Whether it be substance or essence, ens or esse, being or becoming, universal or particular- a great fixation in western philosophy has been with ‘being’ as the problem to be explained. Not that such an approach is absent from humanity in Eastern or South Asia. Nor that the ways in which this problem has been considered in the east have been absent from the west. Nor that the designations of east and west are anything other than arbitrary, relative, and when it comes to common knowledge, often just plain wrong or ill informed.
In a very, very truncated and crude rendering, it could be said that positive “being” was privileged in the west, while negative or non-being was considered of great importance in the east. As early as the Vedas, the fear of restriction, or of being bound and thus afflicted was in evidence as a central concern in South Asia, taking precedence over “beginnings”, while certainty in “whatness” or “howness” questions came to the fore as a concern in the west.
No doubt the respective material conditions of human societies gave direction and emphasis to these features. Together, as filling out a wider vista of human consciousness, they should be regarded as a unification through diversification of expression of the same root human experience. That whatever my own disposition may be that I favour some central interpretations historically more developed in the east should not be taken as anything more than that I find affinity for them. Neither do I think it should mean that questions are simply settled by one system of belief to the discrediting of the other and never the twain should mix. That would be quite anti-realistic.
However I am sensitive, or rather I do react emotively to certain problems which have become super-emphasised in modern culture, particularly in the west. Not that I don’t recognise the conditions that underlie these problems. Certainly not. But I do think there are helpful and probably harmful ways with which these underlying conditions are addressed. The emphasis on “identity” and “we, them, our characteristics and culture vs theirs” is one such unhelpful reaction to problems of underlying, economic conditions (quite ironically given the characterisation of east and west which I have been using as simply expedient or unavoidable terms).
You could probably see here the way in which Buddhist concepts of “no-self” and “impermanence”, even out of a purely Buddhist context and in a very mundane application could be of great benefit. Again, it must be stressed that the negative-emphasis in the characterisation of being, or non-being, emptiness, nothingness in various schools of Buddhist philosophy is not nihilism. In fact the very duality of nihilism/eternalism was an explicit concern (explicit in it’s rejection) of Buddhist thought very early on. Controversially, speculatively, without much evidence (even presumptuously!) I characterise early Buddhism as kind of “advaita vedanta” for the masses (given the caste strictures and the prohibitions of orthodox religion at the time and in the vicinity of the Buddha). That’s a purely personal whimsy. Buddhism in fact developed quite different answers (though perhaps not so different in effect) to Advaita Vedanta.
Nevertheless, binding, fixing, imposing, grasping, rejecting, ignoring when applied to human beings, and indeed other sentient beings, in short – objectifying and manipulating sentient beings, and not the material1 conditions of society which are indeed practically addressed through such objectification and intentional shaping is something I am sensitive to the dangers and consequent suffering of. And ‘identity’ culture is about as near to perfect breeding conditions for that kind of danger and suffering as could be readily recognised.
as in, material resources, necessities, wealth etc; I don’t mean ‘material’ as the abstract “matter”