No more right-wing bullshit.

[OldDog]

2 hours ago, OldDog said:

This is a very delicate subject. On the surface Steve's assertion is shocking, outrageous ... And probably gets a lot of people's backs up. But I think it bears a little deeper discussion.

 

I just re-read my earlier comment and while I stand behind what I wrote, I think it needs qualification. It should not be taken as an endorsement of a left view. I very carefully worded the comment without direct reference left/right politics. I leave it to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

 

And so I think it should be with any political discussion ... void of direct reference, nameless ... as neutral as possible. We should be discussing ideas and processes ... Looking deeper than the surface issues. How else will we be able to understand what is happening to us?

 

[dawei]

5 hours ago, OldDog said:

So, what happened? Some very astute politicians realized that Christians represented a voting block that was already consolidated around a set of values. They needed no convincing. All that was necessary was that a political party, regardless of its agenda, adopt these moral values, at least superficially, and a large block of voters would swing their way.

 

Ever since then, that political party has only had to agitate the moral block ... by way of threatening their core values ... in order to gain support each political cycle ... And their real agenda can ride the wave.

 

I think you have made a clear point here, thanks. 

 

5 hours ago, OldDog said:

Small wonder our founding fathers took steps to try and keep religion and governing separate. They just didn't figure on political parties being so ... Machiavellian. 

 

But have wondered about this on some level.

 

The Feuding Fathers

 

[ralis]

3 hours ago, dawei said:

 

I think you have made a clear point here, thanks. 

 

 

But have wondered about this on some level.

 

The Feuding Fathers

 

 

‘The linked article is behind a paywall. 

[dawei]

2 hours ago, ralis said:

 

‘The linked article is behind a paywall. 

 

I've encountered that at times and it really seems to vary.  Sorry about that. 

 

AH, your right !!!   maybe the first link is open but later ones are not.  I just got blocked from the entire article.  Maybe I'll check if clearing my cache lets me back in but good to know.  Thanks. 

 

I went through my clear cache that I normally do (3 softwares) and cannot read the entire thing again.  Apologies for posting a link that cannot be read now. 

Edited August 17, 2019 by dawei

[Geof Nanto]

A general comment on the left / right divide....

 

From my perspective in Australia, the centre in American politics is well to the right. From what I’ve seen, all of the so called left-wing policies mentioned in the American context are undisputed policies on both sides of mainstream politics here. I suspect this is also the case in most all, if not all, other Western democracies. 
 

[OldDog]

1 hour ago, Yueya said:

A general comment on the left / right divide....

 

Your words reflect only the outer appearance of things. I fear it runs deeper still. It is not a case of left or right. If it were only that, then there could be a way to reconcile and find a way forward, as other countries with liberal and conservative elements have done. I fear that in American it is not position on social policy that drives politics but rather it is monied and power seeking interests which have their own agenda.

[Geof Nanto]

7 minutes ago, OldDog said:

I fear that in American it is not position on social policy that drives politics but rather it is monied and power seeking interests which have their own agenda.

 

Yes, I've just added a new topic with this same thought as one of my observations.  

[sean]

On 8/17/2019 at 4:50 PM, Yueya said:

From my perspective in Australia, the centre in American politics is well to the right. From what I’ve seen, all of the so called left-wing policies mentioned in the American context are undisputed policies on both sides of mainstream politics here. I suspect this is also the case in most all, if not all, other Western democracies.

 

[liminal_luke]

I´m adamantly opposed to "forced property seizure by the working-class" yet happy to support programs and policies to keep people from dying in medical poverty.  Does this make me exactly the kind of leftist that earns eye rolls from our beloved leader?  Perhaps.  Still,  it´s not all the time that I´m in tune with the American zeitgeist and I´ll take my conformity where I can get it.

[Apech]

47 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

I´m adamantly opposed to "forced property seizure by the working-class" yet happy to support programs and policies to keep people from dying in medical poverty.  Does this make me exactly the kind of leftist that earns eye rolls from our beloved leader?  Perhaps.  Still,  it´s not all the time that I´m in tune with the American zeitgeist and I´ll take my conformity where I can get it.

 

Count me in to the soft lefty camp.  Can't people just be nice to each other without taking their stuff

 

 

[Apech]

5 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

Count me in to the soft lefty camp.  Can't people just be nice to each other without taking their stuff

 

 

 

 

I'll let Stephen Fry speak for me:

 

 

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

 

Count me in to the soft lefty camp.  Can't people just be nice to each other without taking their stuff

 

 

 

The people who can be nice to each other without taking their stuff wind up having their stuff taken by those who are not so nice. 

 

I don't know what could undo a predatory economy.  Perhaps a social movement that would heavily stigmatize, without punishing,  wealth in excess of what one can use in one lifetime?  I remember, as a kid, being really worried that I might accidentally wind up possessing something that would make other kids think I'm "wealthy."  I only had very basic necessities growing up, and so did most kids I interacted with.  So a new pair of boots, fancy, expensive looking, of uncommon style, higher-than-average quality -- when I was 7, I refused to wear them to school.  "What if they think I'm wealthy" -- it would be shameful, I knew it!  I also had a bicycle where most kids didn't -- well, that was redeemable by letting anyone who wanted to ride it borrow it.  I don't remember exactly when this flipped toward the opposite scenario, only that it happened fast...  a revolution of consciousness of sorts...  and at 9, a girl who showed up wearing pants that were fancy, expensive looking, etc., was no longer worried that other kids will see her as "wealthy" and shame her for it -- on the contrary, she was proud and everybody was envious.  How does that happen?..    

[Nungali]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

 

Count me in to the soft lefty camp.  Can't people just be nice to each other without taking their stuff

 

 

 

'Ownership' is an interesting concept .   It was fairly challenging for me  (at first)  staying in an Aboriginal camp.

 

' I am off to the shops  ( a looong drive ), anyone want anything ? "

 

Ooooooow   ... thats what ya get for not 'sneakin off' !   ..... list totalled  near $300 and all I wanted was some coffee, and powdered milk 

 

 

Watch this ... I seen stuff like this all the time ... but you gotta be quick and observant,  as its just part of the 'way of things '

 

@   0:26  -   0:29 .

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle Lewi stopped off here on way to city , he was  picking up some money for some artwork he did on an album cover  - 3G.

 

" You spread that around / "  I asked him .

 

" Nope ! " 

 

.... curious . 

 

 ---------

 

  He stopped in on his way home ;  New car, totally cashed up .  "Where did that come from ! "

 

"  I used  some of that money to buy paints and  a huge roll of canvass, sat down  in my mates  squatter warehouse  for days painting . Then I got painted up, took my didge'  and sticks and canvass roll and  a pair of scissors down to Chinatown and  set up on the ground 'busking', sold the painting by the metre, just cut off what they wanted. The Chinese tourists paid HEAPS .  So I got a new car and this ."

 

- shows me a crazy amount of money.

 

Me ; " Now what ? "

 

" Oh ... I give  to the mob  *  . "  

 

 

 

*   Associated kin and extended family

 

Casual ... just like that .

[Nungali]

15 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

The people who can be nice to each other without taking their stuff wind up having their stuff taken by those who are not so nice. 

 

In the 'old days' we put numerous festivals here,  each would take about 6 months out of my life - but it was fun  ( so maybe it put 6 months INTO my life ).  But it does take money. We prided ourselves on being one of the best cheapest non commercial festivals around.

 

We where nice and did not want to refuse people entry that genuinely could not afford it . I observed there where predators who hunted and took advantage of this concept . I went through ll sorts of dynamics with them over the years . Often they had a wallet full of cash !

 

" Oh  Man, we all own everything Man . What goves you the right to take ownership  Man . ... etc "  

 

We even had a " if you cant pay, you can get in by helping us  work ' policy.  Got scammed big time with that .  A lot of people   where not even asking , just sneaking in . More and more each year as the word got out .  They would come up an old track from our pump house, up the river and into the site the back way.

 

So one day I filled it with pulled out lantana, prickles, claw vine   and other nastiness. HEAPS of it, rammed it in with the tractor for a good 70 metres     I set up a little table at the end   and took some tickets and waited .  Eventually bedraggled, snagged scraped and scratched  people would emerge with their camping equipment and ..... 

 

"    Good Morning !  Three adults s it ?  Thats $180  please .  ... and by the way, its a lot easier coming in the main entrance  , and there, if you cant afford the fee they will arrange something for you  ... but not here . " 

 

That and similar dynamics of rule breaking    eg no dogs and cats, no glass, leave you car in car park and dont drive around the camp ground , not damaging environment or polluting,  etc etc  eventually ended all their fun .  warned em it might happen but I got the 'hand wave'  ... what would I know , I was the 'fascist controller '   (most didnt realise I was the main organiser  that made all that fun possible in the first place     )  Ho hum .

 

I guess I didnt  LOOK    cool enough ?

 

 I remember one guy,  a real hippy looking dude ,single  Dad, turned up with a heap of kids, insisted on paying upfront for everyone  got there early, helped with last setup, worked all through the festival, helped people, also partied hard .  yeah !

 

Others winged and wined,  got in for free, didnt work, had a lot of money  and probably didnt have as much fun 

 

Tis the way of people , I suppose .

 

 

15 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

I don't know what could undo a predatory economy.  Perhaps a social movement that would heavily stigmatize, without punishing,  wealth in excess of what one can use in one lifetime?  I remember, as a kid, being really worried that I might accidentally wind up possessing something that would make other kids think I'm "wealthy."  I only had very basic necessities growing up, and so did most kids I interacted with.  So a new pair of boots, fancy, expensive looking, of uncommon style, higher-than-average quality -- when I was 7, I refused to wear them to school.  "What if they think I'm wealthy" -- it would be shameful, I knew it!  I also had a bicycle where most kids didn't -- well, that was redeemable by letting anyone who wanted to ride it borrow it.  I don't remember exactly when this flipped toward the opposite scenario, only that it happened fast...  a revolution of consciousness of sorts...  and at 9, a girl who showed up wearing pants that were fancy, expensive looking, etc., was no longer worried that other kids will see her as "wealthy" and shame her for it -- on the contrary, she was proud and everybody was envious.  How does that happen?..    

 

 

It happens via the same dynamic that causes social systems to go capitalist , it is what happened here on the commune and has happened throughout Kibbutz movement .

 

Its the main complaint against socialism / communism that many have .  It is refelected in the 'commune movement' and ended most of them.  Nowadays they are all interested in a new variation 'Intentional Communities'   - whatever.

 

I spoke at a few workshops' on them .... I do know the solution to it  ... I was actually lauded by one group when they heard it and they thought I had solved the problem that plagues all this, went and got their leader to listen ... but he didnt like it  ..... not having the limelight on him that is .... I dont even think he heard what I said, like the others did . Or didnt want to or just culd not accept such a notion about people and societies .

 

I can explain it later if you like . Pressed for time now

 

[liminal_luke]

In my ideal world there´d be less super rich people and less super poor, more of a middle class.  Still, I´m not sure that shaming the conspicuously wealthy is the answer. I´m not a black tie and faux gras type of person.  If I threw a Bum-wide potluck here at my apartment (very unlikely), nobody would think me in danger of being obscenely high-class. Even so, I know what it´s like to be embarassed about nice things.  Years ago I bought some computer equipment and hoped to sneak the boxes into my bedroom without my roommates knowing.  That´s how ashamed I felt.  A mischievious friend who was helping me bring in my stuff made a loud announcement in front of everybody: oh look at this box, must be expensive.  I was mortified.

 

These days I don´t think it´s wrong to have money, even lots of it.  Well, that´s not really true.  I´m not actually that comfortable with money, not yet, but I´d like to be. Many poor people tend to think there´s something morally suspicious about the rich and vice versa.  Theoretically, I believe there are good and bad people all along the economic spectrum.  Not having money doesn´t make a person a criminal -- and neither does having it.  I´m glad to live in a world where some people own yachts and Cartier watches.  I hope such people pay high taxes and give generously to those less materially blessed but I don´t want to see them shamed and banished.

[Taomeow]

Maybe none of it applies because I suspect we don't know the real situation, we see the tip of the iceberg and we can't find a solution because, well, the tip has been dissolved many times and it didn't affect the invisible part of the iceberg at all, and the new structure growing on top of it just replicated itself, with this or that level of precision.  That's one reason I don't pay much attention to what's going on on the visible top.  Sometimes I get glimpses of the invisible though, and that's when I start scrambling for a time machine to get the hell outta here.

 

A casual item on some TV show I saw perhaps 20 years ago.  About what wealthy people are into, about "it's not what you plebeians think."  No, not foie gras and black ties.  Not champagne and caviar.  They are into "whatever the hell I please," that's the name of the bigger game.  And that tip of the iceberg that gave me one of the memorable glimpses into what lies beneath was a few minutes' worth of a documentary within that show about a woman in California, in a place that "will remain anonymous," who -- the narrator informed the viewers in a  voice full of admiration -- does not collect cars or works of art but likes to collect live lions.  She doesn't do anything with them, just collects them.  At the time she had 56 of them -- in rows of small cages on her property, much like prison cells in an ordinary jail.  She was a young woman, perhaps in her 30s, looking like a regular California trophy wife.  There's no way she earned, or any which way deserved, to have the resources to be doing what she's doing.  Why?  Why inflict unimaginable misery on the magnificent, endangered animals in this manner, toward no imaginable purpose?  What can possibly be happening in a head that came up with this hobby?  How many heads of this kind are out there, in control of 99% of everything there is to have and to control?  And how scary is it if you stop and think about it?  What else is going on?  We all love to think "nothing much," horror scenarios are for movies and tinfoil hat wearing cooks, what's going on is, at most, champagne and caviar in excess of what we have access to but that's it. 

 

Nope.  That's not it.  Secret wealth and secret power and secret infernal madness go hand in hand -- that's what I think is the part that doesn't even occur to most about the invisible underwater part of the iceberg.  No one wants to "go there" and there's no proof anyway, ever.  But, man, circumstantial evidence...  Damn...   

Edited August 20, 2019 by Taomeow

[liminal_luke]

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

 

A casual item on some TV show I saw perhaps 20 years ago.  About what wealthy people are into, about "it's not what you plebeians think."  No, not foie gras and black ties.  Not champagne and caviar.  They are into "whatever the hell I please," that's the name of the bigger game.  

 

You´ve got a point.  My idea of wealthy is a pantry full of great condiments, Red Boat fish sauce and aged balsamic vinegar.  There´s no point collecting lions.  I think it´s challenging maintaining mental balance with too much money, just as it can be challenging maintaining mental balance with too little.

[Apech]

4 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

In my ideal world there´d be less super rich people and less super poor, more of a middle class.  Still, I´m not sure that shaming the conspicuously wealthy is the answer. I´m not a black tie and faux gras type of person.  If I threw a Bum-wide potluck here at my apartment (very unlikely), nobody would think me in danger of being obscenely high-class. Even so, I know what it´s like to be embarassed about nice things.  Years ago I bought some computer equipment and hoped to sneak the boxes into my bedroom without my roommates knowing.  That´s how ashamed I felt.  A mischievious friend who was helping me bring in my stuff made a loud announcement in front of everybody: oh look at this box, must be expensive.  I was mortified.

 

These days I don´t think it´s wrong to have money, even lots of it.  Well, that´s not really true.  I´m not actually that comfortable with money, not yet, but I´d like to be. Many poor people tend to think there´s something morally suspicious about the rich and vice versa.  Theoretically, I believe there are good and bad people all along the economic spectrum.  Not having money doesn´t make a person a criminal -- and neither does having it.  I´m glad to live in a world where some people own yachts and Cartier watches.  I hope such people pay high taxes and give generously to those less materially blessed but I don´t want to see them shamed and banished.

 

It's 'foie gras' old chap - though perhaps when times are tough you have to put up with the faux version  

Actually for me inequalities only matter when you don't have enough - if you have a enough who cares if your neighbour has a Farrari?  The problem is if you want to equalise things by say, taking someone's stuff then you can only really do that by repealing property law and with guns to enforce.  At which point you have to ask who decides who should and shouldn't have things?  And  whoever it is becomes de facto, your dictator.  If Sean and others want anarchy to create dictatorships that's their choice (to want it) but be careful what you wish for.  And also I would observe that every single Trot, Anarchist, Marxist-Leninist I have ever known (which is quite a few) end up in financial services, real estate , hard-headed business or becoming a professional gob shite in a university somewhere.  

[Apech]

3 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Maybe none of it applies because I suspect we don't know the real situation, we see the tip of the iceberg and we can't find a solution because, well, the tip has been dissolved many times and it didn't affect the invisible part of the iceberg at all, and the new structure growing on top of it just replicated itself, with this or that level of precision.  That's one reason I don't pay much attention to what's going on on the visible top.  Sometimes I get glimpses of the invisible though, and that's when I start scrambling for a time machine to get the hell outta here.

 

A casual item on some TV show I saw perhaps 20 years ago.  About what wealthy people are into, about "it's not what you plebeians think."  No, not foie gras and black ties.  Not champagne and caviar.  They are into "whatever the hell I please," that's the name of the bigger game.  And that tip of the iceberg that gave me one of the memorable glimpses into what lies beneath was a few minutes' worth of a documentary within that show about a woman in California, in a place that "will remain anonymous," who -- the narrator informed the viewers in a  voice full of admiration -- does not collect cars or works of art but likes to collect live lions.  She doesn't do anything with them, just collects them.  At the time she had 56 of them -- in rows of small cages on her property, much like prison cells in an ordinary jail.  She was a young woman, perhaps in her 30s, looking like a regular California trophy wife.  There's no way she earned, or any which way deserved, to have the resources to be doing what she's doing.  Why?  Why inflict unimaginable misery on the magnificent, endangered animals in this manner, toward no imaginable purpose?  What can possibly be happening in a head that came up with this hobby?  How many heads of this kind are out there, in control of 99% of everything there is to have and to control?  And how scary is it if you stop and think about it?  What else is going on?  We all love to think "nothing much," horror scenarios are for movies and tinfoil hat wearing cooks, what's going on is, at most, champagne and caviar in excess of what we have access to but that's it. 

 

Nope.  That's not it.  Secret wealth and secret power and secret infernal madness go hand in hand -- that's what I think is the part that doesn't even occur to most about the invisible underwater part of the iceberg.  No one wants to "go there" and there's no proof anyway, ever.  But, man, circumstantial evidence...  Damn...   

 

Indeed Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew et al scrape the suface of something very dark and disturbing.  I can think of some answers but I would go all Buddhist on you and you wouldn't like that

 

But then why the Dao or nature distributes so much wealth to so few is a genuinely ineresting question.

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, Apech said:

 

Indeed Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew et al scrape the suface of something very dark and disturbing.  I can think of some answers but I would go all Buddhist on you and you wouldn't like that

 

I don't mind hearing you out on the Buddhist version if you're up to sharing (although I seldom agree with Buddhists on much, I can always find it in me to process their perspective. ) I do know the non-Buddhist version -- several in fact.  Take the  gnostic one, e.g..  They came up with theirs long before our kind of technology, long before anyone thought that AI would ever be a thing...  I wonder how they knew that an excess of technology and a deficiency of the soul are two sides of the same coin.  I developed some new respect for their version when I did Prince Charles's bazi reading and discovered he only had two phases of wuxing in his make-up.  That's an elemental, practically.  Humans are usually more complex than that.  And demons have only one phase.  So royalty must be somewhere in between (although I didn't have access to more royal specimens' natal information, who knows -- might have discovered that some of them do have only one phase.)   

 

2 hours ago, Apech said:

But then why the Dao or nature distributes so much wealth to so few is a genuinely ineresting question.

   

"In the human world tao has been destroyed," according to everybody who's anybody in taoism.  Tao doesn't print money.  But it does base its functions on self-replication.  Who'd have guessed that this "virtue" of tao could be imitated to build replicators of dead things and get enslaved by them.  I'm pretty sure tao itself, if it had a head to scratch, would be doing just that looking at us.     

[Apech]

5 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

I don't mind hearing you out on the Buddhist version if you're up to sharing (although I seldom agree with Buddhists on much, I can always find it in me to process their perspective. ) I do know the non-Buddhist version -- several in fact.  Take the  gnostic one, e.g..  They came up with theirs long before our kind of technology, long before anyone thought that AI would ever be a thing...  I wonder how they knew that an excess of technology and a deficiency of the soul are two sides of the same coin.  I developed some new respect for their version when I did Prince Charles's bazi reading and discovered he only had two phases of wuxing in his make-up.  That's an elemental, practically.  Humans are usually more complex than that.  And demons have only one phase.  So royalty must be somewhere in between (although I didn't have access to more royal specimens' natal information, who knows -- might have discovered that some of them do have only one phase.)   

 

   

"In the human world tao has been destroyed," according to everybody who's anybody in taoism.  Tao doesn't print money.  But it does base its functions on self-replication.  Who'd have guessed that this "virtue" of tao could be imitated to build replicators of dead things and get enslaved by them.  I'm pretty sure tao itself, if it had a head to scratch, would be doing just that looking at us.     

 

 

That about Prince Charles does not surprise me one bit.  The British Royal family have perhaps the most well documented history of bloodthirsty violence, greed, lust, deceit and appropriation - and somehow the Queen comes out of that to represent all that is steadfast, dutiful, loyal and good.  They have repeatedly sunk to the depths of genuine unpopularity only to rise phoenix like to be embraced by the hearts of the British people and be feted round the world.  There is something reptilian about that for sure and not entirely human.  Meanwhile in their private lives there is an icy blast where otherwise emotions would dwell.  I say all this as a loyal Englishman

 

That's a very interesting quote ... although is it literally possible to destroy the tao? 

 

 

[liminal_luke]

9 hours ago, Apech said:

 

But then why the Dao or nature distributes so much wealth to so few is a genuinely ineresting question.

 

I´ve spent a lot of time talking to self-appointed authorities in the healing crystal section of my local occult bookstore and I think I know the answer: some people are here to learn life lessons about having lots of money while others (most) need to learn life lessons about scarcity.

 

(In truth, I´m as attracted to beautiful rocks as the next guy and love to hang out in New Age shops. I draw the line at coastal art galleries offering dolphin sculptures.)

 

((Hands Apech a tray of delicious vegetarian faux gras.))

Edited August 20, 2019 by liminal_luke

[Apech]

54 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I´ve spent a lot of time talking to self-appointed authorities in the healing crystal section of my local occult bookstore and I think I know the answer: some people are here to learn life lessons about having lots of money while others (most) need to learn life lessons about scarcity.

 

(In truth, I´m as attracted to beautiful rocks as the next guy and love to hang out in New Age shops. I draw the line at coastal art galleries offering dolphin sculptures.)

 

((Hands Apech a tray of delicious vegetarian faux gras.))

 

 

Merci beaucoup - is your house full of amethyst geodes?

[manitou]

5 minutes ago, Apech said:

 

 

Merci beaucoup - is your house full of amethyst geodes?

 

 

Hardest thing in the world to dust.  submerge in water, no problem

[Taomeow]

3 hours ago, Apech said:

 

That's a very interesting quote ... although is it literally possible to destroy the tao? 

 

 

 

 Within oneself, definitely.  Within a whole society, definitely.  Both the individual human self and civilized human society are very impermanent phenomena while tao is eternal.  It is possible to destroy anything eternal locally even though it's not possible to destroy it on its own scale. Does it matter on the local level, of an individual, or a whole society where it has been destroyed, that on the nonlocal level it's indestructible?  Hardly.  One's own scale is where things matter.  

 

Imagine a man whose hair naturally manifests to always grow and renew itself -- continuously a few individual hairs fall out every day and a few new ones sprout to replace them.  At all times this lucky individual, impervious to male pattern baldness, would have a full head of hair if he were to just "go with the flow."  But what if he's a monk and the monastic code demands that he shaves his head daily, so that not a single hair can emerge.  What if he shaves his head for 70 years, since he's been admitted as a boy and throughout his life?  One can say hair on this man's head has been eliminated.  "Destroyed" for all practical purposes -- maybe it isn't "really" destroyed, maybe all he needs to do for it to manifest is stop shaving it.  But he never stops.  He always shaves his head.  So, it's not that all hair everywhere has been destroyed -- unless the society, for whatever reasons, decrees that everybody must shave their heads.  Besides some varieties of monks, there's other groups that do it, for religious reasons (e.g., in a few communities, married orthodox Hasidic women shave their heads and wear a wig instead), or hygienic (in Russia, an army conscript and a prisoner alike had their hair shaved off to prevent the spread of lice in confined settings), or fashion mixed with this or that ideology (skinheads), or iatrogenic (chemo patients), and so on.  If one of such groups were to gain universal power and demanded that everybody shave their heads, and if it happened ten thousand years ago, we would probably never even know what human hair looks like.

 

Well, in our practical case, it didn't happen with human hair.  It happened with human life as a whole.   It got shaved off and replaced with a wig, or a head scarf, or a burqa, or a tinfoil hat, or a soldier's helmet, or just remained bare -- metaphorically speaking, not in terms of what we do with our hair universally, in terms of how we do nearly everything with all things natural.  That's what taoist sages meant I think.  Of course they knew better than everyone else that tao is indestructible on the nonlocal level.  But they also knew it's zero consolation and zero redemption for those dwelling on the local one and destroying tao just about as far as their local size allows them to reach.