Ontology talk:9k/RD/Q618-CorePrinciplesOfTaoism

Main entry

618. Q618/Q618

     core principles of Daoism

     / core principles of Taoism [1] [2]

List of principles from tao.org

618. Q618/Q618Reason alone cannot be trusted (Daoism) / Logic alone cannot be trusted (Daoism) / The universe itself is what is true or factual, not human ideals or speculations; observe concrete examples in nature to build accurate understandings of what is true; this is to imply that society and local culture can distort humanity's understanding of the universe -> this one just sounds like a still-valid principle of science. were there, like, astronomers using this, or sailors who were inventing sextants and stuff? I don't know what level of science they would have had back in 2000 BC. but definitely there was astrology, and the transition from astrology to using star charts for more concrete purposes. I can almost visualize this one being applied back then.
     also? the part about culture is weirdly violet. some people definitely misused it, like in the water pump parable. but if you use it correctly it slowly gets you to inventing meta-Marxism.
     Logic alone cannot be trusted (Daoism) + ?? = There exist helpful individual beliefs and unhelpful societal beliefs.
618. Q618/Q618Nature is unkind (Daoism) / The natural world is not an environment of polite coexistence -> you know what, this is the most nearly-violet 'religion' or metaphysical cosmology I've ever seen. this is not half bad
     I'm tossing the part about sages getting to be indifferent though. humanity has the ability to destroy all of the rest of nature. that is bogus.
618. Q618/Q618There exist helpful individual beliefs and unhelpful societal beliefs (Daoism) / There are helpful individual values and potentially unhelpful social values -> actually true
618. Q618/Q618Humaneness and justice are artificial constructions by society / On the decline of the great Tao, the doctrines of "humanity" and "justice" arose (Lao Tzu) -> this is dissecting Idealism and the concept of applying detached Ideals versus having a holistic model of everything. (as much as 'the spiritual' was a part of holistic cosmologies back then as well as individualized ones.) I swear Lao Tzu was smarter than most anarchists today
618. Q618/Q618When humans interfere in their surrounding environment to change things that do not involve them personally, they waste their vitality and the energy they would use for action which is important; within nature, many things can be expected to reach harmony on their own / He responds only when moved, acts only when he is urged, and rises to action only when he is compelled to do so (Chuang Tzu) -> okay, that one's a miss. it actually wouldn't have been all that bad in the 1000s, or the -2000s, though. a lot of the politics of warring states periods really was pointless. so, this is out of date but not truly objectionable.
618. Q618/Q618You can get away with Daoism as long as you do not draw attention to yourself -> I see the purpose of this one too. when anarchists are open about their individualism (if applicable) or indifference to particular governments or societies, center-Liberals and Stalin-followers each rightfully point out how stupid their philosophy is practically, so if anarchists are smart they then pivot to claiming that because they are in favor of building a village or permaculture forest they are pro-social relative to every society in the world, although in an age where societies can disfigure and annihilate entire societies and forcibly assimilate them into another nationality on another continent (that was taken by force in the first place) if anarchists stand around and do nothing that isn't really true.
618. Q618/Q618The natural world is an environment of clearly defined limits; this is to imply you should never set goals that you cannot achieve immediately or cannot prove you will actually complete / Do or do not, there is no 'try' (generic) ->
     this one is false. species make other species go extinct; it's happened at least once before humans ever existed. there are no natural limits on the species that actually come out on top of that. even if those species then die out. that isn't a restoration of balance. it did nothing to prevent them from creating catastrophe in the first place; the catastrophe happened because the catastrophe went unchecked. it's not even necessary to invoke human concepts of law and government to prove this. look at homeostasis. the catastrophe of death happens when homeostasis fails to prevent that catastrophe in an organism. that is what life is: the active struggle against death. life and death are not balanced. life itself is a lack of balance requiring an active input of energy. life is a pile waiting to tip over. that is what physics says. that normally life cannot occur except under special conditions, because even something as simple or complex as a refrigerator cannot occur except under special conditions.
618. Q618/Q618The natural world is an environment of clearly defined limits -> this one is... better than Hinduism but still a blatant upper class agenda.
     you can say it's true to certain small extents if you want to use it to explain how to become good at art or something; as much as you have to push beyond your previous limits to make finishing things more than busy work with boring results, you have to be able to finish something in the first place for it to be good. but this should never be used to describe society or a group of people bigger than 1. it will only lead to oppression and "society's unhelpful values" as everybody on top tries to make up rules for why nobody else will ever get there and has to obey them.
     insert remark about how RD shouldn't have stood for Stalinists framing themselves as the only valid Marxist theorists in their respective society. yeah, that one's going to bounce off me now.

Ideologies or fields

• HAS / religious studies
• HAS / Daoism