there's a certain kind of "following the dao" philosophy i think i know a lot of people who hold implicitly in some form, which i think if taken sufficiently seriously suggests the bizarre conclusion that literally everything follows the dao automatically *except humans*
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like compared to the rest of the universe we're these alien eldritch entities invading the harmony of the dao, the only things capable of disharmony. it's a weird, depressing, and frankly confusing pov. how did our ability to disharmonize evolve? do any monkeys have it partially?
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if you keep poking at this story it just turns into original sin i think
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the alternative, which is bizarre in a different way, is that everything follows the dao automatically *including* humans, that all of the indignity and suffering and horror of modern industrial civilization and so forth is still somehow harmonious
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distressing if true, click through for full thread
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Welcome to my TED talk:
Chasing Ourselves: How Persistence Hunting in Early Humans Explains the Origin of Consciousness and Spirituality
Alternate title: We're All Living in Our Fish FInders twitter.com/ChasingMyself/…
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good stuff in this subthread, roughly consonant with the above. really needed a multi-QT here
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Replying to @meekaale @QiaochuYuan and @JakeOrthwein
having to do with the capacity to create autonomous imaginary models and maps which become like a metaverse virtual reality where the properties of the wholeness are transcended
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Replying to @PrinceVogel @QiaochuYuan and 2 others
That is to say - mankind's sins are more notable because his light is brighter. He can support failure for longer periods of time. If a less grand system has a failure it just ends.
Brightest light casts the longest shadow. The Dao is beyond good and evil
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there is at least one large confusion in what i wrote last night, maybe two, and i’m frustrated i can’t pin it down more precisely. somewhere i’m failing to distinguish between ways the world could be vs. ways of seeing the world
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This is just two truths doctrine trouble, right?
Something like: you’re already always following the dao, but you can become confused about that, and if you get unconfused, problems are still problems, but it’s ok because you’re following the dao.
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hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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I personally don’t conceptualize it as rules you can obey or conform to that has any moral connotation of goodness or badness attached. I see the dao as morally neutral and as having no authority over you.
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everything *can* be viewed as fine. doesn't mean you have to view it as fine. thinking-it's-not-fine is also fine.
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the sense in which "things are fine" is hard to explain because it's not "fine, compared to some other not-fine thing that also occurs in reality" but "fine, compared to an imaginary horror that it turns out doesn't exist"
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