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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Unironically great, I've been trying to integrate traditional Chinese philosophy and religion with my communist views for a long time now actually.
I've talked about this a bit on here but I think the metaphor of Taoism is correct even if the underlying explanation isn't. You can explain to children how gravity and shit works and how that causes the seasons but it's just fucking numbers. You tell them that Persephone is in Hades and Demeter is mourning her absence and they understand it perfectly. Now obviously the gods aren't literally real but meaning is often better explained by metaphor than science.
It's my sincere belief that there is lots of meaning in religion and philosophy that has yet to be discovered by science. Scientists discover universal principles, poets explain them.
on the contrary, bill nye perfectly explained axial tilt causing seasons to millions of children, and that greek myth shit is needlessly complicated and stupid as hell compared to "look at ball tilt"
a garden is perfectly beautiful on its own without talking about faeries instead of the nitrogen cycle
Except axial tilt merely explains the change in weather. It doesn't account for the experience of the changing of seasons like trees losing their leaves. Sure, you could pull out more science but having to explain cosmology, biology, and weather systems to a kid who asks "Why is it cold in the winter?" is kinda silly. Otherwise, you're just telling them about an abstraction of an abstraction interpreted through your elementary school science teacher.
You're not Bill Nye with a team of writers and a TV show budget. Your you and presumably being asked on the fly by your kid.
dunno how to break this to you but winter is cold because there's less light
Not at all. Summer nights are warmer than winter day despite having more light.
Besides, the context is teaching children the practical meaning of seasons changing. No one is literally trying to figure out the thermodynamics of the earth. I never suggested that Diameter is literally causing winter because she's in mourning. But I may be wrong either way, if Hexbear adults can't understand the metaphor I'm using here then I doubt their children would.
but it doesn't mean anything?
It's a natural consequence of how the solar system is, because of how the natural phenomena we describe with physics are, and for the purposes of a simple explanation for children "less light [during the day, bleeeh 🙄] = colder out" is totally adequate.
you're trying to do something real weird here mate and it doesn't make any sense.
I think, aside from summer having more time between sunrise and sunset, it effectively has "denser" light due to the angle of exposure.
that happens because the leaves are there to pick up on sunlight and there is less sunlight in winter so many trees kill the leaves to save resources in winter
the less sunlight is also why it is cold
Other way around. Because the trees lose their leaves there's less surface area to pick up heat so it gets cold until the trees grow new leaves. Read a book.
This is such a bad-faithed interpretation of the point of my paragraph that I must conclude it's deliberate. No one is literally questioning axial tilt. It just doesn't explain the practical experience of the seasons changing in the way a good story can.
Weird post
That's a good thing, truth is often stranger than fiction.
I feel like it's not that much of a leap to incorporate knock on effects like autumn leaves while still keeping things comprehensible to kids.
The tilt of the earth changes how much daylight places get through the year. The natural world grew within and alongside this pattern, and reflects it. Trees take advantage of spring and summer daylight, storing energy to rest through winter.
Anything you recommend reading if I want to explore the intersection of Taoism and Marxism?
Can tell you that Mao created a Criticize lin, criticize Confucius campaign. Westerners take this as destroying eastern religions, but on the contrary it was designed to center Marxist aspects of specific religions in discussions and teachings. Essentially it was an extension of liberation theology
That sounds like a worthwhile read, is there a good starting point for that specific part of the topic?
idk if there are many english speaking texts relating to this. here is course material on this subject from beijing university. you could run it through a translator
http://www.shehui.pku.edu.cn/upload/editor/file/20220118/20220118160716_5274.pdf
here is a website that has the pdf if you wanna just use a browser's translate option
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA4Mjg3MTYyMA==&mid=409949253&idx=1&sn=22f3ed891c8c6e04825a56881644d130
Thanks for the link, it’s a good starting point.
no prob, strongly recommend using baidu and translators for research. there are a lot of lies that the west tells that are very easily verifiable just with a quick search on baidu (recently there was a campaign about how china bans winnie the pooh. you can search it on baidu and find millions of examples of winnie the pooh in china. the only 'banning' of winnie the pooh was a racist caricature and it was on only one social media site where it was a problem). there are also lots of lies about china banning certain video games and movies, when you can easily search and find it false.
that sounds like a really clunky metaphor that's trying too hard to Christianise Chinese religion. They're entirely different
im of the opinion that liberation theology is just interpreting any religion through a marxist lens, not just the natopedia definition that purely is about christianity. its a thing that happens a lot and to constrain the definition to christianity is weird
But liberation theology was the actual name of a Christian movement that sought to do that. When other religions do the same thing I think it should have its own name because it's weird to just give them all the Christian name for it. It's like saying you've been going to a Hindu church
I am pretty sure the name for the combination of Confucianism and Marxism is Confucian Marxism for example
that's what this paper from a Chinese university's school of Marxism studies called it anyway
sure, but to me i think there is value in having a general term for an interpretation of religion through marxism. there isnt anything inherently christian about the name 'liberation theology'.
Honestly, I've just been reading the classic Tao texts. It's been a personal project and I don't think there's much of an academic interest. At least until I saw this.
there is academic interest in china at least. in the west, its only used as a vector of attack on china in most books
Best way would be to just read the Dao De Jing (essentially a short collection of poetic philosophical points), which is the core text, and then the Zhuangzi (a larger text created over centuries, expanding on the topic with various characters - quite humorous). With the latter, being the product of dozens of authors, in a few chapters you can feel the philosophy being bent towards "actually, political hierarchies and wealth disparity are natural law and therefore cool", but they rather stand out.
Ursula Le Guin's translation is my favorite, but the differences between translations are interesting - both texts have a lot of fun with the ambiguity of language.
I like to do the same, from the perspective of Indian philosophy especially as it's my own background.
There is already similarity and even borrowings in Western philosophy from the East and elsewhere. I'm of the opinion that if capitalism developed somewhere else in the world besides Europe, communism would have still arisen, although maybe by a slightly different philosophical path.
I'm interested to see what other cultural traditions could have offered in these alternative timelines so to speak