Customer Reviews

Rambo and the Dalai Lama: The Compulsion to Win and Its Threat to Human Survival (Suny Series, Global Conflict and Peace Education) (Suny Series, Global Conflict & Peace Education)

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This is a wise and useful book -- full of stories, anecdotes and movie reviews -- about why we compete and how me might learn to cooperate more effectively. In simple language (without jargon), Fellman explores the roots of our tendancy to oppose one another, to define relationships in terms of winning or losing, conquoring or submitting. Western culture is so dominated by conflict, Fellman argues, that we compete compulsively; in business, in our personal lives, in politics and international relations, we've convinced ourselves that success must be purchased at someone else's expense. Such adversarial thinking, according to Fellman, fuels the war machines and threatens us all. Therefore we need to explore some different way of conceiving relations; we need a model of "mutuality." Mutuality, in Felmman's schema, describes a shift in both language and perception: from demonizing those with whom we disagree (thus turning them into enemies) to expressing empathy and understanding, from glorifying triumph and scorning failure to recognizing and forgiving vulnerability and frailty. Such a vision may seem utopian, but Fellman's long list of examples suggests otherwise. Within our predominantly adversarial culture, Fellman finds what he calls the "seeds of mutuality" almost everywhere: in religion, education, politics, sports, movies, even in law enforcement. And this is the most heartening (and entertaining) part of his book. Although mainly a work of sociology that explores our culture in depth, Rambo and the Dalai Lama is also a kind of self-help book -- a psychological pep-talk that suggests people can overcome anger, contempt and jealousy, and learn to accept the estranged parts of themselves. This is an important book and a timely commentary on our age.

Firstly, I agree completely with the review of December 17, 1998 by a reader from San Francisco, CA. I bought this book at the time of that review and read from one paragraph to one page per day for two years in moments of relaxation. It sat on my shelf next to the Tao Te Ching whose chapters I read multiple times in random order interspersed among the Rambo... snippets. I found an amazing resonance between these two works. Fellman writes with exquisitely precise language and very high density of information and concept but not at all dense in the impenetrable sense. In fact nearly every paragraph has in it a lesson, an opportunity for personal recognition (of self to use his term). Some lines bear re-reading both because the grammatical construction, albeit entirely correct, requires a lazy reader to reboot and try again, and because the ideas contained absorb more easily on repetition. This is a text worthy of any graduate course, certainly in sociology, but also in psychology and political science. As Archimedes needed a place to stand to lift the earth with his lever, we need a place to stand clearly to see ourselves and others from the inside out. Without demanding adherence to a particular dogma, faith, or politics, this book provides that place.

The last two reviewers did a wonderful job at briefly describing this book, although I was somewhat surprised to see that one was ten years ago and the other was 8 years ago. I feel that this book is written so as to never become outdated. And perhaps with the release of the new Rambo movie more people may stumble across this book.

Now don't expect the author to go throughout the book comparing and analyzing the differences or particular aspects of Rambo versus the Dalai Lama. On the contrary it is not written in much of a comparative study at all, and Rambo only gets a short discussion, with elements of the Dalai Lama's (not solely-held) non-violent practice peppered in.

You will find references to film, books and news articles, international and sub-national conflicts of our time (never finger-pointing), social strife and encouraging displays of human interaction, problem-solving and compassion at every level.

Discussion after discussion, we are left to contemplate adversarialism in our every day actions (sometimes minute) as individuals, corporations and nations. We are left with time to contemplate the aspects and importance to human development and survival that mutuality holds, although receives little attention in our day-to-day lives.

An introduction:
"The adversary impulse seeks contexts, even invents them, for expression. Winners, in their implicit commitment to the adversary paradigm, believe and feel they have no equally powerful or attractive choice than competing to win; they reject, ridicule, or deny alternatives. It is not only -believed- to be necessary, it is -felt- to be right, natural, even moral, to seek advantage over others, to 'win' what one's culture defines as worth having."


Fellman does not seek radical behavior or change, only that we see mutuality in our social and inter-personal structures and emphasize them and encouraging education of our mutualistic tendencies and capabilities:

"I believe that mutuality can emerge from the adversary thickets of contemporary institutions--it need not be invented from scratch. Mutuality is already here, as seeds of cooperation, connection, love, and care in institutions familiar to us."