Is the Tao just a false positive?

[The Dude Shepherd]

...rather than appointing ourselves as the police of right and wrong we just recognize that both are a part of the way the world works.  If good conquered evil then eventually a new evil would arise to challenge the status quo of good and if evil oppresses good then eventually good will spread to balance it out again. 

I have learned that good and evil are figments of our imaginations...

Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks they are evil... Everyone thinks they are good... think about that a second

Terrorists think they are doing god's work... they think they are the good guys... serial killers think they are doing good as well... everyone has a justification for their actions

Some actions are simply different from culture to culture... many people would say cannibalism is evil, but I have read about a tribe where it is a ritual... when a tribe elder dies, the tribe cooks him up and eats him for dinner... I certainly wouldn't call them evil for it... their way is just different from mine

Good and evil are subjective, not objective... the only "objective" good claim is made religion... who claims their god is good (yet their god murders millions of people, and so do their followers)

It seems such a contradiction to me when... the people who claim to be the most good/holy, commit the most atrocious of crimes (priests raping children)... spread the most bigotry and hatred of anyone who isn't like them (christians hate everyone... atheists, muslims, gays, blacks, you name it... they hate you)

[thevideoartist]

...rather than appointing ourselves as the police of right and wrong we just recognize that both are a part of the way the world works.  If good conquered evil then eventually a new evil would arise to challenge the status quo of good and if evil oppresses good then eventually good will spread to balance it out again. 

I have learned that good and evil are figments of our imaginations...

Nobody, and I mean nobody, thinks they are evil... Everyone thinks they are good... think about that a second

Terrorists think they are doing god's work... they think they are the good guys... serial killers think they are doing good as well... everyone has a justification for their actions

Some actions are simply different from culture to culture... many people would say cannibalism is evil, but I have read about a tribe where it is a ritual... when a tribe elder dies, the tribe cooks him up and eats him for dinner... I certainly wouldn't call them evil for it... their way is just different from mine

Good and evil are subjective, not objective... the only "objective" good claim is made religion... who claims their god is good (yet their god murders millions of people, and so do their followers)

It seems such a contradiction to me when... the people who claim to be the most good/holy, commit the most atrocious of crimes (priests raping children)... spread the most bigotry and hatred of anyone who isn't like them (christians hate everyone... atheists, muslims, gays, blacks, you name it... they hate you)

I hear you man.  I guess I've come to understand that I don't mean them as absolutes but incidental opposing views and you could take any side you want but the truth remains: you can't eliminate one completely or the other won't continue to survive.  Most people think murder is wrong, but how do you eliminate it?  It's physically impossible to lock up every single murderer in solitary confinement and anything short of that gives them the opportunity to continue killing, if you institute a death penalty or even have police officers shoot to kill in defense than that's still the taking of someone's life and so you open up a philosophical question of "what entails murder vs self-defense or defense of others?".  Effectively the yin and yang switch sides.  Same with conservatives and liberals, we'll always have some degree of both because the definitions are fluid.  A liberal in the 1860s believed slaves should be free, a belief that people today now commonly hold even among conservatives (though the social implications of defining that freedom perpetuate the sides of the fence).

Good and Evil are definitely a matter of perspective, but they also need each other to exist.  A less volatile example I suppose is light and darkness.  Without an absence of at least some wavelengths of visible light, all we see is whiteness everywhere.  No shapes no forms nothing but pure white.  Complete darkness provides the opposite effect: total blackness, no sight.  We cast lights or we absorb them, one gets credit as a good thing and one as a bad thing, but it's totally context dependent.  Light is bad if you're trying to sleep, dark is bad if your trying to read... extremes of both are totally useless.  I guess what I've learned in all this Tao stuff is how to recognize that inner nature is never wrong, and rather than fight it, it can be useful at appropriate times and in appropriate places and that when the inner nature of something is recognized and utilized, it's generally much more benign or even beneficial.  It seems like a no-brainer but coming from western worldviews that emphasize conquering or subduing anything that gets in the way of clear goals and visions, it's revolutionary!

That, good or bad, was a lot of blathering...

[The Dude Shepherd]

Evil is a name we give things that we either do not understand, or disagree with... it is the label we give things that we are scared of

I have been called evil for being an atheist... christians call muslims evil, and muslims call christians evil... some people call meat-eaters evil... some people call the oil industry evil... some people call Hillary Clinton evil... everyone wants "the other" to be "evil", so they can pretend to be the good guy

I don't see any reason why you can't have good without evil... I think that's a misnomer... the only thing stopping this world from living in a utopian society, where everyone had plenty of everything, is greed

[Brother D]

I don't see any reason why you can't have good without evil... I think that's a misnomer... the only thing stopping this world from living in a utopian society, where everyone had plenty of everything, is greed

Fuckin' A, mark it 8, man.

[SagebrushSage]

"I don't see any reason why you can't have good without evil... I think that's a misnomer... the only thing stopping this world from living in a utopian society, where everyone had plenty of everything, is greed"

One element that is often used to explain the Taoist concept of yin and yang is that there cannot be light without shadow. But, all objects emit light through radiative cooling. We emit light in the infrared spectrum. So does a jar of liquid nitrogen. Neptune's moon Triton, for example, is covered in ~37K solid nitrogen, which is detectable in the infrared against the ~3K temperature of the interstellar medium. This light can reflect off of other objects and be detected with the right equipment. So, it is more accurate to say that there is no shadow.

[The Dude Shepherd]

I think the light/dark analogy is backwards... it only fits if you assume light=evil, and dark=good

You cannot have light without shadow... but you can have darkness with no light...

Same goes for good/evil... you cannot have evil without good (self destructive)... but, you could have good without evil (utopia)

The major obstacles to overcome are fear and greed (greed is simply the fear of not having as much as someone else)... it is a difficult obstacle though... fear is instinctual, via evolution... the dude who runs from the bear, is more likely to survive and make little dudes, passing on his fear of bears

[thevideoartist]

Evil is a name we give things that we either do not understand, or disagree with... it is the label we give things that we are scared of

I have been called evil for being an atheist... christians call muslims evil, and muslims call christians evil... some people call meat-eaters evil... some people call the oil industry evil... some people call Hillary Clinton evil... everyone wants "the other" to be "evil", so they can pretend to be the good guy

I don't see any reason why you can't have good without evil... I think that's a misnomer... the only thing stopping this world from living in a utopian society, where everyone had plenty of everything, is greed

I think the reason we cannot have good without evil is inner nature.  Human beings want to survive, we find patterns where there are none, we call things "evil" that we do not understand.  We are not creatures who cannot successfully separate good from evil because our desires are neutral and how we act on them is determined to be good or evil after the fact (for example... the desire to mate is neutral, but for most people a wedding night is something good and a date rape is something evil... both are derived from the same neutral desire though).  In fact we aren't great at separating any of the dualities inside ourselves because they are imagined.  A perfect utopia would never exist without someone or something being in control, and we tend to resist control, so at some point that control would turn into dominance and here we are painting "good" and "evil" on people who want subjugation or autonomy and vice versa.  escaping inner nature seems one of the few things the Tao never really allows any of us to do.  But it's US doing the struggling. 

It's like when people quit habits they usually have to replace them with something else.  You can never be habit free... you can just choose a more socially acceptable habit... like subbing out smoking for working out or eating junkfood to eating healthy, or if you don't take control you can slip even further into something else worse... I think this is what happens when we try to strongarm evil away.  You could lock up all the murderers, but then you end up having to murder them or violate their human rights somehow to keep them from killing, or new people will be inspired to kill you out of a sense of righteous indignation.  Eventually given enough people and time in a given space, someone will offend someone and it will escalate.  You could eliminate all drugs but then people will find other ways to alter their consciousness which may or may not be more dangerous to collective health and sanity.  It's not a matter of creating a world without evil, while yes evil is undefined and subjective, it's also never going anywhere.  There is always going to be something in our human perception that is considered evil and do enough good but with enough force or disregard for individuality and it can TURN into evil.  I can't imagine a utopia where people actually interact, are cared for, happy, and comfortable, that is sustainable.  It either requires solitude, or some kind of system of artificial control that eventually not everyone will abide.

[First Last]

First let me say that I'm not seeking to criticize any system of belief but to understand.

I've been researching Taoism a lot and it's connections with Dudeism.  Seems most of us do somewhat uphold the idea of there being a "way" that the world works and that a natural order of things shouldn't be tampered with or improved upon in most circumstances because it is perfect and it is balanced.  In the Tao De Ching, it's described as being hidden, simple, and difficult to grasp, but can be partially understood through observation of its effects.

Now we as human beings are pattern-seeking primates.  Patterns help us stay alive because we learn what is safe and what is dangerous through this mechanism.  We touch a hot stove, it burns us, we learn not to touch the stove.  Some of these patterns are even instinctual, such as a nearly pervasive alarm when any of us sees a snake or spider next to us that we did not notice before.  Whether we're phobic of them or not, these are animals which presented a danger to our ancestors and hence our base-level response to encountering them is caution if not all-out terror.

We cannot turn this mechanism off though and find plenty of patterns that are completely unfounded.  Superstitions often are self-fulfilling examples of this, we hear that walking under a ladder is bad luck and maybe even experience something negative after walking under one ourselves and then avoid ladders, which logically have no effect on circumstances later in the day.  Several people use anecdotal evidence and personal experience to justify a pattern between vaccines and autism, in spite of statistical evidence to the contrary.  Casinos are another place where people find patterns that aren't really there.  The roulette table even posts the last 10-20 results in hopes someone will think that there is a "streak" or "lucky number" and be more likely to sit and play.  The truth is with a game like roulette, there is no way to predict a fair wheel.  The 00 could come up 20 times in a row and the next spin would still have a one in 37 chance of landing on 00.  You can flip a coin 10 times and get heads every time and the next flip would still be effectively 50/50.  Finding patterns and "streaks" in these circumstances means that your brain has created a false positive scenario because our brains, magnificent as they are, are easily fooled.

So given this information.  I'm starting to wonder when observing the world and looking for evidence of the Tao or the "Dude Way", how does one differentiate between how the world really works and the false positives our brain correlates on a regular basis?  Is the point just to continue observing and amending our understanding as we go in perpetuity?  Is the Tao just a metaphor or a conceptual koan we're meant to ponder to help curb our desire for meaning?  Or is it a tool for us to use to help make better decisions by recognizing the consequences of our choices and where they might lead us and those around us?  I am always questioning these things to determine to what extent they will help me abide and at what point they're just adding more ins and outs to decipher.

How do you dudes discern your own worldview from a false positive pattern?  Do you believe in a Tao and does that help you abide?

Taking it easy when possible, realising that the wheel goes around anyway and the result is the same for everyone , knowing the illusion of striving for lousey narcissistic values, finding value in nearly everyone as a teacher or reminder in lifes dos and don'ts,
recognising the 'know it all' knows little, treating it all gingerly and avoiding the arrogance of a dogmatic and allowing an idea to flow on its own merits, disliking control freaks and manipulators,
finding comfort in simple often frugal ways, and being flexible with problems. Donny was too nice, sobchak would end up in jail, the dude stays in a nimble middle. I also dig Alan Watts alot more now.

[First Last]

In terms of how the world works?

A theory on society

The world works on loafers, workers, predators, and prey that intermingle in time and circumstances.

Bunny for example - probably started off as naive and likely has an addiction problem. - prey
Found work in the sex industry - worker
Got hold of big lebowski - becomes a loafer
Probably has debts and false values leading to a craving for money - prey
Kidnaps herself - predator

As for luck and circumstance

story for a tao perspective

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically.

"Maybe," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed.

"Maybe," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "Maybe," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. "Maybe," said the farmer.

Be nimble and gingerly and realise circumstance is always changing be comfortable in the present and calmly flex over the unpredictable waves of time and space you are moving through whilst being fixed by gravity to a blue world moving through space at 1'000 mph, being kept alive by a giant burning fireball stars flames that travel an unfathomable distance to reach you. You can't live without it, people celebrate it, people's wealth and happiness is correlated by it, but if you look directly into it, it will blind you, and if you basque in it too long you'll get skin cancer. Good luck or bad luck?
The dude knows and the dude just abides in his place and time.

                 

[BikerDude]

Sometime you eat the bear, and sometimes...
Strikes and gutters, ups and downs.