens
the door to new ways of respond ing to social causes of dukkha, and a more socially engaged Buddhism has been
developing. On the other side, the Abrahamic emphasis on justice, in combi nation vvith the classical Greek realization
that society is a collective construct that can be restructured, has resulted in our modern concern to reform political and
economic institutions. This has involved, most obviously, a variety of human rights movements. As valuable as these social
reforms have been, as much as they have achieved, the limitations of such an institutional approach, by itself, are becoming
evident. Even the best possible economic and political system cannot be expected to function well if the people Within that
system remain motivated by greed, aggression, and delusionthe, three res or three poisons that Buddhism
encourages us to transform into their more positive counterparts: generosity, lovingkindness, and Wisdom. Today, in our
globalizing world, the modern Western focus on social transformation encounters the traditional Buddhist focus on
individual awakening. Their encounter helps us understand why each has had limited success, and challenges us with new
possibilities. We need to see why they need each other in order to actualize their own ideals. Some of the implications of
that interdependence will be explored by looking at our present economic and ecological situation from a Buddhist as well
as a Western perspective.

Oppression Solvency take out and disad- The kritik clings to the capitalism is bad story, and
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

when confronted with the story being inaccurate the alternative just defends the validity of
the story even more this causes oppression and war to take place That is tarrant

Long loy disad-- The kritik establishes a world of good versus evil-- The good anti captialist
against the evil capitalist- This approach to politics has multiple impacts

A- Can't solve-- gives mulitple examples including the Soviet Union and China.

B- Causes war-- The only way to know one is good is by fighting evil this is the basis for
invasions and wars-- this was the logic that caused Vietnam

C- Turns their Value to life arguments when establishing that evil individuals are different
than us and therefore worthy of expulsion requires demonization to the point where one no
longer feels as if they are worthy of respect-- Even if they make a Value to life claim it is
dircectly turned by the aff.

Transcendental ethic disad The kritik assumes that they can create a perfect world in the
future by focusing on the evils of captialism this causes people to ignore the problems
occuring right here and now-- This ensures extinction as per the first Loy 15

Burn out disad- The alternative clings to creating a new world that isn't capitalist-- This
won't happen quickly or overnight-- when the alternative expects things to change and they
don't it causes despair and burn out prevents long term solvency-- that is the second Loy 15

Alternative Can't solve liberation They focus on material conditions being key to happiness
and contentment in life-- this will never work because it doesn't deal with our root of
suffering and tries to focus on material conditions that can't acompany us when we die-- it
is more important how we relate to death than whether it will be nuclear-- this is Jones and
Chordon explained above

No link to apathy arguments Aff doesn't abide by a western meditation the answer of MU
produces a nondualistic way to engage politics-- this is described by the second Loy 15

Redistribution of resources won't solve the impacts the impacts are created by a static and
seperate sense of self
David R. Loy, professor, writer, and teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. A New Buddhist Path;
Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World. 2015 p. 120-123

Notice that this Buddhist perspective does not mention distributive justice or any other type of social justice, nor does it
offer an ethical evaluation. The basic problem is delusion rather than injustice or immorality. Yet this approach does not
deny the inequities of our economic system, nor is it inconsistent with an Abrahamic ethical critique. Although an
alternative viewpoint has been added, the ideal of social justice remains very important. What does this imply about our
economic institutions, the structural aspect? The Buddha had little to say about evil per se, but he had a lot to say about the
three roots of evil: greed, aggression, and delusion. When what I do is motivated by any of these three (and they tend to
overlap), I create problems for myself (and often for others too, of course). Yet we not only have individual senses of self,
we also have collective selves: I am a man not a woman, an American not a Chinese, and so forth. Do the problems with the
three poisons apply to collective selves as well? To further complicate the issue, we also have much more powerful
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

institutions than in the Buddhas time. These constitute another type of collective self that often assumes a life of its own, in
the sense that such institutions have their own motivations built into them. Elsewhere I have argued that our present
economic system can be understood as institutionalized greed; that our militarism institutionalizes aggression; and that the
mainstream media institutionalize delusion, because their primary focus is proting from advertising and consumerism,
rather than educating or informing us about what is really happening. If greed, aggression and delusion are the main sources
of evil, and if today they have been institutionalized... well, you can draw your own conclusions. Here lets consider only
the rst poison: how our economic system promotes structural dukkha by institutionalizing greed. One denition of greed is
never enough, something that does not function only personally: corporations are never large enough or protable
enough, the value of their shares is never high enough, our national GDP is never big enough. . .. In fact, we cannot imagine
what big enough might be. It is built into these systems that they must keep growing, or else they tend to collapse.
Consider, in particular, the stock market, high temple of the economic process. On the one side are many millions of
investors, most anonymous and mostly unconcerned about the activities of the corporations they invest in, except for their
protability and its effects on share prices, In many cases investors do not even know where their money is invested, thanks
to mutual funds. Such an attitude is not disreputable, of course: on the contrary, investment is a highly respectable endeavor,
and the most successful investors are idolized (Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha) On the other side of the stock market,
however, the desires and expectations of those millions of investors become transformed into an impersonal and unremitting
pressure for growth and increased prot ability that every CEO must respond to, and preferably in the short run
Contemplate, as an unlikely example, the CEO of a large transnational corporation, who one morning wakes up to the
imminent dangers of climate change and wants to do everything he (it is usually a he) can to address this challenge. If what
he tries to do threatens corporate profits, however, he is likely to lose his job. And if that is true for the CEO, how much
more true it is for everyone else further down the corporate hierarchy Corporations are legally chartered so that their rst
responsibility is not to their employees or Customers, nor to other members of the societies they are part of, nor to the
ecosystems of the earth, but to those who own them, who with very few exceptions are concerned primarily about return on
investmenta preoccupation, again, that is not only socially acceptable but often lauded. Who is responsible for this
collective xation on growth? The important point is that the system has attained not only a life of its own but its own
motivations, quite apart from the motivations of the individuals who work for it and who will be replaced if they do not
serve those institutional motivations. And all of us participate in this process in one way or another, as workers, consumers,
investors, pensioners, and so forth, usually with little if any sense of personal responsibility for the collective result Any
awareness of what is actually happening tends to be diffused in the impersonal anonymity of this economic process
Everyone is just doing their job, playing their role, In short, any genuine solution to the economic crisis will require more
than some redistribution of wealth, necessary as that is, and it is not enough to append a concern for social justice to
Buddhist teachings. Applying a Buddhist perspective to structural dukkha implies an alternative evaluation of our economic
situation, which focuses on the consequences of individual and institutionalized delusion: the dukkha of a sense of a self
that feels separate from others, whose sense of lack consumerism exploits and institutionalizes into economic structures that
assume a life of their own Although distributive justice remains important, in terms of equal opportunity and more equitable
distribution, we must also nd ways to address the personal dukkha built into consumerism and the structural dukkha built
into institutions that have their own motivations. It has become obvious that what is benecial for those institutions (in the
short run) is very different from what is benecial for the rest of us and for the earths ecosystems.

The kritik can't solve and prevents liberation The notion of a static ego I self prevents the
fight against capitalism from being effective, the problem is how we relate to the world, we
seek to fill our lack not with material goods but symbols that are an attempt to prove our
seperate sense of self to be true--
David Loy, Professor in the Faculty of International Studies at Bunkyo University, Japan. A Buddhist History of the West;
Studies in Lack. 2002 p. 77-79

THE MIDAS TOUCH If there is to be a psychoanalysis of money it must start from the hypothesis that the money complex
has the essential structure of religionor, if you will, the negation of religion, the demonic. The psychoanalytic theory of
money must start by establishing the proposition that money is, in Shakespeares words, the visible god; in Luthers
words, the God of this world (Norman Brown 24041). What I want to see above all is that this remains a country where
someone can always get rich. (Ronald Reagan, quotedin Laphani 8) One of Schopenhauers aphorisms says that money is
human happiness in abstracto, consequently he who is no longer capable of happiness in concreto sets his whole heart on
money. The difficulty is nor with money as a convenient medium of exchange but with the money complex that arises when
money becomes desirable in itself. That desire is readily understandable when money truly improves the quality of ones
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

life, yet what about those many situations when pursuing money impairs it? How does this happen? Given our sense of lack,
how could this not happen? Money is the purest symbol because there is nothing in reality that corresponds to it
(Norman Brown 271).The coins and paper bills we pass around are in themselves worthless, just as Midas discovered about
gold in itself. You cant eat or drink them, plant them or sleep under them. At the same time, money has more value than
anything else because it is value. It can transform into everything because it is how we define value. The psychological
problem occurs when we become preoccupied with the desire for such pure value. To the extent that life becomes focused
around the desire for money, an ironic reversal takes place between means and ends: everything else is devalued in order to
maximize a worthless-in-itself goal. because our desires have become fetishized into that symbol. The crux of the matter is
the general fact that money is everywhere conceived as purpose, and countless things that are really ends in themselves are
thereby degraded to mere means. But since money itself is an omnipresent means, the various elements of our Existence are
thus placed in an all-embracing teleological nexus in which no element is either the first or the last (Siminel 1907, 431).
When everything has its price and everyone his price, the numerical representation of the symbol system becomes more
importantmore realthan the things represented. We end up enjoying not a worthwhile job well done, or meeting a
friend, or hearing a bird, but a bigger number on a bank statement. To find the method in this madness we must relate it to
the senseofselfs sense of lack, whose festering keeps us from being able to fully enjoy that birdsong (just this!), etc.
Since we no longer believe in any original sin that could be expiated, what can it be that is wrong with us and how can we
hope to get over it? Today the most popular explanationour contemporary original sinis that we dont have enough
money. The origin of money is puzzling: How did the transition from barter ever occur? How were human cravings
fetishized into pieces of metal? The answer that Norman Brown provides is elegant because it reveals as much about the
character of money now: money was and still is literally sacred. It has long been known that the first markets were sacred
markets, the first banks were temples, the first to issue money were priests or priest-kings (Norman Brown 246). Simmel
also noticed that Greek money was originally sacred, because it emanated from the priesthood (Simmel 1907, 187). The
English word derives from thefirst Roman mint, in 269 u.c., in the temple of Juno Moneta, whose coins carried her effigy.
The first coins were minted and distributed bytemples because they were medallions inscribed with the gods image and
embodying the gods protective power. Containing such mana theywere naturally in demand, not because you could buy
things with them but vice versa: since they were popular you could exchange them for other things. The consequence of this
was that (as Becker puts it) now the cosmic powers could be the property of everyman, without even theneed to visit
temples: you could now traffic in immortality in themarketplace. This eventually led to the emergence of a new kind
ofpeople who based the value of their livesand their hope of ending their lackon a new cosmology focused on coins. In
this way a new meaning system evolved, which our present economic system continuesto make more and more the meaning
system. Money becomes thedistilled value of all existence . . . a single immortality symbol, a readyway of relating the
increase of oneself to all the important objects andevents of ones world (1975, 76, 8081). In Buddhist terms: Beyond its
usefulness as a medium of exchange, money has become our most popular way of accumulating Being, to cope with our
gnawing intuition that we do not really exist. Suspecting that the senseof--self is groundless, we used to go to temples and
churches to ground ourselves in God; now we work to secure ourselves financially. Because the true meaning of this
meaning system is unconscious, we end up, as usual, paying a heavy price for our ignorance. The value we place on money
rebounds back against us: the more we value it, the more we find it used (and use it ourselves) to evaluate us. In The Hour
of Our Death Aries turns our usual critique upside down. The modern world is not really materialistic, for things have
become means of production, or objects to be consumed or devoured. They no longer constitute a treasure. . . . Scientists
and philosophers may lay claim to an understanding of matter, but the ordinary man in his daily life no more believes in
matter than he believes in God. The man of the Middle Ages believed in matter and in God, in life and in death, in the
enjoyment of things and their renunciation (13637). Then our problem is that we no longer believe in things but in
symbols, hence our lfe has passed over into these symbols and their manipulationonlyto find ourselves manipu lated by
the symbols we take so seriously, objectified in our objectifications. We are preoccupied not so much with what money can
buy as with its power and statusnot with the materiality of an expensive car, but with what owning a Lexus says about us.
Modern man would not be able to endure real economic equality, says Becker, because he has no faith in self transcendent,
otherworldly immortality symbols; visible physical worth is the only thing he has to give him eternal life: Or to give us real
Being that can maybe fill up our sense of lack. In such fashion our spiritual hunger to become real, or at least to occupy a
special place in the cosmos, has been reduced to having a bigger car than our neighbors. We cant get rid of the sacred,
because we cant get rid of our ultimate concerns, except by repressing them, whereupon we become even more
compulsively driven by them (Becker 85).

The approach of the alternative ensures failure-- personal change is a pre condition to solving
the impacts--- the politics of good versus evil results in genocide and oppression
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

David R. Loy, professor, writer, and teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. A New Buddhist Path;
Enlightenment, Evolution, and Ethics in the Modern World. 2015 p. 108-113

Although many people in the modern world no longer believe in an Abrahamic God, moralitythe struggle between good
and evil arguably remains our favorite story. It is the main theme in most popular novels, lms, and television shows
(think of James Bond, Star Wars, Harry Potter, not to mention every detective novel and TV crime series). From a Buddhist
perspective, however, this preoccupation with good vs. evil is. . .well, both good and evil: theres something wonderful
about it, but also something very problematic. Lets start with the problem. There is no good and evil, there is only power,
and those too weak to seek it." LORD VOLDEMORT The duality between good and evil is a prime example of the
difculty that often occurs with dualistic concepts, when we think in terms of bipolar opposites such as high and low, big
and small, light and dark, etc. Although those particular examples are usually innocuous, other instances are more
problematical because we want one pole and not the other. Yet, because the meaning of each is the opposite of the other (we
do not really know what high means unless we know what low means), we cannot have one without the other. Although
this point may seem quite abstract, its true not only logically but also psychologically. If, for example, it is really important
for you to live a pure life (however you understand purity), you will inevitably be preoccupied with (avoiding) impurity.
Genuine purity of mind is a state beyond purity and impurity. CHAN MASTER HUI HA! The relationship between good
and evil may be the most problematical example of dualistic thinking, because their interdependence means that we do not
know what good is until we determine what evil is (good requires avoiding evil) and that we feel good about ourselves when
we are struggling against that evilan evil outside ourselves, of course. Hence inquisitions, witchcraft and heresy trials,
and, most recently, the War on Terror. What was the difference between Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush? They were
not only polar opposites but mirror images of each other: both ghting the same holy war of Good against Evil, each leading
the forces of goodness in a struggle against the forces of evil, because that is what the forces of good are supposed to do.
Once something has been identied as evil, there is no need to understand it or accommodate it; our task is to destroy it.
Youre either with us or against us. GEORGE W. BUSH The War on Terror illustrates the tragic paradox: historically,
one of the main causes of evil has been our attempts to destroy evil, or what we have understood as evil. What was Hitler
trying to do? Eliminate the evil elements that pollute the world: Jews, homosexuals, Roma gypsies, and so forth. Stalin
attempted to do the same with landowning peasants, as did Mao Zedong with Chinese landlords. Lest one conclude that this
is a fascist and communist problem, we should also remember the 196566 massacre of up to a million leftists by the
Suharto regime in IndonesiaWith the covert assistance of the US. government. Its not enough to hate your enemy. You
have to understand how the two of you bring each other to deep completion. DON DE LI LLO , Underworld There is,
however, also a very positive side to the duality between good and evil, which brings us back to the Hebrew prophets. One
of the earliest, Amos, castigates those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and crush the needy;
prayers and sacrices cannot make up for such evil deeds. Isaiah complains about those who write oppressive laws, to turn
aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you
may make the orphans your prey. Both speak on behalf of God, and both address themselves primarily to rulers who abuse
their power. Of course many more examples could be cited from the Bible: speaking truth to power, the prophets called for
social justice for the oppressed, who suffer from what might be called social dukkha. THE OTHER SOURCE of modern
Western civilization is classical Greece, which discovered the momentous distinction between physis (the natural world)
and nomos (social convention). In effect, this was the realization that whatever is socially constructed can be reconstructed:
we can reorganize our own societies and in that way (attempt to) determine our own collective destiny. This was another
important aspect of the Axial revolution that occurred in the middle of the rst millennium BCE. The Axial Age took form
as new religions in India, China, and the Middle East, but in Greece it inspired the beginnings of philosophy, science, and
this new perspective on how we live together. As mentioned earlier, preAxial Age cultures such as the Mesopotamians,
Egyptians, and Aztecs generally assumed that their hierarchical social structures were as natural as their local ecosystems.
We consider the Greeks humanists because their discovery about social convention challenged the archaic religious
worldview that embedded the traditional political order within the larger natural order of things. Now humans could
consciously determine for themselves how to live together. An unusual set of cultural conditions encouraged this
development. Consistent with Homers detached, ironical attitude toward the gods, most of the Greek citystates had no
sacred scripture or powerful priesthood. Their merchant eets sparked a great colonizing movement that exposed the Greeks
to very different cultures, which encouraged relativism and skepticism toward their own myths. And unlike Moses and
Mohammed, Solon did not get his tablets from a deity when he gave Athens new laws. With the help of some remarkable
leaders, Athens was able to reorganize itself more or less peacefully. Cleisthenes replaced the four traditional, family-based
tribes of Athens with ten districts, supplanting kinship identity with ones area of residence. Pericles extended the access of
humble citizens to public ofce. The result was a provocative experiment in direct democracy, although a very limited one
by todays standardswomen and slaves did not qualify. Not everyone liked democracy. Plato never forgot what happened
to Socrates, and offered more elitist plans to restructure the Greek citystate in two of his dialogues, the Republic and the
Johnson County Debate 2012 [Insert Topic Here]

Laws. Such alternative visions nevertheless presupposed the same distinction between physis and names. The various
revolutions that for better and worse have reconstructed our modern worldEnglish, American, French, Russian, Chinese,
etc.all took for granted such an understanding: if a political regime is unjust and oppressive, it should be challenged,
because social structures are collective human creations that can be recreated. Bringing together the Hebrew concern for
social justice with the Greek realization that society can be restructured has resulted in the highest ideal of the modern West,
actualized in reform and revolutionary movements, democratic government, human rights, etc.in short, social progress.
We are all too aware of the shortcomings of this progress, but our concern with those shortcomings itself testies to our
social justice principles, which we understand to be universal but are nonetheless historically conditioned and not to be
taken for granted. Of course, even with the best ideals (what might be called our collective intentions), our societies have
not become as socially just as most of us would like, and in some ways they are becoming more unjust. An obvious
economic example is the gap between rich and poor in the United States, and in much of the rest of the world as well, a
disparity that is not only obscenely large but increasing. How shall we understand this discrepancy between ideal and
reality? One obvious reply is that our economic system, as it presently operates, is still unjust because wealthy peeple and
powerful corporations manipulate our political systems, for their own selfcentered and short-sighted benet. So we need
to keep working for a more equitable economic ' system, and for a democratic process free of such distortions. I would not
challenge that explanation, but by itself is it sufcient? Is the basic difculty that our economic and political institutions are
not structured well enough to avoid such manipulations, or might it be the case that they cannot be structured well enough
in other words, that we cannot rely only on an institutional solution to structural injustice? Is it possible to create a social
order so perfect that it will function . well regardless of the personal motivations of the people so ordered, or do we also
need to nd ways to address those motivations? The Greek experiment with democracy failed for the same reasons that our
modern experiment with democracy is in danger of failing: unless social reconstruction is accompanied by personal
reconstruction, democracy merely empowers the egoself. Insofar as I am still motivated by greed, ill will, and delusion,
my freedom is likely to make things worse. So long as the illusion of a discrete self, separate from others, prevails,
democracy simply provides different types of opportu nities for individuals to take advantage of other individuals.
Athenians became aware of this problem quite early. According to Herbert Mullers Freedom in the Ancient World, Greek
individualism was rooted in the Homeric tradition of personal fame and glory and was nourished by habitual competition,
as much in art and athletics as in business, but everywhere off the battleeld with little team play. This individualism was
tempered by little sense of strictly moral responsibility, or in particular of altruism. It soon became obvious that private
appetites were corrupting the democratic process. Demosthenes lamented that politics had become the path to riches, for
individuals no longer placed the state before themselves but viewed it as another way to promote their own personal
advantage. Platos Republic argues that the democratic personality fails because it lacks a coherent organizing principle and
yields to the strongest pressures of the momenta recipe for interpersonal as well as intrapersonal strife. Sound familiar?
Perhaps this also helps us to understand why so many political revolutions have ended so badly, with one gang of thugs
replaced by a different gang of thugs. Suppose, for example, that I am a revolutionary leader who successfully overthrows
an oppressive regime. If I have not also worked on transforming my own motivationsmy greed, aggression, and
delusionI will be sorely tempted to take per sonal advantage of my new situation, inclined to see those who disagree
with me as enemies to be purged, and (the numberone ego problem?) disposed to see the solution to social problems in
my superior judgment and the imposition of my decisions. Unsurprisingly, such motivations are unlikely to result in a
society that is truly just. And the history of Athens reminds usas if we need to be remindedthat these distor tions are
not conned only to authoritarian rulers. If we can never have a social structure so good that it obviates the need for people
to be good (in Buddhist terms, to make efforts not to be motivated by greed, aggression, and delusion), then our modern
emphasis on social transformationrestructuring institutions to make them more justis necessary but not adequate by
itself. That brings us to the Buddhist focus on personal transformation.

And, Your generic buddhism links don't apply - We dont have to defend all of budhism only
the thoughts we portray in the round
Thubten Chodron, studied and practiced Buddhism in India and Nepal since 1975and resident teacher at Dharma
Friendship Foundation in Seattle. Buddhism for Beginners 2001 p. 17

Must we be a Buddhist to practice what the Buddha taught? No. The Buddha gave a wide variety of instructions, and
if some of them help us live to better, to solve our problems and become kinder, then we are free to practice them.
There is no need to call ourselves Buddhists. The purpose of the Buddha's teachings is to benefit us, and if putting
some of them into practice helps us live more peacefully with ourselves and others, that is what's important.