sean

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💯 Love this. ❤️ I agree billions very well may die if we don't find new ways and rediscover old ones. I just hope we agree an ideal goal at least is that we not simply shrug; that we do anything we can to imagine and move toward alternatives. I have a penchant for melancholy and even outright nihilism in my darker hours. I'm no stranger to depressive realism. But lately I wonder if a dash of delusional hope for a more enchanted living future is not the worst spell to cast from a corner. 🧙‍♂️ Agreed! Also, hope my post didn't come across as an attack on your philosophy or anything. I haven't found anything you've written offensive in the way I was addressing at all, and I think there's an important and beautiful dialectic to be had with green anarchism. 💚🌿 Speaking of cave paintings: Why are these 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Europe? Sean

😂 Likewise! ❤️🙏 Sean

I appreciate the rewilding instict in its expression as a natural, personal and intuitive counterbalance to clearly inhuman implementations of technology (風水!). I also believe humans are fundamentally inseparable from technology. 🐉 Making tools and towns and poems and machines is what we do. But our technologies do reflect the ideology and character of those with any power to shape them. Hence why we're now often surrounded by terrible modern technology. For example, looking at the technology of cities. U.S. cities and suburbs structurally encode a legacy of hypercapitalist industrialization, racial segregation, white supremacy, unprecedented wealth inequality, and fear of nature and death. Modern cities, and the networks between them, are rarely "human scale" or even lifecentric. They are overwhelmingly bloodless factory and personal-smog-vehicle scale. This entire mess is an aberration, not a progression, of traditional city design patterns (i.e. traditional technologies). I think it's rational to be disgusted by all of this and want to imagine something better. Or even to fantasize about simply tearing it all down and starting over. Unfortunately I can't see how anarcho primitivism in the large, as any kind of grand destination, wouldn't require the death of billions of human lives. 😳 At best it also seems to have no ideas for how to move "forward" with this low-key annihilation death wish except to individually move backward, drop out, wait for an apocalypse? At its worst reactionary edges, it also starts intersecting with straight ecofascism. 😢 I simply do not buy that human technology is inherently problematic. I also reject the idea of human overpopulation. Last time I did the napkin-math, the entire human population, nearing 8 billion people, could all fit in the U.S. state of Texas with a population density less than Paris, France. The problem isn't "too many humans, a bunch of these fuckers need to die". The challenge is collectively discovering sustainable energy and resource models that help us all thrive in deepening harmony with our beautiful planet. I absolutely love and cherish that some of our ancestors and the still living sought and continue to seek ways to include and nourish bodies and minds of so-called disabled and neurodivergent peoples. Bodies much more susceptible to displacement and death in exclusively pre-agrarian societies. Millions of now living people are only here with us because of very modern technology. The idea that these same bodies would "become strong" over time via some kind of planetary scale loss of modern life and technology I think relies on a misunderstanding of how biological evolution works. "Survival of the fittest" is another way of saying "the 'weak' died off". Social Darwinism is a boring, shitty, unimaginative approach to society. I really believe we can envision and do so much better y'all. Don't give up. 🙏✨ "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ❤️ Sean

I think you may underestimate how impolite, politically incorrect and rowdy us dirtbag leftists can be. 😜 I want things to get more weird around here. Just with less punching down. Sean

Also now I'm already feeling torn at the idea of relegating the Daoist tradition to one subforum on a site called "The Dao Bums". 😳 Sean

Thanks. Yeah I keep fiddling with where these belong Currently Textual Studies is all Daoist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ OK I'm a dumb dumb re: the correct terms here. I was hoping Vedic was a broader umbrella that could include both Hinduism and also older teachings. Is that not the case? Neatly categorizing the 10,000 things in language is hard y'all. 😆 Sean

What if "Discussions On The Way" becomes the new "General Discussion" with a new forum to house "Focused Traditions". THE COURTYARD - Welcome! - Newcomer Corner - Discussions On The Way (previously "General Discussion") - Focused Traditions - Daoist (previously top level "Daoist Discussion") - 道家学说 - Interviews - Textual Studies - Buddhist - Vedic - Occult - The Rabbit Hole (merges "The Rabbit Hole", "Off Grid". Basically an off topic forum to talk about whatever, but not an "anything goes") - Meta-Talk (merges Forum and Tech Support, Moderation Logs, Rules and Use) PRIVATE GARDENS - Personal Practice (still has everyone's private subforums under this) - Gender Gardens - Nonbinary (for nonbinary, gender questioning and intersex) - Women (for women and female identified) - Men (for men and male identified) - Group Studies - Lending Library - Local Meetups and Events (merges Local Meetups and Upcoming Events) Sean

I think you were demonstrably tolerant of exactly such, even by your own admission. And I think this was actually my fault, because of my own bad, "apolitical" policies. Hence this topic. Sorry but right-wingers are pretty reliably bigoted if you keep scratching. 😬 As important, they're also ideologically classist and anti-poor. These are not just "like, my opinions, man". As many have articulated in this very topic, these antisocial beliefs map to real policies and physical institutions that effect horrific material consequences upon actual people's lives and deaths even right now, as I type this. Liberals aren't even much better by the way. If I was really going full super saiyan I'd have drawn the line further left, so please consider this an attempt at compassionate compromise, amigo. 🙏 Sean

A classic example of bothsidesism in this case. "Hatred" of racism and homophobia are not the same as being racist and homophobic. Sure, hatred is not the healthiest or most effective emotion. But it's still qualitatively different to be naturally morally disgusted and upset with bigotry than it is to be a bigot and ignorantly espouse such. Intolerance of intolerance is not intolerance. Please don't hijack the word diverse to include people with regressive, intolerant politics. Spend time with your bigoted friends and family in the real world. Love them. Talk to them. Hold them accountable. Help them evolve. Just don't invite them to this one weird Daoish forum on the internet run by a literal communist. Que sera. Sean

Quick thoughts ... "New Age" as the spontaneous modern expression of an archetypal syncretic impulse = 💯. 😎 "New Age" in the negative connotation I think refers to a kind of lazy hodgepodging for shallow personal indulgence and without intention for real depth or transformation. A kind of performative spirituality that feels insincere and often intersects with cultural appropriation. Anyway, FWIW this difficulty in arbitrating between "True Daoism™" and any "Discussions Along The Way" was part of my motivation to simply merge the two main forums and let us all be weird in one spot. Sean