For the first 30 or so years of my life, I was apolitical. Sure, I voted in most elections and I tended to vote for Democratic candidates, but I wasn't that focused on electoral politics nor the major issues that dominated the nation's capitol or the state legislature. It's not that I didn't understand that what went on in these places was important; like many people, I simply wasn't that interested. I naively thought that politics didn't impact my everyday life in a significant manner.
My perspective changed dramatically when I decided to enter graduate school to study political philosophy. My major wasn't chosen due to some great epiphany. I looked at my undergraduate record to see which courses I had done well in that were not in the sociology or journalism fields (my two undergraduate majors). I noticed that I had earned As or Bs in the three courses concerning political science or constitutional law. So, I decided on political philosophy and theory.
As I started into my studies, I began to wake up to the impact politics has on all spheres of life. While individual decisions or pieces of legislation may not impact the common man, woman and child in the way we conduct our routine affairs, the overall political philosophy or system serves as the foundation for how each individual relates to the world around them and affects the manner in which we view that world.
It was when I started studying Karl Marx that my head exploded. While Marx is no god, I found that many of his theories resonated with me to my very core. The one that changed the way I view the world in the most fundamental sense is his theory of economic determinism.
I write this to provide you with a window toward understanding why economic issues are emphasized on this blog apart from the main focus of philosophical Taoism. This is why many of my intermediary posts target the proposed tax cuts and overall economic inequality that exists in the world today.
Even more so, I believe that the capitalist economic system is not in keeping with the Way. Capitalism promotes the concepts of rugged individualism and separation. It postulates a world in which we are each individual actors whose chief concern is ourselves or our group and everyone/thing else be damned. It concurrently pushes everyone to push and strive to fulfill insatiable desires.
Was Karl Marx a Taoist or Lao Tzu a Marxist? No, not at all. For me, however, much of what each wrote and speculated on dovetails nicely together. That is why both ways of viewing this life are melded together on this blog.
My perspective changed dramatically when I decided to enter graduate school to study political philosophy. My major wasn't chosen due to some great epiphany. I looked at my undergraduate record to see which courses I had done well in that were not in the sociology or journalism fields (my two undergraduate majors). I noticed that I had earned As or Bs in the three courses concerning political science or constitutional law. So, I decided on political philosophy and theory.
As I started into my studies, I began to wake up to the impact politics has on all spheres of life. While individual decisions or pieces of legislation may not impact the common man, woman and child in the way we conduct our routine affairs, the overall political philosophy or system serves as the foundation for how each individual relates to the world around them and affects the manner in which we view that world.
It was when I started studying Karl Marx that my head exploded. While Marx is no god, I found that many of his theories resonated with me to my very core. The one that changed the way I view the world in the most fundamental sense is his theory of economic determinism.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.In other words, how we order our economic relations within society serves as the nexus for everything else. The overall philosophy of each economic system strongly influences the religious, political, sociological and psychological consciousness of each member of society.
from Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
I write this to provide you with a window toward understanding why economic issues are emphasized on this blog apart from the main focus of philosophical Taoism. This is why many of my intermediary posts target the proposed tax cuts and overall economic inequality that exists in the world today.
Even more so, I believe that the capitalist economic system is not in keeping with the Way. Capitalism promotes the concepts of rugged individualism and separation. It postulates a world in which we are each individual actors whose chief concern is ourselves or our group and everyone/thing else be damned. It concurrently pushes everyone to push and strive to fulfill insatiable desires.
Was Karl Marx a Taoist or Lao Tzu a Marxist? No, not at all. For me, however, much of what each wrote and speculated on dovetails nicely together. That is why both ways of viewing this life are melded together on this blog.
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