In Grad School, I wrote my Master's thesis on Marxism and Democracy. My focus was on the generation of Marxist theoreticians who came after Karl Marx. One of these second generation Marxists (or Socialists) was Eduard Bernstein.
One of Bernstein's most famous quotes is “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing.”
He, of course, did not mean that the ultimate goal was devoid of any meaning, but that the act of working toward the goal day-by-day was far more important. In his own way, I believe he was merely restating that famous line from Verse 64 of the Tao Te Ching:
There is another aspect to this methodology as well. As we take care to watch where we are going AS we go, we often notice that the course we have mapped out won't lead us to where we originally thought it would. The prudent person who is paying attention will alter the map and then continue on the journey. The person who is not paying attention will continue to follow the original heading only to wind up in an altogether different place than expected and, most likely, won't have the foggiest notion of how to handle the new circumstance.
One of Bernstein's most famous quotes is “The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing.”
He, of course, did not mean that the ultimate goal was devoid of any meaning, but that the act of working toward the goal day-by-day was far more important. In his own way, I believe he was merely restating that famous line from Verse 64 of the Tao Te Ching:
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feetIn my estimation, Lao Tzu was trying to draw people's attention to embracing the steps we take in the moment we take them. If you spend all your time focused on your final destination somewhere on a distant horizon, you are far more apt to trip and fall OR get lost along the way. It is only by paying attention to each step that we have any chance of, conceivably, finishing the journey along the chosen path.
(Feng & English translation)
or
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a step
(Cleary translation)
There is another aspect to this methodology as well. As we take care to watch where we are going AS we go, we often notice that the course we have mapped out won't lead us to where we originally thought it would. The prudent person who is paying attention will alter the map and then continue on the journey. The person who is not paying attention will continue to follow the original heading only to wind up in an altogether different place than expected and, most likely, won't have the foggiest notion of how to handle the new circumstance.
Man, that's so right on, and fits with this book I'm reading, Deep Survival. It's about how people behave in survival situations, the psychology and such behind it. He quotes the Tao Te Ching quite a bit, which impresses me. A lot of it is about dealing with the unexpected, talking about the beginners mind, from Zen, and also his rules of life: "be here now," and "everything takes 8 times longer than you think it should." Expectations will kill you out there, where there's no room for it.
ReplyDeleteMake a plan, follow the plan... but don't be married to the plan; it's a changing world we live in, and you have to be fluid. It's all so Taoist....