Violence is pain

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.

Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?

His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.

He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

Retrieved from: Kasayasan.

Blogger as Artist. Attention-Seeking Culture or Information Sharing Attitude?

It is a fact.

In the Western societies, we are encouraged to aim for those ideals like fame, success and power.

Especially fame, since it can easily bring the other two along.

Fame is measured in the amount of attention one receives. Back then, attracting attention with such an ambitious aim was beyond the reach of the average individual. But internet came, and with it, the social networks and the blogs. I will leave the social networks for now just to focus on blogs.

A blog is thought to be a personal (yet open) space where an individual puts any type of content he wants to share.

The common aim of a blog is sharing information, hence their open nature.

But in our western culture, almost everything gravitates around attracting attention upon ourselves, that is why, sites like Youtube, where an individual can be heard (synonymous with attracting attention) are so successful. The blogsphere is not an exception.

There is a blurry line between sharing information and seeking attention from others.

This leads us to the dilemma of the artist.

It is well known that, not only today, but always, artists of any kind have struggled between their love towards what they do and their desire to spread their work (to be known). These two forces are often exclusive respect to each other, meaning by that how easy is to get lost in seeking attention by spreading information that one ends up spreading nothing but the truth of one’s desperate attempts of being known, reckognized, remembered. And in some broader sense, that is just an attempt to escape the truth of our own fleeting nature. Our mortality.

It could be said that another aim of most artists is keeping their works away from time, at least for a while. The intention of putting ideas on permanent containers does not seem to have other reason, and also it could be seen that for the love of humanity, you should share the best of you, your beloved work, with everybody, otherwise you are doomed to die in a sort of spiritualist selfishness. Some kind of aberration of the concept of artist. After all, knowledge implies the idea of sharing. Information is a layer of knowledge.

The dilemma lies here: what is more important, getting your information spread far away or doing what you love?

That dilemma is the dilemma of this blogger.

About free will, evil and love: Dialogue with an amoralist God

Smullyan is quite an off-beat person. Why?

He started as magician and later on went to become a logician. The most incredible part is that he also became a Taoist (for details of the core ideas of this eastern philosophy click here). It is no secret that Taoist views are rooted on profound paradoxes nor it is secret that Western logicians have been battling against paradoxes like doctors a disease. It should seem that both logic and Taoism are conflicting but apparently, this fellow has managed to keep inner peace.

“Is God a Taoist?” is a dialogue between God and a theist where the latter asks the former why did he bestow free will on humans.  What follows is an explanation of quite a laid-back God who describes the problem of evil, his love for humans as well as a surprisingly simple idea to show why humans need free will.

P.S. Taoists do not believe in divine entities so the title of the dialogue itself can be taken as a sort of paradox, making the title a subtle reference to a core paradox surrounding the idea of free will (this core paradox happens to be mentioned in the dialogue).

You can read it here for free.

Eastern Philosophy: Tao Te King

Chinese kanji for "way". Tao means way.

It starts like this:

“The Tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin.

of particular things.

Free from desire, you realise the mystery

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.”

So even though the book talks about the Tao it tells you that the Tao that can be told is not the real Tao. We are supposed to make inferences of what they say to understand what it is meant by Tao. It is like the allegory of the finger pointing at the Moon, the finger is needed to point at the Moon, it is a means, but the finger is not the Moon. You must make an inference and understand what the finger is actually doing so then you can follow the direction of the finger and eventually leave it and keep going with your inference. And then, you see the Moon.

Paradoxes abound in this book as in no other, yet universal truths also abound in this book as in no other. As I already explained, making a direct review of the book goes against what the book tell us in order to understand it. Themes of wisdom, humility and respect are frequent.

The author? As with many books, the authorship of masterpieces is a controversial topic, but you don’t need to know the author to enjoy a bit of millenarian wisdom.

Read it here for free