I enjoyed your explanation of intuitive reasoning, fuzzy logic and how the fox sees reality – I think I see (somewhat dimly on my part) where your thoughts are leading and believe we, in the West, need to better understand these concepts.

Most Westerners have little knowledge or understanding of Zen, we’re products of the Enlightenment and the great Judeo-Christian belief in the continuous upward progress of modern civilization. For my part, I support the thoughts and writings of an Australian philosopher, the late David Stove. Stove was a critic and satirist of the Enlightenment and its legacy – he saw the problem as a lack of metes and bounds on the ideas. In other words, the ideas of the Enlightenment provided no inherent method for setting limits on how far society should carry the concepts into reality or how seriously to take the ideas. In the end, the ideas become more real than reality itself.

As each succeeding generation was taught the ideals and concepts born from the Enlightenment, the intellectuals created a fantasy world where the ideas always worked and worked well – if a little was good, then more was even better. For an example of this, our criminal justice concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty was a reaction to a previous era where the courts operated in an arbitrary fashion; wealth and position could determine guilt or innocence. Religion, ethnic origins and race could point to guilt without regard to facts or evidence.

Assumed innocence was a very understandable reaction to past abuses, but the idea was just that, an idea. Often, the individuals charged with crimes were in fact guilty and at other times were, in fact, innocent. The concept of always innocent until proven guilty was an abstraction that grew into a foundational principle and was joined with the concept that all citizens regardless of race, ethnic origin or religion should be treated equally before the law. Over the ensuing centuries, each generation learned the ideas and foundational principles and tried to improve on them.

Today, these over-developed foundational principles and ideas create absurd situations where the innocent remain always innocent despite obvious evidence of guilt. The courts once again operate in an arbitrary fashion which takes no notice of common sense or the concept of protecting society from individuals determined to commit crimes. Allegiance to the concept overrides all other considerations.

We have learned that the law isn’t intended only to protect society from criminals; it’s also intended to protect us from ourselves. Therefore, for example, we’ve abandoned torture to induce confessions, the police can’t execute a child molester on the spot and the courts can no longer meet out harsh sentences like lopping off a thief’s arm. We try very hard not to become as hard and ruthless as the worst criminals we send to prisons.

But, where do we draw the lines between fairness and absurdity? The foundational principles of the Enlightenment provide no advice, no limits on how far we carry the idea. Do we put ourselves in physical danger to prove our loyalty to and love for an abstraction? Do we ignore common sense to free an individual whom we know preys on the most vulnerable and innocent among us – and for the trivial reason that the criminal’s confession was thrown out due to a technical irregularity?

As you said, with us it’s always binary or linear logic. It’s either Justice or Injustice for example, without a means or even a desire to see all the various shades of gray. Perhaps Zen (which I don’t understand) is saying we can never develop such abilities; we’ll never logically determine how to protect ourselves from those who love intellectual abstractions for their own sake and value them above the welfare of others. Perhaps Zen says it’s absurd to try or think we can ever know anything with absolute certainty.

As to foxes, bear with me for a while. I am not dealing with zoology here, but with Zen. Western intelligent order is breaking down not because of some fault in our reasoning, but because of the disruption and suspension of our personal and collective survival instincts that, in turn, has given rise to the self-destructive reasoning. The fox is a metaphor for the path of instinctive wisdom, free from the mind pollution that washes over us from practically all contemporary Western societal institutions.

We are operating in a universe of binary values, e.g. Racism or NoRacism, Privilege or Equality. We have decided that NoRacism and Equality are the good values, and are doing everything to tear down and suppress their converses. But reality is not binary. It works by fuzzy logic – which predictably, the Japanese have bought, in the realm of engineering, from its American inventor after he found no buyers here. The fox will bring some fuzzy logic into the issues we ponder here.

Indeed, our mainstream religious denominations have failed us in coping with social reality, but it's complicated and space does not permit here. For a great example, google Brussels + churches + Muslim asylum and find out how Catholic churches in the capital of Belgium (and the EU) have turned themselves into sanctuary zones for illegal Muslim immigrants, some of them open jihadis. These church-dwelling Muslims turn parts of the churches into mosques, and make no bones about converting the whole thing —by which I mean Belgium – into a dominion of mosques as soon as they can. Still, the viral Catholic dhimmis persist in their delusions. Another relevant topic here is Liberlism-as-religion, which is what it is for most American Jews.

We can learn a lot from the Japanese and the Chinese, not only about how to make good quality products but also how not to destroy ourselves with binary notions. To this end, I intend to keep the fox busy for quite a while.

As a former government supervisor, I cannot tell you how many times I was forced to endure the line, "Diversity is the source of our wealth."

Employing a different metaphor, “diversity”, as currently understood and used in social dynamics, may be merely a symptom of an underlying intellectual disease that was spawned well before the American revolution and has attacked various organs of the body public in turn, leaving the patient in a weakened state and near death. The patient refuses to acknowledge his body’s deterioration in various areas and stubbornly clings to the hope the disease is actually the cure for problems that ailed him in the past. Ironically, the patient, in this case, believes he is actually improving and, in fact, “never felt better in my life.”

In this author’s examples, I saw my home town of Detroit as a microcosm of diversity politics as practiced in America and, viewed dispassionately from my present home in Northern California, it mimicked and often led the country’s development of “victimhood” politics.

Today, Detroit is finally acknowledging the catastrophic loss of their great automotive based economy to the Japanese. And, predictably, the cure is to keep doing the same things and hoping the outcome will be different next time. Detroiters have been and currently are in denial that diversity is a prime cause of their present problems and refuse to admit their problems were mostly self-inflicted.

Historically, Detroit is a city and geographical region of immigrants. Early Protestant settlers, originally from the East Coast regions, gradually left their small Michigan farms for higher paying manufacturing jobs in the city. Starting around 1900, immigrants from Eastern and Northern Europe poured in and continued to come for several more decades. Many of these immigrants were Catholic which contributed to the political problems that surfaced later. Black American sharecroppers and day laborers migrated up from the Deep South for jobs in the defense industry during WWII. Tall, lanky hillbillies drifted in from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia looking for a semi-rural life in the outlying Detroit suburbs and jobs in the auto plants. The ‘50s and ‘60s saw Detroit as the true melting pot society that liberals find so glorious and a living legacy of the Enlightenment vision of the ideal society.

But the late ‘60s saw Detroit coming apart under the weight of diversity – in July 1967 a devastating race riot hit the city with over 40 deaths, the highest death count in any of the urban riots of that era. Diversity politics was the response to the social tensions spawned by diversity. Victimhood was conferred on some Detroiters based on race, but also based on class envy.

Not only did Blacks resent whites, the hourly union workforce resented the salaried management group. The Catholic descendents of the European immigrants, led by a clergy that embraced the political goals of the Democrats, offered the Enlightenment ideas of brotherhood and economic equality as the only conceivable solution to social tensions. As with all liberal Enlightenment proposals, the Catholics meant well and sincerely believed they were acting in accordance with the tenets of their faith as actualized in their political worldview.

And the fault was not solely with Catholics, many Detroit Protestants and Jews also embraced liberal concepts of victimhood, but Catholics formed a major political group in metro Detroit at that time and had a commanding voice in the ensuing political solutions. The politics of victimhood spawned increased resentment among the various ethnic and racial groups and the war was fought out in the auto factories among other venues.

Historically, the automotive plants had paid high wages and an unskilled, automotive worker in the ‘60s had an hourly wage three times the national average. But the work performed didn’t justify the hourly wage and many of the workers possessed little education and had difficulty passing a simple IQ test administered by the auto manufacturers. The Big 3 used these simple tests copied from the U.S. Army to weed out the hopelessly stupid among prospective employees – they never expected or wanted a highly educated workforce. The assembly line work was mindless, repetitive, exhaustive labor in noisy, depressing factories and deeply resented by the workers, but the hourly wage was too high to pass up and unreasonable resentment smoldered throughout the various plants and warehouses. The front line management employees in their white shirts and the highly paid senior managers in their company furnished limousines were the visible targets of this resentment.

The unions took advantage of this resentment to press contract demands without any concern for the health of the business or the long term effect on the industry. One of the Big 3 automakers would be targeted for a crippling nationwide strike and then the same contract terms offered to the other automakers to avoid strikes at their plants. Senior managers in the Big 3 gave in to the demands too often with a self-serving view to quarterly earnings rather than strategic goals.

In the ‘60s, these problems came together in a perfect storm and the atmosphere in the factories resembled that of today’s prisons. Factions formed among the workers divided along racial and ethnic lines. Drug and alcohol use was common, absenteeism even more common and the work ethic was a joke – the union protected your job and you did as little as possible. The pressure was on line foremen for hourly production quotas and sub-standard parts were often passed on for use in final assembly. Some workers even sabotaged the cars in various ways as an outlet for the constant, seething anger. The quality of Detroit built cars deteriorated noticeably and with increasing speed.

Rather than bringing the workers, the unions and management together in mutual self-interest, diversity politics drove the wedge deeper still. Detroit is a Democrat’s town and the Detroit Free Press is the Democrat’s mouthpiece. The constant political message was “unfairness”, “racism” “economic inequality” etc., etc.. When the poor quality cars turned out by Detroit created a furious backlash among American consumers, there was nothing that could be done – the political wedge that separated Detroiters was driven too deep to reverse.

While this was happening the Japanese car makers were coming into their own. Apologists claim that gas prices and emission standards killed American cars, but the truth is that abysmally poor quality was the primary reason. The Japanese didn’t enjoy diversity in their domestic workforce and contrary to “diversity ideology” this proved a unique advantage over their American rivals. Their workers formed natural, cooperative teams, actually cared about their jobs and their employer’s welfare, and were educated at least enough to add considerable value to improvements in manufacturing techniques. The superior quality of their cars was obvious by the mid ‘70s, although the range of their product line was not attracting Americans as it does now.

Today, the Japanese have completely conquered the Americans; they own the sedan market, the mini-van market, the compact market, the luxury market and have made serious inroads on the SUV market. Light trucks will be their next victory. What’s left for the Big 3 automakers and Detroit (and Flint, Midland, Saginaw and Toledo)? Even the fantastic loyalty Detroiters once had for their domestic cars has evaporated and Japanese and German cars sell very well in Detroit. Whatever the Japanese leave untouched the Koreans are targeting and the Chinese will be entering the market within a few years with their own offerings.

Detroit claims it has learned its lesson and quality is improving, but not fast enough. Only deep discounts sells American cars, but K-Mart pricing isn’t much help to long term growth or market recapture. Once the Big 3 go down for the final count, the Japanese will be free to raise prices to recoup competitive losses.

For Detroiters, the loss of the automotive industry has meant the loss of other industries as well. Taxes are high and the costs and restrictions on business make southeastern Michigan unattractive; non-automotive factories are closing as well and jobs are fast disappearing. What have Detroiters learned from this politically? Nothing of value – the Democrats are as entrenched as ever and new welfare schemes are being proposed. Did diversity and its related politics live up to its early promises and bring the good life to all Detroiters? Well, you can get a great price on a used RV in Detroit and you can bet someone’s vacation home on a beautiful Michigan lake is going for a song. At least the unemployed are now a diverse group.

Detroit has the largest Muslim population in the United States, mostly in the border suburb of Dearborn, but this disaster can’t be blamed on the Muslims – the inheritors of the great Enlightenment ideals, the Catholics, Protestants and Jews didn’t need or want their help in killing the golden goose.

We appear to be intent on cultural if not actual suicide and one of the major root causes is an education system focused in trivia like women's studies and other college majors that lead to NCO (no civilian occupation). God (oops a word that is not PC) forbid that anyone should have to take math or science or that a student be told that they have a great future as a plumber. I remember teaching an economics class where students were moaning about the rate charged by skilled tradesmen…I then queried the class (adults all in a 300 level economics class) how many were suggesting to their children that they learn a skilled trade? Response, no surprise = 0.

The hedgehog barbeque is about to begin and it brings all of us down.