Since the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius was full of hope and radical reorganisation of politics, culture, and minds, polymath Robert Anton Wilson felt free to roam across all topics, integrating the quantum with the cosmic, Buddha with Bohm, whilst clearly having fun. He's dead now, but still alive on YouTube and the book Prometheus Rising, currently entertaining your blogger with crazy ideas, including the proposition that: The Thinker, imagining some idea or another, employs The Prover, an integral part of the psyche, to Prove the validity of the thought, along with all the details creating a Reality Tunnel unique to her or him. Find a few friends to fall in line and bingo! Yet another cult prepared to convince the rest of us that they're right, we're wrong and ready to kill or die for the cause. Please add your favourite examples here. You might include all religious organisations, States with which you disagree like Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Imperialist Britain or USA, even groups of individuals so rich with money and poor in wisdom that they hatch plans to scare whole populations with stories of deadly diseases about to kill us all.
These truths are timeless of course. Hegel and Marx wrote about dialectics, for example. For Marx and Engels materialism constrained their great idea: To change the world by organising the proletariat and training them for Revolution, destroying Capitalism, replacing it with the dictatorship of the workers as an interim stage, called Socialism (from each according to abilty,to each according to the work performed), en route to nirvana, called Communism, a Utopia (from each according to ability, to each according to need). Things don't always work out as planned of course, and the opportunity to overthrow the State occured not in an advanced Capitalist country, but in Russia, still labouring under Feudalism, with many more peasants than proletarians.
Capitalism meanwhile morphed into Corporatism and ate itself, as predicted by Karl and Fred. The post-capitalist debacle, with one or two cartels in charge of the world now threatens the loss of freedom, small businesses and so on. Worker's rights went out of fashion decades ago with the advent of Neo-Liberalism, and far fewer workers are required anyway, as robots gear up to take the strain. A future without work sounds good to lazy bloggers like yours truly, since philosophers need time to take it easy and of course this pseudo-philosopher is retired, but the notion does not appeal universally to ordinary folks. Especially when Plutocrats are still in charge.
In Dao, dialectics is clearly identified in verses of the Dao De Jing, pointing out the human trait to require an opposite to describe a thing. For example, how can we know good without bad? Another human trait is to mistake the words for the thing described, take sides and argue endlessly who is right and who wrong (another pair of opposites), leading to divide and rule, violence and wars. The point, of course, is to find a synthesis from thesis and antithesis and transcend both. Which may only lead to more opposites, at a higher, deeper level. No wonder then that Lao Tse in verse one insists that the Dao which can be described is not the Immortal Dao!
As for Plutocrats through the ages, they and their advisors certainly knew the Dao De Jing and used it selectively to mislead the masses. When the people read it, comprehend it, live it fully, then even Plutocrats fall in Love, not with Power and Money, but the deeper reality pointed to. As for the Ultimate Reality ... we may never know it ...
Meanwhile, in Stanhope, another weekend begins, with fine dry weather forecast after a dip and even light snow, known hereabouts as lambing storms. The first lambs indeed appeared in fields nearby last week, charming most if not all who see them, heralding Spring and their destiny sooner rather than later, on the plate with new potatoes, baby carrots and peas. Wild mint in the woods can't be far behind, as the cycle of life goes on.
An early walk at Dawn, to stretch the legs and greet the Sun, is in the plan. First breakfast, then the route can choose itself. The house in the valley has options to climb in every direction ...
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