tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58429324550933965342024-02-18T20:05:42.534-06:00Diary of a Daoist HermitMany years ago I was initiated into Daoism by a teacher who came from China. I've spent many years learning since then and would like to introduce anyone interested into my odd little life trying to practice this ancient wisdom tradition in a modern urban setting.The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.comBlogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-69732495488480676102018-10-19T11:12:00.000-06:002018-10-20T17:52:42.787-06:00Internal Alchemy for Everyone---Review of a Book by Chungtao Ho<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBRyyiVryz3l9JoC5q4DRyOZbeJqvqbnbvFb_pVPIJoi6YGd6CrHG44Tv-lbH9KSdAB_Y6CjtcbTDewKyOhV3T1ehUIfy-8x1XNysuzF9JGtvBMq41bU-nGflBEZDkUGWUoT46Y6v2KRU/s1600/Internal+Alchemy+for+Everyone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBRyyiVryz3l9JoC5q4DRyOZbeJqvqbnbvFb_pVPIJoi6YGd6CrHG44Tv-lbH9KSdAB_Y6CjtcbTDewKyOhV3T1ehUIfy-8x1XNysuzF9JGtvBMq41bU-nGflBEZDkUGWUoT46Y6v2KRU/s1600/Internal+Alchemy+for+Everyone.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sorry, that's the biggest <br />
size image I could find.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In every religion, for every thoughtful person there comes a time when they have to make a decision about traditional texts. Are you going to read them as being literally true---like a cookbook---or you going to read them as metaphors and myth? The decision you make will inform every aspect of what you do after that. Readers of this blog will know that I am someone who reads Daoist literature as being evocative and metaphorical instead of literal. Three Pines Press has recently published a book, <b><i><a href="http://threepinespress.com/">Internal Alchemy for Everyone</a>, </i></b>by someone who has taken the alternative route. I thought people might be interested in my take on this book. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing in this book that I have any sympathy with, so this post will be less a review than a meditation on the relationship between modernity and a literal understanding of internal alchemy.<br />
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In a nutshell, Ho argues that it is literally possible to become an immortal through the practice of specific meditation techniques that involved the creation of a secondary spirit body within the existing physical one. This involves creating a "heavenly fetus" that grows to maturity and over the course of many years results in a new non-corporeal body that will leave the adept and slowly learn to live a new, immortal life without being limited by material constraints.<br />
<br />
How exactly is someone supposed to respond to this assertion? Could it possibly be true? Are there people in China who use esoteric meditation techniques to dramatically extend their lives and develop super powers? Do some of them become literal immortals who end up residing in paradise with the Jade Emperor?<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Vv7nGoeahI3qUzyNsF37VET6SP6jtLcVRiY7ohLjuov8tquHWgmwm-KxaeqjmtLP-0huWgKeGXvoIbec4rDrLE-M3oDkx6f-OOj5rsPodYWUMMfD5PdkrDDWV_rfQXYR7e4mT3NhDdg/s1600/Dragon_gods_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Vv7nGoeahI3qUzyNsF37VET6SP6jtLcVRiY7ohLjuov8tquHWgmwm-KxaeqjmtLP-0huWgKeGXvoIbec4rDrLE-M3oDkx6f-OOj5rsPodYWUMMfD5PdkrDDWV_rfQXYR7e4mT3NhDdg/s1600/Dragon_gods_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_15250.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is this picture a realistic depiction of a plausible <br />
event? Or is it just a whimsical painting based on an <br />
elaborate metaphor? Image from<br />
<b><i><a href="http://myths%20and%20legends%20of%20china%20by%20e.%20t.%20c.%20werner/">Myths and Legends of China</a></i></b> by E. T. C. Werner</td></tr>
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I think it's important for casual readers to understand a key element of academic Daoist scholarship: sociologists of religion don't actually care about whether or not a specific idea is "true". It's totally sufficient for them to simply report on a belief system. I realized this point when I tried to read the book <b><i><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Opening-Dragon-Gate-Making-Modern/dp/0804831858">Opening the Dragon Gate: the Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard</a></i></b>, by Chen Kaiguo and Zheng Shunchao. I emailed a leading expert on Daoism (I forget his name.) Because of all the crazy magical events that were described in the main character's life, I asked him "how could this possibly be true?" . The response by the academic was something to the effect of "whether or not you believe that any of this stuff happened, this sort of book is certainly the sort of thing that Chinese Daoists have been writing about for hundreds of years". In other words, as a professional academic he doesn't even care if it is or isn't true---it's a subject that he studies and writes about, <i>simply as a phenomenon of human society</i>.<br />
<br />
That's the attitude of a sociologist. I don't have the luxury of thinking that way because I am a philosopher and a practitioner, as well as someone who writes popular books and a blog. I need to come to some sort of conclusion about whether or not something could actually be "true". This is because there are significant life choices one has to make on the basis of your belief system. If you actually do believe, for example, that it is possible to become immortal and gain super powers by intensively meditating for ten or twenty years, then perhaps you should do it. If, on the other hand, you believe that it isn't possible, then you will spend your limited time on other pursuits. It's as simple as that.<br />
<br />
Chungtao Ho says that he has studied Western philosophy, psychology, and science, and is attempting to bring a modern sensibility to the subject.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Over the past hundred years, Western philosophy has begun to influence Chinese thought, inspiring scholars to apply epistemology to interpret internal alchemy. Although this offers a new presentation, it still does not touch the core---which goes far beyond theory and centers on practice, always closely linked to verification of concepts through actual experience. Overall, we can thus say that, despite many years of philosophical discussion and interpretation, the approach of philosophy does not offer a perfect interpretation.</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i><b>Internal Alchemy for Everyone</b></i>, p-13</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
"Epistemology" is the study of what we can and cannot know about a specific topic. This is obviously a pretty important issue when we are talking about experiences that only a very few people have, and, which almost always leave no tangible, physical evidence. It is exactly what we need to think about when we are deciding whether or not to spend a very large chunk of our lives pursuing a specific set of spiritual practices in pursuit of a goal that may or may not actually be feasible to achieve. To be blunt, with regard to internal alchemy, the value of epistemology is that it helps people think about whether or not something "actually happens" or whether it is "merely" a hallucination. </div>
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With all due respect to Ho, I think it is safe to say that he really doesn't understand what modern scholarship is all about. (I find the term "Western" somewhat annoying---philosophy and science are part of the entire world's heritage, not just a small number of countries in Europe and North America.) I say this because he doesn't mention anywhere in the book the absolutely core element of scholarship: consensus building.<br />
<br />
Naive people think of the world as consisting of "facts" and "opinions"---and never the twain shall meet. But the process that resulted in the computer I'm writing this blog with, the vaccines that I am injected with to prevent a flu pandemic, the robots that have created a growing prosperity that has spread to most corners of the globe, etc, all come from something as totally nebulous as a consensus among a small group of scholars who have devoted their lives to participating in a public conversation about the specific set of ideas that define their area of expertise.<br />
<br />
A small group of experts associate with each other through membership in elite organizations such as a university department, by subscribing to specialist journals, private correspondence between individuals, and, meeting at conferences. Someone puts forward a <i>hypothesis</i> to explain a given set of observations. And then the very small number of people who have done enough research on the issue to have an informed opinion on the subject enter into a discussion about whether or not that hypothesis makes sense.<br />
<br />
As a general rule, they do this not by trying to prove it but rather by disproving it. (Only a deductive discipline---math---works on "proof". Everything else is inductive---evidence based---which can only prove a hypothesis wrong through observation.) They do this by creating experiments that attempt to isolate one particular prediction of the hypothesis. If this prediction actually proves true, this doesn't mean that the hypothesis is correct just that one particular prediction seems to be true in this particular situation. But if the prediction doesn't come true, then they know that there may be something significantly wrong with the entire hypothesis.<br />
<br />
Usually, if many experiments are undertaken---and hopefully repeated by several experts---and none of them invalidate any of the predictions, then the hypothesis becomes adopted by the majority of experts in the field. At this point, it becomes a <i>theory</i>. Contrary to how people often use this term, "theory" doesn't mean <i>provisional.</i> Instead, it means an understanding of the world that explains a great many different phenomena and which is accepted by the overwhelming majority of people who have put in the time and effort to have an informed opinion on the subject. Once it is accepted, it then becomes a building block that the scholars use to develop future hypotheses, create new experimental technology, and, future experimentation.<br />
<br />
Uninformed people will sometimes assert that one theory displaces another---like when they say that Einstein "proved" Newton "wrong" about gravity. This is nonsense. Einstein's theory of gravitation didn't make any of Newton's insights go away, instead, it "adds to" parts of Newton's explanation that deal with extreme situations that Newton could never have observed---like enormous masses (eg: stars) bending light. Similarly, evolutionary biologists have found that under periods of extremely fast climate change species can evolve much faster than Darwin would have predicted. But this doesn't change the fact that Darwin was right in the vast majority of instances, just that there are odd situations where his theory needs to be "polished" to explain what happens.<br />
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I suspect that Ho would take issue with the idea that internal alchemy as he describes it doesn't follow a similar method. There are groups of individuals working within an elite Daoist community who practice what he would call "experiments" to learn how to create the heavenly fetus and learn how to ride a phoenix to the Jade Emperor's court. Why isn't this the same thing as Charles Darwin being a member of the Royal Society and studying finches to explain evolution?<br />
<br />
One problem immediately comes to mind.<br />
<br />
Our modern world of scholarship and science has one very interesting feature: <i>it hangs together</i>. That is to say, as we learn more and more about each individual discipline we find that they compliment and bleed into each other. Physics bleeds into chemistry in a way that atomic theory explains things like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table">the Periodic Table</a>. And, chemistry also explains some elements of psychology---we know, for example, that the human brain <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabinoid_receptor">contains receptors</a> that connect with many of the chemicals in cannabis, which explains it's many effects on the mind and body. Anthropologists are able to understand important facts about the lifestyle of ancient societies by studying <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/horse-domestication-dna-indo-european-science/?user.testname=none">the genetic composition of animal remains</a> found in digs. And even wildlife biologists have explained flocking and schooling behaviour in social animals <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocking_(behavior)">using computer modeling</a>.<br />
<br />
Does any of this wide-ranging, increasingly finely-grained understanding of the world and humanity's place in it leave any room for an individual to create a "spirit fetus" in their body and nurturing it over a decade of practice into an immortal who has super-human abilities?<br />
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This leads to the next question. <i>Why should anyone bother with this stuff? </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I'm not a sociologist of religion, and I'm certainly not getting any money from this blog other the the odd donation in the tip jar or book sale (which averages around $10/month in royalties.) But I do think that there is something useful in the Daoist tradition or I wouldn't have expended so many hours studying and popularizing it over the years. That is, it can be a way of living your life that is vital and dynamic while at the same time in harmony with nature and humanity. As I explain in my book, <i><b>Digging Your Own Well</b></i>, there is a way of living where you don't fight against impossible odds and destroy yourself in the process but at the same time don't give up and "go along" with a fundamentally destructive society. It is a way that helps you squeeze every iota of awareness from life and at the same time helps you come to terms with our own limited understanding of a vast and incomprehensible universe. It doesn't require that you turn your back on personal freedom, and, modern knowledge---but it does augment them with a deep wisdom about what it means to be a human being.<br />
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For me, gaining the wisdom of the Dao is the secret elixir of internal alchemy. It is what I seek when I do things like practicing "holding onto the One", "sitting and forgetting", or, taijiquan. It is what I look for when I read Daoist texts. Whenever I come across the word "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_(Taoism)">Xian</a>", or talk about Daoists and Daoism, I never use the common word "immortal". Instead I use the phrase "realized man".<br />
<br />
From this point of view, the idea of creating a "heavenly fetus" over a long period of sustained spiritual practice is a metaphor for reforming my personality and becoming a better person. And the amazing spiritual powers like riding Phoenixes or joining the Jade Emperor's Court, are about the serenity and wisdom that come from that reformation. <b style="color: red; font-style: italic;">Ask a reformed opium addict or alcoholic about what is more important---power over others or the ability to overcome their addiction, and I suspect that they would opt for the latter over the former every time. That's real power. </b>Immortality is much the same. <span style="color: red;"><b><i>What value would there be in living forever if it meant that if you had to watch everyone you love grow old and die? </i></b></span>As a Zen story says, it is a real blessing to simply be in harmony with the natural order of life and death: "<a href="http://users.rider.edu/~suler/zenstory/prosperity.html">father dies, son dies, grandson dies</a>".<br />
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I started out suggesting that in all religions one has to decide whether or not you see the texts as being literally factual, or metaphoric. All the faiths of the world have had to deal with conflicts with modern science and culture. And each of them, in turn, has split along this fault line into "fundamentalist" and "reform" bodies. It is hardly surprising that Daoism also has this tendency. Ho's book is a suggestion of what a fundamentalist type of Daoist spirituality might look like. I'm a modern, educated Canadian man and this sort of Daoism has little appeal to me. Unfortunately, a lot of what calls itself "Taoist" in the West comes down to not much more than "don't worry, be happy" and <b><i>the Dao of Pooh</i></b>. My hope is that I can push a little bit against both tendencies with my writing.<br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-14543667929021387822018-08-06T08:27:00.000-06:002018-08-06T08:27:29.027-06:00Daoist China: Governance, Economics, Culture<div class="tr_bq">
Livia Kohn, the noted Daoist scholar and practitioner has recently published a new book titled <i style="font-weight: bold;">Daoist <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOSeQagDCAOvP4l6G2wx85W6XnWXohoYRZ7f87UQeLiHq-htL5uKaNq-7X9_mqOBk7XC6WFRS1sqX5amXCIlEozV3MsAgDcXi3a0VpznOqQ7cfvKrRSJy_LqxNLJdgXBUx1iJerOqHkl0/s1600/LiviaKohn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="499" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOSeQagDCAOvP4l6G2wx85W6XnWXohoYRZ7f87UQeLiHq-htL5uKaNq-7X9_mqOBk7XC6WFRS1sqX5amXCIlEozV3MsAgDcXi3a0VpznOqQ7cfvKrRSJy_LqxNLJdgXBUx1iJerOqHkl0/s200/LiviaKohn.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Livia Kohn,<br />
image c/o <a href="http://bu.academia.edu/LiviaKohn">Boston University</a> </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
China: Governance, Economics, Culture</i>. It's available at the <a href="http://threepinespress.com/">Three Pines Press</a> for a little under $30, US.<br />
<br />
It's a simple book with a lot of useful information. It consists of a lot short little essays that deal with a specific issue in modern China---usually from a Daoist perspective. Each chapter ends with a list of links so anyone with an interest can pursue their exploration of the issue in greater depth.</div>
<br />
The list of chapters pretty much describes all the stuff she deals with. The first twenty are:<br />
<blockquote>
1. The China Experiment<br />
2. The Party<br />
3. Religious Control<br />
4. The Chinese Daoist Association<br />
5. The White Cloud Temple<br />
6. Complete Perfection<br />
7. Levels of Priesthood<br />
8. The Kundao Curriculum<br />
9. Personal Attraction<br />
10. Tourism<br />
11. Sacred Mountains<br />
12. Daoist Sites<br />
13. Laozi<br />
14. New Expansions<br />
15. Public Spectaculars<br />
16. Martial Arts<br />
17. Mount Wudang<br />
18. Spreading Abroad<br />
19. International Masters<br />
20. Daoism in the West</blockquote>
<div>
After these, they go on for a further forty to total out at sixty. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is a format that I find increasingly drawn to as a reader. I have to measure my time with an eye-dropper because of all my commitments, so the ability to take a ten or twenty minutes to read a short chapter means that I can read the book whenever I have a moment with nothing to do. And I've also gotten to the point where I am pretty happy if I can learn one or two things in reading a book. (Just to give an example, Kohn makes a throw-away statement early on about Daoist initiates being encouraged to travel and learn from different teachers---called "cloud walking". This is useful to me because I had the same understanding, although I have come across writers who've said that this describes a type of walking meditation. It's nice to have some confirmation from a respected scholar with lots of experience talking to Daoists in China.)</div>
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Years ago as part of a lawsuit against Walmart aimed at preserving a Jesuit retreat centre, I gave a little demonstration of a Daoist ritual. I freely admit that I'm no expert on such things, but I did some research and came up with what I hope was a reasonable approximation. I wore some robes, and burnt a "paper horse" that I downloaded from the Internet. Then I burnt some requests to various members of the pantheon with "Hell money" as "travelling money". When I was finished, I told the Jesuits to throw the ashes in a nearby pond as a gift to the local dragon. I then went inside, gave a little talk, and, answered questions.<br />
<br />
It was received quite well by most of the folks present---who were a collection of interested citizens and members of the clergy. On the way out, however, a friend who is a Benedictine nun said a strange thing to me, "Oh it must be so liberating to be able to make all this stuff up from thin air". I sometimes hear this from people. They've never heard about Daoism before, so it's "just make believe"---not "real" like what they grew up with. I try (sometimes with greater or lesser success) to not be offended by this, but it is simply not true. Daoism does exist. It is a recognized tradition, and it has a history, books, buildings, etc. Professor Kohn's book is a useful antidote to this idea because it not only shows the "nuts and bolts" of modern Chinese Daoist culture, it helps people understand how it's sensibility is still important to the culture of the world's second largest economy. </div>
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<br />
I recently started getting involved in the Reddit subgroup about Daoism. I need to market my latest book (<b><i>Digging Your Own Well</i></b>), and the open secret about social media is that flogging yourself on it actually works. I was a bit reticent to do so, however, because there is a large section of the population that has gotten a bad English version of the <b><i>Laozi</i></b> and thinks that all there is to Daoism is to just read it over and over again. If they really want to get esoteric and read a commentary, they will break down and look at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Hoff">Benjamin Hoff</a>'s <b style="font-style: italic;">The Tao of Pooh. </b>The problem with this is that there is a huge body of Daoist literature---much of it now in English translation---and a continuing tradition that teaches a wide variety of spiritual practices. With the tremendous resources that now exist through the Internet to learn more and more, why would someone just read a (often bad) translation of one book over and over again instead of reaching out to learn more?<br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-34006984232242278362018-06-20T10:08:00.003-06:002018-06-20T10:08:33.435-06:00Mencius: How Much Do We Owe Our Fellow Citizen? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-7jKT17163GWL8FFsdGEvFYcEWayDICSWTFDtCMZulbEnfNlNl-frojl68l7sIufPp0l3pdmPQRWHDUN6a1uuo3_tyR-ccgm0XhzJg6MtCaOttdkICj_PAYUFfs92-xTEbyTGdDMOrk/s1600/Mencius.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1595" data-original-width="1178" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw-7jKT17163GWL8FFsdGEvFYcEWayDICSWTFDtCMZulbEnfNlNl-frojl68l7sIufPp0l3pdmPQRWHDUN6a1uuo3_tyR-ccgm0XhzJg6MtCaOttdkICj_PAYUFfs92-xTEbyTGdDMOrk/s320/Mencius.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mencius, public domain image.<br />
C/o the Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I've been working my way through the <a href="https://www.davidhinton.net/mencius">David Hinton translation</a> of <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius">Mencius</a> </b>for quite a while because I think that anyone who is interested in Daoism should also have a bit of an understanding of Confucianism too. Indeed, the temple that introduced me to the Way not only made the <b><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Filial_Piety">Classic of Filial Piety</a></i></b> one of its core texts, it allowed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism">Confucians (the "priests of Ru")</a> to perform rituals in the building. (According to my teacher, the Temple belonged to the geographic community, not any one particular religion. Indeed, he once suggested that it be named "the People's Temple". Unfortunately, the association of this name with the infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple">Jones Town cult</a> meant that the board of directors opposed this suggestion.)<br />
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Consider this passage:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"These days, if someone in your house gets in a fight, it's fine to rush out and rescue them with your hair hanging loose and your cap untied. But if it's someone from your village that's fighting, then it's wrong. In fact, it's perfectly fine if you just bolt your door and ignore it." </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<b style="font-style: italic;">Mencius</b>, David Hinton Trans, Chapt VIII, Section 29</div>
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Of course, Mencius doesn't really think "it's perfectly fine to just bolt your door and ignore it". Indeed, earlier on in this section he talks about Yu and Hou Chi. "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_the_Great">Yu the Great</a>" was a legendary ruler of China who introduced the people to hydraulic engineering as a means of controlling flooding. And <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hou_Ji">Hou Chi (or "Hou Ji")</a> was the hero who introduced Northern China to growing millet---China's first staple crop. Mencius says of these men that whenever Yu heard of a person drowning he felt that it was his fault. Hou Ji felt the same way whenever he heard of someone starving. Mencius is contrasting Yu and Hou Ji to the "ordinary man" of his day---who simply doesn't want to get involved unless he has "skin in the game".<br />
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This raises an interesting question. How should we react towards the sufferings of complete strangers? Here's another take on the issue, from the excellent movie "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man">The Third Man</a>".<br />
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Harry Lime (the character played by Orson Welles) says something to the effect of: "Look at those little people on the street. To us they look like little more than ants. Who cares if they live or die---especially if you can make a lot of money in the process? (Tax-free, no less!)" He then goes on to make a dubious claim about culture, namely that the Swiss have had 500 years of peace, democracy, and, prosperity and have produced little more than the cuckoo clock; whereas Italy at the time of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Borgia">Borgias</a> was a cesspool of violent intrigue yet it produced the great art of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance">the Renaissance</a>.<br />
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I wrote "dubious" because actually the cuckoo clock is a German invention and at the time of Borgias the Swiss had the most powerful army in Europe. This meant that their soldiers were in high demand, which is why the Pope to this day is protected by Swiss mercenaries. This is an important point to consider, because Lime is expressing a very persuasive bit of sophistry in an attempt to convince his friend to work for him instead of the police. And what he does is pretty awful---he steals antibiotics, dilutes them, and, sells adulterated product to desperate people with sick children. Indeed, Lime's friend decides to hand him over to the police after they show him a ward full of children who suffered permanent brain damage as a result of treatment with Lime's shoddy medicine. (Think "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningitis#Prognosis">meningitis</a>".)<br />
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So who should we believe? Mencius or Lime? When a person dies should we feel responsible like Yu the Great did? Or should we simply see them as "ants" that are probably better off dead anyway?<br />
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The first thing to remember is that this isn't a logical argument. <span style="color: red;"><i>Confucianism isn't about rational analysis according to the canons of reason. Instead, it's about introspection of our emotions.</i></span> The traditional Confucian argument is that people are innately concerned about the well-being of others. And the archetypal image that they present in support of this idea is the child crawling towards the open well. The argument is that almost everyone would prevent the child from falling in. But this raises the question posed by Harry Lime---what if you really don't care? What if money really is more important to you than the well-being of others. This isn't a hypothetical question, as illustrated by the crazy behaviour of businesses around the world. Consider, if you will, the actions of milk producers in China who put <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine">melamine</a> in their product because it will <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine#Production_in_mainland_China">"spoof" the protein testing system</a> that defines quality of milk.<br />
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If you go back to Harry Lime's monologue in the above YouTube clip, around the 1:30 mark he starts to introduce a general theory about people's motivation. </div>
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"Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about "the people" and "the proletariat"---I talk about "the suckers" and "the mugs". It's the same thing. They have their "five year plans" and so have I."</blockquote>
Think carefully about this argument. It is an attempt by Lime to move from the relatively easily-defended position of saying "it isn't true that <i>all </i>people care about others" to the totally indefensible position of "it is actually true that <i>nobody</i> cares about others". This point of view is totally ridiculous. Obviously a great many people care about what happens to other people, which is why there was outrage around the world when people found out companies were putting melamine in milk used in baby formula.<br />
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Is it possible that Lime really believes that "everyone does it"? I think that he just might. Consider the following line of argument. The world we live in is, bye-and-large, an abstraction. Instead, the people we interact with is very limited: our immediate family, who we work with, and a small number of friends. And some of us know a lot fewer people than others. I have a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances from all my years in politics. Other people I meet, however, seem to only know co-workers and family members. Others have wider circles of friendship---but they are limited to a particular subculture, such as a church or other religious organization. Increasingly, I suspect that a significant fraction of the population have self-selected themselves into a subculture of like-minded people who only really interact with people who also see things much the same way.<br />
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What if someone is surrounded by criminals like Harry Lime? Could he eventually honestly say "Nobody thinks in terms of human beings---"? He's not right, but he's making an understandable statistical error---he's generalizing about a much larger population based upon an analysis of a non-randomly selected sample: the criminal underworld. If you live in that milieu and never socialize with anyone outside of it, you can start to really believe some pretty strange things.<br />
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There's another side to this. People aren't simple. They can hold several opinions at the same time---sometimes ones which directly contradict each other. This is what we mean when we say someone is "conflicted" or "on the horns of a dilemma". A person can be like Harry Lime and honestly think that "everyone does it" and at the same time have a nagging feeling that he is still doing something wrong. Indeed, why does Lime think that he has to justify himself to his friend at all? Why not just shoot him and throw the body out the car of the Ferris wheel?<br />
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In cases like these, the arguments that they put forward can be attempts to talk themselves into believing what they say that they believe. Years ago I watched a totally ridiculous movie called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenhooker">Frankenhooker</a>". It was about a modern-day Victor Frankenstein who's girlfriend was killed and her body destroyed from the neck down. This modern-day Prometheus decided to bring her back to life by killing prostitutes and building her the "perfect body" by stitching together their best parts. In one of many over-the-top scenes the protagonist started having moral qualms so he performed an self-inflicted lobotomy on himself with a electric drill to ream the conscience out of his brain. Do people create crazy arguments in a similar attempt to get those pesky second-thoughts out of the equation so you can continue to make tax-free money off poisoning children? Is Harry Lime using ideas like an electric drill to remove a residual conscience? <br />
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Indeed, could it be that in some minimal way a part of Harry is hoping that his friend will talk him out of his amoral point of view? Confucians put a lot of emphasis on the importance of remonstration in the face of evil. Indeed, a previous post I did on Mencius (<a href="http://urbanecohermit.blogspot.com/2017/10/mencius-filial-piety-and-rise-of-neo.html">Mencius: Filial Piety and the Rise of Neo-Fascism</a>) mentioned the responsibility of scholars to disagree with people---family members or government leaders---who have talked themselves into taking immoral actions. How much of a moral responsibility lies on Harry's friend to try and talk Harry into ending his criminal activities?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bev Oda, spendthrift Tory<br />
Public domain image c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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I'm making a big deal about this issue because I often come across people who justify immoral behaviour in politics on the basis of "everyone does it". In fact, I think that this idea gets a lot of people into real trouble. For example, it seems to be something of a "thing" for politicians to go absolutely wild with their expense accounts. For example, consider Bev Oda---a Conservative Cabinet minister in the Stephen Harper government. She got into hot water after people found out <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev_Oda">she spent thousands and thousands</a> on limo rides, fancy hotels, and---most famously---$16 for a single glass of orange juice. (I could cite several more recent examples from the Trump government in the US.)<br />
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I suspect that these people come into office under the assumption that government is a total cesspool and that "everyone" spends money like water. (That seems to motivate a great many conservative politicians.) With this assumption in mind, it's easy to move towards the idea that "everyone does it---so why not me?" Another possible explanation could be that some of these people start to mix with the very wealthy as part of their time in office and begin to lose track of the fact that the vast majority of people have to watch their money and spending $16 for one glass of OJ is just not acceptable.<br />
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Having trouble with an expense account is one thing. But this attitude can also encompass far worse things. If you believe that the opposition are a bunch of amoral traitors, then that would encourage someone to believe that "the ends justify the means". This is part of the reason why Donald Trump has been so damaging to American political culture. He encourages people to believe all sort of outrageous things, such as:<br />
<ul>
<li>Barack Obama wasn't born in the USA and was therefore unqualified to be President</li>
<li>Hillary Clinton is guilty of criminal behaviour and should be put in prison</li>
<li>prestigious news organizations like the <i>New York Times</i> and <i>Washington Post</i> routinely print "fake news"</li>
<li>that immigrants are mostly thieves and rapists who come from "shit hole countries" to take advantage of "entitlement" programs </li>
</ul>
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This sort of political discourse is dangerous in the extreme because it encourages a fraction of the population to believe that they live in extremely dangerous times where a true patriot should seriously consider taking extreme measures to ensure the survival of his society. Just to consider how much American political culture has changed in the last ten years, consider this clip by the Republican candidate for president in 2008. </div>
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You can see that the poisonous partisanship that was overtaking American society had already affected people that were attending McCain's rally. (Don't pay too much attention to the idiotic questions---listen to the crowd's reaction when the Senator answered them.) I think that what you heard was McCain's honest, personal feelings when confronted by the awful ideas that ordinary voters who supported the Republicans were believing. (McCain deserves some blame for the current mess too. He is a coward who routinely "caved" in order to get along with his idiotic supporters. Don't forget that he inflicted Sarah Palin on the body politic.) </div>
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The big thing that I want readers to get from this post is process related. I'm trying to show you the sort of discursive analysis that Confucians use to make sense of the world around them. Mencius draws from the history of China to compare the way Yu the Great thought of his fellow citizens and how ordinary folks did in his time. In the same way, I've been drawing from today's news as well as films to illustrate important issues. <span style="color: red;"><i>It isn't a logical argument in the sense of using set theory or truth functional calculus. Instead, it is an attempt to develop more and more articulate understandings of our own personal emotions and what we think is right and wrong about the world around us. It isn't a form of meditation as we commonly understand the term, but it does have the effect of calming the mind and developing a deeper understanding. I think of it as "Confucian contemplation". </i></span><br /><br />
<span style="color: red;"><i>Among other things, our culture is suffering from a "crisis of clarity". Hordes of highly-paid "spin-masters" are paid huge sums of money to confuse the general public into supporting very dubious policies. We have fake news, foreign propaganda influencing elections, media that play people's emotions like organists, and, politicians building successful careers on not much more than bullshit and outrage. In a situation like this it is vitally important for citizens to learn how to dispassionately contemplate the world we inhabit and carefully parse out what they do and do not agree with. Moreover, we also need these people to go forth into the public sphere and remonstrate with both the people they meet and the community's leadership in order to push back against the avalanche of fear and anger that they have unleashed. </i></span><br /><br />&&&&<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i>Alas, if you thought you would avoid the begging bowl it's not going to happen. I put a lot of effort into these posts and I wouldn't be helping the cause of "creatives" all over the Web if I didn't remind people that if you like this sort of thing you should consider supporting it. I understand that some people don't have a lot of money, and the great thing about using the Patreon model is that it will never take away content and hide it away from people who cannot support it. But if you can help out, consider even as little as $1 a month or per post through Patreon. Tips are appreciated too---if you especially like one particular post or you feel particularly generous. Also, consider buying a book. Finally, share the post through social media. Word-of-mouth is the big advantage that good writing has over expensive advertising, and it is essential for building support. </i></b></span><br />
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-83442952371649035872018-05-26T14:08:00.000-06:002018-05-27T06:43:36.709-06:00Something About "Fate"Like most people, I am a little confused about the concept of "free will". Actually, that's not true. I've come to the conclusion that it really doesn't exist---at least as most people understand the concept. Increasingly, I find the idea of "Fate" much more appealing. Let me illustrate one aspect of it using an idea that came to me the other day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not an uncommon sight where I work.<br />
Public Domain Image c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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I work in an academic library of a University that has a veterinary college. As a result, it is very common to see dogs in the building. Most of these are "service dogs in training"---ranging in size from quite small puppies, to larger, almost adult animals.<br />
<br />
Until my dear sweet significant other got a dog, I had no idea why people brought these puppies into the building. But Misha explained to me that dogs have to be "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_behavior#Socialization">socialized</a>" to be able to function in situations where people and other dogs are present. This is only possible during a very short "window of opportunity" when they are quite young. If it doesn't happen, the dogs will never be comfortable around other dogs or people, and this will manifest itself either in extreme fear or aggression. Just by way of an example, her best friend---who is a professional dog trainer---has a German Shepherd ("Karbon") that was never socialized around other dogs and will basically kill any other dog on sight. (It's a wonderful dog---but in some ways it is sorta like a pygmy tyrannosaur.) As I see it, being properly socialized as a puppy is an intrinsic element in the "fate" of a dog. If it is raised like Karbon, it will never be able to interact with other canines.<br />
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What has this got to do with people? Well, I have a intuition that humans also have a limited opportunity to "socialize" when they are young. If a child doesn't get a chance to learn how to interact with others, it will struggle with those relationships for the rest of his life. Please note, I wrote "struggle with", not "will be incapable of ever". Human beings are not dogs. We have higher level reasoning than dogs, which means that we are capable of learning very complex social behaviours in later stages of life. Moreover, we have access to a very rich cultural inheritance, which allows us to learn from the experiences of others through art, literature, philosophy, social science, therapy, and, dialogue with other people.<br />
<br />
What got me thinking about all of this was the recent sad incident where a young man was so angry about his frustration with women that he <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_van_attack#cite_note-32">drove a rented van down a busy street in Toronto</a>---killing and injuring 26 people, mostly women. After the event, people mentioned that he had made the following statement on social media before heading out for the attack:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: red;">Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!</span></i></blockquote>
Reading this short statement it's important to understand that the guy, is using a very rich set of coded language, which includes the following terms:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>4chan</li>
<li>Incel</li>
<li>Chads</li>
<li>Stacys</li>
<li>Supreme Gentleman</li>
<li>Elliot Rodger</li>
</ul>
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Before the mass killing happened, I was only vaguely aware of a couple of these terms and had never really heard about the rest. Since then, I've been reading about and studying all of them. That too has got me thinking about the idea of "fate". </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not really all that awful an image, eh? </td></tr>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan">4chan</a> is an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imageboard">imageboard</a>-style social media website that has evolved into a place where people can "misbehave" without being given a hard time. There is no attempt to force people to use their real names (like FaceBook), nor are there any community guidelines, or, moderators enforcing a code of conduct. The result is mostly a lot of interesting pictures with the sort of childish comments you'd expect from teenage boys who believe no adult is listening. </div>
<br />
And, as you might imagine---teenage boys et al---there are also naked pictures of women too. Most of this seems pretty harmless, but there is one "board" that is a little different: "Politically Incorrect". I pulled it up and in a very short time saw the words "kike", "faggot", and, "nigga" being thrown around. There's also an shout out for <i>Siege</i> magazine---proclaimed as being "proudly Judenfrei since 1933".<br />
<br />
Yup, "politically incorrect" is right.<br />
<br />
This doesn't really surprise me all that much. Young, very intelligent young men who feel somewhat alienated from society get enjoyment from shocking other people. I know that I did at one time. I still do once in a great while. This isn't just something that men do---women too. I know my significant other sometimes gets so angry about the way the world treats her (Dao knows she has a right to be pissed), that she goes on long rants about "the penis". I try to just listen patiently. She directs all this at me, which I've learned doesn't mean that she is angry with me---just that she feels safe and comfortable enough to say it in my presence. And I've repeatedly told her to vent away---that's part of being in a relationship. <br />
<br />
In fact, I recently watched a really intense comedy show on Netflix by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Wong">Ali Wong</a> that bases a lot of its jokes on shocking audiences (using very crude language) about how awful it is to be a woman in a sexist world. (The trailer is quite mellow compared to most of the show.)<br />
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I'm enough of a "fuddy-duddy" to have been quite shocked by what this woman was talking about. One thing in particular took me a while to process. She was talking about men giving her "head". She mimed forcing them to "go down" on her in parks, public washrooms, etc. I was more than a little perplexed by why so many women in the audience thought that this was hilarious. Then I realized that what she was doing was taking many women's experience of being coerced and talked into unpleasant teenage experiences giving "blow jobs" to their boy friends and "inverting" them.<br />
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So it is possible to dismiss all this idiotic racist and misogynistic talk as just being "humour".<br />
<br />
And indeed, a great deal of the time people dismiss this as not being much more than ironic. Indeed, when I was young I can remember reading <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon_(magazine)"><i>National Lampoon</i></a>---which was filled with what would today be considered incredibly sexist<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PMS1eQ-4HBcvCEziNnuMmwx669GPUUN0aFyC-RSjBsNrOvnsLUhJw3LEJQL0c90GcDRYKxDRsWtTFIDrfF_me6VzUr3bQ-c-josmBNH_JwQEf0hV2ivo7GWWZghXQgGP9DFau3S4Yu0/s1600/nationalLampooncover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PMS1eQ-4HBcvCEziNnuMmwx669GPUUN0aFyC-RSjBsNrOvnsLUhJw3LEJQL0c90GcDRYKxDRsWtTFIDrfF_me6VzUr3bQ-c-josmBNH_JwQEf0hV2ivo7GWWZghXQgGP9DFau3S4Yu0/s320/nationalLampooncover.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">This is far from the most offense thing<br />
that I saw in <i>National Lampoon</i>, but<br />
you get the idea. Fair use.</td></tr>
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and racist stuff. But at the time, I considered all that as just being "ironic". For example, I remember one cartoon where a couple of grotesquely-caricatured black men in a pickup were pulled over by a sheriff and ordered to secure a load of trash. Lacking any tarp or ropes, he made one of them lay on top to stop things from blowing off. Driving down the road, an observer opined "People are getting so wasteful nowadays. There's someone who just threw out a perfectly good n*gg*r". My teenage mind said to itself "yup, that's the way those racist pigs think about Negros".<br />
<br />
The problem with this, among other things, is that it creates camouflage for real racists and sexists. The thing about symbols and language is that the same image, word, or, story can mean very different things to different people. In the example of the old cartoon I described above there can be three different reactions.<br />
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First, it is going to act as a "barrier" towards the entry of people who would be critical of the culture that is on display in social media groups like 4Chan "politically incorrect". Anyone who has direct experience of racism and how awful it is in people's lives is not going to want to spend any time there. Nor are any people who have absorbed a superficial antagonism towards it through some sort of ideological standpoint (these are the SJW types that sometimes really do deserve ridicule for wearing their "grooviness" like a badge---which is known as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling">virtue signalling</a>".) By using racist language and posting overtly racist images (or sexist, homophobic, etc), the site keeps out enough people who might find all this stuff juvenile and offensive that it creates a "safe space" where people can indulge in this talk without being reprimanded.<br />
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Secondly, it can serve as a way of "desensitizing" or "coarsening" people's reaction to racist images and ideas. This is probably the core reason why a whole type of humour that was very common in my childhood has disappeared. There were lots and lots of jokes about Poles, Jews, Newfies, etc, when I was young. Indeed, broadly drawn racial caricatures were part of some very famous, serious movies. Take a look at this clip from the otherwise excellent movie "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(film)">Breakfast at Tiffany's</a>".<br />
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The well-known actor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Rooney">Mickey Rooney</a> put on some false teeth and played an embarrassingly awful racist stereotype of a Japanese man. The role has zero relationship to the plot and seems to have been tossed into the story simply to evoke "cheap laughs". The elimination of this type of "humour" that has happened in society in my short lifetime, IMHO, seems to have been pretty much only the result of "political correct" disapproval becoming more and more common in society. The "Politically Incorrect" space on places like 4chan is an attempt to create a "safe haven" where this sort of old-school stupidity is allowed to flourish.</div>
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Finally, this "desensitization zone" gives really nasty racists (sexists, homophobes, etc) a place where they can "fish" for the people who really are vulnerable to their propaganda. So among all the adolescents who are just trying to shock others with their outrageous language, established racist organizations put out links to their own Webpages---like the <i><a href="https://dailystormer.name/">Daily Stormer</a></i>. </div>
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The great thing for racists about using 4chan is that they can always "play" the naive and make them look foolish. This is because "insiders" constantly skate around by tossing around memes and images in ways that are designed to confuse anyone who hasn't invested effort into learning the "inside lingo". To cite one example, consider the phrase I quoted above about <i><a href="https://siegemagazine.bigcartel.com/">Seige Magazine</a></i> being "Judenfrei since 1933". It's not an old Nazi publication but instead a new art design magazine. If I'd assumed it was the former instead of the latter---and hadn't bothered checking---I would have been identifiable as a silly old fart who doesn't know what he is talking about. That would have totally discredited anything I have to say in the eyes of the "young, hip guys" that are the mainstay of this site. (The problem, of course, is that the only way to be able to avoid these traps is to spend enormous amounts of time cruising these sites, which is more than any reasonable person will do.) </div>
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To cite one famous defender of this idiocy, </div>
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Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide. These caricatures are often spliced together with Millennial pop culture references, from old 4chan memes like pepe the frog, to anime and My Little Pony references.</blockquote>
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Are they actually bigots? No more than death metal devotees in the 80s were actually Satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents. Currently, the Grandfather-in-Chief is Republican consultant Rick Wilson, who attracted the attention of this group on Twitter after attacking them as “childless single men who jerk off to anime.”</blockquote>
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos">Milo Yiannopoulos</a>, in a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/">Breitbart </a>"op-ed" </div>
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The next question is "what is an "incel""? The word is a "portmanteau" of "<i>in</i>voluntary <i>cel</i>ibate", and refers to people who---as we used to say---"don't get around a lot". It's true that young males have always had this insane sex drive that makes a lot of men somewhat nutty pretty well into their 40s. But the problem that I'm trying to identify is that social media technology has allowed a subset of these people to get together and create an "alternative society" with it's own ideas about what does or doesn't make any sense. And one of those ideas is that there is a definable group of people that society has decided are "failures" in some sort of sexual arms race.<br />
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The way they describe becoming aware of this "fact" is by "choosing the 'black pill'". The image comes from the movie "The Matrix" where the hero has to choose between two metaphors: a "red pill" that means he understands that the world around him is a comfortable illusion masking a dark truth; or; the "blue pill" that would allow him to give in to the illusion and forget that the possibility that it could all be an illusion. For incels, the black pill is the personal realization that they are failures who have totally lost the genetic arms race for sex. </div>
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To get an idea of how their reasoning works, consider <a href="https://incels.me/threads/study-on-the-sexual-market-of-tinder.45375/">the following "black pill" argument</a> that I came across in the FAQ part of the <a href="https://incels.me/">Incels.me website</a>. Basically, it brings economic analysis to the "Tinder economy". To understand this, however, you first have to know what "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinder_(app)">Tinder</a>" is, which I have to assume at least some of my readers don't. At it's most basic, Tinder is a dating app for your smart phone that allows people to put up photos of themselves that a person can look at and instantly decide whether or not they are someone they would like to talk to. It's an instant, almost unconscious decision. If that person also decides that you are someone that they would like to talk to, then an opportunity arises to use a chat feature. If the conversation "clicks", then you can set up a date to connect in person. (No, I've never used this thing. I'm just working from the Wikipedia article.)<br />
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There is <a href="https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a">data out there</a> that suggests that 80% of the women on Tinder are only interested in 20% of the men. This attraction is based on physical appearance---which is to be expected when all they have to go on is a photo on a cell phone app. The black pill argument then goes on to say that this means that sexual inequality is actually worse in modern American than economic inequality.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKhu_XmBZ90yJg95VR_MEP7n3bVWDCWGdQKOEdIlxqXzCpYQuL55yS2YOLhUSD_GDct4GueJCW99-mdANduV4VqnaQqCXoAP7tNB7LMrOBrL91SuK3-SwqjE-svp2nsAmylAujxHvw_pQ/s1600/tindereconomy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="606" data-original-width="1016" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKhu_XmBZ90yJg95VR_MEP7n3bVWDCWGdQKOEdIlxqXzCpYQuL55yS2YOLhUSD_GDct4GueJCW99-mdANduV4VqnaQqCXoAP7tNB7LMrOBrL91SuK3-SwqjE-svp2nsAmylAujxHvw_pQ/s400/tindereconomy.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image originally came off a Web page called<br />
"<a href="https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-guys-unless-you-are-really-hot-you-are-probably-better-off-not-wasting-your-2ddf370a6e9a">Tinder Experiments II</a>", used under fair use provision.</td></tr>
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These successful men who have lots "hits" on Tinder (and presumably lots of sex too) are known as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_(slang)">Chads</a>". The incels find themselves in the situation where the overwhelming majority of women that they might have sex with are chasing the 20% of the population that are Chads---which freezes them out of the market.<br />
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(Of course this is analysis is insane because it is based on the data that comes from a particularly skewed sample---people who date based exclusively on the basis of looks. In effect, this is how the very limited pool of very shallow, looks-obsessed people select a mate. It really says nothing at all about how the vast majority of couples end up together. I wouldn't be surprised if not a single person who reads this blog has ever used Tinder---and I suspect that lots haven't even heard of it.)<br />
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But once someone has eaten the black pill, they can then go on to build a whole social world-view on that foundation. The next step is to find out where women fit into this, which leads to "Stacys". These are the "sexually-desirable, dominant women" who drive incels crazy with lust but are only interested in Chads. The "second-rate" females are "Beckys", but they only want to have sex with Chads too---which is the root of the problem for the incels. Since the sexual revolution women have managed to undermine and remove all the biological and social underpinnings of monogamy. Birth control means that sex is possible without creating a child. Legal changes no longer punish women for having sex with non-husbands. And, equality in the workplace and the welfare state mean that women no longer are financially dependent on a male "bread winner". Once the need for a specific, permanent relationship with a man went away, women were free to follow their "natural instinct" to find and have sex exclusively with Chads, which is where we have 80% of women chasing after 20% of men. The implication is that Chads are screwing almost all the women in the world, who are happily becoming parts of "virtual harems" for these guys.<br />
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As for the "supreme gentleman Elliot Roger", that was a young man <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings">who went on a killing rampage </a>in 2014 because of his frustration with women who wouldn't have sex with him. Before he set out, he recorded a monologue on YouTube that describes his sense of frustration and justifies his actions before the fact. (Warning, it's kinda disturbing to watch. Keep your children away from it---.)<br />
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Of course, strange people do strange things all the time. And moreover, some of them try to justify their behaviour. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski">The unabomber</a> had his manifesto, to cite one case. But usually subcommunities don't latch onto these folks and start making them into folk heroes to emulate.</div>
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I started off this disturbing mess of a post by introducing the idea of "fate" and the need to expose puppies to crowds of people and other dogs in order to prevent vicious or terrified adult animals. What has this to do with incels? Well, as I suggested, I think that there are probably parallels between dogs and human beings. If a human child isn't socialized properly in his development, he is going to have a problem getting along with other people---which will include finding a mate. As someone who spent his early teen years totally isolated from others my own age except in school, I can relate. Girls and women were a totally mysterious quantity for much of my early adult life, which led to some extreme frustration. Luckily, there were no internet rabbit holes like "4chan" that I could disappear down and be exposed to crazy fever dreams like the incel movement. Instead, I had to work through my "issues" with the help of friends, therapists, and, the great thinkers of the ages---in the form of philosophy, and, Daoism.</div>
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We are not isolated, atomic individuals who get to pick and choose what ideas we live our lives around. To a very large extent we are instead created by the ideas we are exposed to. That's because we are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality">eusocial animals</a>---like termites, bees, and, ants. Only instead of being controlled by chemical signals that send us off in search of food for the colony, we exchange <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">memes</a> (self-replicating fragments of culture) that influence our behaviour. The fellow who drove the rented van down the sidewalk in Toronto wasn't some crazed Richard the Third character who "choose to make good his evil, and evil his good", instead he was an individual with "issues" who was influenced by a dysfunctional minority culture to the point of committing mass murder. In this, he was not any different from the guy who walked into a Quebec mosque with a gun and shot a bunch of people, or, the fellows who hi-jacked airplanes and flew them into the World Trade Centre. All of these people immersed themselves in a weird subculture that created a new way of looking at the world that convinced them that killing a lot of people "just made sense" and was actually "heroic". <br />
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This is the point that needs to be emphasized. Our society labours under an idiotic macro-culture that says that each of us is an individual, atomic, Cartesian individual who has the ability to consciously and rationally choose their actions according to our "free will". I understand why it has yet to give up this absurd fantasy: our criminal justice and dominant religious culture is built on this assumption. But if we really want to understand why crazy shit like this keeps happening, we need to give up this childish idea and start understanding the ancient idea of "fate". People are controlled by the experiences that mold and shape the way their minds operate---including the strange subcultures that are emerging from the Internet. And, if we want to really curb this sort of nutty behaviour, we need to encourage social science to look at these subcultures and develop mechanisms to vaccinate people against these crazy ideas. One suggestion I that comes to my mind would be to teach children critical thinking skills from an early age instead of teaching them to "shut up and do what they are told"---which was certainly the subtext of everything I learned in primary school, and, church. Another one would be to encourage our leaders to stop babbling on about "evil" whenever some outrage occurs, and instead encourage debate about how these things really do come about.<br />
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Lest people think I'm reading too much into all of this. Consider the following quotes. There is this guy named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson">Jordan Peterson</a>, who is one of the highest paid YouTube personalities on the Web. He also has a best-selling book titled <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos/dp/0345816021" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">12 Rules for Life: an Antidote to Chaos</a>. He was recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html">profiled by the </a><i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html">New York Times</a>, </i>where he explained the problem that led to the recent mass killing in Toronto:<br />
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<span style="color: red;">“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: red;">Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: red;">“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: red;">I laugh, because it is absurd.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="color: red;">“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”</span></blockquote>
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Peterson has taken some criticism for this statement, which he explains by saying that he isn't talking about laws, "just" social pressure. You know, like employers refusing to hire women, doctors refusing to give women access to birth control, schools refusing to allow girls to take "men's courses"---stuff like that. The sort of things that people did when I was young, and which the nasty state has outlawed because of politically correct types having too much influence on society.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59IrTdXDw958K8wnqaeMUtNEo2mbg7wcvbQ7rDYWgShg3pwjCOuEDn-IneIruP25zHXOiPLNw6LfDIYfq8rm-IIOH_8wZa_C-17-KJ_3-SUOFTwxUwUiZ6ZUx677RIjiwZngfexaUF30/s1600/Peterson_Lecture_%252833522701146%2529_%2528cropped%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="734" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59IrTdXDw958K8wnqaeMUtNEo2mbg7wcvbQ7rDYWgShg3pwjCOuEDn-IneIruP25zHXOiPLNw6LfDIYfq8rm-IIOH_8wZa_C-17-KJ_3-SUOFTwxUwUiZ6ZUx677RIjiwZngfexaUF30/s400/Peterson_Lecture_%252833522701146%2529_%2528cropped%2529.png" width="368" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jordan Peterson wants you ladies to marry someone---or else!<br />
photo by Adam Jacobs, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-215107753169649382018-04-12T09:43:00.001-06:002018-04-12T09:43:29.417-06:00 Book Review: Daoist "Cli-Fi" <br />
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Last month I got an email from one of my regular readers asking if I'd be interested in reading a book he just published titled <b><i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Voice-Elders-Greg-Ripley-ebook/dp/B079YZ2LZH">Voice of the Elders</a></i></b>. When I answered in the affirmative, <a href="https://www.gregoryripley.com/">Greg Ripley</a> (the author) sent me a review version and I've spent the last month reading it in dribs and drabs whenever I had the time. (Between this blog, <a href="http://guelph-back-grounder.blogspot.ca/">my other one</a>, working full time, etc, I have to measure my time with an eye-dropper.) I'm glad I made the effort.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Greg Ripley</td></tr>
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The plot revolves around a young woman, Rohini Haakonsen, who attends a youth conference on Climate Change at the United Nations. Totally unexpectedly, a representative of a mysterious alien race, "the Elders", arrives and announces that they have decided to help humanity deal with this existential threat. They literally "pop into existence" and "mind dump" huge amounts of information into the heads of various world leaders, engineers, and, scientists about how they can quickly "rejig" the world economy into one that is no longer dependant on fossil fuels. A nefarious industrialist---who is heavily invested in fossil fuels---organises a terrorist campaign against this transition, and, a secret Daoist organisation emerges to help Rohini and the Elders. Daring do, wisdom teachings, and, hints at future conflicts to be resolved in sequel novels are woven together into a pretty good piece of escapist fiction.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eva Wong, (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ptk8nMj35I">from YouTube</a>)<br />
"fair use" provision. </td></tr>
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The first thing to understand is that there is a tradition in Daoism of using popular literature as a teaching medium. The idea is based on the idea that "it's easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar". If you want people to learn about what you are teaching, don't bother with ponderous, hard-to-understand books of philosophy, just write an engaging novel that explains your ideas as part of an enjoyable plot. Indeed, it was with this idea in mind that the guy who initiated me into Daoism suggested <a href="https://www.shambhala.com/authors/u-z/eva-wong.html">Eva Wong</a> (another person from my temple) translate <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Taoist-Masters-Shambhala-Classics/dp/1590301765"><i><b>Seven Taoist Masters</b></i></a> into English. (I don't generally suggest that people read Wong's translations because they are usually horrible. But I've never found another English version of this book, so I've added the link.) Another, much longer, more well known example is <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Journey-West-Wu-Chenen/dp/7119016636"><b><i>Journey to the West</i></b></a>. (This link is to the W.J.F. Jenner translation, which is the best one I've found---there are lots of really bad, abridged translations too.)<br />
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So the idea of writing a popular novel to explain Daoist ideas is not innovative but rather part of the tradition. Having said that, just how good is the Daoism in <i><b>Voice of the Elders</b></i>?<br />
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Ripley manages to work in a bit of lore from religious Daoism, including thing like a brief description of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Pure_Ones">Three Pure Ones</a> and the martial prowess of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudang_Mountains">Wu Dang Shan</a> monks. Even the name of the mysterious, alien "Elders" is a good choice---that is the what scholars say was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi#Historical_views">original meaning of the name "Laozi"</a>, who is supposed to be the author of the <i><b>Dao De Jing</b></i>. On the experiences of the characters, I cannot fault the author. He does a good job of explaining the psychological elements of "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuowang">sitting and forgetting</a>" and gets right some subtleties that an outsider might not. For example, he mentions the strong emotional responses from people that lead to uncontrollable weeping. In the Temple where I was taught, one of the staff people was assigned to provide towels to people when this happened---and it did. Even the stuff that outsiders might think far-fetched---like the secret international society---aren't as odd as you might think. Indeed, I once met a man who had been taught <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_Ga">hung-gar</a> at an early age by a secret society---"<a href="http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/chinese_freemasons/index.html">the Chinese Free-Masons</a>"---in Victoria, British Columbia.<br />
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&&&&<br /><br /><span style="color: blue;"><b><i>You may have noticed that I've removed all the advertisements off the blog. This is because the ad market for small guys like me has pretty much dried up. That's OK anyway, because I never really was all that comfortable with advertising in the first place.<br /><br />Having said that, as I approach retirement and have added another "mouth to feed" to my costs, I am trying to access a little more money for my soon-to-be much less income. In addition, I now see myself as someone who is a member of the "creator class" on the Web, and I think I should "do my bit" to help create a culture where people get used to supporting the people who consume the art they create. To that end, I've added a Patreon button to the top of the right column. I've been using it on my other blog and have started getting subscribers. If anyone feels like they gain from my posts, consider subscribing for a buck a month---or whatever you think best. Feel free to buy a book or make a one time donation too. Everything helps. <br /><br />One of the "creatives" that I support with monthly payments articulated something about this Patreon subscription model that I thought worth passing on. He said that people call things like Uber and Air BnB part of an emerging "sharing economy". That's nonsense, these are just businesses like anything else. But providing things through Patreon really is sharing. That's because people who can afford to pay support the opportunities of people who literally cannot pay to read the content. That's the difference between Patreon and a paywall. <br /></i></b></span><br />
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The book isn't just about Daoism, it is also something that specifically sets out to be part of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_fiction">"Cli-Fi" genre</a>. This is an emerging literary style that integrates climate change into the world that book's characters inhabit. Another example is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Greer">John Michael Greer</a>'s<a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Stars-Reach-Novel-Deindustrial-Future/dp/098437647X" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"> Star's Reach</a>, where climate change has melted the ice cap, the Eastern part of the mid-West United States now experiences a monsoon season, Florida is under water, the South West is an uninhabitable desert, and, society is managed by Druid-like priestesses who enforce a strict code of law that provides for things like burying alive anyone who gets caught using fossil fuels. Octavia Butler's "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler#The_Parable_series:_1993%E2%80%931998">Parable Books</a>" (mentioned in my last post) also loosely fit into the genre. In that universe, climate change has damaged the USA's society and strengthened Canada---which now has a militarily-defended wall on its Southern border to keep out illegal immigrants.<br />
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In the case of Ripley's book, the climate issue serves to create the plot in that the "Elders" are driven by concern about the future of humanity to actively intervene even though it isn't something that they are generally inclined to do. It also drives conflict by creating a motive for shadowy business leaders to fund a campaign of sabotage against renewable energy installations and terrorism against any humans who are working with the Elders. Since a great many environmentalists do get a lot of opposition from big business, this is a perfectly understandable plot device too. Just in my own personal case, I've been called a "terrorist" in print, had lawyers threaten to take away my home and life savings through lawsuits, got death threats over the phone, and, caught private investigators snooping around my life. And, it certainly is the case that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/13/environmental-defenders-being-killed-in-record-numbers-globally-new-research-reveals">lots of environmentalists have been murdered</a> for organising against collective suicide.<br />
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So while it is true that there is nothing in this book that either does violence to various teachings in Daoism, or stretches credibility to the snapping point (at least vis-a-vis human society), I do have some quibbles. <br />
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There are different ways of understanding what Daoism is all about. And some people put a lot of emphasis on things like "Qi", "meridians", "energy", etc. I can understand where all of this comes from, as I have experienced the sorts of feelings that people describe as "Qi", felt if "flow" through my body, and so on. It is also something that is definitely part of the tradition. But I am also a modern man who has a graduate from a competent modern university. And I believe that a lot of this stuff is simply---for lack of a long discussion which I'ved had in <a href="http://urbanecohermit.blogspot.ca/2010/12/beginings-of-theory-of-qi.html">other blog posts</a>---a lot of "<a href="http://skepdic.com/woowoo.html">woo-woo</a>" that needs to be discarded.<br />
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I come to things from a very different point of view. My emphasis is on the more prosaic goal of becoming a "realized man" in the sense of dispelling delusion and gaining wisdom. My first meditation teacher explained this with a story. He talked about two disciples who were talking about how great their respective teachers were. One of them said that his teacher could hold up a brush on one side of a river and write on a piece of paper someone held on the other side. The second one said that this was nothing---his teacher managed to eat only when he was hungry and sleep when he was tired. (These are two skills that I have yet to master myself.)<br />
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I mention this point because as I see it, real Daoists would not be secretive or use special powers, instead, they would be inherently invisible to outside society because the vast majority of people wouldn't have the categories of thought necessary to process the information that they are seeing. Let me illustrate with a martial art called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira">capoeira</a>. For those of you who don't know, capoeira is a martial art native to Brazil and which incorporates a lot of African dancing and music into it. It really is very different from the Chinese or European martial arts. Let me explain to you how I see things when my viewpoint is informed by the small amount of Daoism that I have learned over my life.<br />
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Here's a video of "the money game" and something I think is called "the urban ritual" (I'm far from knowing much about capoeira.) Pay really close attention to the first minute or so and you will notice that there is a small bit of folded paper money on the floor of the gym. Watch how the two men go through their movements on the floor and one the fellow maneuvers the other guy away from the money so he can pick it up with his teeth.<br />
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What has happened is that there was a strictly strategic competition between two people to gain access to a specific location without making yourself vulnerable to a counter-attack by your opponent.</div>
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The majority of the demonstration is something called "the urban ritual". I don't know how capoeira explains this, but it seems obvious to me that what is happening is a very involved exercise in learning how to adapt to the <a href="http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=126">tempo</a> and balance of another person. As such, it is much like the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_hands">push hands</a>" of taijiquan. In retrospect, it makes sense that a martial art that comes with African roots and which is practiced in time to music accompaniment would put a huge emphasis on tempo.<br />
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So what has all of this got to do with Daoism and <b style="font-style: italic;">Voice of the Elders</b>? Well, I'd suggest that if real "super Daoists" were to intervene into world society in order to prevent an ecological holocaust they'd use some sort of subtle mechanism that ordinary people are pretty much oblivious to---like the tempo that capoeira teacher uses to win the "money game" or show off during the "urban ritual".<br />
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Instead, <i style="font-weight: bold;">Voice of the Elders </i>uses Daoism as a "back drop" for a fairly conventional "spy thriller" in the same vein as a Tom Clancy novel. There is a lot of flying around the world. Gangs of mercenaries attack secret bases. People are killed. The plot is developed by focusing on the psychological quirks of individual law enforcement officers. So forth and so on. <br />
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Of course, I'm not being particularly fair to Greg Ripley. A novel isn't a book of philosophy and if you are going to write something that appeals to the general public an author has to use the same <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trope_(literature)">tropes </a>that exist in every other novel in the genre. Greg knows what these are and plays them like a pro. These include:<br />
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<li> The <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTeamBenefactor?from=Main.TheRichGuy">rich benefactor</a> (loosely based on Jackie Chan) who provides the private plane that jets people from New York to the Daoist Temple in Chinese hinterland. </li>
<li>The well-trained <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BattleButler">secret agent body guard</a> with a heart of gold who's assigned to watch over Rohini.</li>
<li>The magic mysterious "<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicalAsian">oriental monk</a>".</li>
<li> The "<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGoodKing">good Czar</a>" who understands when all the petty bureaucrats don't, in the form of the US president. </li>
<li>The <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BenevolentAlienInvasion">magic space bats</a> (ie: the Elders) who can fix all the world's problems by intervention.</li>
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Indeed, it could be argued that Ripley is simply using the "Dao" of publishing to get his ideas out there. If he didn't use these tropes, then he'd never get anyone to publish or read his book. </div>
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And that is the dilemma authors always face. How can I give readers what I have to offer in a way that they will actually want to receive? You always have to make a choice between conforming to what the market wants so much that you have to water down the message you are trying to make; or; being so true to your beliefs that almost no one is interested in what you have to offer. And being able to make this choice already assumes that you have something useful to say and are a good enough writer to express it well---which pretty much excludes most people in the first place. That is why many years ago a friend told me "Writing is very easy. You just smash your head on the keys of your typewriter until the blood comes forth and makes words on the page."</div>
The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-21457186040028552162018-03-26T08:27:00.001-06:002018-03-26T08:27:40.278-06:00Sympathy, Empathy, FaceBook, and, Cambridge AnalyticaI have a hard time watching videos where people do embarrassing things. I have a <i style="font-weight: bold;">really </i>hard time. So much so that I generally have to stop, walk away, and do something else. If this becomes a "regular thing" in a series, I have to stop watching altogether. This is annoying, because a fair number of otherwise very funny programs base a significant amount of their jokes on people doing "over the top" stupid things and then making the character "twist in the wind" as they realise how dumb they've been. And because of some quirk of my mind, I totally self-identify with this situation and it makes me feel absolutely horrible. This has meant that several programs---even some that I really liked---simply have become unwatchable by me because I get so agitated.<br />
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A couple examples are "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_the_Hill">King of the Hill</a>", where "Peggy" routinely gets into problems because she thinks she knows Spanish and "teaches" it as a supply teacher in a Texas public school---with "hilarious" results. Another is "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s_Burgers">Bob's Burgers</a>", where "Linda" simply cannot control her curiosity and as a results trespasses on other people's property with "hilarious" results.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAlQ8h4ekT7m_Y0EBYpbDXuCR5QLPmCkM8GO5wEy4mOSyRGimEKK4I2R28kHO56Gru9u1ZpQVY1jH5FJJhHDTQxpQhQhNgdGRAPq42uW4Qe8k7FsU7s1Ms9naljom3Tv8PzuAAjpNy0aQ/s1600/Peggy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="418" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAlQ8h4ekT7m_Y0EBYpbDXuCR5QLPmCkM8GO5wEy4mOSyRGimEKK4I2R28kHO56Gru9u1ZpQVY1jH5FJJhHDTQxpQhQhNgdGRAPq42uW4Qe8k7FsU7s1Ms9naljom3Tv8PzuAAjpNy0aQ/s200/Peggy.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peggy embarrassed again<br />
Copyright fair use</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_1ibQZqjRx22b2gyxgUl2jYiGc-K5PySR6dyDuEg4JyY_MRr7SJCl5Drgobb0wI3zckKIy6gGiJsWG3-GwwfJOe5kOZ_Yo2nfLABXZS6ybDQZiMmE99mIaOspeGBwr6J5QCYfwGzOaY/s1600/linda_belcher__bob_s_burgers__1_by_frasier_and_niles-d91s04c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1233" data-original-width="647" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ_1ibQZqjRx22b2gyxgUl2jYiGc-K5PySR6dyDuEg4JyY_MRr7SJCl5Drgobb0wI3zckKIy6gGiJsWG3-GwwfJOe5kOZ_Yo2nfLABXZS6ybDQZiMmE99mIaOspeGBwr6J5QCYfwGzOaY/s200/linda_belcher__bob_s_burgers__1_by_frasier_and_niles-d91s04c.jpg" width="104" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linda gets caught<br />
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(I know, I know. I watch too much TV. But I live what most people would consider a very productive life and I have to spend some of my waking hours in undirected activity. And anyway, most of the time I use the plots and character development to think about issues like the one this blog post deals with.)<br />
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The late and much missed writer Octavia Butler wrote a couple of speculative fiction novels that came to be called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler#The_Parable_series:_1993%E2%80%931998">the Parable series</a>". The central character was a woman named Lauren Oya Olamina who was afflicted with a genetic disorder caused by her mother taking a drug to increase her intellectual powers while pregnant. This disease causes Lauren to literally feel the physical pain of anyone that she sees suffering.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTCHw6DptfZ7Al95bvqy22_1JFRV6LJUZGt44k3cVdj31GPffztm9vxfTY1nJpmE6_TaanrbVn8whrgADQetjChQCArAfSqivZk-QinejuR9KeCEn3s3WuQoMdugdGwbDkHzdXnwbuyM/s1600/croppedOctaviaButler.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="487" data-original-width="386" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOTCHw6DptfZ7Al95bvqy22_1JFRV6LJUZGt44k3cVdj31GPffztm9vxfTY1nJpmE6_TaanrbVn8whrgADQetjChQCArAfSqivZk-QinejuR9KeCEn3s3WuQoMdugdGwbDkHzdXnwbuyM/s200/croppedOctaviaButler.png" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Late Octavia Butler<br />
Wiki Commons, BrillLyle</td></tr>
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Of course, it's very hard to understand exactly how someone could end up with a disease that forces her to feel the agony of something like a having her hand cut off just by seeing it happen to someone else. But as a metaphor it works very well to illustrate how different some people's experience of reality is from others. Without getting into the skin of other people, it seems to me that there are very different levels of empathy expressed in the human population. Obviously psychopaths don't even feel anything when they torture people to death (except, of course, pleasure.) But there are a lot of people who are closer to the middle but somewhere towards the unfeeling end of things. These are the folks who don't care about the implications of various government policies. Cutting welfare will dump people out on the streets? They aren't upset as long as their taxes don't go up. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlItJPUEgm76WANvGGkOMzeAdNhZOlEBvbbrXIMhm1qNldBSgWPAlPSYNAI03EHRc3KwYCpUvfcKouk2HSixmeZuRjMsMo1MjKkKAJwA1H-_Aa3azrAzrWssvXzOm2u2xsmlGLkX_Tpzk/s1600/Eleanor_Roosevelt_and_Westbrook_Pegler_in_Pawling%252C_New_York_-_NARA_-_195810_%2528cropped%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="95" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlItJPUEgm76WANvGGkOMzeAdNhZOlEBvbbrXIMhm1qNldBSgWPAlPSYNAI03EHRc3KwYCpUvfcKouk2HSixmeZuRjMsMo1MjKkKAJwA1H-_Aa3azrAzrWssvXzOm2u2xsmlGLkX_Tpzk/s200/Eleanor_Roosevelt_and_Westbrook_Pegler_in_Pawling%252C_New_York_-_NARA_-_195810_%2528cropped%2529.jpg" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Westbrook Pegler<br />
Photo c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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On the other end are people like me that are sometimes called "bleeding heart liberals". These are the folks who get an overwhelming desire to help whenever they seem someone in distress. You might get a bit of a feel for how wide the gap between various types of people is by learning <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/origin-bleeding-heart-liberal">where that term comes from</a>. If the World Wide Web can be trusted, it comes from a 1936 newspaper column penned by a fellow named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbrook_Pegler">Westbrook Pegler</a>. In it he is complaining about a law being proposed to stop lynchings.<br />
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At this point I hope that I've pointed out that how people react to the problems of others is quite complex and differs dramatically from person to person. Unfortunately, it is really hard to talk about this issue because our language on the subject is badly muddled. People understand that there is a difference between "empathy" and "sympathy", but a brief survey of articles on the Web has shown me that there isn't anything like a consensus about what that would be.<br />
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For the purposes of this essay, therefore, I'm going to arbitrarily define "empathy" as "a direct emotional <i>feeling</i> that <i>purports</i> to allow someone to feel <i>a close approximation</i> of what another person is going through when they are in distress". In contrast, I will define "sympathy" as "a <i>conceptual attempt to understand</i> the perspective and situation of someone who is in distress". Using these definitions, Lauren Oya and myself are suffering from <i>empathy</i> when we feel the physical and emotional pain of other people. In contrast, I would say that Octavia Butler <i>sympathized</i> with people who feel extreme empathetic anguish when confronted with the suffering of others---which is why she came up with the character of Lauren Oya in her "Parable" books.<br />
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Please note that I have tried to be very precise in my language. I didn't write that people feel the exact same things as others, I wrote "that purports". Indeed, when I get my strong empathetic reaction to television actors and cartoon characters, there is no way I could possibly be really feeling another person's actual emotions---simply <i>because I'm not connecting with real human beings</i>. This is absolutely obvious in my example, because I'm talking about by crudely drawn, two-dimensional animated fictional characters.<br />
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So what is empathy? I'd suggest that it is simply an instinctual emotion that forces people to think about the good of other members of the "tribe". From an evolutionary perspective, this might seem to be opposed to the idea of "survival of the fittest", but it fits perfectly into modern ideas about "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene">selfish genes</a>". That idea is that "fitness" boils down to "ability to have offspring that share your DNA". And if the DNA comes from a relative instead of directly from you, that's perfectly OK.<br />
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For most of our existence, human beings used to live in very small extended family groups or small tribes where everyone was related to each other. So in that context, the person you save in a difficult situation would very probably be related and shares at least some of the same DNA as you. This means that from a Darwinian point of view, helping other people makes perfect evolutionary sense. And the way we integrate this instinct with the high intelligence and self-consciousness that is our "evolutionary advantage" over all other species is by developing a strong emotion towards other human beings. People who's "heart bleeds" are acting on this instinct.<br />
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One important thing to remember about the hypothesis I'm positing above is to remember that from an evolutionary point of view, empathy makes sense for a small tribe where everyone is related to each other. So why would people feel empathy about strangers---such as black people in another state that are being lynched? The thing to remember is that evolution is brainless, so much so that Richard Dawkins called it "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Watchmaker">the blind watchmaker</a>". That is to say, there are many instances that biologists can point to where evolution came up with something that works well enough, but isn't a very good or elegant solution. That's because evolution is a totally non-rational system of trial and error rather than a process where some intelligence designs a solution to a specific problem.<br />
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To understand this point, look at the two images below. They represent two different times that natural selection developed what's called "the camera eye". The left image comes from a vertebrate like us, the other is from an octopus. For some reason in our natural history, the nerve fibres connecting the rod and cones in our eyes ended up on the side towards the lens of our eye. This means that where the nerve fibres come together to leave the eye and connect to the brain---they have to create a gap in the light receptors so the nerve fibers can go through them. This creates <a href="https://visionaryeyecare.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/eye-test-find-your-blind-spot-in-each-eye/">a blind spot in our eyes</a>. In the octopus the nerves ended up underneath the light receptors, which means that they don't have a blind spot. This not only shows that the same sort of eye evolved twice, through "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution">convergent evolution</a>", but that it is a trial and error system that creates "good enough" results instead of "the best" ones.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLagBwaexU5wZaL9aSKAGdoKzuUPYeHDhJALG5u9g_5TkSyBWEOlvoc3bceLosNOdxN2wjbVX5vvt0QRo-V_MjFk5c7qicbQyWgUEhYG8QVoc085INMtHFoVwntDsrMxNrY6q6o6FPE3s/s1600/600px-Evolution_eye.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="600" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLagBwaexU5wZaL9aSKAGdoKzuUPYeHDhJALG5u9g_5TkSyBWEOlvoc3bceLosNOdxN2wjbVX5vvt0QRo-V_MjFk5c7qicbQyWgUEhYG8QVoc085INMtHFoVwntDsrMxNrY6q6o6FPE3s/s400/600px-Evolution_eye.svg.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"1" are the light receptors, "2" and "3" are the nerve fibers,<br />
and, "4" is the blind spot. Image care of Wiki-Commons</td></tr>
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In the case of empathy, people existed in small tribal groups already, so there was no "need" for evolution to develop some sort of "filter" to ensure that empathy didn't extend to members of the group that were not related to the individual. This means that humans developed empathy for every human human they met. This worked fine for hunter-gatherers, but the situation changed when we started living in larger communities. Now people feel empathy for total strangers who do not share any DNA.<br />
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At this point humanity has made the leap from small "packs" (like wolves) to large complex societies (like ants or termites.) So now we are what are called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality">eusocial animals</a>". It might be that empathy has "leap-frogged" from being a mechanism to encourage continued spread of tribal DNA to being a mechanism for preserving the human "mega-colony" that covers the entire earth. (I'm possibly stretching the science well past the breaking point here.) But even if the continued existence of empathy is a vestigial hold-over that no longer serves a purpose in modern life, our change of circumstances has happened so quickly, that it would make perfect sense for the majority of people to still feel empathy, even if it no longer serves any evolutionary purpose.<br />
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If this is the case, why doesn't everyone's heart bleed? Well it's important to realize that in an entire population of a species there is a fair amount of difference between individuals and this can result from two mechanisms: sub-populations, and, gene expression.<br />
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In the former case, there is an advantage for a small percentage of the population to not have empathy because this means that they can benefit from the help of others while at the same time not having to expend the effort of helping anyone else. This is a parasitical relationship, but one that only works if just a small fraction of the public pursues it. If the majority stops having any empathy, then it no longer gives anyone a competitive advantage to be indifferent to suffering of others, because no one else is going to help you either. And that situation also wipes out the collective benefit of empathy in the first place. This means that there is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeostasis">homeostatic relationship</a> between empathy and psychopathy in any give population of individuals---that is, with a minority of psychopaths and a majority of empaths.<br />
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In the gene expression hypothesis, people are born with a "toolbox" of potential behaviours. Which particular tool becomes part of your personality is based on what happened to you at specific times of you early development. For example, it might be the case that certain types of stresses would push someone towards indifference to the suffering of others; while others would encourage an empathetic response. <br />
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Please note that there is no conflict between these two different explanations. It might be that they both exist. It might also be the case that there are no people who are inherently psychopathic and they are simply people who've had the gene express itself. Moreover, I'm not dismissing anything like a social influence either. I'm not a scientist, but rather a Daoist philosopher and all I'm trying to do is use my limited understanding of the modern scientific consensus to make sense of a complex social phenomenon.<br />
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At least one modern thinker, Paul Bloom, has written a book that suggests that empathy can be a bad thing: <i><b><a href="http://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062339355/against-empathy">Against Empathy</a></b></i>. (To be honest, I haven't read this book, but I did watch an hour long lecture by him where explains his ideas, so I think I have a good feel for his thesis.)<br />
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He doesn't say that the empathy, per se, is a bad thing. It does help to have that specific emotion that pushes us towards helping others. The problem comes from the ability of emotions to "shut down" or "over-ride" our rational minds. When that happens we tend to forget that we aren't really experiencing the actual feelings of other people, but rather a projection of what we think they are feeling. Moreover, we also tend to "confabulate" (ie: make up explanations in the absence of any real knowledge) a narrative to explain the situation. These two experiences often bear no resemblance to reality at all and will encourage people to pursue behaviour that will not only not help, but often will make the situation far worse. Moreover, this tendency to insert a made-up narrative can be exploited by "dark" elements in society who can amass power by encouraging people to accept a specific narrative that benefits no one except the people promoting that story.</div>
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Let's look at one particularly simple example of this behaviour.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGBDwv7EMroRFR38P5PZQQEMlxFs2zLIuQUwalpNP9SXQDAgoyY2N622Kf5jZkl6RhJ7VqWOER9OSDng32bNqnf4_mzac0EaKHWdo0QSuTDhI-WqfvCWyC7V-xP6jNsVeJZeaz60-DqM/s1600/busads_euthanasia.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="245" data-original-width="768" height="101" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSGBDwv7EMroRFR38P5PZQQEMlxFs2zLIuQUwalpNP9SXQDAgoyY2N622Kf5jZkl6RhJ7VqWOER9OSDng32bNqnf4_mzac0EaKHWdo0QSuTDhI-WqfvCWyC7V-xP6jNsVeJZeaz60-DqM/s320/busads_euthanasia.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bus advertisement, c/o <a href="http://www.guelphforlife.com/busads.html">Guelph "Pro-Life"</a>,<br />
Used under the "fair use" copyright provision.</td></tr>
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Canada recently passed legislation that allows for doctor-assisted suicide in the case of terminally-ill patients who are suffering and request it. This advertisement is working on the empathy of viewers by suggesting that their personal situation is exactly the same as everyone else's, and they can make complex social decisions based on this "fact". This is complete and utter nonsense. I wake up most mornings with a little pain from my arthritis, but this is absolutely nothing like the pain that some folks suffer with as they slowly "shuffle off this mortal coil". I simply do not know what it is like to suffer through a particularly nasty slow death, neither do I think that the people who made up this bus advertisement. This is because death is that "<a href="http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_140.html">undiscovered country</a>" that Shakespeare wrote about.<br />
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My reaction is one of "sympathy"---as I have defined the term for the purposes of this essay---in that I am trying to reason through the objective truth of the situation and made a rational decision about what would be objectively in the best interest of another person. In contrast, the poster is consciously trying to by-pass "sympathy" and instead elicit a totally "empathic" reaction (again, as I have defined the term.) It says "we're all in danger"---implying that euthanasia will be done to us whether we want it or not, and, that we won't ever want it because we will never want to die no matter how awful life has become.<br />
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The real point of view that the "Pro-Life" people are supporting is that of the government should force you to have a slow, horrible death. Why? I suppose if pressed, they would say something to the effect that "God says so". Another option might be to say "if we allow assisted suicide for the terminally ill in horrible pain, we start on a "slippery slope" that will end up with us euthanizing all disabled people too".<br />
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The problem with these two arguments are that "God says so" is that it an appeal to a totally idiosyncratic, hidden authority. Who gets to speak for God? Which God? As for the "slippery slope", that sort of argument is always based on the premise that society is simply incapable of making the sort of relatively simple distinctions that it makes all the time. For example, almost no one argues no one should have a beer once in a while because that will inevitably lead to alcoholism. Similarly, why do we assume that the government can't tell the difference between a person dying in agony and someone who just has to use a wheelchair?<br />
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OK. So why mention the issue of empathy at all? Why should anyone outside of academia care? I raise the issue because empathy has an enormous impact on politics. For example, consider the huge march in favour of gun control that recently happened in Washington DC. Hundreds of thousands of people took part primarily because of several mass shootings at schools in the USA. I'm not opposed to this effort, but I do think that it's important to remember that the odds are completely over-whelmingly against anyone being killed by a mass shooter anywhere---even at school.<br />
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A quick Web search found <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604">a report from the BBC</a>. In the USA in 2015 there were 372 mass shootings that killed 475 people, of these only 64 happened at a school (no numbers are given for those killed at a school.) In contrast, 13,286 people were killed by guns in total. This means that only 4% of gun deaths happened because of mass shootings and a much smaller fraction of those deaths happened at a school. In comparison, 35,092 people of all ages <a href="http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/teenagers/fatalityfacts/teenagers/2015">died in motor vehicle crashes</a> in 2015---with 2,715 being teens. This really does raise the rational question "Why are people marching about gun deaths versus motor vehicle deaths?" I would suggest the difference is these people are acting on the basis of "empathy" instead of "sympathy" (as I have defined the terms.)<br />
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I'm not really opposed to gun controls. I grew up around guns and can't understand why anyone except the police, the military, or, a few exceptional civilians (eg: armored car guards) need pistols or semi-automatic rifles. But I am concerned about the impact of empathy on politics, because it is something that can so easily stampede voters into supporting terrible policies. People felt a great deal of empathy towards Alan Kurdi when his lifeless body was photographed. Empathy generated by this picture had a dramatic effect on Canadian government policy and led to over 25,000 Syrian refugees entering the country.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNOVNFjVwp23-sxynjG4L1P2JuHsIKrDpNWKmdDYNm-dF21VnZlyBJTNADBFJMPSy15qYORApJzWacWmd5bEJUwt6-_ww4zBYH14uggn1iw8X-nhI1hSOVBD74TrsP2y6bzaGXeaD-ajY/s1600/Alan_Kurdi_lifeless_body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="349" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNOVNFjVwp23-sxynjG4L1P2JuHsIKrDpNWKmdDYNm-dF21VnZlyBJTNADBFJMPSy15qYORApJzWacWmd5bEJUwt6-_ww4zBYH14uggn1iw8X-nhI1hSOVBD74TrsP2y6bzaGXeaD-ajY/s320/Alan_Kurdi_lifeless_body.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This photo brought in 25,000 people to Canada:<br />
photo c/o Wiki Commons </td></tr>
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Again, I have no problem with this particular policy. But the knife cuts both ways. Donald Trump won his election in part by whipping people into an frenzy of empathy over illegal immigrants. For example, consider this campaign advertisement:<br />
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The shoe is now on the other foot. We aren't having our empathy "played" to support refugees from a gruesome civil war, instead we are being told that immigrants are vicious killers who murder our heroic police officers. This means that people are being whipped up into a frenzy to not help people in distress, but rather to dick them over.<br />
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In case the Trump ad didn't make my case, take a look at this piece of Polish fascist propaganda I quickly found on the Web. The inference from video is that Muslim immigrants (ie: Alan Kurdi and his family) are as great a threat to Europe as the Turkish invasion of Austria---and they require just as vigorous a response.<br />
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<br /><b><i><span style="color: blue;">A while back a person complained that she was annoyed with me for putting these little blue advertisements in <a href="http://guelph-back-grounder.blogspot.ca/">my other blog</a>'s posts because she said I was "attacking people for not paying". Last month she gave me $100 and apologized because she said she "finally realized" how much work goes into writing these things. I don't ask for money primarily to make people feel guilty, but more out of a sense of obligation towards everyone else who is trying to help humanity make the transition to a better world. I don't want all our culture to be controlled by algorithms that are designed by advertising companies. And the best way to do that is to get people into the habit of paying directly by services like Patreon. Once in a while I get a donation and it really does make me feel that I'm actually building an audience for my weird take on reality. And that does help me---both financially and emotionally. So, thanks Irv, for being so awesome!</span></i></b><br /><br />&&&&<br /><br />
Some readers might respond by saying "so what? we've always had propaganda, what's so different about this?"<br />
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People may have heard something about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica">Cambridge Analytica</a> scandal, but I suspect many really don't know what it's about. In a nutshell, this quite sleazy political consulting firm was hired by the Brexit Campaign, Donald Trump, and, others to use very fine-grained FaceBook data (which they obtained under false pretenses) to create targeted ads to individual voters. On the face of it, this doesn't sound all too nefarious. Who cares if people who are concerned about the environment get ads that deal with this issue, while others who care more about healthcare something else?<br />
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The problem is, however, that you can sort people into different types of categories and parse them out based on their psychological makeup instead of their voting priorities. What if an ad agency was able to identify the fraction of the population who are potentially compulsive gamblers and direct on-line gambling adverts towards them that encouraged them to try on-line gambling? Or people who might become impulse shoppers? Or, what if a political party could identify those voters who were potentially fearful of "the Other" and sent them advertisements that stoked that fear to make them even more afraid? And what if no one else ever saw those ads, so their friends and family never got a chance to explain how misleading and fallacious they are?<br />
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People who've never been involved in politics at a high level usually don't know how technical and "numbers driven" it can be. Let me give a trivial personal example just to illustrate. Years ago I remember getting ahold of the poll maps for my city. I found out our municipal elections had a very, very low voter turnout---about 30%. I also found out that senior homes had something like 100% turnout. I asked around and found out that for mobility reasons the city clerk set up voting stations in each retirement facility. I also found out that most homes "encouraged" the seniors to vote---sometimes to the point where people complained loudly because they knew nothing about the candidates but felt that they had to vote anyway. Moreover, I found that the then mayor exploited this fact by constantly visiting these places to entertain them (he played the piano.) So for all the elders who didn't know anything about city Council, the one name they recognized on the ballot was of "the nice young man who comes to play the piano".<br />
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Things have come a long, long way since then. Political parties have extremely detailed lists of voters. These identify which party they support, which issues are of concern, how likely they are to actually vote, whether they give money, and, if they ever volunteer. These databases are protected and constantly polished like the crown jewels---because they are the biggest asset that any political party owns. Who gets to have access to them is the best indicator of the status that anyone has in the organization.<br />
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At the same time, social media companies like FaceBook also have created lists that they polish and cherish. These lists include all the same people as the political parties, and they also identify people according to their psychological profile and tendencies. In addition, these companies also offer advertising agencies the ability to separate these people into different demographics: potential compulsive gamblers, people who have a hard time saying "no" to aggressive advertisements, and, folks who are prepared to believe the worst of foreign peoples. This sort of finely-grained sorting is what allows party consultants to craft specific advertisements that are designed to appeal to the worst elements of their emotions. This is what the Cambridge Analytica scandal is all about.<br /><br />&&&&<br />
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One last point. No one is suggesting that the impact of directed internet advertising is enough to win an election. Neither is playing a piano in an old folks home. But <i>democratic politics is additive</i>. That is to say, modern parties don't set out to craft a platform and campaign for everyone and hope that a majority support it. Instead, they do polling and build a "winning coalition". This includes their "base" who will vote for them through thick and thin (these are the people who would vote for a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_dog_Democrat">yellow dog</a>" if it had the right party affiliation.) When you've identified that, then you have to try to find "wedge issues". These are specific policies that are so important to a fraction of the electorate that they will vote on it and ignore everything else the politicians are talking about (eg: abortion.) Add a couple of these to platform, plus the base, and you approach a chance of winning. Toss in Gerrymandering and some voter suppression, and you get even closer. Using a targeted series of ads that will whip that last fraction of the voting public into voting for you can make the difference about whether or not your candidate ends elected or not. <br /><br />This doesn't mean that the candidate that a party puts forward (eg: Clinton) doesn't still have an impact on the election. But in "winner takes all" situations, the dirty tricks that parties pursue can push a candidate that last little inch needed to come first across the finish line.<br /><br />&&&&<br />
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What should readers take away from this monstrous pig of a blog post?<br /><br />First, they should realize what all the fuss about social media is about. It might not be the case that Cambridge Analytica (or Russian interference for that matter) was all that important in the last US election. Clinton was a deeply unpopular candidate and the "neo-liberal consensus" that she is identified with is well past it's "best before date". But even if this is so, it is tremendously useful for people to start being concerned about how the interaction between increasingly complex computer analysis and sophisticated psychology makes a significant fraction of the public easily manipulated. If this is a "fake scandal", it is still a tremendously useful starting point for important collective discussion.<br /><br />Secondly, as part of that discussion I think it's also very important for us to ask "what is it about our society that makes so many people willing to believe such over-the-top idiocy?" Is it perhaps that the old "mass market" society of the 20th century and an educational system that was designed to make people into docile factory workers simply simply doesn't work in the emerging 21st century society? Perhaps our electoral systems and representative democracies need a significant rethink too.<br /><br />Fodder for future blog posts by myself or others---.<br />
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-14032112436969535402017-12-29T10:28:00.001-06:002017-12-29T14:46:04.888-06:00Scary Monsters and Crazy, Dangerous Worlds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a vacation time for me lately. Part of that has been some total sloth binge-watching Netflix. In particular, I've been immersing myself in "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agents_of_S.H.I.E.L.D.">Marvel's Agents of Shield</a>". For those of you who don't follow such stuff, "SHIELD" is an enormous, incredibly well-funded, secret police agency who's task is to protect the entire world's population from the dangerous "super people" who keep popping up in the alternative "Marvel universe".<br />
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Watching episode 7 of the 3rd season of the series I heard a little speech by Rosalind Price---a US intelligence leader---talking about how scary it is to live in a world with "super people".<br />
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This is a really interesting conversation because Rosalind pretty much embodies the naive fear that people routinely express about any number of issues our society has trouble dealing with. I say "naive" because she is completely oblivious to the danger that she represents to the rest of the world. She suggests that Daisy (the younger woman---who has a super power) can "bring down the plane" and "kill Rosalind", without contemplating the fact that Rosalind can kill Daisy and bring down the plane too. After all, she is a trained killer who carries a gun. Moreover, she ignores the fact that she is the head of a secret police agency that routinely kicks in people's doors, drags them out at gun point, puts them into a coma and warehouses them indefinitely, and, has no compunction at all about shooting people who refuse to comply with their orders. (Heck, that dear plane that they are flying in can also shoot rockets and drop bombs, if you really want to get into it.)<br />
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As if it isn't loony enough that it appears that something like 20% of the world's Gross Domestic Product in the Marvel universe seems to be devoted to funding secret police agencies, there is plenty of evidence that plain old, garden-variety human nastiness is still around. The big enemy of SHIELD is a group of neo-NAZIs called "Hydra" (it has the cool slogan "cut off one head and another will grow to replace it"), led by some very nasty villains who were obviously based on folks like<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele"> Josef Mengele</a>. They like to dirty their hands in stuff like recruiting and brainwashing super-villains, but the concept works even without all this "alternative universe" stuff. It's obvious that there's no sense having to invent a new, hypothetical way of being evil when you can draw on the Niagara Falls of horror known as the Holocaust.<br />
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For heaven's sake, the world doesn't need "super heroes" and "super villains" to be an insanely dangerous place, science plus politics is more than enough to come up with nuclear war, genocide, climate change, etc. Can Marvel comics come up with a scenario as nightmare-inducing as Donald Trump in control of the nuclear football? I don't think that the writers of this tv show really have thought through how insanely vicious things like hydrogen bombs and nerve gas really are, or else they'd feel a little sheepish about the "devilish devices" dreamed up by the guys at Hydra. A disk that you throw that can turn you into rock? That's really nothing compared to nerve gas---a single drop of which on the skin is deadly.<br />
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The point I'm trying to work towards is that the world is an insanely dangerous place. It always has been. It has always been the case that politics can go bad very fast. The Mongols or Vikings or British Empire can show up, and you end up dead or a slave, and, your entire society being plucked and devoured like the Christmas turkey. You don't even need outsiders. Some bad political events can happen and you end up with a long-term catastrophe like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses">Wars of the Roses</a> (the real-life inspiration for the Game of Thrones series.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens <br />
(1908) by Henry Arthur Payne<br />
Yup, a bunch of toffs pick flowers and hordes of peasants die<br />
Public Domain Image c/o Wiki-Commons</td></tr>
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Do I really need to mention religion? If you don't know why I would say that, do some reading on the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War">Thirty Years War</a>". It killed off half the population of the German nation. It also inspired some very interesting art.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_7-IyZ8-TJX2oFMnEyp2DpEuwJqbfDAkx9l71isCgBF-_mZViQG92NytBTFU3yJ8dx3CqKsMqMKpYTntoDfXweQ0ZpjzMj2VQ8Q-m6ScQPlXD29gV5U_lTWA87k2JJxdT8Fky0dwv3w/s1600/The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="1458" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN_7-IyZ8-TJX2oFMnEyp2DpEuwJqbfDAkx9l71isCgBF-_mZViQG92NytBTFU3yJ8dx3CqKsMqMKpYTntoDfXweQ0ZpjzMj2VQ8Q-m6ScQPlXD29gV5U_lTWA87k2JJxdT8Fky0dwv3w/s320/The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hanging by Jacques Callot<br />
More public domain goodness from the Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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If you want to talk about crazy behaviour inspired by fear of "the other", nothing really compares to terror of heretics by fundamentalists. (Something to think about in our current political climate.)<br />
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This blog post isn't meant to an attack on "Agents of Shield". I actually really enjoy the show. But the role that Marvel plays in our society is that it allows people to work through the "big issues" that face us as human beings. It is the equivalent of the myths and legends that people used to tell around the hearth when it was too dark to work. As such, it creates a common language and more emotionally neutral way of discussing issues that are terribly important to all of us---but often so fundamentally terrible that people have a hard time talking about them.<br />
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And yeah, the basic fragility of life and human society is one of those things that people fool themselves into ignoring because they find the idea too scary to contemplate. We are all somewhat like Rosalind Price---up to our eyeballs in a vicious, dangerous, nasty world yet somehow deluded into thinking that in some way it is safe and stable. It is one of those key, important truths of Daoism that this is just a fantasy. The only thing that is constant is change. The Dao is totally indifferent to the suffering of humans, it treats us like "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_dog">straw dogs</a>".<br />
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This isn't to say that we need to become indifferent to suffering, just that any kindness or compassion that exists comes about because we choose to show it to others---not because it is intrinsic to the way things are. It also should teach us that we need to savour every moment (ie: hold onto the One), because it really may be our last chance to do so.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i>Yeah. More blue type. Just remember that "creatives" need to eat too. We're happy to share with folks that can't afford to toss something in the tip jar. But if you can, think about doing so. If not for this blog, maybe someone else's. If you think that you gained some insight or even wisdom from my words, how about tossing me a buck? </i></b></span><br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-34072780319976573932017-12-27T09:58:00.000-06:002017-12-27T09:58:13.626-06:00What is a Martial Art? When someone asks me "what is a martial art?" I generally wax on about the spiritual benefits of a sustained discipline aimed at excellence: kung fu. But in this post I want to talk specifically about the practical, self-defense element. This is a very small part of why anyone should pursue a martial art---the health and spiritual gains are far, far more important. But I do think that it is useful to think about self-defense, primarily because it is a way of understanding a little more about what life is all about. If nothing else, I'd like to try and "push back" against some of the silly notions I routinely hear expressed.<br />
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The first thing people should get rid of is the notion that self-defense oriented schools of martial arts should be about training people to become all-powerful super ninja soldiers. (Or at least, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_martial_arts">Mixed Martial Arts</a> (MMA) champions.) This is nonsense. The real background of martial arts for self-defense is about giving weak, relatively soft, moderately wealthy people an "edge" in confrontations with lower class ruffians.</div>
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Consider the following scenario. An 18th century <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fop">fop</a> bumps into a street thug while brothel crawling in England. The thug is a lot tougher and stronger than the fop, and he carries a strong oak cudgel. All the fop has is a small-sword that looks like a toy---plus the fencing lessons his wealthy dad insisted that he take when he was a teen. The thug assumes that his greater strength and experience brawling, plus the longer reach of the cudgel gives him an edge. And it might, if he had ever taken the lessons that the fop has. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An 18th Century Small Sword of the Sort that Fops wore</td></tr>
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But he hasn't. He tries to hit the fop, over-extends, and the fop curls around him, moves in close, and drives his small sword into his heart, killing him. The fop used terrible technique, and if the thug had ever practiced against someone using this move, it would never have worked. But the move is totally new to the thug, and he will never have a chance to learn how to counteract it because he is dead. The fop now vomits into the gutter, runs home, changes his clothes, and tries to sleep. The next day he hires the fencing master to learn new lessons and also to teach his son---whom he now absolutely insists on taking these lessons seriously. Moreover, in conversations with friends and family, he convinces a couple others to also hire the fencing master too.<br />
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(I suppose I should put a disclaimer in here. Some people automatically think "Eastern" when the phrase "martial arts" comes up. This is nonsense. Europe and other parts of the world all have martial arts traditions of one sort or another. Sword fighting is sword fighting, stick fighting is stick fighting, etc, and once they advance beyond mere thrashing around, intense competition will create cultural systems that fine tune people's abilities to a very fine level. That's what a martial art is, whether it's fencing, boxing, or, taijiquan.)<br />
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The thing to understand about this situation is that fights are often games of "rock, paper, scissors". People talk about about winning fights as being a question of being better than the other guy. But the real way to win a fight is to pit your strengths against the other guy's weakness. In the case of the fop versus the thug, the fop had two strengths that he could pit against the thug's weaknesses. The thug was poor, so he had never been able to train with a fancy fencing coach. Moreover, he was uneducated and low class, so he'd never actually seen how fencing works or been exposed to its theory (like I'm explaining in this blog post.) The fop, on the other hand, was well aware of the fact that he was nowhere near as strong as the thug---and that in an equal, "fair" fight he was doomed. So he played rock to the thug's scissors, or, he played his strengths against the thug's weakness.<br />
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In the above clip Butch Cassidy isn't playing any specific fighting skill against the thug's inherent strength and supposed superior knife-fighting skill. But he was playing superior tactical skill against the thug. He first gained the support of the on-lookers by asking about rules and got the thug to accept the lack of them. This means that if he bested the thug he would have settled the larger political issue (ie: "who's the boss of the gang?") and wouldn't have to return to the issue because people carped that "you didn't fight fair". Then, he used a superior knowledge of what chess and martial arts call "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_(chess)">tempo</a>" in order to get the first punch in, which created a position of superiority and never allowed the thug to recover from it.</div>
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Now I use the terms "soft" and "rich" above in a very limited sense. I don't mean that it is a good thing in the martial arts to be "soft" (in the sense of being physically weak.) Nor do I suggest that only the super rich could learn them either. But I am saying that martial arts are very useful for people who aren't really strong to begin with---even though strength does help you if you want to get good at martial arts. And wealth is only an issue up to the point where you are wealthy enough to be able to pay for lessons and have enough leisure to practice. Really poor people---no matter how strong---often simply don't have the time to be able to practice, even if they could find someone to teach them. </div>
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The sort of guys who taught me taijiquan---<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daoshi">Daoshi</a>---and Shaolin monks are not, strictly speaking "soft", "wealthy" people. But they aren't hardened, poverty-stricken peasants, either. They specifically had educational opportunities and leisure time that allowed them to learn things that peasants would never have learned. Of course, not all Buddhist monks or Daoshi learn martial arts, but enough of them did in old China that ruffians would probably think twice before they attacked them. (Their general poverty also made them somewhat not worth the effort, which was probably more important.)<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i>Years ago I used to write lots of free copy for very profitable newspapers in the belief that it was just enough to see my words in print. I know realize that I was doing a disservice to the reporters who were working hard to dig up news. I still write mostly for free, but now I usually put a note in the text reminding people that we really do need to come up with a mechanism for rewarding "creatives" for the work they do. I get a few dollars now and then, pretty much all of which ends up being spent to support other creatives that I support. And I don't mind if people who cannot afford to help out read for free. But if you do have extra money jingling in your pocket, think about making a donation or buying a book. </i></b></span><br />
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Another issue that I should probably deal with comes from the relationship between the martial arts and the military. In modern times hand-to-hand fighting is pretty much irrelevant for most soldiers. Modern weapons ensure that most battles are settled long before people get close enough to throw a punch. You cannot dodge or deflect a bullet, bomb or IED.<br />
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Having said that, many people believe that ancient battles were different. If you watch a lot of movies you would be excused for thinking that a battle simply involved a lot of people fighting one-on-one from one side to another. Surely martial arts would help with that? Not really. From ancient to modern times soldiers didn't fight one-on-one, but rather as units. One popular drama that does understand this point to some extent is "Game of Thrones". (I've never seen it, but I have heard others talk about this on YouTube.) Take a look at this video that explains something called the "battle of the bastards". </div>
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You can have all the grooviest martial moves in the planet, but if your general orders you into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encirclement">a cauldron</a> and then the other guy shoots huge numbers of arrows at you, you are going to die. And, if you get stuck in the middle of a bunch of guys with big shields, heavy armor, and, spears, and you have none of these things, you are toast too. Moreover, if in the middle of all this insanity a bunch of heavy cavalry show up from nowhere and attack you in the rear while you are busy slaughtering their friends---you are toast too. (Not to mention if you manage to get into a castle and a giant arrives to smash in the doors.)<br />
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This "fantasy" tv show is probably the most accurate vision of ancient battle that I have ever seen anywhere, and it clearly illustrates that soldiers are not martial artists. Instead, they are just cogs in a giant machine who have almost no control at all about whether they live or die. All they can do is what they are told and hope for the best. So let's just discard the idea that soldiers have anything at all to do with martial arts.</div>
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In terms of taijiquan---the martial art I know a little about---the "strength" that a person with some training brings to a fight is the insight that being relaxed can be a good defense against some attacks. There is also the point that if you get in close to someone a lot of strikes (punches and kicks) become harder to land. And, if you know a little bit about how to lock someone's joints and where the balance points in the body are, you can move around people that might even be a lot stronger than you. If the other guy has never come across anyone who knows about these things, it might give you a momentary advantage in a fight---just like the fop with his small sword. Obviously, the more and better you train in these techniques, the better you will be. But you don't have to be "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Luchan">Yang the Invincible</a>" to get value from the art, simply because the person you get into a fight with is probably not going to be terribly good at fighting either. <br /><br />More importantly, by thinking about the Dao and the subtle ways in which the world operates, you will gain greater insight into all the different ways in which delusion colours and distorts our understanding of the world around us---including self-defense. This will help you in ways that go far beyond the outside chance of meeting someone in a dark alley who wishes to do you harm. (More likely, it will keep you out of that dark alley in the first place.)</div>
The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-81613173039043309712017-12-04T14:52:00.000-06:002017-12-04T15:14:15.472-06:00What does a Fake Smile Say About How we Treat Women? Part of my life involves trying to "hold onto the One" as much as possible. This involves trying to pay careful attention to everything in both the world around me and my consciousness. If you do this, you start to notice subtleties that you would miss otherwise.<br />
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One thing that I notice that I find somewhat creepy is the "smile mask" that a some women wear. I walk along the street and sometimes this involves looking at the faces of other people. When I do this, I sometimes see that a woman notices me and instantly breaks out a fake smile. It's too fast to be a conscious choice. Nor, I suspect is it a spontaneous statement about how nice it is to see my face. Instead, I strongly suspect, it is a conditioned response. A lot of women have been trained to smile---just like Pavlov's dog was conditioned to salivate whenever he rang a bell.<br />
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I suspect that there are two cultural factors at work here. First, being a part of the service economy, being friendly and out-going has ceased to be a personality quirk and instead become a condition of employment. A smile isn't a genuine expression of happiness anymore, it's a necessary activity at your place of employment.<br />
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The second element is the socialization process that a lot of girls and young women are subjected to. This is so much of a thing that I found a blog post devoted to this issue. It starts by talking about the author's personal experience of being a woman:</div>
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<i>It’s early, and I’m only half awake as I walk down the street to the bus stop. I walk past a group of people going the opposite direction; a man comes towards me to say, “Hey, why aren’t you smiling?” It takes a while before I realize what just happened. I keep walking as I hear him mutter something less nice about me. I feel violated, as if my feelings have been taken ransom. Whatever emotion I have or choose to show is suddenly not mine but for the rest of the world to consider and qualify. What would happen if I chose to smile at the request of that stranger? Would he take my response as a signal for him to try his advances at me? Does my refusal to comply mean I'm the stuck-up bitch he claims I am?</i></blockquote>
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From the blog "<a href="https://culturacolectiva.com/lifestyle/asking-women-to-smile-sexism/">Culturacolectiva</a>",</div>
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Am I making too big a deal about this? I don't know. I like people who smile and are nice to me just as much as the next guy. But I also like people who are "real" and let me know exactly what they are thinking about things. And I have also met a lot of people who have learned (or maybe a more accurate way of saying it would be "have been trained") to pay so much attention to what other people think of them that they find it impossible to express any emotions that they feel are negative. Can these women who involuntarily smile when I look into their eyes tell a man what they really feel? Or have they internalized a way of relating to men so deeply that they simply can no longer do so?<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><i><b>Time to use blue font and put out my begging bowl.<br /><br />I suspect that most people think that mendicant monks beg for food only because they are hungry. But that isn't really true. Monks beg because it is something that forces them to put themselves in the position of being at the lowest rung of human society. It forces them to understand what it is like to be totally at the mercy of others. Being a monk is an extremely high-status thing in most Eastern countries, which means that forcing them to beg and having lay people decide what goes into the bowl "inverts" the relationship. It helps both sides of the equation realize that monks are just human beings like everyone else. A Western Zen master, Bernie Glassman, goes to the point of having "street retreats" where he forces middle-class students hand over everything that identifies them, put on rough old clothes, and, <a href="https://zenpeacemakers.org/2016/01/bernies-trainings-street-retreats/">force them to beg for food on the streets of American cities</a>---posing as homeless people. He feels that this does a better job of "blowing up" their preconceived notions than a day of intense Zen meditation.<br /><br />It's the same thing when a creative person puts out an "ask" for support on a Patreon account. You stop being an independent thinker who is above all that stuff and put yourself in the position of being a "money grubber" just like any other human being in a capitalist society. It also puts the reader in the situation of realizing that the piece they are reading isn't something that comes from a "groovy intellectual", but instead arrives from a specific person who has many of the same problems that you do---including how to pay the rent. Nowadays part of that distance is the idea that"all content on the Web should be free".<br /><br />So if you can, think about making even a token contribution---a dollar a month on Patreon helps. Buy a book. Share the link with friends if you think it is good. And if you really can't afford anything, that's fine too. The monk blesses the person who wants to fill the bowl but cannot offer a copper more than the person who gives a token amount out of their extreme excess. </b></i></span><br />
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I've heard that there is something called a "repressed memory" that keeps people from being able to remember traumatic experiences. I don't know how that would work, but I can attest to there being a totally different situation where you cannot escape a memory---it haunts you day and night---but it is so painful that it is impossible to express to another human being. What happens to people who have to present a pleasant, happy visage to other people that it has become the "default" and they have to force themselves to express their true emotions? </div>
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In Japan a new medical condition has been identified which they call "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_mask_syndrome">Smile Mask Syndrome</a>" (SMS). A psychologist first noticed this when she found students who were still smiling and wearing their "happy face" when relating especially painful experiences. Our facial expressions and body language are so important to our ability to communicate with others, it must really screw up our self-image and inter-personal relationships if you have been trained to smile and be happy looking when you are crying inside. Indeed, SMS seems to be associated with depression and physical illness.<br />
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I'm kinda lucky in my job because it's the sort of work that is diametrically opposed to this sort of thing. I have to yell at people, look furious, and threaten people with physical arrest. The "happy face" management style just doesn't work when you end up calling the cops and having someone put into handcuffs. (Although that sort of work also takes its toll---I've felt pretty awful some nights after having to deal with a "problem patron".) But truth be told, I'd much rather risk getting my lights punched out than ending up with a permanent "happy face" glued over my real one. </div>
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-32703798154885355232017-11-17T12:16:00.000-06:002017-11-17T13:48:19.184-06:00Hard and Easy Paths to RealizationA long time ago I had a conversation with a Zen priest. It was when I was still much more engaged in "cloud-walking" (ie: finding out spiritual people from various traditions to see what I can learn from them) than I am today. Someone mentioned him to me, and it turned out that he worked as a sculpture technician in the fine-arts building right next to library where I work. So there was no excuse not to seek him out.<br />
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He was a gruff old man who was very close to retirement. He'd gone to Korea as a soldier during the war and ended up staying on in one of the Temples. I mentioned that I was interested in Zen and he did his best to discourage me. Transcendental meditation was, he opined, a much easier way to find some wisdom in life. He said that there was a temple in Toronto, but I had to be "hard core" or they'd simply throw me out the front door. This is a fairly standard trope from Zen---it's not supposed to be an easy way to gain realization.<br />
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Teachers have tended to create easier forms of gaining wisdom "for the masses". These include things like reciting mantras<br />
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and performing devotional rituals.<br />
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These are very standard moves across all religions. Christianity emphasizes devotional practices, but it also has most of the others too. For example, there is a tradition of chanting in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church">Eastern Orthodoxy</a> that is focused <a href="http://www.orthodoxprayer.org/Jesus%20Prayer.html">on repeating the mantra </a>"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner". (The Eastern Church usually says that this is nothing like Eastern chanting, but that's nonsense.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw5swI0Bi8w2RT0eAI0z40sgjGyzRhdjnwX2MA1C6XIM1T3kj-VYr977yjdSKuqb6B2_LRgtk1iJmTSEflo8kCU3yJdkCxoYJp4m1ImCg-j_iJz1CDuCvqTp6k_xu0kZGWFFkFtFBdW5E/s1600/YogaClass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw5swI0Bi8w2RT0eAI0z40sgjGyzRhdjnwX2MA1C6XIM1T3kj-VYr977yjdSKuqb6B2_LRgtk1iJmTSEflo8kCU3yJdkCxoYJp4m1ImCg-j_iJz1CDuCvqTp6k_xu0kZGWFFkFtFBdW5E/s400/YogaClass.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">People practicing a specific posture in a Hatha Yoga class<br />
Photo by"Trollderella", c/o the Wikicommons</td></tr>
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Mention "yoga" to most people, and they will probably think of something like the above picture. This is what is known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga">hatha yoga</a>, which has recently become something of a fad. (I will speak of it no more.) But the actual word "yoga" means something like the word "kung fu", a diligent practice that is used to gain insight and knowledge. It has a slightly different emphasis, though. "Yoga" comes from the same root word as "yoke", so the emphasis is on committing yourself to a certain practice or path. (Sanskrit and European languages <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages">come from the same source</a>, so there are similarities like this for certain words.) "Kung fu", in contrast, emphasizes the individual's hard work leading to personal excellence or realization.<br />
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Indian spiritual teachers have codified the different spiritual "tactics", or "yogas", or "kung fus" one can follow in pursuit of spiritual insight and named them accordingly. Chanting correlates with<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japa"> Japa Yoga</a>, devotional practices correlate with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti_yoga">Bhakti Yoga</a>, the route of good works (think Gandhi) is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_yoga">Karma Yoga</a>, ritual is covered by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra">Tantra Yoga</a>. I'd suggest that Zen is most like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnana_yoga">Jnana Yoga</a>, or, "the path of knowledge".<br />
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The path of knowledge exists in opposition to the path of devotion or ritual. It's about actually knowing the truth instead of having faith or being a loving person. This is an important point, and one I rarely see spelled out in any detail.<br />
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Personally, I've always been consumed by wanting to know things. This isn't just a question of curiosity. More importantly---for me at least---it's a strong ethical commitment to the idea that we shouldn't make decisions without finding out the truth that underlies the situation. This has made me the "odd man out" for most of my life because I tend to get absolutely furious with people who are quite happy to "fudge the facts" or even lie in order to get their way. This recently came home to me in an argument I had with some folks about a Canadian academic who has been spreading a bald-faced lie about an abstruse part of Canadian governance in order to whip right-wing Americans into a frenzy. The result has been that this guy seems to have made a fortune on social media and public speaking engagements convincing people that Canada is on the verge of being taken over by radical Muslims.<br />
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My argument is that this sort of behaviour should be grounds for dismissing this guy from his tenured university position and revoking his Phd---along the lines of taking away a doctor's license for malpractice. The response by most people has been to suggest that I have a screw loose and I simply don't understand the importance of freedom of speech, and, tenure. What I'd argue is that yes, I do understand the importance of free speech, but these folks don't understand how much damage fake news can have on the lives of innocent people. A small percentage of people actually believe this stuff when they hear it and believe that they need to take action. The result are terrorist attacks on Muslims, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City_mosque_shooting">the recent one in Quebec City</a> that killed six and wounded nineteen others.<br />
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I raised the above example not because I want to rehash the issues of "fake news" and the tremendous resurgence of Fascist demagoguery our society is currently going through, but simply because I wanted to point out a strange way in which my mental processes are different from almost everyone else. That is, I do not blame the person who picks up a gun and shoots others nearly as much as I blame the person who bombarded the shooter with propaganda about the perfidy of the victims in order to raise money or promote a political agenda. At least the shooter has the courage of his convictions. But the propagandist may not---and I suspect often doesn't---really believe what he is saying, but just does so to take advantage of the gullible.<br />
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In effect, I am making the same point that the Gospels make in Matthew 7:15, <span style="color: red;"><i>"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." </i></span><br />
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Later on, Christ also makes a very strong statement in a similar vein. When asked "Who is the greatest in Heaven's domain?", he replies that saying that it is the people who are like little children. But then he goes on to say that<br />
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<i><span style="color: red;">"Those who entrap one of these little trusting souls would be better off to have millstones hung around their necks and be drowned in the deepest part of the sea!" <span style="text-align: right;">(Matthew 18:1-6, </span><span style="text-align: right;"><b>Scholar's Version of the Gospels</b></span><span style="text-align: right;">)</span></span></i></blockquote>
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If this wasn't strong enough, Jesus goes on to curse the people who try to fool the gullible.<br />
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<i><span style="color: red;">"Dam the world for the traps it sets! Even though it's inevitable for traps to be set, nevertheless, damn the person who sets such traps." (Matthew 18:7) </span></i></blockquote>
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Looking at these quotes from the Gospels has got me thinking. I've never wanted to put a millstone around the neck of one of these Alt-right propaganda types---but I have contemplated tying ropes attached to cement blocks around their necks and tossing them through holes cut in the ice covering Lake Ontario. (I was actually startled to realize that Jesus's level of rage is comparable to my own. Wow!)<br />
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The point I'm trying to make is that the sort of deep, crazy anger that I (and presumably Jesus, too---I can't get over that) have against the "Grima Wormtongues" of politics and social media is actually quite rare. In fact, I've found that most people not only can't understand why I get so upset about this stuff, they are often genuinely concerned about me and the "crazy ideas" that I hold. I suspect that part of the reason is that people simply cannot see the incredible damage this sort of thing can cause. I suppose that ultimately, it's like a good chess player who can see how awful a play is because he looks several moves ahead. The bad player simply doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. In the same way, for example, I get crazy angry about what is going to happen to other people in the future because of climate change, whereas the folks who can't see this just think I am flipping out about absolutely nothing.<br />
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So what has this got to do with Zen Buddhism and Bhakti yoga?<br />
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Well, the path of knowledge really is too difficult for most people to follow. It involves a constant struggle to fight against your preconceived notions and to stare totally honestly into the face of reality and accept what you see---no matter what. In Zen the mythical story of Bodhidharma staring at the wall of cave for years in order to deepen his understanding illustrates the awful effort that you have to put into tearing away all your illusions.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdaBGH3oHvyYym9BGNOBjFqkIRr3S5yMhyphenhyphen0DGIrsB1T6v6G8SWTB2LpAPLZ2q0zNhYsqGqatWxBzo_7839TqnwQNZEH0sknkIKw0TT-aYlWdhwU8ZAH6Q2zzwvJsljOA0Mo2vRnHOkuM/s1600/wallgazing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="936" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtdaBGH3oHvyYym9BGNOBjFqkIRr3S5yMhyphenhyphen0DGIrsB1T6v6G8SWTB2LpAPLZ2q0zNhYsqGqatWxBzo_7839TqnwQNZEH0sknkIKw0TT-aYlWdhwU8ZAH6Q2zzwvJsljOA0Mo2vRnHOkuM/s640/wallgazing.jpg" width="388" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bodhidharma staring at the wall<br />
I got the picture from a site without attribution,<br />
But it said it was from the middle ages, so I'm assuming it's public domain.</td></tr>
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This sort of horrible, painful effort is common in most religions. Christ on his cross, Daoist stories about students being boiled alive by their masters, even Gandalf's fight with the Balrog from <b style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Rings</b>, are all metaphors for the enormous struggle that has to be fought in the pursuit of wisdom. But where the path of wisdom parts from others is that the people who follow it often do not encourage their followers to embark on the same journey---they suggest something easier. That's what my neighbour the Zen priest was doing. He was trying to discourage interest in Zen and suggested something easier: transcendental meditation.<br />
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Even transcendental meditation is too hard for many people, though. That is why religions instead turn towards the paths of faith and devotion. "Faith" is the idea that we simply have to have hope that it all makes sense in one way or another. If life is a terrible horror for most people, have faith that there is a life after death and everyone gets their just rewards there. Or if that doesn't work, have faith that there is a great God in the sky who's great intelligence is so beyond us, that he sees a way in which it all does make sense. If faith doesn't work for you, there's always devotion. You school yourself to love god or the church or the rituals so much that everything else becomes of secondary importance. The point of faith and devotion is to stop even trying to make sense of things, because it just hurts too much to make the effort.<br />
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I can understand this. Most people don't have the time or inclination to put their entire life into the process of gaining wisdom. I put in ten years studying philosophy. I've spent enormous amounts of time meditating, meeting with spiritual teachers, going on retreats, reading sacred and philosophical texts, studying martial arts, etc. Most folks would rather have a career, raise a family, travel, etc. For them the path of knowledge is simply not a "live option".<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><i>A proud young man came to Socrates asking for wisdom. He walked up to him and said, “O great Socrates, I come to you for wisdom.” Socrates, recognizing a pompous fool when he saw one, led him down to the sea and took him chest deep into the water. Then he asked him, “What did you say you wanted?” “Wisdom, O great Socrates,” said the young man.<br />Socrates put his strong hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him under. Thirty seconds later Socrates let him up. “What do you want?” he asked again. “Wisdom,” the young man sputtered, “O great and wise Socrates.” Socrates pushed him under again. Thirty seconds, thirty-five, forty – then Socrates let him up. The man was gasping. “What do you want, young man?”<br />Between heavy breaths the fellow wheezed, “Wisdom! O wise and wonderful…” Socrates jammed him under again – forty seconds passed then fifty – then he let him up. “What do you want?” “Air!” the young man yelled. “I need air!” “When you want wisdom as much as you have just wanted air, then you will begin to find wisdom.” </i></span></blockquote>
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(Quote from a blog that I don't endorse, but this is a widely used apocryphal story and this version is just as good as any other for the purposes of this post.)<br />
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I can remember when I was "cloudwalking" with Roman Catholics that this decision to pursue knowledge instead of faith was always an unbridgeable crevasse that separated me from them. They simply couldn't understand my commitment to knowledge, and for a long time I couldn't understand their insistence on faith. The other day I woke up with an insight simply about how much different my life would have been if I hadn't had that bizarre obsession with wisdom that Socrates talks about in the above story.<br />
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Wisdom is a funny thing. My experience is that it always comes at the price of suffering. Even if it isn't the result of having a particularly painful experience, I have found that deep realization often comes from a period of something very like depression. What happens is that for days I feel deeply introverted and unhappy with life, but then a moment comes when the clouds part and I understand some deep mystery of life that has perplexed me for a long, long time. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_the_Cross">John of the Cross</a> called this "the dark night of the soul", <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_of_Loyola">Saint Ignatius</a> called this process "desolation followed by consolation". My dear sweet wife simply calls it the alternation of Yin and Yang.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Stuart Mill<br />
Image c/o Wiki Commons,<br />
a pretty smart guy.</td></tr>
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The question of happiness and the pursuit of wisdom is something that a lot of people have thought about. It is especially relevant to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism">Utilitarians</a>, or, the school of philosophy that says that moral issues can be settled by creating the greatest amount of good (ie: "utility") for the greatest number of people. One of its founders, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill">John Stuart Mill</a>, raised the wisdom question in the following way:<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><i> “It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. </i><br /><i>It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” (</i><b>Utilitarianism</b><i>)</i></span></blockquote>
The important point here is "<i><b><span style="color: red;">they only know their own side of the question</span></b></i>". That's why realization is so mysterious. You either get it or you don't.<br />
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It's even worse than that. A few people are "fated" to seek knowledge, but most don't. When I was talking to that Zen priest all those years ago, I mentioned something about having had a wild, weird childhood that shattered any illusions I might have had about ordinary life. He instantly responded with "that's just the price of admission" and mentioned his time in the Korean war. (No specifics, but I suspect that he saw some bad craziness. My understanding is that the Canadian contingent got more than it's fair share.) This is where the issue of "fate" or "karma" kicks in. Some people are like Socrates and need knowledge the same way most people need air. Most folks just aren't like that. They are content to just rely upon faith or devotion.<br />
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I understand why people lean upon faith. A lot of very bad things happen in life and if it doesn't make any sense (and, to be honest, a lot really doesn't---life is absurd.) It can be a tremendously useful strategy to simply force yourself to assume that it all makes sense and go from there. And devotion is simply a variation in that theme. "Jesus loves me this I know, 'cause the Bible tells me so---". You can't love God unless you have faith that he exists and gives a damn about you and your petty concerns.<br />
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But if you hear a particularly scary story about climate change, or you get bummed out because of some horrible atrocity being committed against people on the other side of the planet, or watch YouTube and some horribly trained police officer kills someone, or read about some corporation fudging research to get a dangerous medicine put on the market, or,----you fill in the blank----you still have to wake up in the morning, put your boots on, and, head off to work. Lots of people just don't bother paying attention to the world around them. Lots of others don't really care all that much about what happens to other people. But there are still lots of sensitive types who get upset about this kind of stuff and they don't know how to deal with the pain. For them, faith can be a tremendously good thing because it helps them continue to be functional in a world that they experience as a never-ending horror show.<br />
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I finally get the appeal of faith. But it simply doesn't work for me. My mind just isn't designed to work that way. That's why I'm a Daoist who is committed to the path of knowledge instead of the path of faith or devotion. We need people to seek out knowledge because that is how our society moves forward. But I also suspect that we also need people who have faith to keep the the wheels moving.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><b><i>Out comes the begging bowl. Believe me, I probably hate writing these "asks" more than you do reading them. But if I don't remind people that the guys who tap their fingers on the keyboards and rack their brains coming up with the ideas deserve to make some money too, we continue to support the illusion that all this stuff on the Internet just comes for "free". Not likely. And the guys who do the coding and work on the advertising, and the managers and investors that stand behind them, certainly aren't working for free. In fact, they are making astronomical profits. Do you like that? If not, then remember to support the "creatives" in the best way you can. Toss something in the tip jar, do a little subscription, buy a book, or, just tell your "friends" on social media that they might like to read this blog. </i></b></span></div>
The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-77026590764334376962017-11-07T11:32:00.000-06:002017-11-07T11:33:25.537-06:00Courage, Language and Daoist LiteratureI've recently watched two movies for "<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=old%20soul">old souls</a>": <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_(film)">Logan</a></i>, and, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film)">Arrival</a></i>.<br />
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For those of you who haven't watched the films, here's a brief synopsis---spoilers follow, if you care about such things.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1N85LGAZXqN7yQ9u8oH4cdyNN3ufFQZ5c1IIuTFNgXep73bhtddb8NSckt2WKIHKm7YOkXvTDQwg7KKyhK7D1wb7Nrb3bIzlkPiuG_a-4JGjigXt4uoJL5mGXM4HlXZG9O4EnL_Y7Lj4/s1600/Anime_Expo_2015_-_The_Wolverine_%252819510192704%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1N85LGAZXqN7yQ9u8oH4cdyNN3ufFQZ5c1IIuTFNgXep73bhtddb8NSckt2WKIHKm7YOkXvTDQwg7KKyhK7D1wb7Nrb3bIzlkPiuG_a-4JGjigXt4uoJL5mGXM4HlXZG9O4EnL_Y7Lj4/s320/Anime_Expo_2015_-_The_Wolverine_%252819510192704%2529.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cosplayer representing the Wolverine,<br />
photo c/o the Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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<i>Logan </i>is set in the Marvel X-Men universe, and the Logan of the title is Logan Howlett: the Wolverine. The twist is that this is a dystopian version of that universe, one in which private corporations have released a genetically engineered virus into the environment to stop any new "mutants" from occurring naturally. This allows them to use their stockpile of samples from the existing mutants to create their own altered human beings to use for experiments to create "super soldiers".<br />
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At the same time, Charles Xavier ("Professor X") has developed a debilitating form of brain disease that manifests itself in occasional seizures that affect the people around him because of his psychic abilities. In the past one of these seizures killed off most of the remaining mutants. This leaves only Wolverine and Caliban---who have to keep him doped-up on heavy meds to prevent future seizures---to take care of him in an isolated, abandoned metal recycling facility in Mexico. Logan supports this crappy lifestyle by working as a limo driver for bored, rich teens in the USA.<br />
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For those of you who have never read Marvel comics (I suppose some of you still exist), the Wolverine has the ability to heal almost instantly from any wound. He is also very, very strong. The ability to heal has kept him from aging, which means that he is at least a couple of hundred years old. Through most of that time, he was used by the government in one way or another. During both world wars, for example, the Canadian government used him as a soldier. When the American government learned of his abilities, they performed experiments on him to learn how to control him, and replaced his bones (and claws) with a special super-metal called "adamantium" (which only exists in fiction.) This made him into a weapon that is impervious to almost anything. It was Charles, "Doctor X", who saved him from this life.<br />
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Unfortunately, the adamantium is also poisonous. And at the time of this movie, it is finally over-whelming Logan's innate healing ability. It is making him an old man, and, it is killing him. Logan is in constant pain, which he tries to deal with by almost constant drinking. He also limps. And coughs, almost constantly.<br />
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A plot and drama ensued, but that's really not what I'm interested in.<br />
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I said that this is a movie for "old souls". What I meant was that I can really identify with Logan. I am in significant pain at times, which I do self-medicate with by alcohol. I also limp. And I also cough, a lot.<br />
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One other thing that matters in the movie is the relationship between Logan and Professor X. Charles Xavier (played the incomparable Patrick Stewart), is a paraplegic and confined to a wheel chair. Underneath the gruff, macho exterior it is very obvious that The Wolverine loves this man very deeply. He works at a job he loathes to provide for him. And no matter what happens in the movie, the first thing he does is look out for Xavier's needs. When Xavier is eventually murdered by one of the super-soldiers (who looks just like a young version of Logan), he collapses emotionally. At this point, he ends up being taken care of my a young girl who was also created to be a super soldier, but who managed to escape due to help by nurses at the research facility.<br />
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The old macho guy who's always had to fight turned into a nurse maid for a beloved father figure. And who also ends up being nurtured by a young girl. Like I said, a story for old souls.<br />
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Eventually, Logan dies. And in the process the girl he's the genetic father of, and who he's saved, is crying at his side---calling him "daddy". His last words are "so this is what it feels like". When I heard the words I knew that on one level the script was referring to dying. But my immediate response was to think that this is what it feels like to be vulnerable, to care about others to the point of making yourself vulnerable to extreme, horrible emotional pain, and, to accept that others can feel the same way about you.<br />
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As I said, a movie for old souls.<br />
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&&&&<br />
<br />
For those of you who haven't seen <i>Arrival</i>, it deals with a linguistics professor who's been asked to help the government learn how to communicate with an alien species that has just arrived on the planet (called the "Heptapods"---for their seven tentacles.) Unlike most science fiction shows that gloss over the difficulty of learning the language of a totally different intelligent species, this movie bears down on that issue and comes up with an innovative answer.<br />
<br />
Basically, the movie is based on two premises.<br />
<br />
The first one is that learning a language involves changing the way our brains are "wired". To understand this idea, consider the fact that English only really has one word for "love", where as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love">Greek has a great many</a> ("eros", "agape", "philia", "storge", etc.) What this means is that when an ancient Greek philosopher was talking about "love", he could do it a lot more accurately than a modern English speaker. To understand the point, consider this sentence that an obnoxious child might make to another: "If you love pancakes so much, why don't you marry them!" This wouldn't make any sense at all to Plato, because he wouldn't use the same word for "liking a lot in the sense of enjoying the taste" and "wanting to spend the rest of your life living with because of a deep interpersonal bond".<br />
<br />
The argument is that the complexity and precision of your vocabulary has an impact on how we see the world around us. A better example beyond the word "love" comes from the history of chemistry. At one time people tried to explain the nature of material objects by referring to the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and, fire. This really doesn't work very well to explain a broad range of events, so we now accept that the atomic theory works much better and most folks would probably have a hard time trying to figure out how you could use the states system to understand much of anything.<br />
<br />
The second idea that the movie is based upon is that it is possible to create a totally non-sequential language. Western languages like English are based on the sounds that our spoken language makes. We start out sounding out the letters that make up the words, and then connect a certain sequence with specific words. But some other written langues don't work like that. Chinese, for example, is not "sounded out" from letters. Instead individual characters represent specific ideas. It is true that some characters are composed of different simpler characters and added together, but these too are representative of ideas instead of sounds. Having said that, however, Chinese characters are written sequentially one after another.<br />
<br />
But <i>Arrival</i> posits that the aliens don't have a sequential sentence structure, but a holistic one.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji5T_o5Qd_fZZyBrCi6yCI4ngBZT6Ku30OT4bRlb-8mfhGhDueM7SMWPwQ5FwAkySPa3T0F1-lTGH8dKdW4wL5cwX292evW7UhVMR-zsuwSXnhPE_s0iWudFQO9FP-q1_lS_BofBDJAIE/s1600/HeptapodLanguage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji5T_o5Qd_fZZyBrCi6yCI4ngBZT6Ku30OT4bRlb-8mfhGhDueM7SMWPwQ5FwAkySPa3T0F1-lTGH8dKdW4wL5cwX292evW7UhVMR-zsuwSXnhPE_s0iWudFQO9FP-q1_lS_BofBDJAIE/s320/HeptapodLanguage.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A heptapod "sentence"<br />
taken under "fair use" copyright rules from the Internet</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As you can see, the writing looks like a coffee ring stain. But the different "splotches" aren't random, but convey a specific meaning. The issue that the movie hinges on is that there is no beginning or end to a circle, so the only way to really understand it is to just grasp the meaning all at once.<br />
<br />
This is an important issue, because it talks about the limits of ordinary human consciousness. As this was explained to me when I was at university, Professor Amstutz (my old teacher) explained that studies have shown that there appears to be a limit to how much a person can grasp holistically. He explained this using an example from English common law. A pub used to have a cup with a bunch of wooden matches in it that people could use to light their pipes or cigars. They added a sign that said "take some home with you, if you like". An individual---what we would now call a "street person"---took advantage of this to take a lot of matches that he then used to sell for a half-penny a piece on the street to people who wanted to light a pipe or cigar, but didn't have any matches on them at the time. The pub owner called a bobby to stop this person from doing this, but the individual in question told the magistrate that the sign said he could do it.<br />
<br />
The judge did some research in the literature and found out that when people look at a random pile of objects, on average, the most a person can count at a glance (ie: without having to consciously mentally separate into different groupings and add together) are seven. So the judge ruled that under English Common Law "some" (as in "take some home with you") means seven or less.<br />
<br />
This is important to the movie <i>Arrival </i>because it suggests that this isn't an intrinsic property of the human brain, but instead the result of how our language has "wired" it. In other words, the judge identified an issue of "software" instead of "hardware". If our brains simply have to work sequentially for more than seven items, then we will never be able to learn the heptapod language. But if this is instead an artifact of our language, it might be possible to learn the language---but in doing so it might radically change the way we perceive the world around us.<br />
<br />
The people who made the movie didn't stop at the circle sentences. Towards the end, the heroine says that she understands their language and asks them to tell her more. So they present her with what I can only surmise is their equivalent of a book. (Actually, this image is only the same sentence repeated over an over again---but assume that the coffee rings are all different and you get the notion.)<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAEkDM42HswwJ9nM5qfksvQAOANd6BtR2XdR3xcDadOe3svNcfX_sj4a_pSCYuwsux5ohzn5bNQVPy_FGmY2GFp6diBQ-ak0q4izwgrIqz7FIWt9IBQLxCh9G6seAotKfLIjEWqaRgug/s1600/HeptapodBook.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="549" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAEkDM42HswwJ9nM5qfksvQAOANd6BtR2XdR3xcDadOe3svNcfX_sj4a_pSCYuwsux5ohzn5bNQVPy_FGmY2GFp6diBQ-ak0q4izwgrIqz7FIWt9IBQLxCh9G6seAotKfLIjEWqaRgug/s400/HeptapodBook.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heptapod Book,<br />
Fair Use Copyright, blah, blah, blah.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The important thing to understand is that the sentences aren't in any order---they are thrown all over and the reader has to understand them all holistically---just like the sentences.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
The movie is filled with flashbacks, but ones that aren't identified or labeled. At some point, the linguist (Louise) had a child, who died of an incurable illness. She also had a husband that she dearly loved, but left her. At first, I assumed that she had had all of this heart-break before the arrival of the aliens. But as the movie progresses and she learns the language, you begin to realize that this is the future. The man she falls in love with and marries is her colleague working with the aliens, and, the child is their soon-to-be conceived daughter. Learning the alien language has rewired her brain to the point where she no longer experiences her life sequentially, but rather as a holistic unity. (Presumably she started having dreams and memories before she met the aliens because the process reveals that causality works backwards in time as well as forward---how about that for an alien concept?)<br />
<br />
This would be a really, really scary prospect for most people. Would you marry someone and have a child with them if you really knew in your guts---from direct experience---that both would end in extreme heart-break? Louise believes that she has the choice of not choosing to marry and conceive, but she does anyway because she doesn't want to lose the experience of having a man and child that she loves dearly. And you also see in the flashbacks that knowing how it will all end means that she never misses an opportunity to be as "real" and "there" as she possibly can for these two people. She really does savour every sweet drop from the cup of life---even though she knows that at the end there will be nothing but bitter dregs.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
How does any of this fit into Daoism?<br />
<br />
What is it we do when we read books of wisdom and meditate? We are trying to deepen and expand our theoretical understanding of the world around us. We are fighting against the illusions that bind us to the here and now. We start out in life like the Wolverine---believing that we can live forever and if we get hurt, healing will come fast. But learning from others teaches us that this isn't the case, we do get old and die. Not only this, but the people we love die too. And that hurts, a lot.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Daoism offers to help people with this problem through many different mechanisms.<br />
<br />
For one thing, it offers us stories that help us understand the most practical, best way to navigate life. Consider the story from both <i><b>Zhuangzi</b></i> and <i style="font-weight: bold;">Liezi </i>where Confucius meets an elderly man who has learned to swim across raging cataracts by only swimming a few strokes when the river is pushing him where he wants to go and not fighting when it pulls him away. This is how one survives in a chaotic, violent world according to Daoist wisdom.<br />
<br />
It also helps us by offering us practices like "holding onto the One" that teach us to not get too caught up in the moment-by-moment activity around us. Instead, we learn to remind ourselves that we need to always try to understand the Dao (or "One") and how it is operating both in the processes that govern our mental activity and the world around us. If we are able to do this, for example, sometimes we are able to remember that the other person we are dealing with may be being grumpy towards us not because they hate us, but rather because they may be sick, be worried about a loved one, etc. We might also remember that giving that person a smile, or asking a personal question that shows you care, etc, may totally transform their interaction towards you into something more useful and pleasant.<br />
<br />
It also helps us by reminding us to remember "the big picture" when we feel especially sad, angry, or, perplexed. When Zhangzi's wife dies, for example, he is very sad. But when he realizes that she herself has ceased to feel any pain at all, and has instead merely returned to the undifferentiated Dao that she emerged from when she was born, he can realize that he is really sad for himself because he knows he will miss her. And at that point, he realizes that he can choose to dwell on missing her, or, simply move on in life and find something or someone else to love. Much pain is caused by delusion, and the cure for delusion is a better understanding of how things really are.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
In a very real sense, studying Daoism is like when Louise starts having those memories of her child. I am not the old man swimming in the cataract or Zhuangzi banging on a pot and singing after the death of his wife. But those events are the memories of men who have died long, long, ago in a distant land. And by integrating their insights and experiences into my life, I am just like Louise having memories of the death of a child she hasn't had yet. I know that I too will find myself beset by awful, painful problems---just like swimming the cataract. And I too will find myself deeply hurt by the pain or even death of a loved one.<br />
<br />
We aren't heptapods who experience our personal lives holistically. But we are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality">eusocial</a> animals who live our lives mediated by culture. And culture does exist holistically, and we can experience it as such. Zhuangzi and Confucius are long dead---and yet they are still alive every time we wrestle with the ideas that they have passed onto us through their writings and the traditions that they founded.<br />
<br />
I got thinking about this because I was worried about whether my wife was entering into a psychotic episode. She is going through a stressful time right now as she has decided to sell her house and apply to be an immigrant to Canada. But in the interim, she is in St. Louis and I am living and working a thousand miles away. There is almost nothing I can do to make her life better right other than offer some words of encouragement. And when she enters into an episode, she simply disappears off my radar. She has no support network (she does live in the USA, of course), so all I can do is accept that she's "gone away" for a month or two, and just wait for her to come back.<br />
<br />
At times like this all I can do is remember how much I love her and remember that I wouldn't trade the good times in exchange for not having the bad. I also try to remember that, like Zhuangzi and his wife, we are all part of a larger process and that ultimately we come from and end up in the same place. I also try to hold onto the One and do what helps me cope with my feelings of helplessness and sadness. Writing this blog is one of those things. <br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><b><i>I put out my begging bowl and ask for support from people not just because I want money. I'm also trying to remind people that nothing comes for free in life, and we need to support others when they do something of value for the community. Many of us don't have enough money to be able to shoot off a few bucks to people writing obscure blogs on the Internet---no matter how much they enjoy them. I get that. But I also understand that lots of people who do have money would rather spend it on things like trips overseas, video games, eating out, etc.<br /><br />For them I'd offer this piece of my life history. I used to do a lot of free lance writing for newspapers. There came a time when papers just got cheaper and cheaper towards people like me. That was because they knew that we see writing as a vocation and more than anything else just want to see our ideas in print. The result was no one wanted to pay me anything for what I wrote.<br /><br />I accepted this as something that was happening and couldn't be avoided. Then I realized that reporters---with families to support and mortgages to pay---were being replaced by the free copy that people like me were giving the papers. And at the same time, purveyors of "junk bonds" were looting the newspapers that I was getting published in. The money was there, but I was just helping guys like Ken Thomson and Conrad Black get rich. At that point I stopped writing for the paper press.<br /><br />Since then, I've been blogging. But you know what? The same problem exists on the Internet. People have gotten used to paying nothing for content, and writers everywhere are expected to work for nothing at all. As a result, the content being provided is being twisted into "click bait" and "dumbed down" so writers can pump out quantity instead of quality. This is because that's what the advertisers want. The only mechanism I can think of to push back against this problem is through getting people to pay for what they like to read through "tip jars" and Patreon subscriptions. That's why I always put these ads in my blog posts---it's so I don't go back to the bad old days of taking the food out of the mouths of people with families and mortgages.<br /><br />In effect, I'm trying to help people realize that if you want to have a better Internet---free from fake news, alt-right propaganda, and other crap---you are going to have to get used to paying for it. If you refuse to pay for anything that isn't behind a paywall, you are "doing your bit" to ensure that the Internet becomes a plaything for wealthy corporations and not a meeting place for intellectuals and artists.<br /><br />So, the question becomes "what do you want?"</i></b></span><br />
<br /></div>
The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-86115546998746272482017-10-29T16:37:00.000-06:002017-10-29T17:22:26.377-06:00Feelings, Politics, Social Conflict, and, Confucian RitualIn my last post I mentioned the importance of way modern society no longer gives many people any emotional feeling of "connection" and how neo-Fascists have exploited this to build support for noxious agendas. I thought I'd expand a bit on this issue in this post.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
To understand this issue, I think it's important to understand that people reading this post are going to come to it from different perspectives and it's important for all of us to understand this point. All people are not "created equal", and every individual person's particular life experience simply cannot be used to extrapolate to how every other person experiences the world. And this lack of a universal experience is absolutely key to what I want to talk about in this post.<br />
<br />
In my own case, I have what is called an "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder">anxiety disorder</a>". This came about as a result of a chaotic, violent, childhood in a dysfunctional family. What this means is that during the time when my brain was growing, outside stresses caused it to develop in one of the several potential ways the genes I inherited from my parents allowed. In other words, I might have been an "out-going", adventurous, trusting person, but because of the environment I was raised in, I instead developed into a person who is always looking for potential danger.<br />
<br />
The way to think about this issue is to think of each person at birth being dealt a set of playing cards for a "turn-based" game like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euchre">Eucre</a> or Bridge. Those are the genes that they are given by their parents. But when it's time for your body to physically develop (or "express" those genes), it's as if your body has to decide which particular card it wants to play. Friendly, out-going, and, adventurous could be the ten of diamonds, whereas, stand-offish, introverted, and, cautious could be the ace of spades. Each of these behaviours have pluses and minuses in different given contexts. For example, in a time of prosperity where there are lots of opportunities---out-going, risk-takers have an advantage. In a time of chaos and declining prospects, in contrast---people who are cautious and avoid risks are better off.<br />
<br />
Consider these two rabbits. Each of them has the same genetic inheritance for colouration. But because each was raised in different circumstances---namely average temperature---they developed different coloured fur. I don't know anything at all about Himalayan rabbits, but one could think of an environment where a totally white coat would be better camouflage than one with black high lites---and vice-versa. It's the same thing when we talk about people's disposition. And the average temperature would affect how much snow there in on the ground where one is hiding from things like eagles and weasels. In exactly the same way, children reared in warm, loving homes by supportive parents have brain wiring that is substantively different from those that were raised in homes where they spent a great deal of time legitimately scared for their safety.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJLDFyR6o7i9f_zlTjKJTLfZhNKWk2Yk6iLSo4FBr4C_zeAGokrRacsgWbQly0t4cOfcFYOqWyKERpDlcNFxypDkonv68ZfxT9uEDzRinUMvdmf1gaNSqZBNm5YDUaq0p3pMJ8Hg9eQc/s1600/geneexpression.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="155" data-original-width="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJLDFyR6o7i9f_zlTjKJTLfZhNKWk2Yk6iLSo4FBr4C_zeAGokrRacsgWbQly0t4cOfcFYOqWyKERpDlcNFxypDkonv68ZfxT9uEDzRinUMvdmf1gaNSqZBNm5YDUaq0p3pMJ8Hg9eQc/s1600/geneexpression.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two Himilayan rabbits, raised at different temperatures. <br />
Original photo from <b style="font-style: italic;">Genetics: A Conceptual Approach</b><br />
from<a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/environmental-influences-on-gene-expression-536"> an article in <i>Nature</i></a><br />
Used under copy-rite "fair dealing" provision</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
These different ways of experiencing the world can manifest themselves in different ways of living. For example, when most of my friends were heading out and taking risks like going overseas on development projects, starting up small NGOs, applying for grants, etc, I was looking for a secure job with benefits and a pension. That's why I got my job at the University---which is just about the only place in my town that has never laid anyone off and still has a gold-plated, defined-benefit pension with a built-in cost-of-living adjustment. As I approach retirement age, most of my friends have expressed some degree of envy to the retirement benefits that I will enjoy as compared to their situations. (To be fair to myself---many of them have received very large inheritances when their middle-class parents died---I don't expect to inherit a dime.) <br />
<br />
How I experience the world has a huge impact on the political worldview that I find appealing. I suspect that this is why I am increasingly attracted to Confucianism. It specifically posits a world that consists of paternalistic, reciprocal relationships between different parts of society. It says that people should look out for one another instead of competing. Bosses should keep people on, even if there really isn't enough work to justify their retention---because it's the <i>benevolent</i> thing to do. Workers<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiauUZJRpDpHli2001yue5ShL9GECav2uy_kW6kfh0DxcZHO1FrtneaLM6CHvz3_caDGq936OryvFweWlVdgjz5RZJut7cHZGAQxjJv0lGN5vt5ZM7hOlUx9RnHuW6S-iOWU4nA7KTx8BA/s1600/Robert_Frost_NYWTS_4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1227" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiauUZJRpDpHli2001yue5ShL9GECav2uy_kW6kfh0DxcZHO1FrtneaLM6CHvz3_caDGq936OryvFweWlVdgjz5RZJut7cHZGAQxjJv0lGN5vt5ZM7hOlUx9RnHuW6S-iOWU4nA7KTx8BA/s200/Robert_Frost_NYWTS_4.jpg" width="153" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Robert Frost, <br />
photo by Walter Albertin<br />
Library of Congress, <br />
c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
should be diligent and not expect too much pay because they need to take into account the interests of the owners and managers of the company. The government should assume that it needs to intervene in the lives of ordinary people, because it has a similar obligation towards its citizens that a parent has to each of its children. A perfectly Confucian world would give everyone of its citizens the feeling that they are home, as in the sense of Robert Frost's statement "‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." (If you haven't read Frost's poem <i><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44261/the-death-of-the-hired-man">The Death of the Hired Hand</a></i>, I would recommend you do. It perfectly encapsulates many of the emotions that I am discussing in this post.)<br />
<br />
In contrast to my anxiety-disorder fueled neo-Confucianism, I recently was listening to someone espousing a form of Libertarianism that suggested that we should rely upon competition to solve major social problems---such as racism. In effect, he suggested that there should be no laws against discrimination against people based on race or gender because this interferes with the constitutional right of "freedom of assembly". How this works, according to him, is that any business that doesn't hire blacks or women would be out-competed by other companies that do, either because the first one would be artificially limiting its talent pool, or, because consumers would organize boycotts against it. I won't go into why I think that this is a naive suggestion, other than by suggesting that there are historical reasons why social change has never arrived by these means, which is why governments have intervened in situations like this.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
What I'm interested in is what sort of psychology is involved in a person espousing Libertarianism versus Confucianism. Who's it going to be, Ayn Rand? Or Confucius?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAczCD0H5UjnjbLumr3OmBBTtQRXy4W7I5l3Nb_BtiqD4noLreCK0hO2w6ocTnb_kwclV79xAdRusXH23zpgu8b0ExTO3zDdmkSY67-sZUHTcprKL9FPpy_mY43rTvbGb8rJFHi7v2iUQ/s1600/Ayn_Rand_disegno.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="662" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAczCD0H5UjnjbLumr3OmBBTtQRXy4W7I5l3Nb_BtiqD4noLreCK0hO2w6ocTnb_kwclV79xAdRusXH23zpgu8b0ExTO3zDdmkSY67-sZUHTcprKL9FPpy_mY43rTvbGb8rJFHi7v2iUQ/s200/Ayn_Rand_disegno.jpg" width="130" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ayn Rand, the apostle<br />
of Libertarianism<br />
photo c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyN4wFqQa2En5hiUANoPjhXsfN-mfVZHlRsJ27BK1HFhTngBkgnv5KYksiuPpDnKdD6cbAySJ3lS-JQhy7mgX_ftcCjABruSbk2xWNxZDwC7gRHzxvAzuKyp1BtwJr1SVP0daX9GHDA0Q/s1600/Konfuzius-1770+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1132" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyN4wFqQa2En5hiUANoPjhXsfN-mfVZHlRsJ27BK1HFhTngBkgnv5KYksiuPpDnKdD6cbAySJ3lS-JQhy7mgX_ftcCjABruSbk2xWNxZDwC7gRHzxvAzuKyp1BtwJr1SVP0daX9GHDA0Q/s200/Konfuzius-1770+%25281%2529.jpg" width="141" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confucius, the original<br />
proponent of the "Nanny<br />
State", c/o Wiki Commons </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I suppose I'm suggesting an expansion of the saying by Tom Wolfe that "If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested". That is to say, our politics is informed by our life experience. Moreover, I'm going one step further and suggesting that our early childhood---to some extent---"hardwires" us to have a tendency towards one type of politics versus another.<br />
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This isn't to say that people are doomed to either be timid Confucians or adventurous Libertarians. I've done some very risky things---suing Walmart comes to mind---but in those instances I was pursuing <i>social goals</i> instead of <i>personal ones</i>. I was willing to risk losing my house, my pension, and, my entire life savings in order to help preserve my community. This is Confucian risk taking, not Libertarian. It is very different from, for example, someone who hops into an airplane and goes up to the far North in search of employment and ends up making big bucks in the tar sands. Or, who borrows a lot of money to start a business.<br />
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Up until this point, I've made it sound like I'm something of a damaged individual because I support Confucianism. Actually, I don't think that this is fair, but rather an artifact of our society's language. (Another big issue for Confucius was the "rectification of language", but that's a topic for another post.) I identified myself as having an "anxiety disorder", which is quite true. I have had all the classic symptoms of PTSD---reoccurring nightmares, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)">disassociation</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashback_(psychology)">flashbacks</a>, etc---but I'm also high-functioning and it has never really caused major problems in my day-to-day life. But in this post I'm trying to work through how this issue may have affected my political worldview.<br />
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Having admitted this, I want to suggest that our society "loads the language" against the Confucianist worldview. In the language I used above, I described a person from a non-dysfunction family as being "friendly, out-going, and, adventurous". These are all positive attributes. But all of them can be part of a personality that is shallow, self-centred, and, egotistical. Being friendly and out-going can be shallow and insincere---nothing more than the old "would you like a cherry pie with your Big Mac?" script. And being "adventurous" can be nothing more than running away from the obligations that would hold someone in a specific place.<br />
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Years ago I lived in an old townhouse with a student from Shanghai. We had a neighbour named Lena, who was in her eighties and had (as near as we could tell) no friends or family. Her flat stank like sewage, and was over-run with cockroaches (I looked at her recycling container once---it was literally covered with the things.) The only time we ever saw her was twice a day when she went out to buy a local and national newspaper. The last we saw of her was a police officer breaking in her door in order to get her into an ambulance and off to the hospital. My student boarder was with me when this happened. He said to me "this would never happen in China". You could tell he was absolutely disgusted with Canadian society. (I suspect that this sort of scenario is much more common in China now than it was back then---progress?)<br />
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Would someone from a future era or different society identify Libertarians as suffering from "freedom poisoning", or, being a "borderline psycho-path", because of their indifference to the problems of the people around them? How would people who really, really, really care about their communities or the natural environment feel about people who set out on "adventures" without considering the consequences for the community or natural environment? Would they be disgusted by people who unleash huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere for unnecessary jet airplane trips? Would they think anyone who put the ideal of "freedom" ahead of the real, concrete problems facing other people as being somewhat sick in the head?<br />
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One last point. Confucianism is more than just a philosophic theory, it is a practical way of living your life. To this end, it prescribes <i>a practice</i> that helps you integrate it's insights into your day-to-day living. It puts forward benevolence as an ideal, but the way it suggests that a person can really learn to manifest this behaviour is through study and ritual. As for study, I'd suggest that the sort of self-analysis I've done in this blog post would fit that framework. But as for ritual, I'm a little hard-pressed to come up with an example. I recently listened to <a href="http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/8/f/5/8f58b613a276d238/Michael_Puett_on_Ritual_in_Chinese_Philosophy.mp3?c_id=15784304&expiration=1509313526&hwt=0cd60d76edbbb46c147fc7942f44aec6">a podcast</a> that helped explain why this is. It comes from a Western apologist for Confucianism by the name of <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/puett/home">Michael Puett.</a> In it, he argues that what Confucian ritual does is train a person to understand the importance of inter-personal habits and patterns of interaction, and sculpt them to be able to create harmonious interactions. Unfortunately, translations of Confucian texts---like <i><b>the Analects</b></i>---have tended to edit out the descriptions of ritual because Western scholars have tended to think of them as irrelevant. As a result, I've never had much chance (as a non-Chinese reader) to expose myself to Confucian ritual.<br />
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As a result, it's hard to come up with an example that I can put on a blog post, but one example does come to me from a delightful Japanese television show that I recently binge-watched on Netflix: <i><b>the Samurai Gourmet</b></i>.<br />
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This is a strange show to describe to others, so I'm going to let the YouTube clip above at least introduce readers to it's bizarre quality. One particular episode involved a flashback to when the retired "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaryman">salary-man</a>" (who is the hero of this show) was starting out. As a young man, he had wanted to quit his job and go do something else---which would have been career suicide for him. He hands in his letter of resignation to his boss, who instead of accepting it takes him out to his favourite restaurant. </div>
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When they are there, the boss suggests that the young man take a good, careful look at the people working there. He points out the tremendous attention to detail that everyone is manifesting in every aspect of their work---from the chef to the busboys. Indeed, the owner spends some time training a young person in how to carefully clear and clean a table so not a spot of dirt is left from one customer to the other. The boss then tells the young man something to the effect that it isn't important what a person does to make a living, it's the attitude that they bring to the job that makes her a success or a failure. Moreover, the implication is that a "success" or "failure" comes from within---a person can be a tremendous success in a failing business, or, a complete failure even if they are making a ton of money.</div>
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The point I want to raise isn't the wisdom of the specific message, but rather how it is conveyed. The boss took his underling out for a special meal to make the point. This is actually a very common thing in both Japanese and Chinese society, where meals are an integral part of the relationship between managers and employees. In effect, this is a ritual that is used to get people to stop and reassess exactly what they are doing in their work culture and to build a sense of "community" that transcends a mere economic activity. Moreover, it is important to realize that the boss wasn't just trying to convince his young employee about how he should approach the job---he was also illustrating how much the boss considered it his duty to do everything he could to help the new guy adapt to the "salary-man" culture that he had just been accepted into. This is the two-way sense of social obligation and community that is the essence of Confucianism.<br />
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If this sounds a bit far-fetched, consider how common communal meals are in other cultures to build a sense of solidarity. In the early Christian church communion literally was a real meal---the body and blood of Christ were not just a sip of wine or a cracker, they were literally a big meal where even the poorest person could get a full belly. Sikhs still do something like this at their temples. They have a communal meal, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langar_(Sikhism)">called "langar</a>" where absolutely anyone---regardless of race, religion, or, anything else---can have a free, vegetarian meal. The Sikhs in my town---even in far away Canada---serve it even here. And many were the times I ate together with the other members of the taijiquan school where I was initiated into Daoism.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><b><i>OK. Time for the begging bowl. If you like what I write, consider supporting me through either a regular "dollar a month" contribution through Patreon or a one-time donation. Just to let you know I practice what I preach, here's list of the people I regularly support: "<a href="https://c-realm.com/">the C-Realm Vault Podcast</a>", "<a href="http://www.canadalandshow.com/">Canadaland</a>", and, "<a href="http://guelphpolitico.blogspot.ca/">Guelph Politico</a>". I've also given one-time donations to "<a href="http://professionalleft.blogspot.ca/">The Professional Left Podcast</a>", "The C-Realm", and, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/the1janitor">The Number One Janitor</a>". I've also bought podcast downloads from "<a href="http://www.dancarlin.com/">Hardcore History</a>". I've spent far, far more money supporting other creative people on the Internet than I've ever made. I just wanted to suggest that this is what needs to be the new normal. If you can afford to help people create content, you really should consider it "just part of the gig". I do. </i></b></span><br />
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-10681510853650822792017-10-03T13:55:00.004-06:002017-10-03T13:55:53.743-06:00Mencius: Filial Piety and the Rise of Neo-FascismIn Chapter VII of David Hinton's translation of Mencius, the sage is quoted as saying<br />
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<i><span style="color: red;">Imagine all beneath Heaven turning to you with great delight. Now imagine seeing that happen and knowing it means nothing more than a wisp of straw: only Shun was capable of that.<br />He knew that if you don't realize [sic] your parents you aren't a person, and that if you don't lead your parents to share your wisdom you aren't a child. He fulfilled the Way of serving parents completely until Blind Purblind, his depraved father, finally rejoiced in virtue. Once his father rejoiced in virtue, all beneath Heaven was transformed. One his father rejoiced in virtue, the model for fathers and sons was set for all beneath Heaven. Such is the greatness of honoring parents. </span></i></blockquote>
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Mencius, Chapter VII, section 28, David Hinton trans. </div>
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There are two elements to this quote, and I find it hard to connect them. The first is indifference to fame, which I understand can be enormously hard. I certainly find it very hard to be personally uninterested in it---even though I have tried mightily my whole life to live that way. I've always worked at menial jobs, and routinely tried to "do the right thing", even if that means sabotaging whatever sort of career I might have been able to garner. And without some sort of fame, most careers are impossible (think about how much more popular this blog would be if I was a famous person.)</div>
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For example, I was once organizing a slate of candidates for local Council elections and I had a fairly good shot at getting elected in Ward One. But two other people who also had a good shot at winning a seat were running in Ward Two. Since there was only one slot open for their "flavour" of politics, the odds were that if they both ran they would split the vote and neither would get elected. Since neither one of them were willing to back out, I approached one and told her to run in my ward and I'd not run. Both of them ran and won, and the woman ended up becoming a very successful Mayor of my city. It was the right thing to do, but it meant that I never got elected to public office and instead have supported myself moving furniture and being treated like a moron by management. Objectively, I can see that this is irrelevant, but emotionally, it annoys me. I am not like Shun---fame is still far more than a "wisp of straw" to me. <br />
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The next bit deals with what is routinely called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety">filial piety</a>", or, "xiào". People might find it weird that I would write a post about filial piety for a blog about Daoism. Most Westerners who have been exposed to Daoism tend to have this idea that it's followers have nothing but contempt for stuffy Confucian nonsense. Actually, this is a profound misunderstanding. The Temple that I was initiated into (part of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Gate_Taoism">the Dragon Gate Sect</a> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanzhen_School">Quanzhen Daoism</a>) has three core texts that they suggest people should study. They consist of the Daoist <i><b>Jade Emperor Mind Seal Classic</b></i>, the Buddhist <i><b>Diamond Sutra</b></i>, and, the Confucian <i><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Filial_Piety">Classic of Filial Piety</a></b></i>. (More about these in future blog posts.)</div>
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Filial Piety is a very complex subject to understand, and I don't want to overwhelm readers with their first introduction to the concept, so I'll just raise a few aspects that most people probably haven't thought about just so they can start getting prepared to think about it in depth. </div>
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Most people think of filial piety exclusively with regard to family: "Honour your father and mother". But it is important to understand that Confucianism bases its morality not exclusively on reason, but rather <i>emotion</i>. So to understand filial piety you don't suggest an argument in favour of pursuing this as an ethical standard, you put forward an example that illustrates the innate human tendency that it is based upon. And this is the point that Mencius refers to when he says "if you don't realize [sic] your parents you aren't a person". That is to say, if you don't feel some sort of emotional connection to your parents, your lack of emotions disqualifies you as a member of the human race.<br />
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Perhaps a psychopath has no feelings one way or the other about family, which would mean that they aren't a "person" according to Mencius. But the feelings that arise around family are not always positive. Indeed, the language associated with filial devotion always sounds really strange to me---(and I suspect a lot of other people too.) It also sounds odd to me when Christians recite the Lord's Prayer and say "Our Father who art in Heaven---". It's even worse when union leaders talk about members as being "brothers" and "sisters". That is because my father died when I was a child after a long, horrible illness; I also spent a very important part of my childhood being beaten by my older brother; and, my mother had an out-of-control, crazily emotional streak that terrorized me as a child. "Family" has a very strong emotional connection for me---but it is <i>negative</i>, not positive. So I am a "person" according to Mencius, but not one that is terribly "filial".<br />
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But it is important to remember that for Confucians like Mencius filial devotion is not just one directional. Parents have an obligation towards their children that is just as important as the child's obligation to their parents. And if the parent fails in that obligation, the child has as much of a duty to instruct the parent as the parent has to instruct the child:<br />
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"if you don't lead your parents to share your wisdom you aren't a child. He fulfilled the Way of serving parents completely until Blind Purblind, his depraved father, finally rejoiced in virtue"</blockquote>
Think about this passage. Mencius is putting forward Shun as a paragon of filial piety because he patiently<i> taught one of his parents the difference between right and wrong</i>.<br />
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So what exactly is xiào? It doesn't seem to be the stereotypical ideal of children "shutting up and doing what they are told". Right now I'm reading a new translation of <a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-5820-9780824833480.aspx">the </a><b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/p-5820-9780824833480.aspx">Xiaojing</a> </b>by <a href="http://www.newportri.com/new_obituaries/henry-rosemont-jr/article_ff4f9668-6347-11e7-98af-fb2e7a59c0ea.html">Henry Rosemount, jr</a>, and <a href="http://confuciusmag.com/roger-t-ames-finding-pleasure-and-contentment-in-philosophy">Roger T. Ames</a> that translates it as "family reverence" because the scholars believed that the English word "piety" carries too many resonances with self-righteous, unfeeling, religious fanaticism. Instead, they believe xiào refers more about the feelings of someone who is in a genuinely warm, reciprocal relationship based on real emotion. It's unfortunate that so many people---like me---have had such bad experiences with our families that the emotions we feel are negative, but to my way of thinking that means that we still long for that connection, not that it doesn't (or shouldn't) exist. I see this as evidence for the basic value of Confucian family reverence, not evidence against it.<br />
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This longing for a sense of "family reverence" might begin in the family, but for Confucians it is not supposed to end there. The entire culture of a nation is supposed to function like a family for Confucians. The leader of any grouping---such as the Emperor---is supposed to exist in a dynamic with his subjects much like that of a family. Leaders are supposed to actually care about what happens to their followers, and the followers are supposed to not only be able to engage with leaders when they are acting improperly, <i>they are actually obligated to do so</i> in some circumstances. Shun was expected to gently reprimand his father, "Blind Purblind". In the same way, the court officials of the Emperor were expected to disagree with the Emperor and try to change his opinion when they believed he was acting improperly.<br />
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In ancient China this could often be a very dangerous thing to do, as many Emperors were half-mad with power and were quite willing to torture and kill any scholar who had the courage to criticize an imperial policy. But that was the role that a scholar was supposed to play. Indeed, during the reign of the second Qin emperor there was an incident where a stag was brought before the Emperor. The<br />
Prime Minister (who was the real power behind the throne) declared it to be a horse and then asked the court scholars what they thought it was. The ones who were afraid of him, agreed that it was a horse. The others, who had a greater commitment to the truth, said it was a stag. The latter group paid a heavy price for their statements, as not only they themselves, but their families too <a href="https://www.digmandarin.com/forum/thread/calling-a-stag-a-horse">were punished for their independence</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglOErLhcv4K48iUoSVqARvLmFUOy4F9HQ3jE09Lyate1hepOdlB_KlCwv-eQZfnJruNwfpzWUPuoO4LizCyjoOxkw_ZyjX_tJyP2iNCLgJNvAhlQGoshoXG3NLh6r8tVlEruHQB6aFZkg/s1600/Cambridge_Natural_History_Mammalia_Fig_157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="812" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglOErLhcv4K48iUoSVqARvLmFUOy4F9HQ3jE09Lyate1hepOdlB_KlCwv-eQZfnJruNwfpzWUPuoO4LizCyjoOxkw_ZyjX_tJyP2iNCLgJNvAhlQGoshoXG3NLh6r8tVlEruHQB6aFZkg/s320/Cambridge_Natural_History_Mammalia_Fig_157.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is this a horse? If you say it isn't, you and your family will die. <br />But if you say it is, your entire society may collapse. Pressure? <br />1902 drawing by Frank E. Beddard, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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I've been watching a modern Chinese drama titled "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_Chu_and_Han">The Legend of Chu and Han</a>", but which on Netflix Canada is called "The King's War". It is based on the collapse of the Qin dynasty and the founding of the Han.<br />
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I'm fascinated by the character Liu Bang, who became the first Han Emperor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han">Gaozu</a>. This is because the show is playing around with different conceptions of what it means to be a great man. Gaozu's ability isn't so much his brilliance as a general, but rather<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren_(Confucianism)"> his ren</a></i>, or benevolence. He is able to attract and inspire people to want to serve him, because it is obvious that he really does want the best for everyone around him.</div>
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One scene where the director really pointed this out was where Liu was on the march with his army and he fell sick with the flu. His mistress had rolled him up in a quilt and was plying him with hot water to keep him hydrated. A Confucian scholar insisted on seeing him, even though the guards said he was too sick to see anyone. Eventually, he sneaked in to see Liu, who heard him out. After introducing himself, he started talking about how he was going to get Liu's army into some key city without a fight. Liu was not interested (because he felt awful and had heard it all before), so he showed his contempt by taking a pee in the scholar's special, groovy hat. He then make the guy leave and take his hat with him.<br />
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This peeved the scholar, but after throwing his hat away, he ran back in and then told Liu that he was really an expert at drinking wine. Instead of having the guy dragged off (which really isn't Liu Bang's style), he asks his girl friend to bring in two pitchers of wine. (Liu is a bit of a drinker.) The scholar downs one without a pause, and then suggests that Liu drink the other. Liu refuses, saying he's too sick to be drinking wine. But he says he'll hear out the scholar.<br />
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The scholar says he's friend with the Qin prefect who rules the town and can get him to surrender rather than force a fight. Liu asks why he is interested in helping him. The scholar says that he noticed that on the line of march Liu's soldiers are very careful to not trample the peasant's crops, and, that in general they are careful not to abuse ordinary people. (Not to mention that Liu has put up with some pretty strange behaviour by the scholar himself---even though he's not feeling well.) The scholar is saying that he's spent his whole life trying to find a benevolent ruler to serve, and as near as he can tell, Liu Bang is it. <br />
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In the show, "King's War", this is Liu Bang's "secret weapon"---he is able to attract people of real talent, inspire them with tremendous loyalty, and, get them to perform amazing things for him. This contrasts with his main rival, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiang_Yu">Xiang Yu</a>, who is portrayed in what Westerners would recognize as the "heroic" model of someone like Alexander the Great. <i><b><span style="color: red;">He has the strength of a Hercules, is absolutely fearless in battle, and, has the martial arts skill of Bruce Lee. But he lacks ren.</span></b></i><br />
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The director of the show actually underlines this point through a scene where Yu orders the execution of 5,000 captured Qin soldiers because they didn't surrender as fast as he said they needed to in order to be spared. Yu places a great emphasis on keeping his word---something that Confucianism says should always be tempered by benevolence. When Yu's uncle find out about this act he is so angry that he slashes Yu across the face with a whip and punishes him with house arrest. He informs Yu that this is a catastrophic mistake to make, because it means that he has no ren---and that there is no way he can become Emperor without it. A leader who cannot build a sense of trust in both his followers and the people that he will act benevolently towards ordinary folk is doomed to fail. It is this lack of trust that has doomed the Qin dynasty, and Yu's actions show why he failed in his competition with Liu. That is why Liu became the first Emperor of the Han dynasty and Yu ends up killing himself after losing.<br />
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So what has this got to do with modern life?<br />
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I recently read a post on FaceBook about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/28/is-the-world-really-better-than-ever-the-new-optimists">a story in the Guardian</a> about a movement called "<a href="http://newoptimists.com/">the New Optimists</a>". In a nutshell, their argument is if you use objective measurements of things like life expectancy, global poverty rates, death by violent crime, warfare, etc, people around the world have never had it so good. But at the same time, lots of people really feel awful about their lives and the future. How come? <br />
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Well, there are lots of good suggestions as potential reasons. For example, just because people on the other side of planet are doing better than ever before that doesn't mean <i>you</i> are. Moreover, just because things have been getting better over the past 200 years doesn't mean that it couldn't all go to Hell in a few years because of something like climate change, nuclear war, or, an economic catastrophe caused by something like a computer virus. <br />
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All of these are legitimate concerns, but I wonder if maybe part of the problem is that human beings are suffering the effects of a catastrophic decline in our generalized sense of "family reverence" as defined by Confucianism.<br />
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No, I don't mean that we all need to embrace some sort of fundamentalist nonsense like that spewed by groups like "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family">Focus on the Family</a>". Instead, I'm talking about the more generalized sense of emotional connection that Confucians found mostly within the family. <span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span style="color: red;">The key point of "family reverence" isn't the family, it's the emotional sense of connection and belonging that most often found within families. (Please don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself!)</span><span style="color: red;"> <span style="color: red;">People who cannot find this emotional connection within a family seek it in other aspects of life---for many people it is absolutely essential to their well-being and all leaders ignore it at their peril.</span></span></b></span><br />
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What is this sense of "emotional connection"? Well, like Mencius, I can't really define what it is, I can just suggest examples and ask the reader to think about whether or not I am right when I say that these seem to be indicative of an intrinsic human quality. People during war time often develop very strong interpersonal connections that they hold onto for the rest of their lives. It's also why some people have such a strong emotional connection to the university that they studied at while young. I know that in my case I had very strong emotional connection to the school and Temple where I learned Taijiquan and was initiated into Daoism. I also had a similar attachment to the Green Party where I learned the "nuts and bolts" of political activism. They were both like "families" for me. I also have very strong friendships and a significant other that also provide that sense of emotional connection for me.<br />
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I might suggest, however, that for many (if not most) people our modern society undermines and attacks this sense of emotional connection. For one thing, families and friendships are shredded when people are expected to travel all over the world in order to pursue their career paths. Even worse, the temporary nature of jobs means that people routinely get picked up and tossed into a task for a short period of time then discarded like a used wrench---which makes it impossible to develop anything like an emotional connection with co-workers. Increasingly, even that shrinking pool of people who do have permanent jobs are denied the stability of even having their own personal work-space. Instead, they are expected to just grab whatever computer is free at any given moment, or, park their laptop at whatever desk is free. <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/future-workplace-innovations-1.4119806">These are called "back pack" offices. </a> (My job just transitioned from one where I had a office to being one of these "migrants", and I can attest to how much it makes me feel like I'm no longer a valued part of the workplace!)<br />
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I believe that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right">the alt-right </a>has been very good at manipulating the vague, inarticulate sense of emotional loss that comes from this lack of emotional connection in work, community, and, family by playing up people's sense of emotional connection to patriotism. There are lots of videos to choose from on line, but here's one that illustrates my point. <br />
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Just a few things to explain about this video. There were two times in European history where the continent faced invasion by a determined empire of the East and a heroic battle by an out-numbered force managed to save the day. The first is battle of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae">Thermopylae</a> where a small force of Greeks led by the Spartan king managed to hold off a huge Persian army long enough to allow an Athenian fleet to decisively defeat the Persians at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis">Salamis</a>. This is the battle that was popularized by Frank Miller's comic series and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)">the movie "300"</a>. The second was<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna"> the battle of Vienna</a>. In that battle after a long, heroic siege, the city was about to fall to the forces of the Turkish Sultan but at the last minute an attack by<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_hussars"> the Polish Winged Hussars</a> destroyed the Turkish army and permanently removed it's threat to Western Europe. </div>
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Please note in this video the clever way the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabaton_(band)">Sabaton</a> song has been merged with movie clips about these two battles with other clips of refugees, and the "heroes" and "villains" of the alt-right (the former are Putin, Trump, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen">Le Pen</a>, and, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage">Farage</a>), whereas the latter is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel">Angela Merkel</a> (who has opened the doors of Germany to refugees.) These stirring appeals to ancient glories and emotional connection to "race consciousness" is a classic type of Fascist propaganda. <span style="color: red;"><i><b>The rise of new Fascist parties in the Western democracies, IMHO, is because our leadership has turned its back on the Confucian ideal of ren and has instead decided that the free market will deal with all problems. This has worked to undermine and destroy the sense of emotional connection that people have with both their community and where they work. This has created an inarticulate and deep sense of longing for re-connection in the greater community among the citizens, and the neo-Fascists in the alt-right has learned how to exploit it to their gain. That is how Britain voted for the Brexit and how Donald Trump got elected President of the USA. </b></i></span></div>
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Oh, one last point. I started off this crazy post with a quote from Mencius where he mentions a guy named Shun and says that he was indifferent to public acclaim because of his devotion to filial piety. I found it hard understand this point. But now I do. <span style="color: red;"><b><i>If you have a vague need to feel the support of a real emotional community, you will have a real hunger for acclaim. But if that need is being met by a real understanding of ren and have manifested a Sage's feeling towards the people around you, you no longer have that hunger. Not because you have transcended this human desire, but rather because you have satiated it. </i></b></span><br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-5858248666433168622017-09-08T17:07:00.000-06:002017-09-22T16:43:48.829-06:00Daoism and the Dominant ParadigmAt work the other day I was asked to cover up some furniture with so that when some contractors came in to do some construction work they would be protected with dust. It wasn't a terribly difficult job, but it put me in a totally foul mood. This carried on with me for the rest of the shift, over the night, and on into breakfast the next morning.<br />
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I mentioned my emotions to my partner, Misha, and we talked about them over bacon and eggs. We came to the conclusion that the reason why I was so annoyed was because I had been asked to do a half-assed job that served almost no useful purpose, and, which resulted in totally unnecessary waste to the planet---and there was effectively nothing at all I could do about it.<br />
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The thing is that I was asked to use plastic film to cover up the stuff. And plastic film is useless at this job---even though most people use it. It doesn't drape properly, it is repelled by static electricity, and, it is so light that it gets moved even by the slightest air current. You can't tie it up with string, it is slippery so it slides off items easily, masking tape doesn't stick well to it, and, it actually attracts dust which doesn't stick to it (that's a neat trick)---which means that when you take it off a piece of furniture the dust will slide off it onto what you are trying to protect. For these reasons, I never ever use it for this purpose at home. Instead, I have a heavy-canvas drop cloth that I've used for years. It has none of the problems I've mentioned above, and on hot sunny days I can clean it off with soap, a deck brush, and, a garden hose.<br />
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So part of my funk was just about the half-assed, ridiculous job I had been asked to do.<br />
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Another part of this exercise in futility was the fact that once the work was done the plastic film would be removed and tossed into the garbage, and from there into a landfill. I'm a bit of an expert on our local municipal government as well as a manual labour drone, so I know about how much time, money, and, political anguish goes into solid waste issues in my town. So the idea that we would create another bit of stupid garbage in order to just go through the motions of protecting some not-terribly valuable (and easily cleaned) furniture just seemed irritating as Hell. </div>
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My partner Misha took this annoyance and ramped it up a notch by pointing out that there is no sense at all blaming any of the people involved in this process. Each one of them exists in a system of thought and organization that creates a logical justification for the decision to do something inherently wasteful with only marginal utility. That is, the idea that the cost of disposal and the impact on the environment are rarely part of the design criteria of any decision. And, that in many cases it is more important to be seen to care about an issue than it is to actually accomplish anything. Until society decides to put an actual cost on environmental destruction, it is called an "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality">externality</a>" and ignored. And, in order to ensure the smooth functioning of a large, <a href="https://heroictechwriting.com/2014/09/21/vertical-horizontal-and-matrixed-organizations-and-why-you-should-care/">horizontally-organized institution</a>, it is very important to let each individual know that their concerns are being considered by management. This means that people are rarely told "No, that's a dumb idea" and instead are told "OK, I'll get someone to do that right away."</div>
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The really annoying thing about all of this is the fact that as a species we are skating very close to the edge of an existential environmental disaster. I personally believe that we have already overshot the <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity.htm">carrying capacity of the earth </a> and we are causing a lot of very expensive and deadly extreme weather due to anthropogenic climate change. And yet, none of this seems to filter down to the level of ordinary human behaviour around things like construction. There is nothing at all like a consensus around having to get "all hands on deck" to save humanity, instead it's just "the same old, same old." Until the government makes a collective decision to take climate change seriously and mobilize society to the same extent it did to fight World War Two, it is ridiculous to expect most ordinary people to just spontaneously "get with the program"---because there really isn't any "program".<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We can mobilize the public to fight a war, <br />
why can't we mobilize them to save our civilization?</td></tr>
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When I'm able to get my rational mind to keep my emotions under control, I realize that as Daoists my lovely Misha and I have isolated ourselves from the rest of the human population. We see things so differently from people who "buy into" the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm">Dominant Paradigm</a>" (DP) that sometimes we must seem like Martians to ordinary folks. And it goes the other way too. I often find it hard to understand how these people think. Mostly, however, I find it profoundly frustrating to be around what I call "DP'rs". I know that they cannot do any better, so there is no sense blaming them for their individual choices. But that doesn't mean that I am not annoyed with the casual and unconsciously brutal way they affect the natural world and future generations. To a large extent that's why I have spent most of my work life trying to avoid being around them. But sometimes I cannot avoid interacting with DP'rs, and this generates negative emotions.<br />
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I suspect that this has always been the way with Daoists. It's true that global environmental destruction is not something that loomed large in ancient China, but there was always the casual brutality of the ruling class towards the peasants (that's why Daoists were involved in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Turban_Rebellion">the Yellow Turban Rebellion</a>), or, the tendency of military leaders to smash and destroy anything or anyone in their way (that's why <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiu_Chuji">Changchunzi </a>met with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan">Genghis Khan</a> to try and soften his aggression towards the Chinese people.) When you make the effort to "embrace the void", "hold onto the One", and, "follow the watercourse Way", you find yourself more and more estranged from DP'rs.<br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-58326736954446546772017-07-24T07:58:00.000-06:002017-09-22T16:44:44.715-06:00Confucius and the John Birch Society: Rectification of Names and Modern America<div class="tr_bq">
Recently I did an experiment where I used two social media sites---FaceBook and Quora---to ask why so many Americans say that they don't live in a "democracy", but instead a "republic". That is to say, why do many Americans believe that there is a contradiction between the two words---that a country can be a "democracy" <i><b>or</b></i> a "republic"---<b><i>but not both at the same time</i></b>. </div>
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I ask this because if you look up the Google definition of both terms, you will find the following:<br />
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<i><b><span style="color: red;">de·moc·ra·cy</span></b></i><br />
<span style="color: red;">a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives<br /><i><b>re·pub·lic</b></i><br />a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch</span></blockquote>
If anyone knows much about systems of government, it is obvious that these two terms are <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonality">orthogonal</a>. </i>That is to say, they refer to fundamentally different issues---which means that they aren't the sort of concepts that can contradict each other. An example of two orthogonal concepts are the class of an vehicle and the company that made it. So two classes of vehicles are "car" and "pickup truck", and, two companies that make them can be "Datsun" or "Ford". That is, a car can be either a Datsun or a Ford, and, either one of these companies can produce both cars and pickups. It simply isn't a case of "either it is a Datsun or it is a pickup", or "either it is a Ford or it is a car". So, China is a republic, but not a democracy. Canada is a democracy, but it is not a republic. And, the USA is both a democracy and a republic.<br />
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If you try to explain this in an American context, you get a bunch of responses. One of the more common ones is to suggest that the only real meaning of "democracy" is "a government without any form of elected representation". That is the word "democracy" for them means "a system where every single issue is decided directly through popular referendums". Another popular statement that they make is that in a "republic" there are constitutional laws that protect the rights of individuals against the capricious will of the majority.<br />
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When I try to work through the implications of these idiosyncratic definitions of both terms, I find that there are lots of strange results. For example, what is a "representative democracy" if you simply define "democracy" as only being exercised through referendum? Does that mean that all the nations of the world that have elected representatives aren't really "democracies"? Wouldn't arguing this case be committing tremendous violence to the common understanding of the concept?<br />
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In addition, the idea that only a "republic" has legal protections for minorities against the fickle decisions of the majority is also a bizarre reading of the term. Nations that specifically say that they are not republics---such as Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, etc---do have things like constitutions, Supreme Courts and so on that protect individuals from bad legislation. In contrast both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China---both of which call themselves republics and fit the dictionary definition---have terrible reputations when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals when they annoy the powerful. Moreover, what exactly is it about the difference between popular referendums and elected legislators (if we accept that this is the distinction between a republic and a democracy) that ensures protection of minorities? Surely it is just as possible for elected legislators to deny individual rights as the general public in a referendum? The Jim Crow laws in the Southern US that kept blacks under the thumb of the white majority were not passed by popular referendum, but rather by elected representatives in a state legislature governed by a constitution based on recognized law.<br />
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Most of the responses I got from my question were of the sort mentioned above. I found this interesting, but the real issue I was trying to deal with was "why do so many Americans believe this?", not "how do they justify this way of thinking?". As far as I know, no one outside of the US uses the words "democracy" and "republic" in these ways. They use the standard dictionary definitions that I gave in the beginning of this essay.<br />
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When I asked one person why his definition was so different from a standard dictionary one, he replied that the new dictionaries are wrong, and it is necessary to check older ones. When I went on to ask him where specifically he got this idea from, he said that he got the info directly from the "Founding Fathers", although he didn't suggest a specific document. Another woman simply said that America has a different "culture" than other nations, and she likes it that way---. Several others just agreed that it is an idiosyncratic definition, but it helped people understand the limitations of extreme democracy, so it is a good way of understanding the terms. <br />
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One person who understood what I was trying to learn from the question said that these odd definitions come from the Republican party because it wants to justify ignoring the opinions of the majority of voters. Another said that this is a distinction dreamed up to encourage people to think the names of the two major parties represent really different ideas about how the country should be run: Republicans support the rule of law, and, Democrats support mob rule.<br />
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Finally one fellow suggested that "point zero" for all of this can be traced to a video tape put out by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1589640586"></span>the John Birch society<span id="goog_1589640587"></span></a>. He provided me with a link that ended in a pay wall, but a little more effort and I found this which seems to get to the heart of the issue. (I'm going to be discussing a lot of what goes on in this video, so take a good look at it. What follows isn't going to make much sense without having seen it.)<br />
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Let me start by stating that the above is a piece of very effective propaganda. And like all very good propaganda, it doesn't work by telling the viewer absolute falsehoods, instead, <span style="color: red; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">what it does is manipulate the way people think about issues by leaving out crucial issues while at the same time suggesting that they have completely explained the state of affairs. </span><span style="color: red;"><i style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Propaganda is often most effective by what it doesn't say, instead of what it does.</i> To </span>understand this point, consider one of the first ideas introduced in the video.<br />
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At about the 0:45 point, the narrator discusses what people routinely call "the political spectrum"---communism on the left, fascism on the right---and suggests that it is all wrong. He suggests at about 1:15 that people who call NAZIS and fascists right wing "never define their terms", and instead argues that the key issue in left versus right is the amount of power that a government has over an individual. <br />
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The video is correct to a limited extent. It is true that some people often throw around the words "left", "right", and, "fascist" without really clearly defining what they are talking about. But the John Birch solution is no answer either. The idea of "left" versus "right" comes from a specific moment in the French revolution where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum#History_of_the_terms">the representatives of various political factions were seated either to the left or right </a>of the President of the Assembly. As such, it has continued as a very rough way of articulating where a specific individual or party sits in relation to others. The problem that arises, of course, is that politics is so complicated that it is impossible to accurately map any particular political system on one single axis. Indeed, I'd suggest that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum">it is probably impossible to accurately map all human political tendencies in any specific sort of two-dimensional map</a>.<br />
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The left/right spectrum that is introduced in the video suggests that communism should be on the left and fascism on the right. But it is important to understand that this only deals with one or two variables: nationalism and corporate ownership. The major Axis powers of WW2 gave great power to the major corporations in their countries: for example, Krupp, Fiat, and, Mitsubishi. In addition, all three were tremendously involved in an extreme nationalist agenda: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum">Lebensraum</a> for the Germans, recreating the Roman Empire for the Italians, and, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere">Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere</a> for the Japanese. In contrast, communism believes in <i>state ownership of the means of production</i>, which means elimination of all privately-own corporations. It is also <i>internationalist</i> in orientation, which means that it doesn't support the creation of empires specifically for the benefit of one particular nationality. <br />
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The spectrum that video introduces is based on a totally different set of criteria: relative power of the state versus the individual. This is a perfectly legitimate move---but only if you understand that you are switching what is being measured. <i style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">What makes this video propaganda is the subtle move to suggest that the first spectrum is wrong and the second one right, instead of saying that they each measure something totally different. </i>Political scientists are quite aware of the problems of the left/right way of measuring different tendencies, which is why they have attempted to come up with various other ways of encapsulating differences in easily understood graphics.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another way of mapping political tendencies<br />
Image by Liftarn, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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This map separates out the role of ownership in differentiating Marxism from Fascism on one axis, but on another one it brings them together on how each deals with personal freedom. Please note, that this particular graphic doesn't deal with the relative role that nationalism plays in various political tendencies. That's the problem with these sorts of things---no matter how hard someone tries, they end up leaving something really important out. The problem with the video's depiction of this spectrum isn't that it says anything particularly wrong, it just leaves out an enormous amount of complexity and implies that what has been said pretty much exhausts the issue.<br />
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The video goes on to make an argument in favour of the radical split between democracy and republicanism that brings in several similarly wildly over-simplified descriptions of reality. But I hope that I've already shown how the John Birch society is manipulating the naive into believing something false in order to promote their agenda.<br />
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I've put forward this modern example to illustrate a point from Confucius' <i><b>Analects</b></i> that has direct bearing on modern society. In Chapter XIII, part three, of David Hinton's translation we read:<br />
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Adept Lu said: "If the Lord of Wei wanted you to govern his country, what would you put first in importance?"<br />
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"The rectification of names," replied the Master. "Without a doubt."<br />
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"That's crazy!" countered Lu. "What does rectification have to do with anything?"<br />
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"You're such an uncivil slob," said the Master. "When the noble-minded can't understand something, they remain silent.<br />
<br />
"Listen. If names aren't rectified, speech doesn't follow from reality. If speech doesn't follow from reality, endeavors never come to fruition. If endeavors never come to fruition, then Ritual and music cannot flourish. If Ritual and music cannot flourish, punishments don't fit the crime. If punishments don't fit the crime, people can't put their hands and feet anywhere without fear of losing them.<br />
<br />
"Naming enables the noble-minded to speak, and speech enables the noble-minded to act. Therefore, the noble-minded are anything but careless in speech."</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Chapter XIII, part three, <i><b>Analects</b></i>, David Hinton trans.</div>
<br />
To a certain extent, I've tried to do a little "rectification of names" on this post with regard to the terms "democracy" and "republic". I'm concerned about the confusion that surrounds these words, because how ordinary people understand these two concepts has tremendous impact on what they expect from their society. If people associate "democracy" with mob rule, they are not going to be as upset if the influence of ordinary people declines in society. And if they believe that the existing legal structure trumps the aspirations and needs of common folk, they will be easier to convince that they shouldn't expect help from society-at-large for their problems. The John Birch Society definitions ultimately support an elitist vision of society where the legal right of the wealthy to own property effectively trumps every other value that people support. If they can control the definition of words that people use to understand politics, they will have already won half the battle to convert the USA into a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy">Plutocracy</a>.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0cKS-6WQ8VD6cybZLcNtdaQYkMG-l660QFbUuKCUxivZFUgX7CbgKr4FpY5Q6WqbTIYekeHgrRfV_pyhj7tz4WgQft2F5vMqIpuR-7pxp5jNGdiAvOW9iPMErvg338xgGkoARGVE7DoM/s1600/Confucius_02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="192" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0cKS-6WQ8VD6cybZLcNtdaQYkMG-l660QFbUuKCUxivZFUgX7CbgKr4FpY5Q6WqbTIYekeHgrRfV_pyhj7tz4WgQft2F5vMqIpuR-7pxp5jNGdiAvOW9iPMErvg338xgGkoARGVE7DoM/s400/Confucius_02.png" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confucius wouldn't be a fan of the John Birch Society!<br />
Engraving c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-38203202690983158172017-07-03T13:01:00.000-06:002017-09-22T16:45:34.489-06:00How Realistic is Your Taiji Sword Form? I've done the Government of China official short Yang form of taiji sword for quite a few years, but I've recently become somewhat frustrated with it. I learned from a pretty good source, a woman who was on a provincial wushu team from the People's Republic, so I cannot find fault with her expertise. It's just that I've spent a bit of time learning about swords from <a href="http://www.fioredeiliberi.org/">people on-line who discuss the European tradition</a>, and I simply cannot believe that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wushu_(sport)">wushu</a> sword techniques are realistic. Let me explain why.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95kYdQlSWj6I76s7OfQJxZY-xgmGFXFle_LptNZHa00lor2KL3W0gXg3kKZ58L24ee9EnaZGcOM6oDsC_lrxRbCIhiVrBvf_Fx4n3HoGqCcxlYQnkUNA8dHtSZMOAflMGq8S2lrrbndk/s1600/10th_all_china_games_Jian_pair_406_cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1372" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi95kYdQlSWj6I76s7OfQJxZY-xgmGFXFle_LptNZHa00lor2KL3W0gXg3kKZ58L24ee9EnaZGcOM6oDsC_lrxRbCIhiVrBvf_Fx4n3HoGqCcxlYQnkUNA8dHtSZMOAflMGq8S2lrrbndk/s320/10th_all_china_games_Jian_pair_406_cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How could I possibly suggest that wushu sword forms aren't realistic?<br />
photo by "Wushu One Family", c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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Using a sword is a complex issue because it involves a lot of different physics problems. Consider, for example, the issue of "cutting". This is not as simple as you might think, because it involves applies two directions of force at the same time. To illustrate this point consider the following YouTube video.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vbpnDe-ow5g/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vbpnDe-ow5g?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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This is what my the fellow who initiated me into Daoism used to call a "circus trick". It looks impressive, but it's really based on simple physics. The point is that the sword hammers down onto the fellow's abdomen without importing any sliding movement. This means that when the sword goes through the watermelon and meets the towel, it just bounces off instead of cutting.<br />
<br />
A water melon has very different qualities than human skin and cloth. It is rigid and has almost no tensile strength. This means it <i>splits</i> very easily. In contrast, skin and cloth have much greater tensile strength, so they are very difficult to split. Moreover, there is an added complication: skin <i>slices</i> very easily---cloth not so much. If the guy with the sword had tried to slice or saw through the watermelon, it would have taken some effort and the sword might very well have gotten stuck. So what the sword hit what is in effect<i> a laminate</i> consisting of watermelon, a towel, and, the karate teacher's abdomen---all three of which react to cutting in very different ways.<br />
<br />
So the key to the trick is the sword splits the watermelon, then bounces off the towel. If the towel wasn't there, then there might have been a little bit of residual sideways, slicing motion from the cut, which might have cut the sensei's abdomen (note that the fellow wielding the sword cut his hand while cleaning the blade.)<br />
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The sword splits the watermelon only because it is rigid. If it wasn't, the sword would bend around after it hit the watermelon, which would probably cause it to bind and stick. To understand this point. Let's look at another circus trick, this one done by people who perform as Buddhist martial monks. (They may actually be Shaolin Temple monks---but I'm told that a lot of the guys who perform for tourists are just acrobats and not real monks.)<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C4nDqeRcksM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C4nDqeRcksM?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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The secret to this trick is that penetration---like from the tip of a spear---can only happen if the force is directed at right angles to the body. If there is even a slight bend in the "spear"---and the "spear" has enough flexibility---the harder you push on it, the more the spear bends, and the more it bends, the more the force comes from the <i>side </i>of the spear blade and the less it comes from the <i>point</i>. If you look carefully, those "wax wood" spears don't act anything like a real one. First, they have a pre-set bend in them, which the two helpers aim towards the floor. Secondly, after the demonstration is over, they hold a very definite, much greater bend after the fact. This shows that the spear shafts are not made of a really strong, mostly rigid, and, only slightly springy material (<a href="http://www.trueswords.com/foot-wood-staff-p-3187.html">like real wax wood.</a>) Instead, I suspect that what they really are are thin, easily bent, mild steel rods with something over top that makes them look like wax wood. </div>
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This is an issue not only with spears, but also with swords. If the fellow slicing the watermelon had been using one of those floppy wushu jians, the blade would have deformed when it hit the fruit and bounced around inside the fruit---not neatly splitting it, but probably getting stuck. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9tkB-kdlNtpp6fv-5tDxljA9IAgiQ130GOehzgdz48mUmR9qx6_4X2W1ktpON9YLbvJm2D2tEmx2xkpnGkgep5FgvFivkYjJtHhFBTaQHvYRqsbrt52enXXw_90oJeuXX7BSdRljRr8M/s1600/flexible-tai-chi-sword_bb3efb9f-6243-49cf-bffa-1d879add7638_grande.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="494" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9tkB-kdlNtpp6fv-5tDxljA9IAgiQ130GOehzgdz48mUmR9qx6_4X2W1ktpON9YLbvJm2D2tEmx2xkpnGkgep5FgvFivkYjJtHhFBTaQHvYRqsbrt52enXXw_90oJeuXX7BSdRljRr8M/s320/flexible-tai-chi-sword_bb3efb9f-6243-49cf-bffa-1d879add7638_grande.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This isn't the most floppy wushu/taiji jian I've ever seen, either.<br />
Photo from <a href="https://www.wudang-store.com/products/ancient-coins-flexible-tai-chi-sword">the "Wudang Store"</a></td></tr>
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There's a third issue at play here. That's the <i>shape</i> of the sword. A straight sword acts very differently from a curved one. A curved blade imparts slicing motion with just about every move it makes, simply because of its shape. This makes it much more effective in cutting. In fact, the shape and movement of the blade is so important to the way a sword cuts that the edge can sometimes almost seem irrelevant. I found this out once when I was "fooling around" in my taiji club with a blunt, aluminum "willow leaf sabre".</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4H-pDPrBI5lyKXuzlExHjYTIaj_Seaub8BanX1VrOUzMet2QTdX86nnGGqMu6yqlnfFyv3e7aMJdC_pN-eHT1lmTMUUjGw8dM7ODFMuXlIHe7NUYXtNdjIT2yMGxhgDvmQrbTqKChr88/s1600/Liu_Ye_Dao_%2528Willow_leaf_saber%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="98" data-original-width="467" height="67" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4H-pDPrBI5lyKXuzlExHjYTIaj_Seaub8BanX1VrOUzMet2QTdX86nnGGqMu6yqlnfFyv3e7aMJdC_pN-eHT1lmTMUUjGw8dM7ODFMuXlIHe7NUYXtNdjIT2yMGxhgDvmQrbTqKChr88/s320/Liu_Ye_Dao_%2528Willow_leaf_saber%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A willow leaf sabre,<br />
original art by Nazanian, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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I saw a small poster tacked up on the bulletin board that was supporting a group that I knew was a bit of a religious cult. So I stabbed the poster with the tip of the sabre, pulled it off the board, tossed it up in the air, and, did a draw cut (from my taiji sabre form) on it in mid-air---which neatly cut it into two pieces, which then lazily fell to the floor.<br />
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(I'm not trying blow my own horn here. There is no way I could do this on command, but it was an amazing example of Zhuangzi's idea that there is tremendous power in spontaneous action.)<br />
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A more prosaic way of understanding this point involves thinking about what happens when you suffer a paper cut. No one could ever use a piece of paper to cut anything, but we all have experience of quite painful cuts from drawing the edge of a sheet across our skin "in just the right way". Exactly the same issues are at play when it comes to swords.<br />
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If you look at the above drawing of the willow leaf sabre, you will see that between the curve of the blade and the handle, there is a complex "S" curve to the whole sword. This means that when you thrust the blade forward, draw it back back, or, chop from top to down, you are always going to be imparting some sort of slicing motion to the edge. That's the whole point of the shape. It would be a bad idea to try to do the watermelon trick using a willow leaf sabre. It might still work OK, but it's best to no take any risks.</div>
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If you look at the sword used to cut the watermelon, it is a straight "ninja" type sword. This is the absolute best type of sword to use in for this trick, as the straighter the sword, the easier it is to us it in a straight chopping motion with minimal slicing action.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ZZ3m78f-Qb7Qw3q7WIYWv7ymC0OHSNHJmLSoDGhcfLkv475OqTC1L0QKNlKASmnUlf8wymL4GUFDquvLf7vXADBlz33eB7se9nEmAV1hZDAt4yRV1IpdpVmsmHJHRSicFbjJ4RrqY2k/s1600/ninja+sword.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="650" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ZZ3m78f-Qb7Qw3q7WIYWv7ymC0OHSNHJmLSoDGhcfLkv475OqTC1L0QKNlKASmnUlf8wymL4GUFDquvLf7vXADBlz33eB7se9nEmAV1hZDAt4yRV1IpdpVmsmHJHRSicFbjJ4RrqY2k/s320/ninja+sword.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A "ninja-type" sword,<br />
<a href="http://www.sword-buyers-guide.com/ninja-swords.html">From a commercial website</a></td></tr>
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What this means is that for a sword to "work" it simply cannot be floppy. And it is more work for a straight blade to cut than it is for a curved one. And cutting is more difficult than people think, because of the issue of armor and clothing. This again has something to do with the watermelon trick---that little towel on the skin actually acted like a piece of armor.</div>
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Most people don't understand this, but for millennia the most basic type of armor wasn't plate, chain mail, or, even leather---it was quilted cloth. Here are three types, from three different times and cultures. </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0ERSx1o8wwk/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ERSx1o8wwk?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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The Ancient Greek <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linothorax">Linothorax</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkH3-KzEVXtyq6hGMbwqWoY5EmKirv6YG7sf0PzjCynXmbEGaOAmPsgNUl0mz7LXhmoNsXp3Q2v7cZG7oqoYpuNGJEhjjooOieHKeql94LpRm_-aPrdL1nSMHpeB1koHeMLxb_30Ar5ZY/s1600/Kolder%252C_ca._1660-1670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="298" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkH3-KzEVXtyq6hGMbwqWoY5EmKirv6YG7sf0PzjCynXmbEGaOAmPsgNUl0mz7LXhmoNsXp3Q2v7cZG7oqoYpuNGJEhjjooOieHKeql94LpRm_-aPrdL1nSMHpeB1koHeMLxb_30Ar5ZY/s400/Kolder%252C_ca._1660-1670.jpg" width="315" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Medieval European <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson">Gambeson</a><br />
Photo from Centraal Museum Utrecht, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6AGEQ-YwBIFYo90hE4Txlg_4kHshd5dOotLkHtQXx3EcTXbxztFcv5T5kDJtyBzUW-vHiIFA5Nq53Dm57J-b0JBukFRvJyoLxOMyNnHRN8aV0lfBsytL8_uxv6Ymi3SWUTd5ZdEhsTXo/s1600/Aztec+Armor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="331" data-original-width="800" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6AGEQ-YwBIFYo90hE4Txlg_4kHshd5dOotLkHtQXx3EcTXbxztFcv5T5kDJtyBzUW-vHiIFA5Nq53Dm57J-b0JBukFRvJyoLxOMyNnHRN8aV0lfBsytL8_uxv6Ymi3SWUTd5ZdEhsTXo/s400/Aztec+Armor.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aztec quilted cotton armor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichcahuipilli">the Ichcahuipilli</a><br />
<a href="http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/how-did-a-warrior-put-on-the-skin-of-an-eagle">From Mexicolore</a></td></tr>
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This issue goes beyond just quilted armor and circus tricks involving watermelons. That's because it turns out that it was often quite difficult for a person wielding a sword to cut through just the clothing that an opponent was wearing. To explain this point, here's a video by the excellent Matt Easton explaining the issues.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AQDr13TyLJ8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AQDr13TyLJ8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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With this thought in mind, consider the clothing that the Mandarin in the picture below is wearing. He has a fur lined robe plus layers of clothing below that (cold climate plus no central heating!) Think about how hard these layers of cloth would be to either cut or penetrate in a sword fight. No floppy modern wushu blade would be able to do it.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhAJgEkQ_C9iCEC5eMg5WsXMgbY9hS75cn40YMXeNT-lKKvVs9cLHgpMa4utGGyiB_3q8J7eTAJRmmVIhuKciX3rIteJiPpBHJ_DIe7eTzkPWLX2mKvxVMG-99Rfr8xigtDdjDIL1hyphenhyphenQ/s1600/A_Mandarin_official%252C%252C_photograph_by_John_Thomson%252C_1869._Wellcome_L0056113.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1280" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUhAJgEkQ_C9iCEC5eMg5WsXMgbY9hS75cn40YMXeNT-lKKvVs9cLHgpMa4utGGyiB_3q8J7eTAJRmmVIhuKciX3rIteJiPpBHJ_DIe7eTzkPWLX2mKvxVMG-99Rfr8xigtDdjDIL1hyphenhyphenQ/s400/A_Mandarin_official%252C%252C_photograph_by_John_Thomson%252C_1869._Wellcome_L0056113.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This guy might as well be wearing armor!<br />
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There are other issues beyond the ability to cut. For example, a sword has to have a certain "heft" or mass to be able to parry blows from another weapon. A really light, floppy blade won't be able to force another weapon out of the way. If the blade doesn't just bend around the other sword, staff, spear, or, whatever, the lack of weight will simply overwhelm the arm and push it out of the way.<br />
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In addition, we also need to understand how jians were actually made in pre-modern times. Most people are aware of how Japanese swords are made from layers of folded metal---with a soft, resilient core holding a hard, yet somewhat brittle edge. What this means is that compared to modern, European swords Japanese swords are actually really heavy. That's because the folded metal, lamination technique requires a significant cross section. Jians were traditionally made the same way. (Unfortunately, the best illustrations of this were all labelled in either Russian or Japanese, but hopefully the casual reader can get the point. The different coloured sections have different degrees of hardness and resilience.) The consensus among scholars is that the Japanese sword making techniques used to make <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana">katanas</a> were copied off Chinese techniques used to make jians. This means that a historically accurate jian would have to have a similarly quite large cross-section. This would add dramatically to the weight of the sword. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-pTiEeWDo9sBelWAXM8A_XceKVF38VMci31bN092xPWkmbn5zfzp02D04zJYsOFemy2sO4UAKx9PHH2Enel_4LnLl5vlP6z24RRfrU1rJNUNEUcHF24esdqcdF-CzZpm5r2lsCePxQ8/s1600/Nihontou_Steels_1_J.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-pTiEeWDo9sBelWAXM8A_XceKVF38VMci31bN092xPWkmbn5zfzp02D04zJYsOFemy2sO4UAKx9PHH2Enel_4LnLl5vlP6z24RRfrU1rJNUNEUcHF24esdqcdF-CzZpm5r2lsCePxQ8/s320/Nihontou_Steels_1_J.PNG" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration by Tosaka, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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Years ago, I went to a workshop led by a leading light on the Canadian taiji sword team and in the intermission I asked about whether she ever trained with a "real sword". She gave the standard "I'm far too evolved to do such a thing. Are you planning to go out and kill people?" response. I thought that that was kinda lame, but she was the teacher, so I just accepted it as her point of view and finished the workshop.</div>
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I kept thinking about the subject, and did a little research on the Internet. Eventually, I found a source in China that said they sold real jians---ones that were modern copies of old ones that were actually used in combat. It cost a few bucks (but of course it would) but it has a real high-carbon steel blade, etc. When it arrived, I was really surprised. First of all, it weighs three pounds. This causes all sorts of problems in the Yang taiji jian set. I'm a big strong guy, but the first part of the set where the sword is held in the left hand is a total killer. It takes a lot of strength to hold that three pound sword balanced by the force of one or two fingers as you hold it backwards in the left hand.<br />
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After that, the exquisite, slow motion control that this woman exhibits is simply impossible with that monstrous, three pound chunk of high-carbon steel that I own. </div>
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This raises the question, was I "ripped off" by that company in China? Actually, I don't think so. To understand this point, consider the hand grip on the sword. Almost every modern taiji jian you can buy has the hilt of the sword pointing forwards---just like on a Western sword. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9bnsJ5aze2yTKejhvgUcdKCQep4XKEpBnX74WKffG49bCHYgN7BDwYQVOFlce-6P_y-ApulRWDmQ6vvKYuEsL1PcLnzxZo-IuLVATDF7yq6QOkxmhbayAzSPxD4bX11qq9QV1vCElIxE/s1600/Oak+Jian+Handle+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="294" data-original-width="750" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9bnsJ5aze2yTKejhvgUcdKCQep4XKEpBnX74WKffG49bCHYgN7BDwYQVOFlce-6P_y-ApulRWDmQ6vvKYuEsL1PcLnzxZo-IuLVATDF7yq6QOkxmhbayAzSPxD4bX11qq9QV1vCElIxE/s320/Oak+Jian+Handle+.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's your standard type of "guard", on a oak practice Jian<br />
Photo from the <a href="http://sdksupplies.netfirms.com/index.html">Sei Do Kai Supplies</a> website</td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td></tr>
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But this "traditional" jian has them pointing backwards. Why?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kxCGAI7XPTQafp9U0hnCa83D1PXxDr2eJSp3mAIJbiPbQHX9PyqIz8BU28xVkDotufVhY3-gk68nBZQdwgfHrOuhBl-mXGo54sV3_5UHb47iGstUecmMf-RsdMBGswZ5HGvXyD8fTXA/s1600/sword2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_kxCGAI7XPTQafp9U0hnCa83D1PXxDr2eJSp3mAIJbiPbQHX9PyqIz8BU28xVkDotufVhY3-gk68nBZQdwgfHrOuhBl-mXGo54sV3_5UHb47iGstUecmMf-RsdMBGswZ5HGvXyD8fTXA/s320/sword2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's the "backwards" sword guard.<br />
(I added the cord wrapping onto the wooden handle.)</td></tr>
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I came across a book by a martial arts teacher who said that modern jians all have their guard facing the wrong way because there was a period in modern China where the government confiscated and destroyed all the real swords. When martial arts were brought back into favour, anyone setting out to make new swords was stuck copying weapons from opera companies, which were not much more than toys. Probably they were influenced by Western swords, which have a solid hilt whose purpose is to catch a sword blade and protect the hands. The guy who wrote the book then went on to say that the backwards hilt is no good because if you trap a sword blade in it, you can easily have your sword ripped from your hands.<br />
<br />
This last bit of the argument seemed bogus at the time, and I could never figure out exactly what he was talking about. I have an alternative hypothesis, one that seems to make a lot more sense to me. In Western martial arts, there were always schools that taught a person to hold their sword with a finger on the hilt. In fact, this became so popular that there are a great many surviving Western swords that have a special "finger ring" on the hilt to protect that digit.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPMNfdYofkpgH2VFP-bMAp-8ch8zVVh74GnzdHs6T832AmxebdnshpE10hy6kcwWfxcJGjqTM8k9zoEagHupcIXSf64yc2XaXmU4c8sVMwM7p2D8HDVG79cfvUJeHQb0QzIgYmyTaMsU/s1600/Finger_Guard_Hilt_Milanese_Sword_detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="358" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpPMNfdYofkpgH2VFP-bMAp-8ch8zVVh74GnzdHs6T832AmxebdnshpE10hy6kcwWfxcJGjqTM8k9zoEagHupcIXSf64yc2XaXmU4c8sVMwM7p2D8HDVG79cfvUJeHQb0QzIgYmyTaMsU/s320/Finger_Guard_Hilt_Milanese_Sword_detail.jpg" width="229" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here's a reproduction of a late medieval Milan sword with a finger ring.<br />
<a href="http://deepeeka-wiki.net/index.php?title=File:Finger_Guard_Hilt_Milanese_Sword_detail.jpg#filelinks">Photo from the Deepeeka Wiki</a></td></tr>
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When I learned about this totally practical European adaptation to heavy swords, I tried to do the same thing with my heavy jian and found out that the "reversed hilt" on it was absolutely ideal for this.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWpYgBg2eVYBj16t46FV6pWcldROMnA-QG2czMx7q_FSkwWxrgu9BfOFFxLNAQXDP4-a8-2WsozK_IjXQogLtlV15dusnyNuG6I1uvAgthr8EXJnpfPtGx8G5TjdO1RTcUGZx5Lu4qnDU/s1600/JianSwordGrip.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWpYgBg2eVYBj16t46FV6pWcldROMnA-QG2czMx7q_FSkwWxrgu9BfOFFxLNAQXDP4-a8-2WsozK_IjXQogLtlV15dusnyNuG6I1uvAgthr8EXJnpfPtGx8G5TjdO1RTcUGZx5Lu4qnDU/s320/JianSwordGrip.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My improved grip on the heavy jian.<br />
Author's photo</td></tr>
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IMHO, what this means to me is that what we see as a "hilt" to protect the hand of the person holding the sword was really more about giving the hand more purchase to hold and control a very heavy blade that was designed to chop through and penetrate layers of armor and/or heavy clothing.<br />
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I think that this has profound implications about how we should do the taiji jian form. First of all, some of the moves are simply impossible to do safely with a heavy, long sword. Moves that involve flamboyant over-the-top moves with maximum wrist flexibility are just asking to damage the tendons in the arm. As well, moves that are effective and useful when done at speed become dangerous if not impossible when done very slow. That's because the "heft" or mass of the sword works with the taiji player at speed whereas it works against them when done very slowly. It seems clear to me that the modern taiji jian forms were heavily influenced by the use of totally impractical, floppy wushu swords. That means that when people are doing them they are not actually practicing a martial art, but rather a type of dance or gymnastics. </div>
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Many people have no problem with this. They are just jocks or jockettes---like that woman on the Canadian taiji team---but if you want to do taiji as a spiritual practice you have to work within the limitations of the art. And the most important limitation is that <i>it has to actually work</i>. I'm not saying this because I intend to go out and get into sword fights, but because I want to avoid fooling myself about what I am doing. Our biggest problem as human beings is our almost infinite capacity for delusion. Most of us bumble and stumble through life with all sorts of goofy ideas about ourselves and the world around us that create lots and lots of unnecessary problems. </div>
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Modern militaries understand this point, and a lot of boot camp is designed to deal with a small set of delusions that make modern people into terrible soldiers.<br />
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One of the delusions is that people cannot do very much. By early adulthood most people have been <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzow70mUC0mNK1j5s-HaK4k6ttqJcjSm_xdYjoNw4oP2QXD8QeFUAYd0q8XT4XtYvdGfnN2KQMFmGdBuvv2tAJuD9cs8AS7kZLWPed38vQqz8Ki5a6UqKAsMMnwnDF93ksiglnCOJ9C34/s1600/Inverse_tower_at_the_Pulau_Ubin_Campus_of_Outward_Bound_Singapore_-_20080910.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="903" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzow70mUC0mNK1j5s-HaK4k6ttqJcjSm_xdYjoNw4oP2QXD8QeFUAYd0q8XT4XtYvdGfnN2KQMFmGdBuvv2tAJuD9cs8AS7kZLWPed38vQqz8Ki5a6UqKAsMMnwnDF93ksiglnCOJ9C34/s200/Inverse_tower_at_the_Pulau_Ubin_Campus_of_Outward_Bound_Singapore_-_20080910.jpg" width="112" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "Inverse Tower", an<br />
Outward Bound Singapore training obstacle.<br />
Photo by Chen Siyuan, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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conditioned to avoid unnecessary risks---to the point where they won't try anything that pushes their envelope a bit. Boot camps force people to do some things that are fundamentally worthless from a military perspective, but which look spectacular and teach people to trust the orders of their superiors and their own ability to do the difficult. Modern training seminars for managers do exactly the same thing, which they often put people through zip lines or fire walking. "Outward bound" style schools do the same thing for young people.<br />
<br />
There are other delusions too. The idea that each person is an individual and we don't need each other is a big one. So is the idea that we don't have to really pay attention to what we are doing. My wife, who was in the National Guard during the First Gulf War, told me a story from her training. They were finally issued rifles, but a "sad sack" in her unit simply couldn't remember the stern admonition that no one should ever point a gun at anyone unless they wanted to kill him. (Something that my family pounded into my head when I was allowed access to a "22" as a child.) That woman "disappeared" and was never seen again. She was discharged and served as an example to everyone else in my wife's unit. The lesson was "guns, grenades, etc, are totally unforgiving and require a totally different mindset to handle safely---civilian-style thinking will not be tolerated".<br />
<br />
Martial arts, like taiji jian, are only worthwhile---IMHO---if we use them to cut through delusions. And I don't see how we can use them for that purpose if we labour under delusions in their practice. The weight of your sword has a profound effect on the form. And if you train with a flyweight, floppy sword you are going to be practicing moves that would be are either worthless in a fight and/or damaging to your body if you ever attempted to practice them with a real sword. My concern isn't with what this would do for you if you ever had to fight against the Mongol hordes---it's about what the effect of this sort of training will have on your mind as you navigate the world outside of the studio. Can you afford to allow any easily avoided delusions into your consciousness?<br />
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So what're the lessons learned?<br />
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The first one is that I'm going to force myself to totally rethink my taiji jian set and change it so it will "work" with a real jian. That probably means doing it at a proper speed so the weight of the blade ceases to be a liability and instead becomes an asset. At the same time, I'm going to have think about various moves where I will incorporate a double-hand grip. The set obviously already has some of these, but with a flyweight sword it is really easy to "fudge" them. Finally, some moves are simply going to have to be dropped or modified as they aren't viable with a full weight weapon.<br />
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The second one is to remember to "hold onto the One". Being a Daoist means looking deeply and objectively at every aspect of my life so I can understand the subtle laws that are what the Dao is all about. At the same time, I have to remind myself that it is only through engagement with the Dao that life ultimately has meaning. We only get out of life what we put into it. "Holding onto the One" means that by putting our full attention, effort, and, creativity into everything we do we can be renewed and inspired by the amazing universe that we are all a part of.<br />
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i>If you found this essay useful, please consider tossing something in the tip jar. Or you might consider buying one of my books. If nothing else, share it through social media. Obviously, I don't do this blog for the money, but dollars buy convenience, and if I can afford to spend a little more coin instead of sweat in my life, it gives me more time to spend on my real loves: Daoism, taiji, and, writing.</i></b></span><br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-43222140713854813932017-05-26T07:09:00.000-06:002017-09-22T16:46:20.026-06:00Mencius: Advice for the Emperor Trump and His MandarinsIn Hinton's translation of the <i><b>Mencius</b></i> I've gotten to chapter VII, or, Book One of Li Lou. I think it's especially apropos to what is currently happening in Washington.<br />
<br />
Mencius starts off by emphasizing the importance of tradition to a good ruler. It isn't enough to just set out with good intentions, a ruler has to follow the "Way"---or traditions---that has been set by previous leaders. He quotes an unattributed saying:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Virtue alone isn't enough for government,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
and law cannot alone put itself into action.</div>
</blockquote>
The point is emphasized by an analogy with skilled craftsmen. Even the best of them rely upon tools like a compass or square to draw their circles and right angles. In the same way, a leader needs to rely upon the traditions of his predecessors in order to get things done.<br />
<br />
This can sound odd to modern people, but I'd ask readers to try to understand how a government bureaucracy works. Ultimately, it is a huge collection of people who have been hired to make sure that certain policies will be acted upon. And the problem is that getting something done is always a lot more difficult than people think. This requires expertise and myriads of individual choices being made by individual bureaucrats. And to do this, every government requires high officials who have a great deal of authority delegated to them by the sovereign. In effect, every complex society requires a class of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_(bureaucrat)">Mandarins</a></i>. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivUW6UCcFmRcnZUjiDkGTXtBF3cpHfS_2J8I3phKTrlA1AbLHXzJrMcRdZKTacHW6Hm1zWHNYGWcCYZrdGYv8XeeYgSMUFEMttojExUgIaaPvxNmENfmffs_WN1BIDV8TrRp5BRWLVJBI/s1600/A_Mandarin_official%252C%252C_photograph_by_John_Thomson%252C_1869._Wellcome_L0056113.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivUW6UCcFmRcnZUjiDkGTXtBF3cpHfS_2J8I3phKTrlA1AbLHXzJrMcRdZKTacHW6Hm1zWHNYGWcCYZrdGYv8XeeYgSMUFEMttojExUgIaaPvxNmENfmffs_WN1BIDV8TrRp5BRWLVJBI/s400/A_Mandarin_official%252C%252C_photograph_by_John_Thomson%252C_1869._Wellcome_L0056113.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Mandarin official, Late Qing China, by John Thomson, 1869.<br />
c/o the Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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<br />
"Mandarin" is the Portuguese/English word that we use to describe the scholar/officials that governed ancient China for centuries. It is also the word that Canadians routinely use to describe the higher officials in our government bureaucracy, though I've never heard an American call any of their officials "Mandarins". Donald Trump ran for office and pledged to "drain the swamp" in order to "get things done". Many people thought that the swamp he was going to drain was the influence of big money in politics, whereas it appears that what he really meant was to destroy the influence of high officials. <br />
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A key principle of modern governance is the idea that the sovereign is not above the law. This is part of the "Way" of American society. It is the square or compass that the president is supposed to use when he is governing the nation. It is also a key principle that allows American mandarins---like FBI Director <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey">James Comey</a>---to guide the way they do their job. That is why the President's attempt to get Comey to swear personal loyalty to him, and, his decision to fire him when he refused to take direction on the Russia file, is viewed by the law as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice">obstruction of justice</a>". No one---even the President---is supposed to be able to stop an independent official from doing his job. This is especially true when the mandarin in question is a law enforcement official who is investigating claims of wrong-doing aimed specifically at the President himself.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvH9psWxxFPiGsR1-H6HcgwIp_yLub7IQ3sllhJ7LwpQlApdeAL9Q8LMu3juHHaaiAfrWpQ3qT1A1KT22LWYBW8L0lQ1JOQqNg0-EgnJAPolZN9wl5HV1vDypuvXOshv7SwS2pG9x3ElY/s1600/FBI_Director_Speaks_on_Civil_Rights_and_Law_Enforcement_at_Conference_%252827182463191%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvH9psWxxFPiGsR1-H6HcgwIp_yLub7IQ3sllhJ7LwpQlApdeAL9Q8LMu3juHHaaiAfrWpQ3qT1A1KT22LWYBW8L0lQ1JOQqNg0-EgnJAPolZN9wl5HV1vDypuvXOshv7SwS2pG9x3ElY/s400/FBI_Director_Speaks_on_Civil_Rights_and_Law_Enforcement_at_Conference_%252827182463191%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Modern US Mandarin, James Comey<br />
Federal Govt Photo, c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
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This principle, that the sovereign is not above the law, came about because it is the only way to stop officials from using their power to make themselves rich at the expense of the general public.<br />
<br />
It is tremendously important for an efficiently functioning society to create institutional "firewalls" between the politicians and the bureaucracy (eg the Mandarins.) If you do not, you will have government officials "pulling strings" in order to get special favours for wealthy "friends". This is not only unfair, it damages the economic life of a society. Business people need consistency to be able to make long-term plans. And if they have no idea how to tell if something is going to be accepted by a planning commission, for example, because the issue is settled not by legal precedent but by bribing the local official---it becomes very expensive to do many types of business.<br />
<br />
Mencius understands the importance of following the "Way" of society to the point where he suggests that it is not only <i>necessary</i>, it can actually be <i>sufficient</i> to sustain it.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If city walls are unfinished and weapons scarce, it doesn't spell disaster for the nation. If people aren't plowing new fields or piling up wealth, it doesn't spell ruin for the nation. But if a leader ignores Ritual and officials ignore learning, the people turn to banditry and rebellion, and the nation crumbles in less than a day. </blockquote>
This is an important point. What is at stake in the Trump Presidency isn't the economic or military might of the United States. It isn't even it's influence on the world stage. These are ephemeral. What makes America "America" are the such esoteric principles as the rule of law instead of the sovereign. And because these only exist insofar as the bureaucracy keeps them in existence, something that keeps America being America are the Mandarins like James Comey---who refused to put loyalty to the President ahead of loyalty to the law.<br />
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<br />
One of the memes that has been bandied about a lot recently is the existence of the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_the_United_States">Deep State</a>". This term was originally coined with reference to the way the military in Turkey and Egypt, as well as the Security Apparatus in Russia control the organs of government without any significant influence by elected officials. It has also been suggested that this is also happening in the USA through the machinations of what Eisenhower called "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex">the military industrial complex</a>". Supporters of Donald Trump are arguing that the work of the FBI, the CIA, and, the Judiciary, to investigate his administration for ties to Russia and also to block his orders banning Muslims from entering the country is evidence of the Deep State's opposition to a democratically-elected president. <br />
<br />
This is a profound misuse of the term "Deep State". What is happening in the US is that the bureaucracy is doing its job of defining and limiting the ability of elected officials to trample over the rights of its citizens. The constitution and the traditions of the USA mean nothing if they are just words on pieces of paper. A society also has to have effective leaders who devote their lives to making sure that the spirit of the law remains enforced. Mencius said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
When all beneath Heaven abides in the Way, small Integrity serves great Integrity, and small wisdom serves great wisdom. When all beneath Heaven ignores the Way, small serves large, and weak serves strong. Either way, Heaven issues it forth---and those who abide by Heaven endure, while those who defy Heaven perish.</blockquote>
What he is talking about is the rule of law versus the rule of the powerful. The only defense that any society can have is the existence of honourable people who put their allegiance to what they believe is right ahead of their own personal careers. That is to say, in a large society like ours, an essential element of its defense against the abuse of power is the existence of Mandarins like Jame Comey. <br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
This isn't to say that the man is a saint. His <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/">behaviour during the election with regard to Hillary Clinton's emails was ridiculous</a>. I don't know the man, so he could be totally and utterly wrong about any number of things from civil rights, the environment, to, Black Lives Matter. In fact, I suspect that he's the sort of patrician Republican that I would consider an ignorant boob if I ever met him. But within his understanding of right and wrong, he was unwilling to put his own career ahead of the constitution. As such, he did his job as a Mandarin. That is all anyone can ask of him. Being a Mandarin doesn't require any great insight into the great issues of the day, it just requires a personal commitment to the principles that sustain the nation---even at the cost of your own career. I may not particularly like the USA as it presently exists, but I have no illusions that it could not get significantly worse. I believe in the importance of change, but I want the change to be for the better. <br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
One last point. Once the United States loses its ability to find and appoint Mandarins to high office, it will be totally destroyed as a nation. Mencius said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
---only after a person has demeaned himself will others demean him. Only after a great family has destroyed itself will others destroy it. And only after a country has torn itself down will others tear it down. The "T"ai Chia" says: </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ruin from Heaven</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
we can weather.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Ruin from ourselves</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
we never survive. </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
If the USA cannot continue to find Mandarins of integrity (however they define it) and place them in positions of responsibility, the nation will be destroyed. It is that simple. We have to see who will win in this battle between demagoguery and integrity.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
If you enjoyed this essay, please consider tossing something in the tip jar. Even a dollar would be significant.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Walk lightly on this beautiful earth!</div>
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-1937084201321631252017-04-22T12:07:00.000-06:002017-04-22T13:59:58.632-06:00What is a Hermit? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9HvxbKvawCJbmLnrMAj_JeRd2w2nGQJYeMCgxpbkVB8g2T7V8zG3P9AdEHAwEcw2onHSP9_VrwueVeXcYu4DbIbP_HLedMPrp9duo-ARE2EVPv6d2CmhCGO4DQ_R3mMkD-886-OVfy0/s1600/KMOhigh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs9HvxbKvawCJbmLnrMAj_JeRd2w2nGQJYeMCgxpbkVB8g2T7V8zG3P9AdEHAwEcw2onHSP9_VrwueVeXcYu4DbIbP_HLedMPrp9duo-ARE2EVPv6d2CmhCGO4DQ_R3mMkD-886-OVfy0/s200/KMOhigh.jpg" width="172" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">KMO from C-Realm Podcast</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I've been thinking a lot about politics and society lately. I did an interview with a Vermont radio station as part of my feeble attempts to promote my recent book, and in the conversation the idea of success came up. In terms of radio shows and podcasts, as well as blogging and book publishing, the important issue is how many "subscribers" or "readers" you have. By that metric, both my interviewer (KMO from<a href="https://c-realm.com/">the C-Realm Podcast</a>) and myself are abject failures. He has spent long periods of his life interviewing people for his podcasts and only has a relatively small number of subscribers (including myself.) And I have spent many years writing---first for newspapers, then blogs, and, now books and have a very small number of followers too.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsoNTN7wITQEpBsC7AWLPZVHN7nKeY_tuH0ghpuplCRmIjtWq-inMpOma7Ys4FRiq4YMg9r4FySQBolIrCTm9rK26zBWbNv2PHfHdaw8KiGBZ2h0yDrUrNvmvqegCZcpIsSWwTwbH3hcA/s1600/BodhidharmaYoshitoshi1887.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsoNTN7wITQEpBsC7AWLPZVHN7nKeY_tuH0ghpuplCRmIjtWq-inMpOma7Ys4FRiq4YMg9r4FySQBolIrCTm9rK26zBWbNv2PHfHdaw8KiGBZ2h0yDrUrNvmvqegCZcpIsSWwTwbH3hcA/s320/BodhidharmaYoshitoshi1887.jpg" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bodhidharma, by Yoshitoshi, 1887. <br />
c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I answered this question by suggesting that this obscurity is why I call myself a "hermit". People often get hung up on the idea that I am a hermit by pointing out that I have a job, friends, a wife, live in the city, etc. To their way of thinking, to be a hermit exclusively means living in a cave on some remote mountain top. Well, most people only see the surface of things and not the core, so I generally ignore this opinion when it gets raised.<br />
<br />
What a word, phrase, or, idea "means" is a very slippery thing---especially if it has any sort of depth to it. The famous book <i style="font-weight: bold;">Zen Flesh, Zen Bones</i> gets it's title from a story told about Bodhidharma (the supposed first "patriarch" who "brought" Zen from India to China.) According to the story, after nine years of teaching, he wanted to go home. So he tested his disciples to find out about their understanding of the "Void".<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Dofuku said : "In my opinion, truth is beyond affirmation or negation, for this is the way it moves."<br />
Bodhidharma replied: "You have my skin."<br />
The nun Soji said: "In my view, it is like Ananda's sight of the Buddha-land---seen once and for ever."<br />
Bodhidharma answered: "You have my flesh."<br />
Doiku said: "The four elements of light, airiness, fluidity, and solidity are empty [i.e. inclusive] and the five skandhas are no-things. In my opinion, no-thing [i.e., spirit] is reality."<br />
Bodhidharma commented: "You have my bones."<br />
Finally, Eka bowed before the master---and remained silent.<br />
Bodhidharma said: "You have my marrow". </blockquote>
I'm not directly interested in what the "Void" is in this post. Instead, I'm concerned about what it society makes of someone who is interested in it in the first place. This is important to Daoists, because the things that make Zen Buddhism "Zen" are elements that it has borrowed from Daoism. <br />
<br />
The "skin" of the Void is the idea that there are truths that step outside of conventional dichotomies such as "Left" and "Right", or, "Moral" and "Immoral". The "flesh" of the Void is the idea that once you get a glimpse of this different way of looking at the world, it changes how you see everything. The "bones" is the idea that once you understand that the unconventional truths exist, and, having seen them use them to reassess how you view everything, your evaluation of what is or is not important changes. And the "marrow" suggests that when this re-evaluation takes place, your behaviour changes profoundly---especially how you interact with the rest of society.<br />
<br />
Understanding this point, a hermit isn't just someone who lives in remote physical locations. It can also mean someone who lives in a remote <i>ethical</i>, <i>spiritual</i>, or, <i>metaphysical</i> space. If someone lives in the middle of a bustling city, there is still the question of how much she is <i>engaged</i> with the world that surrounds her. Doe she see it as being inherently valueless? Irrelevant to her life project? Does she think that there is any future to it? If not, then I would say that she is a hermit.<br />
<br />
Confucius has a saying that has a one-dimensional take on this issue. But since that one dimension was crucial to him, I think it is apropos of the same point that Bodhidharma and I are making.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW1F_YxXIZAMNCUjxNvgh_0r6dxP4JzSDqzdq74bcQpqlUSnz6CMBKCyeKEYAbVMgh-T9m6O9HFiRhlmCeM-_vMSJHYBBp6QepfXAWQu4coarG0RfLVeooe7JCHY_KbjaBt22JRqLFNRQ/s1600/Konfuzius-1770.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW1F_YxXIZAMNCUjxNvgh_0r6dxP4JzSDqzdq74bcQpqlUSnz6CMBKCyeKEYAbVMgh-T9m6O9HFiRhlmCeM-_vMSJHYBBp6QepfXAWQu4coarG0RfLVeooe7JCHY_KbjaBt22JRqLFNRQ/s200/Konfuzius-1770.jpg" width="141" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Confucius, Anonymous, 1770,<br />
c/o Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So I would suggest that being "not successful" is not something to be ashamed about. It may be caused by many things, but in some cases it is simply the result of having a deeper insight into how our society---if not the very universe---operates. In those cases I would suggest that it means that someone has a "hermit's soul". <br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
Having said the above. I still have bills to pay and a family to support. I've added a Patreon button and a tip jar. Both of which remain very empty. OK. If that is too much to ask, there is another thing that would help. Turn off your "ad-blocker" for my site and click on the adverts---even if you instantly close the window. This has a significant impact on how much money I make from my "Ad Sense" account, which helps me support my family---even while it costs you nothing at all. <br />
<br />
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-37711239548724405482017-04-10T11:45:00.000-06:002017-04-10T11:54:39.796-06:00Sculpting Our Own ConsciousnessThe other day I was teaching a neighbour how to make her own wine. A year ago, I got her into making wine at one of the "you brew" places, which made her realize that wine can be incredibly cheap if you go about it the right way. It was now time to show her how it can be even cheaper still if you do it in your kitchen. (We are trying a kit right now that cuts the cost of white wine to about $1.65/bottle.)<br />
<br />
While the primary fermenter and fermentation lock were sanitizing, I made her some green tea and we had a visit. I mentioned an acquaintance from my youth who was recently hospitalized for malnutrition after decades of reclusive behaviour, which culminated in being found starving in an apartment so dirty it was declared a hazard. My friend commented that someone had once told her that he thought that people could "think themselves into mental illness", if they weren't careful.<br />
<br />
This is a complex issue. First of all "mental illness" is a very broad range of things. It's like the word "cancer", which is more like a symptom (unregulated cell reproduction) than a specific disease. Lung cancer, which is usually created by inhaling a pollutant---like cigarette smoke---is different from cervical cancer which is usually caused by infection with a virus. In the same way, depression is different from PTSD, which is different from Schizophrenia, and so on. I seems obvious to me that these different types of problems arise from different causes---just like in the case of cancer.<br />
<br />
Having said that, I suspect that there is some truth, in some cases, in what my neighbour said. One widely-used psychiatric treatment known as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy">cognitive behaviour therapy</a>" (CBT) is based on the idea that one aspect of several forms of mental illness come down to people having faulty thinking <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTR9zQMd5H-2PyGW4W-gZZ7k4jvHm9H5MSsX5xLnKwHeihWjICwu42U6m3xH5GeMS3Z_6CWDdYoNucFyS_cFyA4_5DtHfb-yX1AZCkEcxVo0dm6bvNxk0DyreFzAwdWnJgFsXSVEzQ0o/s1600/Depicting_basic_tenets_of_CBT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfTR9zQMd5H-2PyGW4W-gZZ7k4jvHm9H5MSsX5xLnKwHeihWjICwu42U6m3xH5GeMS3Z_6CWDdYoNucFyS_cFyA4_5DtHfb-yX1AZCkEcxVo0dm6bvNxk0DyreFzAwdWnJgFsXSVEzQ0o/s320/Depicting_basic_tenets_of_CBT.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cognitive Behaviour Therapy,<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Urstadt">Urstadt</a>, From Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
processes that shape their way of experiencing the world around them. The therapy is to have people examine the key elements of their thinking, and get them into the habit of changing them to another, more functional way of doing so. <br />
<br />
When I was trying to give up smoking I found that I would often relapse and begin again. This was frustrating, but after a while I noticed something. When I felt optimistic about the future it was easy to stop smoking. But when I was pessimistic, I would inevitably say to myself "oh, screw it---what's the point?" and relapse. My addictive behaviour was related to my mood. And I was "blue" or slightly depressed a lot of the time. When I figured this out, I tried to remind myself when "blue" that this was a time when I would be tempted to start smoking again, but which I would regret later on. This helped me avoid restarting.<br />
<br />
A related issue came from a period of time when I went to a Roman Catholic hermit for spiritual direction. One of the things he did to support himself was teach the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_Exercises_of_Ignatius_of_Loyola">Ignation spiritual exercises</a> at a local retreat centre. One the practical suggestions that come from this system is the idea that people often oscillate between periods of "desolation" and "consolation". Desolation is what modern people would recognize as "depression", and the exercises teach that this is a natural part of human self-transformation. When things are working well in our lives, we come out of this desolation and enter into consolation, which is a greater understanding and insight into how our psyche and the world around us operates.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXx4RgvNDOlongle69ZlQn1l-RNRYxAdZmqjSOCkdWXMqBAPRd8uSjHi8g8S_S1y1fUJuOPXV4iDFpz5_kOQ53cqEcjyr7B9i3av1n160SjeRej4BaklalOIVCuIPd5cC3aTAgqh11cak/s1600/Ignatius01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXx4RgvNDOlongle69ZlQn1l-RNRYxAdZmqjSOCkdWXMqBAPRd8uSjHi8g8S_S1y1fUJuOPXV4iDFpz5_kOQ53cqEcjyr7B9i3av1n160SjeRej4BaklalOIVCuIPd5cC3aTAgqh11cak/s1600/Ignatius01.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ignatius Loyola, From <a href="http://jesuitinstitute.org/Pages/Ignatius.htm">the Jesuit Institute</a>, via Google Images</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
This was a tremendously important insight for me, as it changed the way I viewed my periods of feeling "blue". I stopped feeling that they were this horrible, totally worthless state of mind and instead saw them as part of a process who's end result was a growth in wisdom. This isn't to say that they were any better (knowing that the doctor is breaking your legs to straighten them out doesn't mean that it hurts any less), but the pain is bearable now because I often remind myself that I will probably come out of this experience with a better understanding of life.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
I've pretty much built my life around this process of paying attention to my awareness and how what I do impacts it. For example, if I don't write a little bit every day I start getting progressively more and more "scattered" in my consciousness. This, in turn, stops me from being even-keeled in my emotions, which leads me to doing and saying things that I don't want to---and being more fearful of potential reactions from others. (To be perfectly honest, this is why I am writing this blog post. I've been doing a lot of research lately, which means that I haven't been writing and it has been catching up with me.)<br />
<br />
This activity of "paying attention" to how your mind operates, and what it is in your life that affects it is actually part of the very earliest Daoist spiritual practice: "Holding onto the One". This is a practice referred to in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipingjing#Fundamental_concepts_in_the_Taipingjing"><i><b>Taiping Jing</b></i></a> and the <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Original-Tao-Training-Foundations-Mysticism/dp/0231115652">Nei-Yeh</a>, </b>which involves paying attention to the world around you---both outside and inside of ourselves---and looking for the subtle rules (or "Daos") that govern it. In a way, this is very similar to cognitive behaviour therapy---which is hardly surprising, as I read somewhere that the people who developed this school were inspired by reading from ancient schools of Greek practical philosophy such as Stoicism and Cyncism.<br />
<br />
<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-37883832716280550812017-04-05T09:09:00.001-06:002017-04-05T09:17:02.832-06:00Dao, Dharma, Li, Culture, and, Eusociality Over the past thirty or so years I've slowly developed a personal philosophy of life. A key part of it come from work of biologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson">E. O. Wilson. </a><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPpBOwTwSF2jAmvVUfWBNLX8IC70ErdvVf0SOiD6R2NCbfEbJq_21j33_tNfd_Nsw-G1MjeJjSPSHi3gsJPLTbLgX-qs9rg0Kne9VG3NBkYi9YMjBChmjQgMJsLcld83yk9rAEByZRz8I/s1600/E._O._Wilson_sitting%252C_October_16%252C_2007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPpBOwTwSF2jAmvVUfWBNLX8IC70ErdvVf0SOiD6R2NCbfEbJq_21j33_tNfd_Nsw-G1MjeJjSPSHi3gsJPLTbLgX-qs9rg0Kne9VG3NBkYi9YMjBChmjQgMJsLcld83yk9rAEByZRz8I/s320/E._O._Wilson_sitting%252C_October_16%252C_2007.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">E. O. Wilson, by Ragesoss, from Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Wilson is famous for suggesting that human beings are what he calls "eusocial" animals. That is, animals whose evolutionary advantage comes from working together in large communities of individuals. The most obvious examples of<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality"> eusociality </a> are insects like ants, termites, and, bees. But it does exist in other species---even mammals, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_mole-rat">naked mole rats</a>.<br />
<br />
As I understand it, eusocial insects manage their relatively simple societies through the use of biological clues, such as the scent trails that ants use to mark paths to food sources. Human beings use something far more complex: culture. We have language, teaching, literature, and so on to create and transmit complex ideas from generation to generation, and this allows us to create increasingly complex societies.<br />
<br />
Indeed, as I look at my life, I see it increasingly as simply a fragment of a eusocial whole that's only real "purpose" is the creation and transmission of that culture. In a way, I see human beings as being individual parts of a giant thinking machine---or organism---that is the consciousness of the planet (or universe.) <br />
<br />
A question suddenly occurred to me yesterday: "If this is so, where do the religious traditions fit into this worldview?" Obviously, they are important parts of culture. But the more I think about them, it occurs to me that with only minimal violence to the way they view themselves, they fit quite nicely into my understanding of eusociality. Consider the three religions of China: Confucianism, Daoism, and, Buddhism. Each has some sort of key concept that I believe fits neatly into this idea of culture being central to the human experience.<br />
<br />
Confucianism has "li", which is often translated as "ritual", this governs the relationship between people within society. As the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_(Confucianism)">Wikipedia</a> describes it,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The rites of li are not rites in the Western conception of religious custom. Rather, li embodies the entire spectrum of interaction with humans, nature, and even material objects. Confucius includes in his discussions of li such diverse topics as learning, tea drinking, titles, mourning, and governance. Xunzi cites "songs and laughter, weeping and lamentation...rice and millet, fish and meat...the wearing of ceremonial caps, embroidered robes, and patterned silks, or of fasting clothes and mourning clothes...unspacious rooms and very nonsecluded halls, hard mats, seats and flooring"[2] as vital parts of the fabric of li.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Daoism has "Dao", which is something like a "natural law", but which applies to both human society as well as nature.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The word "Tao" (道) has a variety of meanings in both ancient and modern Chinese language. Aside from its purely prosaic use to mean road, channel, path, principle, or similar,[1] the word has acquired a variety of differing and often confusing metaphorical, philosophical and religious uses. In most belief systems, the word is used symbolically in its sense of 'way' as the 'right' or 'proper' way of existence, or in the context of ongoing practices of attainment or of the full coming into being, or the state of enlightenment or spiritual perfection that is the outcome of such practices. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao#Description_and_uses_of_the_concept">Wikipedia</a>)</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
And Buddhism (as well as other Indian religions) has "dharma", which has resonances of both religious teaching and natural law at the same time. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In Hinduism, dharma signifies behaviours that are considered to be in accord with rta, the order that makes life and universe possible,[10][note 1] and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living’’.[7] In Buddhism dharma means "cosmic law and order",[10] but is also applied to the teachings of the Buddha.[10] In Buddhist philosophy, dhamma/dharma is also the term for "phenomena".[11][note 2] Dharma in Jainism refers to the teachings of tirthankara (Jina)[10] and the body of doctrine pertaining to the purification and moral transformation of human beings. For Sikhs, the word dharm means the path of righteousness and proper religious practice. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharma#Definition">Wikipedia</a>)</blockquote>
<br />
Buddhism goes a little further than these other religions, though, by suggesting the doctrine of "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Turnings_of_the_Wheel_of_Dharma">turning the wheel of dharma</a>". That is the idea that dharma isn't eternal or immutable, but rather that it progresses and changes as humanity becomes more complex and increasingly capable of comprehending more subtle understanding. To my feeble understanding, this would explain the changes as Buddhism started with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theravada">Theravada</a>, moved on to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana">Mahayana</a>, and, from that to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana">Vajrayana</a> systems.<br />
<br />
Daoism doesn't go into such detail, it just suggests that it is impossible to "pin down" what the Dao is, and suggests that it is constantly changing and can't be exhaustively expressed. This lacks the suggestion of gradual progress that is implied in the Buddhist idea of "turning the wheel of dharma", but this distinction need not be evidence of an irreconcilable difference. Progress can be part of humanity without being an inevitable law of nature. Setbacks can occur in each system, as could an unforeseen "slate wiper"---like an asteroid hit that would exterminate the human race. But all religions were created before the concept of extinction became part of the human vernacular, so they can be excused for missing this point.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
I find all of this personally quite satisfying. I've pretty much absorbed the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta">anatta</a>, or that the human ego has no real existence and is instead a fiction created by misunderstandings about the nature of consciousness. If I really never have existed as a continuous entity except as a product of the imagination---my past being a fiction and the future anticipation---then why should I be concerned about personal extinction? <b style="color: red; font-style: italic;">And yet, I get up in the morning and find purpose in life, as a creator and bearer of culture. </b>I write this blog and another besides. I write books that almost no one wants to purchase or read. I am an avid participant in discussions between like-minded people on social media. I talk to friends and, when I can find the time, try to participate in politics. I don't know why I care about the future of the human race or what it thinks---it is just as much a product of the imagination as my own personal ego---but I do. I suspect that that is a biological drive or instinct, much like the scent trail that the ants follow on my kitchen counter top towards some spilled sugar.The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-5052382479781000452016-12-08T23:00:00.004-06:002016-12-08T23:00:58.644-06:00Using the "Ring of Control" and Bodily Awareness to Control the MindIf you've read <b style="font-style: italic;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West">Journey to the West</a> </b>one of the things you should remember is the way <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang_(Journey_to_the_West)">Xuanzang</a> (the Monk) controls <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong">Sun Wukong</a> (Monkey) is through the use of a golden band that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanyin">Guanyin</a> gives him. He gets tricked into placing the band over his head, where it shrinks, and, actually binds itself to his skull. Guanyin teaches Xuanzang a mantra that he can recite that makes the band shrink, squeezing Sun Wukong's skull and causing excruciating pain. This is the only way that Xuanzang can control his "chief disciple".<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAkCDOpsIZhbNw0M9wPIf70aTuviUxFxhcG9zYid5zquJ0-9Zdg8pQ89J6THwjhV_fCfPSLxGEfvNRcfddLa3S_ryGaLC858Cfw_N6yudmov_ayg5JW9GFx1d3y5jazE6HStr3Ajti8g/s1600/Sun_Wukong_and_Jade_Rabbit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCAkCDOpsIZhbNw0M9wPIf70aTuviUxFxhcG9zYid5zquJ0-9Zdg8pQ89J6THwjhV_fCfPSLxGEfvNRcfddLa3S_ryGaLC858Cfw_N6yudmov_ayg5JW9GFx1d3y5jazE6HStr3Ajti8g/s400/Sun_Wukong_and_Jade_Rabbit.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Japanese painting of Sun Wukong </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b style="font-style: italic;">Journey to the West </b>is a collection of folk tales that people have been reciting as entertainment for a long time. But most people don't realize that that the most popular version of the text is considered by some to be a Daoist teaching story. It's taken me a lifetime of learning, but reading the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Francis_Jenner">W.J.F. Jenner </a>translation for the third or fourth time, I can now see this is obviously true.<br />
<br />
People sometimes get hung up on this interpretation because they believe that these sorts of teaching allegories have to be totally universal, or else they aren't real. They point at the characters of the Dragon horse and Sandy and ask what they are supposed to "represent". But the fact is that <b><i>Journey to the West</i></b> is primarily an piece of entertaining fiction, not a book of Daoist theory. It needn't be completely allegorical, all the time---it just needs to be so once in a while.<br />
<br />
Another complaint is that since Xuanzang is a Buddhist monk and the journey is to the Western Buddhist heaven to get Buddhist scriptures, it "obviously" cannot have anything to do with Daoism. Well, this misses the constant refrain in the book that "all religions are one", the way Daoist teachers are often referenced, and, the many, many allusions to arcane aspects of Daoist teachings---all of which would be missed by the casual reader of a bad translation.<br />
<br />
One of the ways to see this is to understand the group travelling to the Western heaven as one entity with each character representing one particular part of the human psyche. Pigsy represents the instinctual drives of the human beings. Xuanzang is the higher intellect that attempts to control the other elements of the human being. And Monkey is the "mind ape" that is the well-spring of mental activity that gives human beings their ability to think their way through the problems of life.<br />
<br />
The part of human beings that Monkey represents is that bubbling well-spring of creativity that goes on in our mind and allows us to think of solutions to the endless problems that life throws our way. As such, it is essential to life. That is why Sun Wukong is the protector of Xuanzang in <b><i>Journey to the West---</i></b>because our "monkey mind" is what has allowed human beings to survive and prosper. But the problem with this bubbling well is that if we don't exert some control over it, it creates havoc in our lives. The well can create ungrounded fears that eat us alive. Or it can develop weird prejudices that alienate us from the community we need to survive. Or it can create strange obsessions that cause us to waste away our lives pursuing absurd delusions. All these problems are represented in the start of the book by the crazy havoc that Monkey creates in Heaven.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyxAmohsrtlHbk05YK6MELXePzusk8kNvkvyHpNrpCPfnY0JVbXzBHWpGKDGw7UeJ0bDljR4wYKRKedgLiEltZm79-RaBX_lCsHcKCLItBYVVwocs8p8_aEPxCojpV760tehJBnsvQ4i8/s1600/Kuan-yan_bodhisattva%252C_Northern_Sung_dynasty%252C_China%252C_c._1025%252C_wood%252C_Honolulu_Academy_of_Arts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyxAmohsrtlHbk05YK6MELXePzusk8kNvkvyHpNrpCPfnY0JVbXzBHWpGKDGw7UeJ0bDljR4wYKRKedgLiEltZm79-RaBX_lCsHcKCLItBYVVwocs8p8_aEPxCojpV760tehJBnsvQ4i8/s400/Kuan-yan_bodhisattva%252C_Northern_Sung_dynasty%252C_China%252C_c._1025%252C_wood%252C_Honolulu_Academy_of_Arts.jpg" width="257" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">10th century Northern Chinese wooden Guanyin</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Buddha traps Sun Wukong under a mountain for five hundred years until Guanyin releases him to become Xuanzang's protector. But she realizes that without some way for the higher intellect to control the "monkey mind", there is no way that anyone can become realized or enlightened. So she tricks monkey into wearing her band and teaches the monk how to recite a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra">mantra</a> to control it. This is the important point. The band is a literary device, but a mantra <i>literally is a way of controlling our run-away creative thought process</i>. It is like a "clamp" that blocks up the bubbling, crazily over-flowing ability to create ideas that can overwhelm our minds.<br />
<br />
The problem is that most of us live our lives with a constant internal voice burning through out minds that says all sorts of destructive things like "you're too fat", "what's wrong with you?", "what if I run out of money?", "what if I lose my job?", "who the Hell do they think they are to tell me what to do?", etc. This voice can get louder and louder until they take over our life entirely. Repeating some phrase over and over again---which is what saying a mantra really is all about---literally drowns this voice out and allows our intellect to regain control of our thought processes. Contrary to what some people may tell you, it doesn't really matter what the mantra is. You can repeat "om mani padme hum", "da do run run, da do run run", or, whatever. My first meditation teacher said if I wanted, I could repeat "cocksucker, cocksucker cocksucker" over and over again if it made sense to me. But the point is to be able to "clamp down" on that monkey mind and stop it from becoming so loud that it overwhelms your consciousness.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;"><i><b>People often go into great detail about the various and sundry ways there are to meditate. But ultimately, meditation is a very simple process. It is looking at the way your mind operates, deciding what is the ideal way for it to be, and, finding out ways that you can learn to control it.</b> </i></span>In the case that I've mentioned from <i><b>Journey to the West</b></i>, I've identified one of the easiest---using a mantra. But there are other mechanisms too.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1RRako_Lqvz-E2C7DFXZIWtl779xHXBI1kJF3mleAIGweNgotROaP38EwNOuAAFybo0XFpJuo4X4zobZhm0hNd6fONkptUDMi3tttIlvAFUn-hq9vp7LDQ_AEucuIw9E9HhxMLmr-N8/s1600/whitecloudinternalbodyview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1RRako_Lqvz-E2C7DFXZIWtl779xHXBI1kJF3mleAIGweNgotROaP38EwNOuAAFybo0XFpJuo4X4zobZhm0hNd6fONkptUDMi3tttIlvAFUn-hq9vp7LDQ_AEucuIw9E9HhxMLmr-N8/s320/whitecloudinternalbodyview.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The traditional Daoist <br />
map of the body</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One that I use a lot lately involves bodily awareness. I suppose that to explain it in Daoist terms I could say that by practicing neidan (qigong---in this case taijiquan), I have learned to move my qi around the body from my lower Dantian up through the mysterious gateway, along my twelve-story pagoda up to the mud pill. At least that's the language that comes from traditional Daoist teaching, and what is used in <i><b>Journey to the West</b></i>.<br />
<br />
Being a modern Westerner, I would much rather say that through a process of dissecting my body with my consciousness, I've learned to identify different elements of my bodily awareness. This allows me to loosen my lower abdomen and chest region. This has allowed me to dramatically improve my bodily posture. It also allows me to become aware of the subtle ways in which my visual, auditory, and, bodily awareness interact with my consciousness to influence my thought processes. Frankly, I find this sort of language a lot more useful than saying that "my qi moves" from one place to another. But I do think that I am describing the same thing as the old Daoists.<br />
<br />
And the upshot is that I can control my "monkey mind" by focusing my consciousness on the subtle feelings in my body. One part of this is feeling my feet come into contact with the floor beneath my feet when I walk. The experience is somewhat like what I expect walking on my hands would feel like. The heel makes contact, I can feel my weight rippling through my (pitifully collapsed) arch, and then each of my individual toes engages with the floor and then rolls off. At the same time, I consciously "drop" my shoulders and chest, counter-acting my genetic predisposition to "hunch" my shoulders into a "scholar's hump". At the same time, I consciously try to look through both of my eyes, giving each equal weight of attention instead of allowing one or the other to dominate. Together with these and other conscious activities, I create a calm and peace of mind that results in a feeling of something coming up my spine and manifesting itself in between my brows and on the top of my head. (At the same time, I am acutely aware of the almost constant throbbing of my chronically infected sinus cavities and ear canals---I get a lot of virus infections at work, plus I am very allergic to dust.)<br />
<br />
This "hyper awareness" has the same effect as repeating a mantra constantly. It overwhelms the chattering monkey mind and allows the intellect to assert control over the random creative impulses that the mind spews at us like a fire hose. As a side effect, for me the hyper awareness technique has added benefits lacking from the mantra method. For one thing, it helps improve my physical health. I suffer from many complaints: arthritis, tendonitis, tennis elbow, chronic sinusitis, etc. (Most are the result of a hard life doing physical labour, inheriting some bad genes---such as very, very flat feet--- and being exposed to thousands of teenagers from all over the world every day at work. Without taijiquan and other neidan practices, I'd be a mess.)<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
I was asked recently why it is that I write about this stuff and do all the things I do. After all, I walk a very narrow path. Traditional religious Daoists have sometimes attacked me very angrily for being a Western "innovator" who they feel "spits on the tradition". At the same time, I often meet Westerners who can barely hide their contempt for me because they think that I am an apologist for "New Age super-naturalism". But the point is that we all suffer greatly from the delusions that our monkey minds create for us. In fact, I don't think that there could be a greater gift that a man could give another than to help them tame the dumb notions that befog their minds.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
Zen Buddhism is the "first cousin" of Daoism and there is a story about a Japanese Zen hermit named Ryōkan. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One evening a thief visited Ryōkan's hut at the base of the mountain only to discover there was nothing to steal. Ryōkan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift." The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryōkan sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon." (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dkan#Stories_of_Ry.C5.8Dkan">From Wikipedia.</a>)</blockquote>
The point is that Ryōkan had something that was absolutely priceless: insight into how his mind operated and the ability to unify his consciousness. Ryōkan would have dearly loved to be able to give this insight to everyone, including the thief. Yet the thief not only didn't want it, he didn't even know the value of this gift or that Ryōkan could give it to him. That is the point of Ryōkan wishing he could give the thief the moon. That is the dilemma that anyone who has gained any realisation faces---almost no one knows enough to even want it. Yet, we have to keep on trying. That's because once in a while someone actually does want the moon---.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTY80f5CHJLA7oAXDmOhckn6b_YzSgRj1iofecUPfcExc6JUf7MmH7Zb1qkc5r_oz_edor1FXBN3he3JhpgMbs8z8_8P7IMe0IRH1q1Ui98DGlKfUSnYicIqyXT2lAc1OLKnVepOe6xfw/s1600/Ryokan-Sculpture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTY80f5CHJLA7oAXDmOhckn6b_YzSgRj1iofecUPfcExc6JUf7MmH7Zb1qkc5r_oz_edor1FXBN3he3JhpgMbs8z8_8P7IMe0IRH1q1Ui98DGlKfUSnYicIqyXT2lAc1OLKnVepOe6xfw/s320/Ryokan-Sculpture.jpg" width="264" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sculpture of Ryōkan<br />by <a href="https://www.blogger.com/By%20Dready%20at%20the%20English%20language%20Wikipedia,%20CC%20BY-SA%203.0,%20https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=392577">Dready</a> at Wiki Commons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-41203207301015525832016-11-30T14:05:00.003-06:002016-11-30T14:05:53.858-06:00The Ebook Version of Digging Your Own Well is Out!My new book, <b style="font-style: italic;">Digging Your Own Well: Daoism as a Practical Philosophy</b>, is now open for sale as an ebook. The price is five dollars at Smashwords, but other ebook resellers are offering it too, usually for a bit more. To get a copy, <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/676912">just go here</a>. Of course, if you want to hard copy, you can get it <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/bill-hulet/digging-your-own-well-daoism-as-a-practical-philosophy/paperback/product-22928352.html">from Lulu books</a> for fifteen dollars plus deliver.The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-26103399374727197772016-11-21T09:31:00.004-06:002016-11-21T09:53:04.488-06:00Mind-Fasting and Donald TrumpA lot of people have been freaking out about the election of Donald Trump. As near as I can tell, the consensus seems to be that the sky is falling and we all need to panic immediately. Let me offer an alternative viewpoint.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Heaven and earth are not humane,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The sage is not humane,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
He treats the hundred families as straw dogs.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Between heaven and earth, </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
How like a bellows it is!</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Empty and yet inexhaustible,</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Moving and yet it pours out ever more.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
By many words one's reckoning is exhausted.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It is better to abide by the center. </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: right;">
(Chapter 5, <b><i>Laozi</i></b>, Ellen Chen trans.)</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Most people who read this blog have probably never taken part in a religious Daoist ritual, so they don't understand the images expressed in this poem. "Straw Dogs" were something that is sacrificed in a ritual to placate or help spirit beings. But the sacrifice was a bit of a sham, dogs were too expensive to really sacrifice, so little dolls made of straw were created to sacrifice instead. This tradition still exists in Chinese culture and to this day, in many Chinese groceries, you will find "Hell money" for sale to use in these events. Just like "straw dogs", this money is fake because people are far to practical to burn real money in ceremonies.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIOn6eEA9aCbN_fZHn0DNvd5EAyBmErModdMhq3E6tRCXCMg-c7UDxOw7d1HtI0YlE7PICObNo0swUKgzZ3AUhxAMnrii0f_eUWBy5xPLGdEkHQ5K3i9UaWxem_EfE6EUPvTgd4tlU-tk/s1600/Hell+money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIOn6eEA9aCbN_fZHn0DNvd5EAyBmErModdMhq3E6tRCXCMg-c7UDxOw7d1HtI0YlE7PICObNo0swUKgzZ3AUhxAMnrii0f_eUWBy5xPLGdEkHQ5K3i9UaWxem_EfE6EUPvTgd4tlU-tk/s320/Hell+money.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Basic Hell Money---notice the denomination!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I can remember---many years ago---folding up ingots of "Hell gold" and "Hell silver" for burning in rituals. I also remember chanting the Jade Emperor "sutra" outside during the full moon and burning "sutras" for the enlightenment of the dead.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmunQA3BfN710jJVfLdIbQrwj-eG3idOCOT9wKvBNaxn9V12Un6AfINEVwGI3Jxx1hG0_cflRZYyAcoY-OOOhPkGkh9K0Vl4yW_V_dtA1zDxMM97XMUTPwWnhZbArOTKzE3LX76y6Ggjg/s1600/burning+hell+money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmunQA3BfN710jJVfLdIbQrwj-eG3idOCOT9wKvBNaxn9V12Un6AfINEVwGI3Jxx1hG0_cflRZYyAcoY-OOOhPkGkh9K0Vl4yW_V_dtA1zDxMM97XMUTPwWnhZbArOTKzE3LX76y6Ggjg/s320/burning+hell+money.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Burning Hell money</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The one time I ever tried doing this on my own, I researched a ritual and performed it to send a message to the "Ghost King" asking for his help trying to protect three cemeteries from a big box mall that Walmart was building. In that one I burned a paper horse and sent letters plus "travelling money" to various deities. I was told that it was "great theater" by the non-Daoists who were watching, (which was what I was trying to achieve.) We were very successful in our legal battle, so perhaps the ritual even accomplished something. (The smoke from the altar set off the smoke alarm in the Jesuit center where I had the ceremony. This is par for the course---I'm told my teacher once set his Temple in Toronto on fire doing one of these ceremonies.)<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now the thing to remember about all these sacrificial offerings is that they <i>are basically worthless things that get destroyed in part of a greater ceremony</i>. The <i><b>Laozi</b></i> is saying that we people are like pieces of paper that are worth so little that we can be burnt at ceremonies with little regard. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The verse goes even further and makes a statement about where every single person exists in the universe. It talks about the gap "between Heaven and Earth" being like a "bellows". Who exists between Heaven and Earth? People do! And what does a bellows do? It helps in burning things up. Human beings are the fuel in the forge of the Dao! We aren't even the iron that the blacksmith beats into implements, we are simply the fuel that gets burnt in order to get metal hot enough to forge. Human beings are dispensable, we act out our short lives and what gets forged is history and culture. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
&&&&</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To understand and appreciate this point, think about the historical context of the<i><b> Laozi</b></i>. China has never been anything but an authoritarian society, Indeed, at the time that the <i><b>Laozi</b></i> was being created in an oral tradition by "the old ones", human sacrifice was still being practiced at the funerals of kings. From that time until today authoritarian rule has been pretty much always been the case, and life has still been cheap. And, want to know a secret? it is just about everywhere else too. Society is cruel to people in prisons, people without jobs, people with psychiatric illnesses, people with drug addictions, people with disabilities, discriminated minorities---even ugly people. When I walk down to the pub in my city, in one of the absolutely grooviest places in the world---I still will see homeless people sleeping "in the rough". I suffer from watching the people I love suffer through life's torment. I know that sickness and death will eventually be my lot. All people's lives end badly. <br />
<br />
So what is the Daoist response to all of this?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Jue">The Celestial Master</a> and the authors of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Original-Tao-Foundations-Mysticism-Translations/dp/0231115652">the <i><b>Nei-Yeh </b></i></a> both suggest to people that they should "hold onto the One". By this, they mean that people shouldn't just take life as it appears to be, but should be constantly trying to figure out the hidden patterns and processes that reoccur. That is, "the One", is the Dao. And by "holding onto" it, human beings retain the ability to be conscious actors in their own life instead of mere objects that fate moves from square to square. The ability to act may be---and often is---profoundly limited by your environment. But the very least that we can always do is remind ourselves that we are on a chessboard and that we are not always responsible for the problems we face.<br />
<br />
This can be a great consolation in hard times. I remember reading one of George Orwell's books, <i><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London">Down and Out in Paris and London</a></b></i>, I believe, where he describes life as a tramp in Great Depression Britain. He mentions that the people who suffered the most from poverty were the ex-middle class. They had totally absorbed the idea that the poor were poor because of their own moral deficiencies. This meant that when fate drove them into destitution they blamed themselves for their situation. The people who had been poor all their lives had no such delusions about why they were poor, so at least that was one burden that they were free of.<br />
<br />
Another Daoist response is to practice something called "mind fasting". As I was taught this, it is simply the practice of removing distractions from your consciousness in order to learn how your mind operates. We weren't given any theoretical talk about this, we were just told to sit. But the process of "just sitting" for long periods of time on a regular basis forced us to pay attention to how our minds operate. It was, in effect, a process of "holding onto the One" with regard to our internal world as well as the external one.<br />
<br />
Learning how your mind operates is a very difficult process. Once you get into it, you find that you have enough work to do until the end of your life. For example, the last two nights I have awoken from sleep due to nightmares. In one I saw a group of women who had been sentenced to death by the state. The were executed by being hurled while still alive into a deep gorge, the floor of which was so filled with rotting corpses of previous victims that they landed soft and smothered in the filth. In the second one, I woke after a disturbing dream where I was with my sister-in-law listening to my wife who was tying up someone who sounded like a scared child who was begging and pleading with her to let him go. When I woke up I realized that the scared child was myself.<br />
<br />
The process of mind fasting teaches the person who pursues it valuable insights into who they are by peeling away the "noise" that distracts us from our true nature. In the case of my disturbing dreams, I would suggest that what we call a "human being" is actually a complex mixture of different competing idea complexes that are at war for dominance. Through meditation and contemplation you learn to identify these different bits and pieces, and learn to control them to a certain extent. The women being executed in filth were people I love who are living in poverty because the world around them is indifferent to their medical problems. That scared child blubbering away in my dreams was the part of me that is afraid of taking on obligations towards the other people in my life. Another part of me tried to get me to fall asleep during the formal sitting part of my training. It is also what causes wild emotional freak outs and hallucinations among people who are doing serious meditation. These "beings" exist in all of us, and mind fasting is about learning that they exist and gaining some semblance of control over them so we can live lives of clarity and value.<br />
<br />
&&&&<br />
<br />
So what has this got to do with Donald Trump? <br />
<br />
The bellows of the Dao has been burning a lot of people lately in order to forge a new world. Not in the sense of there being a huge uptick in the material suffering of people. But the political process has whipped a lot of people into a frenzy of fear about what the new president will bring. They are afraid that Latinos, blacks, gays, Muslims, women, etc, are about to be horribly abused by a Republican party triumphant. To some extent, this may happen. But to a large extent I think that this is just a chimera that was created by the Democrats in order to win their election. (After all, in a lot of ways these people's lives were pretty crappy under the Democrats too.) They lost, but unfortunately the fear that they were counting on to fuel victory lives on after November 8th.<br />
<br />
There are lot of Daos, some of which are dark and awful. One of them is the Dao of torture. People who have studied it realize that the worst part of torture is often not the torture itself, but rather people's <i>fear</i> of it. In medieval "jurisprudence" prisoners were usually "shown the implements of torture" before they were tortured, and offered an opportunity to confess first. This was done because the judges knew that if you whipped up people's anticipation, you could get a lot more confessions than if you just started out with the torture from the get go. Similarly, the military and secret services torture their own people in order to prepare them in case of capture by an enemy. This dramatically increases their ability to resist.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, the Clinton election campaign did such an effective job of raising voter's fears of a Trump presidency that a huge fraction of the public is now in a state of tremendous panic. Not only is this damaging to individual people's psyche, it is also tremendously counter-productive from a political point of view. The net result of all this "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny">Chicken Little-ism</a>" is going to be that the bar will have been lowered so far for Trump that people will think he is a success if he doesn't round people up in concentration camps, cancel all future elections, or, totally trash the economy.<br />
<br />
The solutions to this problem are the same that the Daoists learned thousands of years ago when they had to deal with supreme autocrats who held ordinary people's lives in the palms of their hands. Hold onto the One---try to understand the subtle processes that govern the world around us. And practice mind fasting---learn how your mind operates so you can exert some control over it. In both cases, use the knowledge you have gained to find a little bit of personal peace---even if it is nothing more than realizing that we are nothing more than leaves floating down a stream.<br />
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The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-9807750805992912952016-11-09T16:50:00.002-06:002016-11-09T16:50:31.701-06:00The New Book is Almost HereMy new book, <i><b>Digging Your Own Well: Daoism as a Practical Philosophy</b></i>, is finished. It is scheduled for publication as an ebook at the beginning of December. And the hard-copy version will be available as soon as I get my proof copy and work through any changes that might need doing.<br /><br />
In the interim, I need to start marketing. To that end, I'm looking for anyone who is interested in receiving a free review copy of the ebook in order to write a review for a blog, magazine, podcast, Goodreads, or whatever---or even just to put up on whatever ebook sales site they use. If you are interested, just email me at: thecloudwalkingowl@gmail.com and I will send you a copy in the format of your choice. The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5842932455093396534.post-10694355447343605522016-10-24T08:43:00.000-06:002016-10-24T08:43:52.585-06:00Where have I gone? I haven't published anything on this blog in quite a while so I thought I owed readers an explanation.<br />
<br />
The local daily newspaper folded in my city, leaving a huge hole in local news coverage. I have "stepped into the breach" by starting a local, on-line magazine called "<a href="http://guelph-back-grounder.blogspot.ca/">the Guelph Back-Grounder</a>". It's become a fair amount of work, and it certainly deals with different issues and appeals to a totally different set of readers, so it has effectively robbed this blog of all the time and energy I used to devote to it.<br />
<br />
This isn't to say that I have given up writing on issues Daoist related, however. I have finished a book on how to live a modern life as a Daoist, which I've titled <b style="font-style: italic;">Digging Your Own Well: Daoism as a Practical Philosophy</b>. It's already "in the can" and now I just have to go through the work of formatting it for publishing through Smashwords and Lulu Books. I will announce when that happens.<br />
<br />
For the future, I've already started another book, on taijiquan, which I have tentatively titled <i><b>Theoretical Taijiquan</b></i>.<br />
<br />
Looking at the statistics on my blog, I see that I get a lot of folks looking at posts that I have written years ago, so I see no reason to take it down. It's become a resource for people interested in Daoism and I am still interested in intelligent comments, so I will keep an eye out for those too.<br />
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<br />The Cloudwalking Owlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12753861683491740903noreply@blogger.com0