The Tao of "Something that has been in my head today"

*On anthropocentrism

What is the rightness or wrongness of your being, of the existence of an object, of the very universe? How is the universe rational in any way? I believe that it is not. We anthropomorphize the universe as moral and rational because we are humans,yes, but mostly because we swallow what our ignorant ancestors from the ancients to the most recent influential dead scientists have said. It's not how much or what we think, it's what we feel. I do not care what our ancestors said or what is said of them, whether it's Lao-Tzu or Einstein. They are dead and cannot feel our life or communicate what they feel. When it comes down to life and death situations, we act on what feels right not on what we think is right because we rationalized it or because we morally evaluated one action against another. I anthropomorphize the nature of reality as breath not because I think it's breath, but because I feel it as such in myself and in everything. However, if everything is breath, it is no longer human-centered.

*On morality

You skipped over actually addressing the question. How is the physical nature of reality moral? How is matter, light, and particles moral? Are we not made up of these things? Things aren't amoral according to our morality. Things are amoral because they are. We invest things, and ourselves, with morality for anthropocentric reasons for survival. My life is not grey because I am not colorblind. If I were colorblind I would not appreciate you disparaging the greyness of my life. :P There is no such thing as lifelessness. It is just a word. Everything is alive because we are alive. How could a life understand lifelessness? I mean I do play dead sometimes and I try to be as unconscious in life as I can, but I'm not actually dead when I do so. It's just that I forget whether I'm dead or alive.

We cannot choose to be amoral, life is amoral. However, we can use morality to prolong our life or shorten it, which again is not a moral choice. Dying young or living a long life is neither good or bad. From a moral viewpoint, destroying people and things around you will shorten your life, that is all. A short life is not amoral.

*On life

From the Taoist texts, the tao always existed. All there is is Tao. It is infinite and eternal. Where exactly is the beginning and end of infinity? Am I to assume the Tao stands outside of the universe and is not that which it is ultimately made up of?

We don't come from anywhere and are not going anywhere. I don't need a text to tell me I'm a part of everything. The only question I have ever asked about my relationship with the universe is how and in what manner am I one with everything, not if I am. How exactly does rationalizing or logically determining the world as something actually making it something. It sounds like I would be playing head games. I like head games, but I also like to know I'm playing them.

*On health

I equate morality with health, but I do not equate health with morality. Riddle me this, who is moral and who is immoral in the following: "Beat me", said the masochist. "No", said the sadist.

The masochist loves to feel pain. The sadist loves to inflict pain. By not inflicting pain, the sadist is depriving him or herself of pleasure. By not receiving pain, the masochist is deprived of pleasure. But by being deprived of pleasure, the masochist endures pain. By inflicting pain by not inflicting pain, the sadist is pleasured.

So what to make of the golden rule?

That we have health and perceive welfare does not determine that we have morality. We equate health with morality not the other way around. Health exist in other beings. Animals cannot be moral or be made moral. We can treat them with respect, in as healthy a way as possible, and we can care for their health, we cannot ration with them.

Morality is essentially biased and egocentric because everyone believes they know what is right and wrong, but just because I know what is healthy for me to do does not mean I know what is healthy for you to do. I am not you and cannot feel what it is to be you even if I mapped every cell in your body. If I could feel what you feel, I would be you or you would be me and we wouldn't know the difference.

I do not know what de or virtue is. It sounds like a con.

Holy is derived from health and wholeness. Leading a "holy life", "whole life" or "healthy life" means the same however our ancestors abstracted it. Holy does have an etymology before Christianity, it is called health. Where do you think the Christians got it? That Christians have abstracted it for their own use is their business. Words are themselves an abstraction of things that cannot be described by words. So why have issue with an abstraction of an abstraction? And Christians who support or supported slavery or murder under the guise of just wars obviously haven't made holy into anything meaningful. It's probably because they think it describes something other than physical health and do not understand the defense of one's own health under threat of immediate harm. I think I've been bullied enough to know the difference. Not to get off topic, but preemptive strikes are not healthy, they are delusional. And besides, my "Christian nation", lol, doesn't go to war to defend anything but profits. We are not saviors, we are war profiteers.

If you agree we are already one with everything, what need is there to worry about health. I would argue most of us don't. We worry about living long and being moral because we don't accept being one with everything and taking care of our own health as enough.

/r/taoism Thread