Psychology

The Tao Isn’t The Market

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In my Taoist readings, “the Tao” is always a subject of discussion. This is ironic because as the beloved Tao Te Ching notes, when you speak of the Tao you’re not speaking of the real Tao. A great deal of Taoist writing is talking about how ineffable the Tao is then writing a huge amount about it. There’s a reason I compare writers like Chuang-Tzu to people like Dave Barry – you need that mix of humor and sarcasm to handle such irony.

Of course that’s kind of the point. You have a word for the ineffable (Tao) that’s behind all things, and that word represents everything and how you can’t really define it. The Tao is everywhere, it’s why everything is, it’s the smallest and the largest, the near and the far. Taoism takes a word that lets you refer to the great connected isness of absolutely everything that words can’t otherwise encompass.

It’s kind of a linguistic hack.

That, I find, is also the power of good Taoist writing. Using a single word and poetic writing, it reminds you that the universe is great and connected. Leading you around by words and sentences, you start intuitively getting to understanding the power behind everything. In turn, that lets you live in the world, living in harmony with things, knowing it’s all vast and everywhere and connected – Tao.

If you get it you get it. If you don’t, you don’t. If you want to fake it, you probably can for awhile. But a lot of Taoism is words leading you to the wordless, that there’s a force behind everything.

What’s funny is I realized lately that the Tao reminds me of how Capitalists think of the Almighty Market.

What is is. The Market speaks. The great and powerful force that reconciles everything is perfect and everywhere and if you don’t get rich then The Market has decided. The market is unquestionable and good and perfect and the foundation of all things. The market is like the Tao in that it’s ineffable, AND like a personal god in that it makes decisions about things, granting everything a moral quality. The Market cannot be questioned, it’s that awesome! Yet also it makes decisions.

What’s funny is the market being a human construct, being about profit and gain and exploitation, is something Taoists warned about for aeons. As a construct that warps human feelings, it’s to be regarded with suspicion. As something about gain, it risks the traps of greed and acquisitiveness, which corrupt society. As something surrounded by flummery and endless long-winded justifications, it’s as suspicious as pretentious intellectuals and politicians and would-be sages.

The way people treat The Market as some divine force darkly echoes the words of the Taoists with a touch of theology, and realizing that I understand Market Fanatics passion much better. It’s beyond greed, into religion and even a kind of perverse mysticism.

And thanks to the Taoists, who would have laughed at the Market Fanatics and their pretentious, helped me understand that better. And laugh, of course.

I appreciate the irony. Which Chuang-Tzu and Dave Barry would probably both appreciate.

– Xenofact

The Iron Prison of The Incoherent God

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I continue to speculate on the future of Christianity and “anthropomorphic monotheistic” religions. Mostly Christianity because I live in America. I’ve started looking at some of the utter crazy I see, from Christian Nationalists, to conspiracy theorists, to politicians who manage more than two faces. I’ve started thinking it’s a kind of prison.

Let me back up a bit.

First, when I discuss monotheism, I’m describing anthropomorphic monotheism, which assumes an all powerful omniscient deity who is also possessed of identifiable human traits and idiosyncrasies. I’m not talking the more abstract or neo-Platonic or transcendent ideas, but “ultimate power that in its true form is basically a superpowered person.” I find it’s an idea people who believe rarely question theologically despite the fact it’s hard to reconcile considering.

Anyway, I noticed people who had these beliefs also contain a heavy amount of weird instability if not outright insanity. It finally struck me that be it true believer or religious scam artist, this idea will drive you nuts as it’s about prison.

If you truly believe in a god that is all-powerful, all-seeing, and as biased and emotional as you that’s utterly terrifying. There is no escape from them. There is no bargaining with them. They are just as messed up as the average person and they control the universe. To believe in such a god is to believe you are permanently trapped and at their mercy.

You are in prison you are never getting out and the being in charge is is just as erratic as anyone else. Try figuring how people cope with that.

But let’s say you’re a megachurch pastor or conspiracy podcaster. Truth doesn’t matter a lot, as you’re here to make money. You just have to talk about the Superpowerful Man Who Controls all, but you don’t have to believe. You might not even be able to believe considering your career in bullshit.

But you’ll still go a little crazy and definitely sound crazy because you’re still in prisoni

If you’re just a religious scam artist who praces anthropomorphic monotheism, you essentially have a writing problem – your prison is the tales you spin.. You have to explain why the god you don’t believe in is like they are. You have to explain their human side and their omnipotent and omniscient sides. You are essentially managing the theological equivalent of an extended cinematic universe, mixing marketing and continuity, and almost certainly failing. Your theology is going constantly need maintenance.

This is going to be hard. There are always going to be holes in your story and you’re always editing and re-editing your theology. After awhile that will probably make you a little unbalanced, as you’re always changing and always under threat at making a mistake. This probably explains why so many “religious” public figures seem to give up after awhile and just mouth platitudes.

I think in our complex modern world, facing so many challenges, with so much knowledge, it’s hard for anthropomorphic monotheism to continue. The rapid changes of the world are hard to explain. The theological challenges difficult. The burden of mass media “keeping up” is hard.

I think there future of Christianity is going to be more crazy from people coping with the prison experience and the constant rewrites. But I also think there’s going to be more shrugging and mouthing platitudes because people who are faking belief are tired and figure they can just lie and get away with it. Hypocrisy and insanity.

Our world is more complex than limited theological ideas. Ramming it into such a mold is madness, and the wages of such activity is madness as well.

-Xenofact

Doing Or Watching Myself Do?

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One of the weird things about meditation is what you learn about yourself – like it or not. I have sometimes said that whatever other values meditation has, the things along the way are beneficial. A lot of it comes from understanding your own habits, obsessions, and mistakes.

In this case, I’d like to talk about learning the difference between doing and watching.

My meditative practice, as noted often, is informed by The Secret of the Golden Flower (Cleary Translation) among other readings. I tune my breath to be slow and even as I watch it, refining my breath and my awareness as I go. I sometimes call it the Triple Action as following, slowing, and evening is all one.

Without going into the benefits and experiences – as I and others note discussing goals often distracts from the act – it’s fascinating to see what happens when I get off track. If you’re not a meditatior and wonder “how can you get off track by just breathing evenly and slowly” then my advice is “try to do it consistently for five minutes.”

So anyway there I am meditating and tuning my breath, feeling strangely distracted and distant, and of course I continue to meditate since that continuity is part of the point. I continued and still felt like something wasn’t quite right, that I couldn’t quite focus. Then suddenly I become aware of what’s happening.

I’m not just there following my ever-refining breath, I’m watching myself do it. I’m following the watching of myself. It’s like doing something by looking in a mirror – just a lot of what we do is looking at reflections of ourselves in our own mind, our own self-image. I was so intent on the mirror I kept losing focus on the thing I wanted to pay attention to – my breath.

Now I kept up with my practice – insights can be distractions – but that stuck with me when I was done. Sometimes you’re not watching something, you’re watching watching. Sometimes you’re not thinking, you’re thinking about yourself thinking. The human mind can get into some pretty wild infinite recursion, which is immediately obvious as soon as you remember your last neurotic obsession.

This was a reminder of how we can make simple things very complex, how we over-think, over-monitor, and end up abstract from our lives. It’s pretty amazing what following your tuned breath can reveal to you.

But don’t let such realizations distract you.

  • Xenofact