Mudita

[Martha]

Delighting in someone else’s good fortune

Recently, I was watching the reaction of Simon Cowell, the UK pop music mogul behind America’s and UK’s X Factor, to a young kid, who’d just got through the first round of auditions and was overcome with emotion. Both his fellow judges were whooping it up, obviously enjoying the young man’s moment almost as much as he was, but Cowell was sat stoically, without no hint of expression. An interviewer who’d observed his reaction, inquired later, “Aren’t you happy for him?”
Cowell replied, with characteristic bluntness: “No. In Britain, we’re not happy for anyone.”

I live in Britain and can attest that isn’t exactly true, although the media’s fascination with gossip, particularly gossip about celebrity calamity, appears to stoke the collective appetite over here for schaudenfraude. I recently looked up the word schaudenfraude only to find that there are words for it in every language. Delight in someone else’s misfortune. A seemingly universal emotion. Somehow we think we win if someone else loses.

It also started me thinking the other day about what a community would look like if we all lived according to the new science, if we did not delight in winning at someone else’s expense. I’d been in conversation with Dean Radin, and we were discussing how the great shift in our paradigm will occur.

According to our current world view, largely derived in part by the ideas of Charles Darwin, a community is a collection of separate people all competing for too little. On an individual scale, his theory of evolution describes our lives as being little more than an evolutionary accident. According to neo-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins, we are essentially ‘survival machines’ — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes, which control us, a bit like a Chicago thug mowing down anything in his path.

This bleak scientific story of the individual gets mirrored in the structures we create around us. From the science, we believe that life is not about sharing and interdependence. Life is about winning, getting there first. Be the best or don’t survive. Eat or be eaten. And if you do manage to survive, you are on your own at the top of the evolutionary tree.

If someone experiences good fortune, somehow there is less out there for you.

Unlike the world view of Newton or Darwin, the new ideas being espoused in the new science offer a world vision that is life-enhancing. These are ideas that can empower us, with their implications of order and control. We are not simply accidents of nature. There is purpose and unity to our world and our place within it, and we have an important say in it. What we do and think matters – indeed, is critical in creating our world. Human beings are no longer separate from each other. It is no longer us and them. Indeed, there is no us and them because there is no them. Most essentially, we are all part of a unified whole.

One way to extend our own personal transformation, and to adopt the tenets of the new science, is to begin to transform our communities so that they reflect the unity that is our birthright.

Our schools, our work places, our economics, our local and state communities, and even our countries can be re-structured to honour the collective whole, rather than always competitively highlighting the achievements of the individual. This isn’t communism, more a ‘conscious capitalism’.

Our children can be taught to understand that extended human potential – tapping into The Field – is a natural extension of their abilities.

To change a community is no easy matter. But in the past, politicians have attempted change from the top down – as a dictate.

In the new model, I believe that our individual transformation will occur from the bottom up, as individuals change and then slowly spread the word. The key is not attempting change in an antagonistic way, but through individual transformation and education. You begin with yourself, and then perhaps your own group of likeminded individuals, then reach out to other groups in the community. Once your group is firmly established you can begin to invite different organizations — educators, the police force, politicians — to discover the new science with you and the implications of these new discoveries on the structure of society. If we are all a unity subatomically, does it make sense to create a society based on competition?

The new world philosophy would examine how to live in unity. This concept would need to run deeply through all our current structures — chiefly our current economic model.

Why do we have a current structure based on survival of the craftiest? Why do we still have people who struggle to pay their bills or feed their children when so many people in the west are glutted with an absurd amount of excess? How can we create abundance for all? The model must go on to examine the laws we create, the social structures, the schools, and finally our attitudes to each other.

But mostly it begins with our attitudes. Only when we can replace schadenfreude – delight in someone else’s misfortune —with the Buddhist idea of mudita, or happiness in someone’s good fortune, can we move forward.

Building your community of one

Changing your community begins with you and your world view. Here are a few ideas.

• Begin with your own internal model of community unity — a society in which all members are working toward collective and unified good. Once you truly understand that you are all one, the decisions you have to make must always be for the good of all, and not simply for the people you like, or who think the way you do.
• Try to frame every decision in terms of its impact on your community and environment as a whole. If you aid your extension on your house, will it beautify the community as a whole? Does your work enhance or detract from your community? Are you educating your children to ‘give back’ or just to ‘take’?
• Invite different groups — doctors, members of your local police force, educators – to visit a group of you with similar ideas about the new science. Explore with them ideas of working as a unity.
• Apportion a certain number of hours per week with your Living The Field group toward working on improving your community. Volunteer to work in your local school, or visit other companies based in your community, exploring these ideas and how organizations can adopt them.
• Study yourself and your needs. How much do you really need? How many new gadgets, how many new cars? What else can you do with your money?
• Refuse ever to be competitive with people in your community. Does it really matter if someone makes more money than you do? Chances are, they still face similar challenges to you. Also refuse to engage in schadenfreude – delight in someone else’s misfortune — and replace it with on the Buddhist idea of mudita, or happiness in someone’s good fortune.
• Consider tithing. Donate a portion of each of your income to your community, even if it is $1 a month.