Antar Marc responds to ‘Der Spiegel’s recent article, Predator’s Without Chain.
The name “Der Spiegel” is optimal for a magazine – it reflects the events of the day objectively and clearly as in a mirror *.
Unfortunately this is not always the case.
The story began already in the 80s. Since then, “Der Spiegel” responded to Osho and the red clothes of sannyasins like a red rag to a bull. At that time, many negative articles were published.
Meanwhile, the world has changed, meditation is scientifically recognized as effective, Buddha images are sold everywhere, meditation has become socially acceptable, and the Dalai Lama’s a hero, if not a saint for millions of Westerners.
But somehow in all this global development Osho still reflects like red on “Der Spiegel”, and journalist Frank Tadeusz has made it colorful yet again.
In the book review of Kevin Dutton’s ‘What We Can Learn from Psychopaths’, Tadeusz leads on to the conclusion that Osho is a psychopath because he had so many Rolls Royces.
The article is further battered with a collage of 9 male images of possible psychopaths (predators without chain), and Osho is shown as one of them. It is worth noting that in the book, Osho is not mentioned and discussed at all, not even the smallest hint.
Psychologist Professor Dutton lists 7 skills of psychopaths: recklessness, charm, concentration, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, action. He explains what Buddhist monks do to achieve mindfulness and says why the apostle Saul/Paul can be called a psychopath.
(Personally, I doubt whether the way psychopaths live in the “here and now” has anything to do with mindfulness. To me they rather seem like children who by the way can be ruthless and fearless, and much less than conscious competence.)
As mentioned, not a word about Osho, but to include him instead of Paul in the list of psychopaths presents a vile slander.
That the editor of “Der Spiegel” allows this to be published, reflects only cheap marketing.
Marc van der Heijden
Lecturer in Management and Organization
Related article: Predators Without Chain
* ‘Spiegel’ means ‘mirror’ in German [Ed.]
Comments are closed.