CityHermit!

Ok, I got another free moment. Person I mentioned in earlier post who argued the same point also said the same exact same thing regarding the forum interaction, only it was a different forum. I see nothing new. There goes my free moment now, duty calls.

It's not even a matter of closing or opening, and for you to say as such shows you don't know where I am coming from. I got into the whole "interconnected" oneness theory myself many years ago, before I really studied anything and when I was too young to know better. Life taught me that theory was wrong. Why not use empirical experience and observation to test those theories for yourself? I'm not trying to hijack the thread, so why keep pressing? I made a simple response to OP, said that was all I have and that I would be on my way and let them be on theirs. Why are you so troubled with doing the same thing? Is it something about me saying not to listen to you? Let them make up their own mind, I did say to them to not even pay attention to me didn't I?

Sorry, I'm in the middle of something with my significant other and don't have much time to give a thorough response. Plus I am sitting with my dog who is elderly and dying, who was given a expectation to live a week or two at most 3 months ago and I've been trying to make the best of it since. I guess I'm more interconnected with them than you and others here. That's choices of company for you.

It's funny you say that, I hardly use the internet for interaction in general, let alone forums. I don't use social media either. My personal connections are just that, personal and face to face. In other words, something very natural. Someone can have 10,000 social media friends, are they going to get to know real well each and every one? Do you believe you're the first person to say those things to me about interconnection? Are you going to say you and I are more interconnected than our loved ones in our personal life? Or that those who are strangers to us are more interconnected to us than they are with their own loved ones who are also strangers to us? The last person who tried to argue with me about this, in the exact same manner you are saying now, took some very bad turns in life because they didn't understand the importance of sticking with what, or who, is most important. I would have been better off never knowing them and hopefully they stopped being pulled apart in all directions trying to be so interconnected with others when they couldn't manage their connections with each of them, when those same people couldn't be compatible with one another. You can't please everyone. A passing saint isn't your friend, your family, your lover or life partner. Sometimes other people stand in the way between you and those who matter to you most. Sometimes you have to pick and choose even between those strongest connections if circumstances force it. Sometimes being part and parcel of a greater thing is sticking with who really matters to you and vice versa, so that by part it represents the same thing in the whole, just as an individual family is one representation of the principle of family yet if they did not stay intact in their unit they would not represent it. Which goes to show that some things, and people, are not interchangeable.

It's not about wisdom, but intent and purpose and overall paths. Speaking from a lot of experience and close observations, those latter things shouldn't be dictated by or entrusted with those who aren't sharing in it lest severe problems and conflicts result. This is one reason, though not nearly the only one, why I take Wu Wei very seriously. Interfering in another's life, even with the best of intentions, can yield catastrophe if there is a lack of alignment in overall paths. OP, the only thing I will give you is this: Unless these are people you intend to keep in your life for a more developed purpose, don't listen to any of them. I have no intention to be in your life nor have you in mine, so don't pay attention to me either. I go my way and you go yours. That's it.

The most recent one that I've watched many times and could? Well my significant other watched Snatch for the first time with me not very long ago, I saw that one in theaters back in the day. I must have watched some others with some friends of mine since, as we watched movies a lot including ones we've seen already. We watch many in a given evening though, I'd have to think more on what we saw recently. But really the list would be very long, possibly hundreds of titles or more. I've seen lots of movies and lots more than once that I would readily see again.

I'm not sure why this would be a topic one would entrust strangers with.

OP is right. I'm not so invested into here though, so it's less my concern than it should be for others. My suggestion would be to take care of the issue instead of make excuses.

So many, it could take me a while to make a list.

Even if I change position I don't think they changed theirs, so I don't look for them because they haven't deviated from where I should expect them to be. In general, I think the spatial dynamics are much more complex than linear points of reference.

It's not so much about theft, to focus on theft distracts from the heart of the issue. If a security threat tries to steal national secrets or something similar that would be something to be expected. If those within a nation willingly give their assets to external security threats that is more grave because such acts are not expected to be the norm and are indicative of internal problems. In reality its worse than both of the above, in that private entities knowingly give potential, or actual, external security threats what they need to be a security threat to begin with or amplify themselves as one. This is a profitable venture where gains are made at the cost of the lives of unwitting participants. Even worse, it goes beyond profit towards steering foreign policy and historical agendas. But to recognize these things requires that people recognize as incorrect what they took for granted all along. I don't believe that most people have what it takes to do that, those here included. It's not up to me to hold anyone's hand to reach that understanding either. I only see it as foolish when people spend exorbitant amount of time and energy on a topic in a such a way that had they looked at it a little differently they would save themselves a lot of grief.

Have a look at Taautos of the Phoenicians.

"Programmed movement" sounds like a loaded term, one could describe most kinds of exercise that way. There are a lot of better things to question or criticize as far as what is "natural" as well. I'm not really sure what's being said here, is this about practice itself or teachers?

Well, to ask this kind of pushes aside what I mentioned about referring to different traditions that may not be in agreement about Dao to begin with and that getting into Yin and Yang, which they also don't agree about, is a distraction from that disagreement and is besides the point. If you have two different takes on Dao and on Yin and Yang then that kind of needs to be resolved first before the question you're asking, or an answer to such, becomes meaningful.

That's the thing, it's not always about stealing. According to the research and theories I've mentioned a lot of it is given rather than taken.

Oh ok

Many I Ching commentaries are coming from a Confucian perspective whereas TTC is Taoist. I have a lot of other reading to prioritize so I can't go through that pdf at the moment but it appears to be another commentary. Commentaries upon commentaries, or commentaries on commentaries, can be a detraction from original source material and even material source material is limited via the confines of language which is something that the TTC essentially advocated to avoid. This all seems like splitting hairs and less about Yin and Yang that different schools' interpretations of Tao itself.

Some missile technology yes, but beyond that more from the US than the Germans just as the Germans also did from the US.

It's the other way around. In other threads I've quoted a researcher who spent decades of work on the topic, so I'm coming from a position of evidence. Feel free to submit yours.

Oh the worldcat link tells a little more. So 36 volumes? That could be a little more costly for shipping except that the amazon link says free shipping and it's apparently shipping from China either. But the worldcat link also lists besides the amazon link an abebooks link where it's going for nearly 19k as opposed the 89 on amazon. I'm a bit more curious.

That's interesting except there is no further information, no page numbers, no publisher, I have no idea what 1-36 is, etc. While I could look further into it through ISBNs that hasn't always worked for me either, maybe another time. Thanks though.

Finally a decent question out of you, and less resulting chaos at that. You're improving.

I've been meaning to share this article but had forgotten so here is a good opportunity for me to do so: https://www.chinadialogue.net/culture/9669-Taoist-monks-find-new-role-as-environmentalists/en

The post takes up a lot of space if I try to copy paste the quote I wrote elsewhere so I'll just copy paste the text itself instead: "Lots of people fell to the Cultural Revolution in China, didn't they? Who is left from the purge of the Qigong movement?" It helps to look into the history of these things.