道格 Tao Standard #21

Larry Neal Gowdy

'Way, person not able necessary moment leave. Able leave, not way.' (中庸 Zhong Yong #1)

According to ancient Chinese texts dating back to around twenty-five-hundred years ago, at least some of the people knew that the laws of Nature ruled all things within Nature, and that it was not possible for anyone to leave Nature's laws. Even if a person had to do so, even if a person must do so, even if it was ultimately necessary, still it is not possible for anyone to leave Nature's way... cannot be done... not for so much as a moment.

The words have been written many times... over two-thousand years have passed, and still all nations on earth, and all cultures on earth, still believe that Nature can be ignored... believe, that Nature plays no role in man's life... believe, that man can leave Nature's laws.

Almost all people think of the laws of Nature as something 'out there', outside, external, a thing that does not relate to the people's own lives. People are mentally passive, exerting little or no mental effort to discern how the laws of Nature affect one's own life, and especially do people not extrapolate nor give effort to analyze how the laws of Nature are expressed within one's own life.

Nature rules man, man does not rule Nature, but almost all people sincerely do believe that they can ignore the laws of Nature in favor of magical mystical supernatural fantasies.

Man-made laws change... always change... change and change, and change more, but Nature's laws never change. Nature is the one and only possible standard in this Reality... there are none others possible, and yet man continues being unable to see Nature in front of his own eyes.

The following quotes are from G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (1908, William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccels)... the quotes are quite good for being examples of how desperately mankind has grasped for standards, inventing imaginative standards of his own, while never seeing what is in front of his eyes.

"If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard? Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil; if it were so, we could not talk of surpassing or even falling short of them. How can you overtake Jones if you walk in the other direction? You cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being miserable than another succeeded in being happy. It would be like discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig is fat."

People continue to talk about good and evil, and yet, apparently, almost no one on earth knows what the words mean. Most all people dwell within their own invented philosophies, philosophically rambling of things that do not relate to anything real in this Reality, and then the people not comprehending why the philosophical ramblings never find answers.

Why is it all but impossible for most people to mentally grasp what 'good' and 'bad' mean? The answer is obvious... the people ignore Nature's way while truly believing that the people's fantasies are more real than Nature itself.

"The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought about the past or future simply impossible. The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them."

And there it is... people actually believing that 'standards' are things that humans have control over and can change willy-nilly upon whims of the moment. According to the highest and greatest philosophical minds, it is man who creates the standards of good and evil... the philosophers fully ignoring what is in front of their eyes.

"Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men's acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness. He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will. He does not say, "Jam will make me happy," but "I want jam." And in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm."

Precisely... people invent their imaginary 'new and improved' standards, and if the standards are 'feel-good standards', then other people will also believe that the imaginary standards are worthy of being followed, but only followed for as long as the standards feel good and satisfy each individual's material lusts.

"...Some satisfaction is needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle--that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant."

Ah, but today, within the closed circles of science and biology, the individuals truly do believe that the man-invented doctrine of 'survival of the fittest' is real Reality.

"...Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature."

And there, the author — unintentionally of course — proved the point... almost all people do not and cannot mentally grasp what is in front of their own eyes. The author continued:

"For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value. To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.

We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature, and as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will leave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God. We must have our own vision. But the attempts of most moderns to express it are highly vague."

Chesterton, as all other philosophers, rambled, and rambled, and rambled within circular reasoning, while not once pausing to give attention to what was in front of his own eyes.

Chesterton's statement — regardless of how entertaining his skill was with words — describes the core problem... "We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature". Most people today believe in science... the people believe in science more than the people believe in their religions... the people sacrificing their own children to be vivisectioned to death by science gods... the people believing in science more than their own lives... the people today forming large groups to protest the world's ills, while the people chant that governments must obey science, and yet not a single one of the protestors have enough mind to grasp the reality that Nature rules man, and that man-made science cannot rule Nature. And far more ridiculous is that the pro-science protestors themselves will not participate in their own lives, nor participate in their own science, by turning off their cell phones. And there it is again... the people following 'feel-good' standards, not because the standards are true, nor because the standards are reasonable, but rather only because the standards feel good at the moment.

Chesterton made another comment that is worthy of attention... "You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior". Wow. According to Chesterton and all known philosophers, there must first exist a man-made man-imagined man-invented doctrine before a thing can be real or true.

Doctrines... doctrines doctrines doctrines, far too many people truly believe that 'doctrines' are true truths, and that no truth can exist unless it is presented within a man-made man-written doctrine. Observe Chesterton's words, that first there must be a "doctrine" before even Nature's laws can be accepted as being relevant or even real. The word 'doctrine' is commonly defined to be a popularly-accepted belief of a written thing being the authority over the topic of attention, which sums to the popular belief that man — the created thing — must first write a doctrine before Nature's laws — the Creator of man — can be accepted to exist.

The preponderance of people believing in doctrines, is a portion of the cause of why the simple two words 中庸 (Zhong Yong - Middle Use), has been, today, popularly translated into English as Doctrine of the Mean. Scholars' lust for written doctrines is so prevalent that when a text is found to speak of anything related to how people ought to behave, the scholars, and philosophers, and ideologists quickly leap to claim that the writing must be a "doctrine".

Firsts... such a simple little topic, and yet so precious few humans have ever recognized that Nature arrived first before humans.

Feel-good ideologies, feel-good doctrines, feel-good science, feel-good philosophy, feel-good beliefs, all are immediately abandoned when they no longer feel good.

Chesterton's comment: "Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value" again illustrates how philosophers endlessly debate topics without first knowing what the topics are. The word 'value' is an utter unknown to philosophy, science, and all other ideologies. Philosophically debating the topic of 'value' relates to Chesterton's previous comment: "Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle--that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism".

A portion of Chesterton's thoughts within the "Maniac" chapter:

"And in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street."

Relative to topics like the word 'value', western philosophy never has, and never will achieve "the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street".

"The standard of value of the Objectivist ethics - the standard by which one judges what is good or evil - is man's life, or: that which is required for man's survival qua man." (The Objectivist Ethics, Ayn Rand)

Rand wrote books of fiction, the public enjoyed reading the books of fiction, the fiction books' ideas felt good to the readers, so the readers invented a new feel-good ideology, and gave the new ideology the name 'Objectivism'. Rand wrote fiction... fiction is not nonfiction... fiction... fiction... Rand's claim of 'standard of value' was fiction, still is fiction, and always will be fiction.

Within Daodejing, the value of a cart's wheel, is not within the spokes, nor within the so-called "nothingness-emptiness" inside of the hub, but rather within the purpose of why the wheel was created by its creator. The value of windows and doors, is not within the so-called "nothingness-emptiness" of the openings, but rather within the purpose of why the windows and doors were created by their creator. The value of a clay vessel, is not within the so-called "nothingness-emptiness" between the vessel's sides, but rather within the purpose of why the vessel was created by its creator. Men invented many mystical magical ideologies about "nothingness-emptiness", and then claimed that the standard of value was within the "nothingness-emptiness"... the ideologies' doctrines ignore that humans are not first, and the ideologies' inventors also cannot grasp that all 'value' is within the Creator's purpose, and not within the created things themselves.

When Nature-based logic is spoken of, why is it so difficult for people to grasp? Nature is first before man, Nature is first before man-imagined beliefs, Nature is first before man-made man-written doctrines, and always will Nature precede all people. For an individual to not choose Nature-based logic, permanently proves that the individual is mentally unable to discern a very simple two-dimensional string of sequences.

Daodejing spoke of mutuals... but if the common translators could not grasp the simple two-dimensional difference — and mutual — of first and last, then of course the translators could not translate what was beyond what the translators could see in front of their own eyes.

Dao is first, before Nature... 'not know any it child of'... dao is not a man-made thing, nor a man-made ideology.

A correct standard, is, and always will be, the Source's as observed within Nature. The sequenced source of man, is Source first, then dao, then Nature, then man last. Nature's way is the standard of man, and all of man's invented standards are of maniacs'.