dharmacorps wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:37 pmNothing is a panacea. By that measure, Buddhism doesn't "help" everybody. It works if you learn the skills.
When some people are excluded from learning the skills; or when some required skills are such that one must be born with them or learn them already as a small child, but cannot learn them later in life -- then the supposed "helpful solution" isn't much of a solution. How can that be considered a win-win situation?
Kim OHara wrote: ↑Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:52 pmThat's being unfair, I think. To be fair, we should also ignore all those who weren't helped by Jungian analysis, primal scream therapy, Christian Science, reiki, laying on of hands, etc, etc.
Why unfair? Some moral philosophers propose that if a principle is such that only some people can act on it, but not others (because they are too poor, for example), then such a principle cannot be considered moral. How can that be considered a win-win situation?
Really, if a course of action in anything to do with mental health offers a reasonable chance that it will be beneficial and a low chance that it will be harmful, that's about the best we can expect.
Except that some such courses of action are marketed as being such that anyone, regardless of race, socio-economic background, education etc. supposedly can apply them, but the reality is that they cannot and that those courses of action are available only to people with a specific socio-economic background and mentality. And worse, those that cannot apply those courses of action get accused of being failures, not trying hard enough, or that there is something wrong with them.
For example, I find that much of what modern psychology teaches is such that only the secular (upper) middle class can relate to it and act on it. Religions, too, aren't necessarily egalitarian and democratic (in that, for example, those who aren't born into said religion cannot meaningfully apply its teachings or learn the required skills).