Recollecting

"The emperor awakes, and having dreamt of being a butterfly, wonders if he is now a butterfly dreaming he is the emperor."

Lao Tzu - founder of Taoism

According to history and folklore, Lao Tzu compiled the Tao Te Ching for rulers and emperors to guide them toward enlightened, natural, and effortless leadership (Wu-wei).

The Role of the Emperor & The Sage

In traditional Chinese philosophy, the "Emperor" is the ultimate representative of worldly power, while the awakened sage represents ultimate spiritual mastery and harmony.

Have you been wondering why MAGA is focused on "anti-woke"? Stop wondering

Guiding the Ruler:

The Tao Te Ching is often framed as advice for an emperor. It teaches that an awakened ruler does not govern through force, tyranny, or strict laws, but rather through stillness, compassion, and humility, allowing the empire to find natural balance.

The Concept of Awakening:

For Lao Tzu, to awaken (or to reach enlightenment) is to transcend human desires, shed the ego, and align completely with the "Tao" (the unnamable source and natural order of the universe).

Awakening the World:

Lao Tzu famously tied the awakening of a single ruler to the harmony of the entire kingdom, famously stating: "If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself."

This philosophy applies to modern individuals as well as historical emperors.

True Power is Inner Mastery:

To lead, influence, or change the world, one must first master their own mind and eliminate their own inner negativity.

Leadership by Example:

An enlightened leader rules so effortlessly and unobtrusively that the people accomplish their goals and say, "We did it ourselves," highlighting the beauty of invisible, empowering leadership.

Overheard

Money is true or false

Success is an opinion

A Quote

Many people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile toward those who challenge it, because truth threatens their sense of certainty.

--Plato

A Declaration

What I say may be heretical

and irresponsible,

but I accept full responsibility

for having said it.

On The Theory Of Crowd Stupidity

Never underestimate the potential for fuckery

in large groups of people who are

motivated by their emotions

Sound Advice

Be kind. You don't know what people are going thru - what special burdens they're under.

So instead of telling them to fuck off,

have a little heart.

Ask them, "How can I help to fuck off today?"

Manufacturing Ignorance

agnotology
noun

The process of intentionally creating or encouraging doubt or ignorance, for example by spreading false information, in order to influence opinion, sell a product, or gain an advantage, or the study of this process.

The Banality Of Evil

Hannah Ahrendt:

(Adolf Eichmann) was not a monster performing normalcy. He was something far more disturbing: an ordinary man who had, through a long and quiet series of unremarkable daily choices, stripped himself of the habit of moral reasoning. He had stopped asking whether what he was doing was right; not because he decided it was right, but because he had stopped experiencing that question as one that applied to him at all. He had handed his conscience upward, to the system above him, and found in that delegation a genuine sense of purpose and identity. And he never once looked back.

A Bit Of Zen

You suffer more from the story

you repeat in your mind

than from the event itself.

Let it go and be free.

A Credo

When the world around me

becomes irredeemable,

I must remain a righteous man.

The Naked Truth

The Lie said to the Truth, "Let's take a bath together, the well water is very nice."

The Truth, though suspicious, tested the water and found that it really was nice. So they got naked and bathed together.

But suddenly, the Lie leaped out of the water and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.

The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well to get her clothes back. But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth, looked away, with anger and contempt.

Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared forever, hiding her shame.

Since then, the Lie runs around the world, dressed as the Truth, and society is happy.

Because the world has no desire to know the naked Truth.

Painting: Truth Coming Out Of The Well, Jean-Léon Gérome, 1896.

Anonymous

Freedom is when the air and the waters are clean.

When the food isn't poisoned.

When the future isn't looming like a threat.

And you have a little time

to kick back and enjoy it all.

That's Freedom.

Today's Philosophical Thing

We jump up and down yelling "FREEDOM!!!" only to find it's a terrifying thing to be free because now we'll have to accept full responsibility for who we are and what we do.

It's easier to retreat in some way, and decide we need the comfort of some "higher authority" - a god or a government, or something we can believe is driving us to become some better version of ourselves - to achieve our destiny.

It's like we need someone or something we can praise and give thanks for our blessings, or someone or something we can blame (or will share our guilt) when we fail, or someone or something we can use to punish others because they haven't lived up to our expectations.

Let's take a quick look Jean-Paul Sartre.

The urge to find your one true calling

is a manufactured pressure.

The only purpose your life has

is the purpose you give it.

Weather Clear

... outlook bleak.

Q: If you know with certainty that making a change now would greatly benefit your kids and grandkids, why haven't you made that change already?

A: Because we're actually wired to sabotage our future selves.

Madness is rare in individuals. But in groups, parties, and ages - it's the rule.

Friedrich Nietzche

When a civilization becomes dependent on the knowledge it doesn't understand, it becomes vulnerable to charlatans and demagogues who promise simple answers to complex problems.

1. there
2. are
3. no
4. simple
5. 10-word
6. answers
7. for
8. the
9. important
10. questions

Technique

The elimination of our 'soul' has become the ultimate end being sought in the name of efficiency.

We've seen the effort to kill the humanity in us for at least 45 years.

Productivity Gain isn't everything - it's the only thing.

Overheard

Our mortal time

is the only thing we truly own.

We must learn to spend it wisely.

Philosophizing

Fear is a universal emotion,

common among all sentient beings.

We all walk with fear - all day every day.

But here's the point:

Never ask your fear for directions.

Unintended Consequences

see related: karma

I'm giving this creator a little leeway, but "...defense of conservatism" makes me a little doubtful as to the motives at work here.

(GK Chesterton was a Christian apologist - and a bit notoriously so, though not without a sense of humor and self-deprecation)

So continue with an eye shading to the skeptical side.

A Word On Management

I confess to having been a near-fanatical devotee to the short-sighted, and borderline demonic pronouncements of Ayn Rand.

30 years ago, I finally started to see the faulty reasoning of Rand's "Objectivism", and I won't bore the hell outa everybody with those details. Suffice to say her philosophy insists on sprinting to The Logical Extreme, which is where even good ideas go to die in sometimes epic implosions.

With Ayn Rand, you get things like this:

What the boss says goes.

Rule 1: The boss is always right

Rule 2: If the boss is ever wrong, refer to rule 1

While there's an element of truth to it, there's no room in that cutesy shit for the kind of clear-eyed, pragmatic reasoning that a Randian likes to believe he's mastered.

The most glaring of such reasoning is: The boss does not exist in a vacuum, where he needs no help from anyone.

The only pure rugged individualist is a hermit who starts out naked and alone, and somehow manages to make or otherwise acquire everything he needs all by himself with no help or input of any kind from anyone else - weapons, tools, food, clothing, shelter - all of it.

Wanna know why you never heard of such people? Because they all died before they could get their genetic material into any succeeding generations. Every one of them ended up scattered across the landscape in piles of leopard shit - or bear shit, or fellow-hominin shit - and in very short order.

We are all descended from people who knew how to cooperate - people who knew collaboration and collective action were essential to our survival as a species.

So - New Rules:

1. The boss can be wrong, and the employees can be right. So it's best if everybody gets the benefit of the doubt, and we can hash it all out as we go.

2. Although this is a business and not a democracy, it's a business that exists within a democracy, and democracy is not a business. We all have rights that are not relinquished in exchange for a paycheck.

3. Earn cookies, get cookies. Earn shit, get shit. And that goes for bosses and employees alike.

 That's it - let's get back to work.

Some Quotes

Happy birthday, Monsieur Arouet.

aka: Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet  21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778

French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity—especially the Roman Catholic Church—as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.