The Tao of "Something that has been in my head today"
This comment was posted to reddit on Mar 07, 2015 at 3:38 pm and was deleted within 4 hour(s) and 37 minutes.
The Tao of "Something that has been in my head today"
On anthropocentrism
Anthropomorphosis of the world is not necessairly antorpocentrism.
I do not agree that we antropromorphise the universe, I certainly try not to, Daoists don't really do it either. Who do you claim does this?
We can only use human terms to describe nature or the univers, but such is our limitiations, the best we can do is try to widen this limitiation by trying to understand things that out terms can not address, and perhaps invent new terms to describe things our previsou terms could not describe. This is lingusitic evolution and very much a vital part of our cultural evolution.
On morality
You never posed the question of how the physical nature is moral, but in essence i am not interested in this question, i have no answer to it and don't think the question is interesting or relevant, i don't think i am even near capable of telling whether physical nature is moral or not, therefore there is not point for me in pursuing this question. How could we know whether the physical nature of reality is moral or amoral? (without making at a matter of semantics, the inherent morality of the physical nature (assuming that the physical nature of nature is to be regarded as capable of what we would otherwise consider abstract which morality now is, but that is also beyond our knowledge))
Things are either moral or amoral but we can't really claim that the are amoral, we have nothing to prove this. Claiming that they are amoral because we do not know they are moral is an appeal to ignorance is thus a fallacy.
We are made of parts which we can't tell are inherently moral or amoral. We are either moral or amoral, and that which we are part of is either moral or amoral.
The metaphor of colour in our lives are a metaphore of morality, if there is no such thing as good or bad, then our lives are grey. Of course if we were amoral we would not be able to tell how it is to be moral. But we do consider things to be good or bad, atleast i do, don't you? Since i consider things good or bad i am moral, if i woudl not consider things good or bad, then what would drive me? What would make my decisions?
Choice as a choice of word is a bit problematic because it turns the discussion into a discussion on free well. And although free will is tightly connected to morality in a sense i will avoid such a discussion as far as possible by saying that we either have or do not have morality, whether morality requires free will i will have unsaid unless you really want to discuss free will either as a requirement for morality or in general.
If we use morality then we are inherently moral, but if we make use of morality to cause an effect then surely that is a moral choice (here used in a way that is neutral in terms of free will) or at the very least (if you deny will and choices at all even those that do not require free will) a moral action (but a moral action does indeed imply choices (free will or not) imho).
i will not state whether certain things are moral or not, because i am both an ethical relativist and a metaethical relativist, and i consider the moral statements you make here irrelevant to the current subject matter.
On Life
And infinty does not have a beginning and end, that is it's definition. Whether Dao is outside of universe or not is a matter of semantics, the terms are similar but comes from different linguistic and philosophical traditions. So whether they are the same is a matter of interpretion and translation, over which we could argue, but it is not really relevant to the discussion IMHO.
What do you mean when you ask how and in what manner you are a one with everything? How is that question different from whether you are one with everything or not? In my opinion these answeres are best aquired through meditation. (these quesiton are traditionally meditated upon in many traditions (like the heart sutra of buddhism for instance), and is important daoist tradition)
Whether rationalising and logically determining the world as something makes it something is not a question i can answer, but rationalising and logically determining is generaly though of as a way to realise how things are and not a way to make things a certain way.
Perhaps playing head games is all we can do when we ask these questions, but life is so much more than just asking these questions.
On Health
The sadist and the masochist are either moral or amoral, i would suggest that both of them are moral because they both regard something as either good or bad. whtehr pain is good or bad is an intersteing quesiton and in general it's a semantic question as much as it is a fundamental question on morality and our perception of pain and it leads to some interesting quesiton on our conciousness but that digressing.
I am not a big fan of the golden rule of morality, i do not agree with it because it is egocentrical in it's interpretion of morality while i consider myself both an ethical relativist and a metaehtical relativist, and value respect of others morality as an important part of my moral.
Health does indeed infere morality, how can we have health if there is no such thing as well being, how can we have well being if there is no such thing as a good, and how can we have good without morality? The definition of health relies on good, but good does not rely on the definition of health, clearly our language is based around the fact that health and morality does have a connection, but not that morality is based on health.
Whether animals have moral or not i can not be sure of, but it semms they do, they seem to be happy and they seem to be sad, they seem to prefere certain behaviour, this is the nature of good and bad. Whether they can cognise this as morality does not say anything about if they have morality or not. And our treatment of them in regard to this is our moral, if they do not have moral then how is the difference of your treatment of them moral?
Not everyone claims to knowh what is right or wrong, and not everyone are moral objectivists. If one is a moral relativist and respects the moral of others then how is this biased and egocentric?
if you do not know what de or virtue is then how can you tell if it's a con or not?
We do not know that holy comes from healthy and thus wholeness, but it is possible that id did, but as i said it's prechristian usage is unclear (but not inexistant). I don't think that this is rather relevant to the discussion, nor do i think a discussion on christianity is relevant either.
Why would our agreement that we are one with everything change whether we should worry over health? Though must do not understand that we are part of the whole and it might be connected to worrying about long life and adapting to some sort of objective moral, i don't agree that accepting being one with everything would lead to us being amoral or restricting our moral to an egocentrical focus on health that is rather like hedonism. Rather the opposite. Nor would i agree much with a sort of egocentrical and in a sense hedonistic focus on health as a moral system. I would much rather be unhealthy myself than see the beauty of the world go to waste, because i know that i am just a part of this beauty, and it is much greater than me.