Decision-making is a must-ethics in a world that is so ambiguous. Our educational system is biased in favor of veridical decisions, decisions geared … - Antonio T. de Nicolás

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Decision-making is a must-ethics in a world that is so ambiguous. Our educational system is biased in favor of veridical decisions, decisions geared to agreements between subject and object, logical platitudes, "finding the truth"… But there are no mechanisms in education to teach anyone decision based on multiple ambiguous situations, self-centered decisions, "what is best from among the possible," in the concrete situation facing the subject. For these kinds of decisions new technologies need to be embodied by a subject and also by the guide, guru, spiritual director that supervises the spiritual development of the subject. This is the lesson of Indic texts. Arjuna in the Gita collapses in the first chapter unable to make the decision to fight in a very ambiguous -- to him -- situation. Family, friends, are on both sides of the battlefield. Krishna takes him on a journey of communities and acts (yogas) he was familiar with for ten chapters until his whole organism opens and is able to see (chapter eleven) the geometries on which the passage and dissolution of nama-rupa, names and forms, takes place. This is the embodiment of the Avatara in its full manifestation. A man has been able to embody in one life-time the technologies of the present culture to the point of having it constantly present so that when called upon he may make the best decision, from among the possible, for the benefit of all. It is after the realization that the Gita, in chapter twelve, spells out the meaning of the "battle field" as the human body, and of the technologies of decision-making, as the opening of memory, that opens the heart, and opens finally the frontal lobes so that in the end the subject, Arjuna, by habit from the desires of his heart whatever he wants: yatha icchasi tatha kuru (now that you know do as you wish).

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About Antonio T. de Nicolás

Antonio T. de Nicolas is an American scholar, poet and professor of philosophy. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

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Our educational system is biased in favor of veridical decisions, decisions geared to agreements between subject and object, logical platitudes, "finding the truth" … But there are no mechanisms in education to teach any one decision based on multiple ambiguous situations, self-centered decisions, "what is best from among the possible", in the concrete situation facing the subject.' To achieve this, he says, 'new technologies need to be embodied by a subject and also by the guide, guru, spiritual director', so that a person is equipped to make the best choice among the ones available in a practical sense. Thus, the battlefield in the Gita is the human body itself.

Additional quotes by Antonio T. de Nicolás

My conclusions come from the way they handled history in ancient times when those same scholars were called Akkhedians, stole writing from the Phoenicians and rewrote history for everyone else so that their dates would make them be the first to hold knowledge, the One (conceptual) God, and mostly revelation, the prophetic voice. Of course we know all this is wrong, but their attitude has not changed. I was told that it was impossible for a Hindu mythic text to be philosophical for it was not historical and therefore irrational. My answer is that to proclaim one single rationality as RATIONAL is sheer irrationality and conceptual imperialism.

The Savior image [is] the go between God and the sinful race of humans. We know this image also as the scapegoat, and the Substitute King: someone chosen for the occasion to be the victim of the moment for the salvation of the rest of the community. He gains immortal divinity, saves other humans, brings his Father into the scene, his followers name a Church after him and these same followers establish a narrative, a theology, and ethics based on principles of behavior… The room left for individuals to improve their spiritual knowledge in this scheme of Savior/sinner, is not great, we are after all sinners, born in sin, and our individual salvation is only a gift, provided we follow the rules of ethics, and not the result of any superior knowledge of God or deviation from this scheme. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are the followers and founders of the model. God and the rules of ethics come from the outside and their mission in life is to bring all humans to surrender to this model, either through conversion or force. The individual, in this model, is an individual only in name, for after all, individual perfection consists in total surrender to the model, in letting the model become embodied in the subjects in such a way that the model, rather than the individuals, acts through each complying individual… Wherever there is violence the Savior model is at work.

The training for excellence is to practice the embodied technologies of decision-making, the right decisions, the wise decisions, when needed by the present dharma, context, one faces. This is the goal, the ethics of the whole program of the Avatar Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita: to train Arjuna, that fallen and disturbed warrior, to make decisions, the best ones, as needed by his present dharma (his present situation), a battle field. And this is the program of human acting, from the Rig Veda down, that Indic texts propose: an ethics of decision-making as opposed to an ethics of compliance to rules coming from the outside. There is no outside god able to make these pronouncements in Indic texts …

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