Trey Smith
From time to time, some of you take me to task for mixing my socialist leanings with Taoist philosophy. I'm not here today to APOLOGIZE for this. While I will not advance the simplistic argument that Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were the socialists of their day -- though an argument could be made for this point -- I simply wish to note that many of the themes they write about are not all that different than what we find in the world today.
Both Taoist writers purportedly lived during what is called the Warring States period of Chinese history. Life was exceedingly harsh for the peasants because of constant warfare AND high taxation to feed the wars and the ruling elite. Both writers (or schools of thought) vehemently spoke out against these evils and offered a different blueprint by which to order society for the benefit of all.
How is this that different from the world we live in today? Life is exceedingly harsh for many people in the world and a good deal of this harshness is the responsibility of policies foisted upon the world by the western powers, particularly the United States. While most American lives couldn't be labeled as harsh, we're steadily moving in that direction!
The US ruling elite has adopted the policy of perpetual war. Public monies that could easily go toward benefiting the overall populace instead are diverted to feed the war machine. More and more money is being spent to kill, maim and destroy as opposed to nurturing life to its fullest extent.
If Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu had a time machine and they dialed up the year 2012, don't you think they would be railing against many of the very same things I rant about?
I do. This is the very thing that comes to mind when I look at the world in that way. That the system itself is bringing about the majority of the problems, perhaps all of them. I can't help thinking that if those with money and power, or the desire for either, relented that everyone would be better off.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we can't convince forest trees to only grow to a foot high, they will always fight for the light in the top slot. We can't ask sharks to only eat old sick male prey. Maybe with humanity though, rather than by reasoning with old statesmen, we may see the youth gradually bringing these ideas through. The internet is not only for CERN data and naked celebrities, it can be used to give confidence to people that their "odd" ideas are in truth the ideas if the majority.
Thats great, I feel much the same way about the tao and anarchism. I'm more of a Bakunin-Proudhon guy than Marx, but my anarchism is my own. Im currently working on a pet project "the anarchism of tao--the tao of anarchism"--I very much agree (with the last comment) one cant get trees to grow a foot high--or rather, one shouldnt, and its an awful waste of energy to do so. I liken this to the state of things today. We are told that the current cultural constructs are actually "human nature"-if this were in fact true it would not take the extraordinary amount of resources that are used to 'keep us on task'-even with an economic system designed to refine competition,individualism, and greed, which is what ultimately informs all of our institutions, we still require a tremendous amount of indoctrination, medication,and coercion.
ReplyDeleteBeing against constant warfare and high taxes would also be Libertarian beliefs, so was Lao Tzu a Libertarian? (I know that idea makes your toes curl, Trey.)
ReplyDeleteHere's the problem; we of today tend to see the past in current terms. If we are socialist, we will pick out writings and teachings that can be interpreted in line with our beliefs; ditto if we are libertarian, conservative, centrist liberal, etc. Some of those writings may be taken in more ways than one, thus our disagreement. I would suggest that, instead of trying to label the great teachers of the past with modern political tags, we simply study their writings and apply their teachings in our own lives to the best of our ability.