Daoist Philosophy and the Cult of Relativism.

In certain circles, those identifying themselves as relativists are hugely drawn to Eastern philosophies such as Daoism and Zen and I think there can be much confusion between them. Nowhere is the popular Taiji (or Yin - Yang) symbol more misused than in the hands of those relativists and nihilists who are drawn to Eastern alternatives to Western spirituality.

Invariably these secular mystics focus in on one specific aspect of the most popular rendition of the Taiji symbol, that of the presence of the spot of Yin within the Yang half and the spot of Yang within the Yin. This, they think, means essentially that nothing is real, for each state contains within it an aspect of its opposite thereby canceling out the validity of either state as anything absolute. In truth this reveals a coffee table book understanding of Taiji philosophy.

It is true that Daoist philosophy along with Confucian philosophy (the Taiji symbol belongs no more to one than the other) does make certain observations of the phenomenal world inasmuch as day is seen to transform into night and from there back to day again. Seasons come and go in a continuous fluctuating cycle of change. Virtue might be said to be found in moderation - balanced between extreme behaviours. But none of this calls into question the validity of those extremes. Nor does it obliterate the reality of night and day, or that of winter and summer.

Something that the modern relativist thinkers don't get about Daoism is that it is a prescribed way - the fist classic writing is called the Classic of the Way of Virtue, acknowledging that there is a right way to live one's life and that there is such a thing as virtue.

There is a world of difference between recognising that virtue might be found within the delicate balancing of opposing stimuli and stating that neither vice nor virtue exist at all. There is also a vast difference between recognising the existence of subjectivity and relativity in the world and declaring that great self-contradictory battle-cry of the relativist, that everything is relative. Further, while the truth may at times reveal paradoxes, not every paradox is true. Paradox itself is not a virtue, sometimes it can simply be a meaningless and unhelpful intellectual conceit.

It is true to say that Daoism reveres what Aristotle and Confucius might have described as the Golden Mean - the desirable middle between two extremes, but in order to be able to recognise this state of balance, one must first acknowledge the reality of the two opposing forces being balanced and to do this one must be able to recognise the truth of absolute or objective existence. Any attempt to compromise between two subjectively shifting states would arrive at nothing other than confusion. But then every angle this new popular relativist philosophy takes makes no sense when simply taken to its natural and very real conclusion.

Crucially it is also necessary to re-iterate that for the balance to be seen as virtuous it is necessary to acknowledge that certain behaviours are considered to be more desirable or virtuous than others, thereby creating a scale with right action at one end and wrong action at the other.

Finally, relativism and situationism are not the same. Whatever subjective or extenuating conditions you place on a thing and however many shades or degrees you designate along the way, (and here it may be worth pointing out that the Taiji symbol depicts clear halves of back and white rather than being a circle of mid-grey) for those conditions to relate to anything at all you must begin by discerning the reality of this and that.

I'll finish with a quote from an Incredible String Band Song:

"I mixed stones and water just to see what it would do
and the water it got stony and the stones got watery too.
So I mixed my feet with water just to see what could be seen
and the water it got dirty, and the feet they got quite clean."

Virgin Birth

I had a very simple thought yesterday about a significant component of our contemporary pagan culture that is in direct opposition to the virgin birth of Christ.

Whereas the Virgin Mary gave birth to life without having sexual intercourse, the current trend is to have sexual intercourse without producing life (thwarting the development of life by use of various contraceptives or exterminating life through abortion).

Mary allowed her life to be reshaped by this gift of birth whereas the modern trend is to not allow life-making (the natural outcome of sexual intercourse) to interfere with one's lifestyle. People want the orgasms without having to take on the responsibility of child raising that naturally accompanies such activity.

This has led me to a more general train of thought. It is quite curious the extent to which our culture appears to set itself up to be the precise opposite of Catholic Christianity, but then paganism always was in direct opposition to Judaism and Christianity.


The simple choice is between:
a) voluntarily doing what is morally right, and
b) simply being compelled to obey physical urges, the natural outcome of which is to become enslaved by them.

Do you wish to live in a world of:
a) people willingly sharing and giving, or
b) people taking what they want by force.

Free will can only exist in a world where we consciously temper our temporal desires and are prepared to actively conquer our weaknesses. We should aim to go from strength to strength in the knowledge that whenever we stop fighting we will inevitably slip into decline. It is a battle of mind over matter - of hope over fatalism - of virtue over vice. Lasting joy comes from prudently conquering one's short-sighted physical self for the sake of the greatest good. Without such self-mastery there can be no heroes or heroines.

Good, Bad or Indifferent?

A person can decide that good is really bad and that bad is really good - all that is then required is to swap the terms around so that henceforth good becomes the word that describes what they now call bad, and vice versa.

But if a relativist protests that both things are in reality neutral, they rob themselves of the faculty of discernment that allows us to think, to create and even to live. Without discernment, how could we distinguish nutritious berries from poisonous ones?

I'm sure some relativists might argue that physical facts and moral issues are not the same, but that being the case, without discernment, how do they distinguish the two?

Furthermore, if they argue that the moral dimension does not really exist and that morality is merely a subjective conjuration of the mind and that the mind is purely physical (biological, bioelectrical and biochemical) then isn't that an inadvertent recognition of the tangible and effective reality of morality?

Today Is Human Rights Day!

Apparently it is "Human Rights Day" today. I hope they remember the unborn. See my previous post.

Abortion Is Murder

I've been meaning to write something about this subject for a while, but find it too emotive to quite find the words. I don't necessarily blame mothers who have abortions when they have been raised in a culture that says abortion is an acceptable procedure or even actively encourages it. The society that permits and promotes abortion is the murderer.

I think I'll let pictures say the rest of what I wish to say. First is a "foetus" or preborn baby at 16 weeks:



Here's a preborn baby at 20 weeks:



Next is a remarkable picture of a 21 week old preborn who was operated on for spina bifida. He is called Samuel Alexander Armas and is seen here being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner.

The baby would not survive if removed from his mother's womb but Samuel's mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta and she knew of Dr. Bruner's surgical procedure. Practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr.Bruner completed the surgery, baby Samuel reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon's finger. Dr. Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant he was just frozen, totally immobile.

Little Samuel's mother said they 'wept for days' when they saw the picture. She said, 'The photo reminds us pregnancy isn't about disability or an illness, it's about a little person.'

Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation being 100 percent successful.



Here is a picture of a 21 week old foetus / child living outside the womb:



Now here is a preborn baby at just 9 weeks. This might be a time when some would claim that a preborn child is not really a child at all, but "just a bunch of cells". If this little child is just a bunch of cells, then so am I:



I considered posting a picture of an aborted foetus but couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm sure anyone who needs to be convinced that abortion is murder can find their own pictures on a Google image search. If you don't want to do that, there is a link you can click on from this page, but please be warned - it is a very disturbing sight and if you're anything like me it might just break your heart:

LINK

God bless.

Balance and Discernment

I sometimes find myself at odds with prospective students. The typical student of the martial arts I teach likes to see himself as broadminded and capable of accepting alien paradigms. But what he really means is that he will accept everything Eastern and esoteric and nothing remotely Western, mundane or orthodox. I also find myself at odds with the brave new cynics who scoff at anything that is not purely material and repeatable under laboratory conditions. In truth they reject any notion of morality, soul or responsibility beyond their own physical desires and fashionable political whims.

I have been both a gullible willing believer of everything AND a hard-nosed materialist cynic. I think it is only now that I'm starting to achieve a balance of discerning that some things are true while others are false and it is not always obvious out in the world, where the truth lives. So I do not believe in magic, mystical powers and superhuman feats, but I know quite surely that there is such a thing as moral right and wrong. Such a position could not be more unfashionable as it lies somewhere outside of the two main populist factions of our time, the pagan and the atheist, the tastes of which being remarkably similar.

There are people who will remain in one worldview for their whole lives whilst others will undergo a dramatic and profound change of heart. Some may undertake a second radical change of direction, though it isn't so easy to accept that you've been wholly wrong twice. Of course, the existence of absolute truths means that some people are fortunate enough to recognise the truth from the outset. Such people are freer than the rest of us to enjoy fruitful lives.

The tools of discernment are none other than faith and reason. These are the two great winds that will steer a ship towards the truth, rather than our being tossed around at the mercy of the waves, or determinedly setting out to disprove the ocean.