Anthropology

Around 1969 a friend of mine entered UCLA as a Freshman and eventually got a Master's degree there too by 1976. One day I was waiting in the UCLA library because I had driven up for us to climb some mountain or go rock climbing with me friend or to meet some girls or all of the above and I started reading about Confucius in China. One thing that he said stuck in my head. It was "Man should study man before he studies spirit".

As I read why he thought this was true I found I agreed with him. My parents had been Mystical Christian ministers of  church in Los Angeles when I was 6 to 12 years old and so I had seen what the excesses of religion actually did to people who often were sort of ignorant in their lives. Most of these people hadn't been to college (but a few of them had). And those who had been to college often their lives tended to go better or were at least more disciplined and made more sense than many other people's live.

So, I saw first hand people saying things like, "I'm just going to pray rather than going to a doctor". And 3 months to 6 months to 1 year or 2 they were often dead or dying because of this. My mother officiated at all their funerals. I think during this period of time she did about 300 to 500 funerals where people would have their bodies put on ice for 3 days or more and then they would be cremated after all the life had permanently withdrawn. So, I saw first hand all the death and carnage in people's lives. Many people were vegetarian in our church and most didn't know how to eat enough protein to stay alive. Some didn't understand that organic Baked potatoes often are the basis of being a good vegetarian and how you have to eat the peel to get everything you need to survive like prisoners did in Ireland when they found out that you can actually live on nothing but Baked potatoes and nothing else but water in the mid 1800s.

So, "Man should study man before he studies spirit" made logical sense to me after all the excesses leading to insanity and death that I saw growing up as a minister's son. (actually two ministers son).

So, I saw what being religiously unbalanced as all about and I saw also what a college education while being spiritual often did to make people both educated and religious and how successful some of these people were in every way in their lives.

So, people who said stuff like, "If you go to college you will be too good for our church and become a Pinko College student and will leave the church" I just saw as a form of ignorance. Because without "man studying man" mostly what I saw religions doing to people was driving them insane and into suicidal behavior.

So, from my personal experience being religious really wasn't any different than becoming an alcoholic or drug addict in many ways. So, without "man studying man before he studies spirit" mostly what this brought was the end of people's rationality and often their deaths.

So, spirituality and religion was only useful if you were balanced and practical to begin with. Otherwise, religion was just another fairy tale that might end people's lives.

In 1988 my wife and I got interested in Anthropology because we saw the Tibetan Culture being destroyed in Tibet by the overwhelming nature of Chinese Culture there much like Native American cultures were overwhelmed by Small pox and Christian Culture from Europe coming across from Europe and into American in the 1800s.

So, our idea at this time was to become anthropologists to help the best parts of Tibetan Culture survive by documenting it because we saw it very valuable to the survival of life on earth.

Tibetan Culture and Tibetan Buddhist Culture is very pragmatic in a fairly balanced way because if people aren't practical when they live at 8000 feet in elevation to 12,000 feet in elevation or more basically they are dead. So, the practicality of this culture we felt was important to the ongoing survival of the human race here on earth.

Even though my now ex-wife and I broke up in 1994 and this dream wasn't fulfilled by us and we got divorced that didn't stop the truth of what we believed then as being true. And I still think this is a very worthwhile endeavor for people interested in the long term survival of the human race here on earth.