i've always felt a great ambivalence about Buddhist philosophy. perhaps it makes sense in India, where the caste system defines social position. but it a capitalist system, I feel its dangerous.

define the case in which other peoples issues do not affect you.

for instance, if you see trolls harassing a person, and you are a witness and they know it, your choice of not becoming involved is complicit or passive acceptance of their actions. how does this affect you? perhaps the next person they attack is your friend. is it still not your problem?

when does a problem cease to be of consequence to us? only when we have no power to change it. many people will take the stance that global warming isn't their problem. my opinion is that kind of detachment is a form of avoidance. the refusal of social responsibility. does detachment teach us a lack of ethics?

sure detachment is an effective way of not allowing ourselves to be hampered with emotions which could interfere with day to day life. but to what end? a businessman will say that being caught up in emotional issues distracts you from work. whose work?

if its work that you do for yourself, fair enough. work for your company? that's someone else's self interest talking. businesses want workers to become detached so they won't complain or object, instead of allowing us to matter as people. it's easier to fire someone if you dont need to care about their well being. its also useful to be a detached citizen, because then you dont need to care about the outcome of elections, the war in the middle east, or the economy. if you are detached from the outcome, will you bother to take action when its' needed? .

there is a fine line between feeling your emotions and letting them go as if they did not matter, and allowing them to tell you something. thus fear is often a sign that something is unsafe. anger is your emotions telling you that a boundary has been crossed or something is threatening your sense of what is right.

the problem we have in western society is that we have been taught to suppress or discount negative emotions when they are inconvenient to others rather than express them. wouldn't it be better to be aware of emotions, and let them direct our actions and fuel out passions? if we are constantly letting our emotions go as if they dont matter, that becomes a message to ourselves that our boundaries don't matter, that our values don't matter.

i see the detachment as useful and an effective method of dealing with emotions short term so we can do what we need to do. however we shouldn't have to become detached at the convenience of others, because they dont wish to deal with problems that will interfere with their agenda.

the trick to detachment is knowing when emotions are constructive vs inhibiting, and allowing ourselves the liberty of choosing what is important to us.