Well. That was a bunch of words in a row...

@Toonman glad you noticed surprising how many of us don't know how to ignore stuff we don't like

@whiskywoman

If that's the case, why aren't you ignoring me?

Punctuation would make you look like less of an idiot.

Not talking about Taoism.

What you were espousing in your post has nothing to do with Taoism.

If you think it does, you grossly misunderstand Taoism. Most new Agers do. They take what they find attractive about something, leave the parts they don't and mash it up together with other magical thought systems to create an incomprehensible, intellectually dubious mishmash.

What you were selling was nothing but plain old new age mookie stink.

There is no evidence that mass meditation will create mass consciousness. Your "theory" isn't a theory. It's a baseless claim.

It is fuelled by nothing more than magical thinking and narcissism.

It its best, it's a misrepresentation of science. At worst it's pseudoscience.

And like all magical thinking, it only serves to make dipshits more at home with their dipshittery.

And it doesn't belong here.

You are absolutely right, Taoism is “Old (Iron) Age” woo!

@p-nullifidian I never say anything unless I’m right or think I’m right. :I

@rainmanjr don't we all think we are right most of the time

@rainmanjr

Well, you failed.

Everybody speaks when they think they're right.

Not only are you not right, you're so far removed from reality you can't even begin to be wrong.

Stop it. You sound stupid.

@whiskywoman Yes but you and I are correct most of the time

@Toonman Your estimation doesn’t belong here, either, so I guess both get to stay. I, however, do not try to control the content of posts or tell anyone how right I am. Further, I have posted citations to back up my ideas

@rainmanjr You've been trying to tell everybody how right you are for the past two days.

You have posted no citations that I can see. YouTube videos aren't sources. The rest of your links do what you do--make baseless assertions.

Peer-reviewed papers in academic journals of record are sources.

My "estimation" belongs here because it isn't making claims it can't support. And it is based in reason and in knowing the difference between Taoism and whatever dogshit you're spewing.

You still sound stupid.

@Toonman I have been offering everybody an option to join me in meditation, or in general idea, but an OFFER, or info that it is even a possible thing, is not a demand to be taken as right. It is an offer. You all do with it as you please. Maybe I do sound stupid (oh well) but so do you and your arrogance and suppositions are wrong.

@rainmanjr

If I sound stupid, it's not because I believe a bunch of stupid, easily disproven horseshit, nor am I making a bunch of baseless claims.

If I'm stupid it's not because I mistake New Age butt-spoo for Taoism. It's not because I hide a complete lack of understanding of how reality works behind a bunch of meaningless word diarrhea.

And if I'm arrogant, it's not because I think any of the nonsense I'm spouting could be useful to people on a platform dedicated to reason, to the rejection of magical thinking, and to ridding their lives of stupid bullshit.

There is nothing you offer that has any use here.

Find a New Age site and sell your idiocy there.

@Toonman You are a bully and I will go where I wish and peddle whatever I wish. Here's some Taoism for you [books.google.com]

Somehow you got the idea that I'm on this planet to impress you. Let me assure you that is false. You aren't even real. Nothing more than the remains of last night's pudding. You disdainfully offer nothing of specificity about my knowledge of Tao (and I am but a humble Monk and not a scholar) or of any solutions to society's problems. Just scorn for a 30 min meditation with the pitiful goal of world peace during this end of 2021 season. With so much Democratic Congressional work to achieve. If you listen to the meditation you'll be rewarded with a full explanation to you of how it works and why it is. Or don't. Your soul, body, mind, or just meat sack is your affair. I am amused by you.

@rainmanjr

I don't think you were put on the planet to impress anybody.

You'd be shit outta luck if that was the case.

Damn right you're not a scholar. Somewhere there's an attic with a portrait of you getting smarter.

I doubt you're a monk. Or at least not a good one.

If you were, your Taoist mindset would've given you the serenity to let my words pass right by you, and the clarity to realize thar 30 minutes of anything, let alone meditation, will not bring about anything as fundamental as world peace.

Even better, you could've whipped a couple of Taoist aphorisms at me and put me in my place.

I doubt you read the book linked me to, and even if you did, I'm confident you didn't understand it. Having a read of the first few sections seems to indicate this possibility.

There has been nothing Taoist about our exchange, and that you don't see that has been a source of rollicking Sunday afternoon entertainment.

You're not a Taoist in thought, as a result you are not a Taoist in action or your words.

You are not a Taoist. If you are a monk you suck at it.

What you are is another consumer of woo, who thinks because he calls himself something that it makes him that.

Between that, your adherence to brainless conspiracy theories, and your inability to recognize unreliable sources if they tell you what you want to hear, I'd say you're a perfect idiot.

@Toonman And you are a true pompous ass. I am smiling while writing this because everything you wrote is wrong. Tao Of Pooh was my intro to the ideas of Te Ching but I spent 20 years bellowing atheist concepts (or non-concepts as is more accurate) until waking up to embracing a positive rather than the negative of nothingness. That has built with this social isolation, which I couldn't be happier to experience for myself or society, and many hours of study. I am bipolar, and get high, so have little talent for memorizing exact quotes and anything less than exact (within the confines of accepted knowledge that ALL translations are unexact) gets blasted as a lie. Any citation is denied of authority so rendered useless. There's really little point to throwing such attempts around. Allow me to point out that the best leaders are those whom the people do not see. I read something like that somewhere.

I am suggesting a path for peaceful resistance and how to achieve it. Judging a questioning of Atheistic mind as repugnant on a cite titled Agnostic.com (see definition of Agnostic) seems odd but I encounter a lot of resistance for just that. This is of no concern to Tao. Tao seeks only for calm...and that turns out to be exactly what Ghandi destroyed the most powerful nation on Earth with. Peaceful resistance through a single unified expression of demands. I would now post citations if such knowledge of what Ghandi achieved seemed necessary to back-up or hard to find. "But now you, Rainmanjr, claim to be Ghandi" you say? Citing an individual's methods and lessons do not make me that individual. Only a student, or scholar, of those lessons and why they work. That is also the contemplations of a Monk and I am Ordained as a Dudeist Priest. I can marry and bury folks. Really.

So, again, you pathetic bully. Fuck you. Deal with me because conversation is how my lessons are realized. It's how they evolve so I intend to keep using the precious digital space for such whacky ideas as how to proceed with the greatest chance of peace and success? The minute you put forth an idea I will read and question it (because I'm usually a skeptical dude).

@rainmanjr

And you're a moron.

I'm also bipolar, so your excuse is shit.

You either don't understand Taoism, or you somehow think your bullshit is connected in some way.

Monkeys have read the Tao of Pooh and the Tao Te Ching, too. They just don't understand it.

Your adherence to your New Age dumbfuckery and your susceptibility to conspiracy theories shows that you are in no way a skeptic.

Question away. I welcome it, if only to have anybody reading it provide a laugh track.

I didn't say you claimed to be Gandhi. I said nothing done for 30 minutes, including and especially meditating, will change anything.

Not only do you not understand Tao, you don't understand Gandhi, either.

Ghandi's achievements involved protests and the deliberate breaking of laws to show their cruelty. He and his followers endured beatings and imprisonment, knowing those would be the consequences of their actions.

They suffered greatly in the name of what they believed. They put their lives on the line and many of them died.

When those efforts led to India's independence from Britain, the country split into India and Pakistan, and the partition itself caused interminable bloodshed. Pakistan and India are still at odds with one another today.

Gandhi and his disciples showed the world that nonviolent protest works, but the irony is that they endured great violence.

This goes for MLK and Cesar Chavez, too.

It wasn't the meditating. It was the action.

There was a struggle, and it was costly.

The worst thing about about you and your ideas is that they're cheap.

They require no effort, let alone sacrifice, and no real commitment to the actions that will lead to change.

You want change?

Get off your useless ass.

@rainmanjr

Also, and I don't know how I missed this, meditating will not do the "congressional work". Doing the work will.

@Toonman @rainmanjr Gentlemen, I have no idea what prompted the above exchange, but it’s evident that the two of you would rather lock horns (in public) than contribute to the original point. If neither of you wish to contribute to the discussion at hand regarding Taoism and New Age practices, don’t you think it would be more appropriate to take your vituperative rancor off-line and engage one another via point-point messaging?

Magical thinking is magical thinking, I don't care what it's called.