It seems like a good book. It’s not perfect, and there’s flaws here and there, especially with the part of trying to make “a way” of doing things, because every time we try to covert others to “a way” of doing things, we deprive ourselves of the surprise of something new and maybe even better.
Not surprising, was the time of the writing, which places it around 4th century BC, which makes sense, because after reading it, a little debate came into the mind, seeing there are some similar statements here, as well as in the previous books i’ve reviewed, and i was wondering who copied who, but a logical thought comes in the form of … when parts of a certain philosophy have been taken and made into a less intelligent form, for the purpose of controlling fellow people, it could only have come after, and from little people.
Anyway, i say it’s not perfect, because there are flaws here and there and sometimes i just don’t agree with some of the ideas, like for instance the idea of “stop striving – in the absence of desire, there is peace” … i mean yeah that could work for someone interested in peace, but peace and serenity is not always what is needed.
Overall it seems like a good book, but my perspective shifts a little whenever someone is interested in someone else following because a true leader doesn’t need followers or anyone behind him. A true leader would always be the last one, looking to see if anyone got left behind. With that said, there’s still a bunch of good thoughts in it, and there seems to be more good than bad. i am sure that by now, if you’ve gone through other books, you’ve understood why we read them, and following is most definitely not one of the reasons, so you’ll be able to sift and pick whatever makes you stronger.
i know i keep saying it’s a good book, but another thought came to mind this morning, and i was thinking … alright … let’s go back to the basics – what does the book want? – the book talks about The Tao, which is a way, that wants to be followed, and everything seems fine till now, but let’s pause for a second and think of an endgame. Can you imagine how everything would look like if everyone followed The Tao ? i mean, if the way of being promoted is giving up control, desire, and doing nothing, then if everyone does that, then who is the one that does end up having control over everything? Because the things taught are about laws of attraction and the universe will provide and so on, so basically the followers should be the ones relinquishing control and independence for the hope that they would get what? Peace, serenity, tranquility, everyone singing happily in the meadows?
Let’s test some of this by doing a thought experiment, shall we? Let’s say that we’d be the universe right? And we see things static, doing nothing. Is there any incentive to provide anything to something that already is or do we work with the things in motion, things that want something? Do we fulfill the desires of those who don’t have any? Do we fix things that aren’t broken?
With this in mind, i think that although some of the things in the book are good, it’s still a book that seems like it was created with the intention to create a following, to lead people on a certain path, and to me, it doesn’t look like it’s a path of individual power and fulfillment, but of compliance, acceptance, and pacification. We all know that pacified people will not stand up, because they’ve been taught to accept their fate and that that is the natural way.
As i’ve established that one of the possibilities i see here is that The Tao is there to get everyone on the path relinquishing all their desires, so that it can move things as it wants and be the one in charge, then i guess the existence of the other books makes sense, because they had to be created in various forms, for various levels of intelligence. There had to be some “smarter” variations, while others had to be downright stupid, telling people exactly what they must do, in as simple words as possible.
SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection: 451-The server has reached its limit for processing requests from your host.\n451 Please try again later.
This error usually happens if you’re sending volume e-mails. If it’s inside-network traffic, you can adjust this by whitelisting the sending server ip address, on the receiver:
If you’re using cPanel/WHM, go to: Home/Service Configuration / Exim configuration manager -> Basic Editor -> Access Lists
edit: Trusted SMTP IP addresses – add the sender ip address and click “Save”
You should be good to go.
(If the error persists, add the hostname of the server in the “Backup MX hosts” in the same place and click “Save”)
Since you have decided to act as NPC’s, i thought i might as well use you as notepad. Henceforth, i will be jotting down important notes on the first project i intended to do, and that is the village juice bar. The reason i am putting this out here, is because it is better than out of my head. If there is ever the slim chance that someone will read these words, then the ideas will live on, and there will be an even slimmer chance, that somehow, someday they might be put into practice.
Shall we begin?
It is custom that every place that looks great, is a place people pay attention to. Churches, mosques, museums, castles and so on. We want people to pay attention to this, so this has to be grand. The other reason this has to be grand, is because we want this little perpetuum mobile, this engine, to turn ordinary into extraordinary. We want people that work there to feel good, to feel like they are part of something greater, we want them to feel happy for doing their part, and for this to be a thing they would be proud for having done it for a while.
The juice bar has to have two large, tall blocks of stone, with the story of what this is, engraved in them, so that whoever reads this in the future, long before we – the makers are gone, they will have an idea about what we wanted, and what we were doing there. The stones should be written in the local language and in english, sort of like a Rosetta stone.
Somehow, the juice bar building would have to be encased in a larger building, designed by architecture students to be magnificent, but with a set of features that set it apart as far as meaning goes. It would have 12 deep walls, where 12 of the arts students, would paint them. Each student would get a wall named after them. They can choose to leave the wall empty if they don’t want to paint them right now, if they don’t know what they want to paint, but the reason why the walls would be deep, is that those walls would be theirs, for their entire lifetime. As they grow, and their life changes, if they want to come in and paint over the wall, they would do so, while preserving the initial painting, layering their current persona into the walls. If they would be doing this over the course of their lifetime, the walls would fill with layers of their growth.
It would be an attraction, some people would be forever connected to this place, and have a sense of proudness for having constructed it, it would be their own.
My initial thought was that this would be a perpetuum mobile that’s self-sustaining, not-for-profit, but i’ve changed my mind in the way that i think that if the economics students manage to work out the details to make it generate income, then whatever is on top of break-even and maintenance, should be put in a tank, where it all piles up, until the amount that was required for the original construction is reached, and then the funds are used to create another replica in another place. i know i am saying replica, but it’s never going to be a replica because each build will contain heavy elements of local individuality, considering that we’re always tapping into the local future talent.
The future – why do i want to bring in students for this? This should be fairly obvious – We have come so used to a way of living where one learns ways of society, then they work, in order to make money, and if they want to work, they spend the money in order to work. Seems rather silly.
We’re always looking at the future backwards. Older people, creating things when they are on their way out of this world, so that the kids left behind have something to look forward to.
i think we could do it properly – in the way that if you want a future, you ask the future to cooperate and help building it. It’s their world that we’re helping shape, so we might as well get them involved in building it.
i think i got out all i was thinking about. Maybe there’s more but there’s surely a shape.
