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...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.
Quote from: thevideoartist on August 12, 2016, 01:43:17 PM...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 secondTerrorists 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 actionsSome 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 mineGood 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 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
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 ofI 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 guyI 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
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?
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