If New Labour were to build the Death Star, it would probably be under-powered, delayed and over-budget. And the lifts and IT systems might not always work.

And Princess Leia wouldn’t need to smuggle out the blueprints. Some muppet would probably burn them onto a CD and leave them in a briefcase in the Mos Eiseley cantina for anyone to find. Along with half the galaxy’s names, addresses, bank details and national insurance numbers.

No, I don’t think the Universe is in any urgent peril from New Labour.

A lot of people get the idea that Zen is anti-capitalist, but that’s just because they themselves are anti-capitalist, and through their poor understanding and misinterpretation, imagine that Zen somehow supports this. They meet other people who think the same way and forms groups and think their belief is “true”.

Zen doesn’t actually make you a better or more egalitarian person. There are Japanese Zen Masters who are militaristic and fascistic, because that was the culture they lived in all their lives. Eco-warriors used to eco-warrior culture make the same mistake; they can’t see beyond their own clique.

The moment after you have a satori, you are right back to being the same person with the same mind and the same beliefs and the same IQ and same cultural bias that you had the moment before your satori. Having a satori does not make you wise, any more than it suddenly makes you a great tennis player of a concert pianist. It doesn’t make you an environmentalist. It doesn’t make you a brain surgeon. It does tell you something about the nature of your own consciousness, but everything else, the material stuff of life, the and all the messy economics, politics, philosophy, and so on, all of that is still the same as what it was before. A hot sexy rich rock star could be more consciously enlightened than a quiet gentle tree hugging recycling feminist, because conscious enlightenment and the material ecological physical part of life are separate things. One is a state of consciousness, the rest is stages of life and material progress and culture.

Sorry for the long rant but Zen keeps getting trashed by silly eco warriors and passive Buddhists who rant about how shopping malls are evil and stuff, and it just all gets in the way.

“Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.”

“Capitalism is the path to the dark side. Capitalism leads to consumption. Consumption leads to indigestion. Indigestion leads to suffering.”

“Prosperity. Heh! Economic development. Heh! An Eco-Socialist craves not these things.”