Indriyajaya, environmentalism, the trad fallacy and adapting Hinduism for modernity ⭐

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A common mistake I’ve seen from neo-trads is they think the restraints in Hinduism were motivated by “minimizing harm to others” — whereas in reality the motive was always personal discipline.

(The only context where “harm to others” comes up at all is when the “others” is Dharma itself.)

This is a fundamental philosophical point of difference between Hinduism and the Śramaṇa sects:

• Hinduism preaches restraint over the senses as instrumentally valuable for achieving your goals
• Buddhism preaches restraint as an end in itself
• Jainism preaches restraint to avoid harming others

(e.g. to illustrate my point: many such restraints are only imposed on upper-castes. Surely if the goal was to reduce to avoid causing harm to others, then it would not be OK for a śūdra to harm others either. But holding aristocrats to higher standards of personal discipline is perfectly understandable.)

The distinction between between “terminal goals” (“value in itself”) and “instrumental goals” is important because it tells us exactly how to generalize these principles for modernity.

Terminal goals—in Hinduism, artha, kāma, dharma; and all that is encompassed therein—are not subject to change. But instrumental goals are naturally context-dependent, and thus a matter of pragmatism.

Specific examples in reference to restraint:

I’ve debated ?? (????) and others here re: environmentalism, which is an evil misanthropic cult based on the hatred of man and his ability to far advance the world beyond the unrefined form in which it came to him. “But Hinduism condemns wastefulness!”—indeed, so do I! What is condemned is dehātī destructiveness that shows a lack of restraint on your part: like shitting in rivers and murdering squirrels and trashing your grandmother’s garden. This objection has no relevance to consuming the environment for productive enterprises (which you may note the ancient H did a lot of, and there was never any religious objection to it, rather it was celebrated, whether in the burning of the Khāṇḍava forest or the Pallava kings being celebrated as “the destroyers of trees”, or Kautilya prescribing the colonization of wild tracts as the duty of the minister).

Brahmacārya was promoted in antiquity because many elite men had an absolute abundance of women to enjoy (due to widespread acceptance of polygyny and high-end prostitution, and men dying in wars), and could easily become addicted to the amorous pleasures of life. You, a modern man, do not (yet). Have sex.

Similarly for restraints on onion and garlic. With testosterone levels and sperm counts in freefall, you don’t want to suppress libido. Eat all the onion and garlic you can (and eat it raw btw—that and cruciferous vegetables are the absolute S-tier vegetable be it on cancer prevention, heart disease or testosterone, and both should be eaten raw).

But on the other hand, alcohol is more abundant than ever before, and restraints on its consumption are more relevant than ever before.

This “pragmatism on instrumental goals” doesn’t just apply to restraint, of course. I think ?? (a) had written a quite sensible thread once on a similar point wrt the varṇa system.

But I focus on restraint, because that is perhaps the single biggest area where modern H have failed to correctly generalize tradition to modernity. On one hand Indians restrain themselves on stuff it no longer makes sense to; on the other, as ?? (a) often says, modern India is “an assault on the senses”.

Of the latter category, gaudy aesthetics is one example, but there is a far more serious one—which will be the topic of a future post—where items that were once luxury goods became status-markers, leading to their excessive mass-consumption in modernity. Sugar. Ghee. Deep-frying. Refined grains and flours. The failure of the Indian diet.

… continued in: xeet/politics/new-arya-man/diet2.org

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The arguments in this article (“Ecological Consciousness”):

• H will be reincarnated back on earth so we can’t destroy it
• The root dhr- of Dharma means “to sustain”. Wow, look, sustainability!
• Random ref to 5 kośas and claiming they somehow “banish” anthropocentrism
• H pray to the things we use, bc we’re “conscious” about it

This is sort of article that, if written about Xianity, they would immediately recognize as a subversion attempt by libs. Our geniuses do it to ourselves, because they have no real respect for their own religion.

https://x.com/abbajabadabba/status/1845375312462324049

Why not just be honest about the motivations for this kind of thing? It’s the same genre as “OUR R̥ṢIS KNEW QUANTUM PHYSICS!!”

You are so indocrinated by lib ideology you subconsciously view it to be as factual (and therefore as much worth kanging on) as quantum physics.

I’m rarely this harsh on groups like brhat, because at least they’re doing something etc. But distorting the sacred word for some lib approval is contemptible.

… and you won’t even get it. Your worst sin is that you have sold your Dharma for nothing.

https://x.com/ImperiumHindu/status/1845430230594224387

Distorting and lying about the sacred word in service of lib ideology, and romanticizing Indians living in poverty, is liberal subversion.

The only reason I know it isn’t deliberate liberal subversion is that libs would give vastly smarter arguments than “dhr- means sustain!”

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Ok sār then tell me what’s your cope for:

• Kṛṣṇa & Arjuna burning down the Khāṇḍava forest
• Pallava kings being honored as “the destroyers of trees”
• Kautilya saying that it is good to create artificial forests (plantations) that expand replacing wild tracts (7.12, 2.2)
• Kautilya stating that the colonization and improvements of wild tracts is a duty of the minister (8.1, 2.1)