chinese take on utilitarianism and andy lau

i was going to write about john stuart mill and utilitarianism.. but just couldn’t find the enthusiasm so i watched a jackie chan movie...

it made me think of the chinese take on utilitarianism I heard about.

chinese history is fairly complicated. there are many strata.. periods. developments. ideologically there have been three basic trends living with a fair degree of harmony. the dao.. (mystical native tradition).. the code of confucious (traditionalist, legalist) and the way of the buddha (occultist, divine). however, in an early period there was another ideology that lost purchase and has basically been swallowed up in oblivion.. this was the views of mo zi mohism.. there is an excellent movie around the idea from hong kong battle of wits 墨攻 (2006) starring andy lao. dir Jacob cheung.

the movie goes like this…

a mohist warrior arrives at a city to protect it from the onslaught of the army of zhao.. zhao was one of the warring states. it’s a complex story of the defense of the city, exploring many facets of human nature…it is basically about politics and attitudes to war… well worth the trouble even for the acting alone. it raises interesting concepts about conflict management and the roots of chinese tradition. though I guess it takes a fair degree of cinematographic licence.

as for the philosophy itself…

while confucious looked back on the zhao dynasty( 1122-1249) as a model of social organization(stability, orderliness), mozi preferred the former xia dynasty (2183-1752 bc )as a paradigm in view of its peace and equality.

in mohist thought, actions are judged with a view to their consequences : right if they increase benefit… which is a basic form of utilitarianism.

during the conflict of the waring states period it was totally drowned out by violent milirarism and bloodshed…. and fell out of popular textbooks on philosophy..

as for mozi.. he seems to have lived in the early fifth century bc. his ideas are preserved in the mozi text (partly lost)

he is so overshadowed by confucious that his ideas are seen in terms of the latters fundamentals. but while confucious ‘s whole thrust was strict conformity to ‘li’ 礼 教 traditional morality/ceremony, mozi looked to tian heaven and the natural order of the universe for a moral standard.

he repudiated offensive warfare and traditions he views as unjust and inutile.

he maintains a doctrine of universal love.

the confucianists must have hated him.

there has been some interest in his ideas under the current anti-confucianist regime.

talk about mill another day.. john stuart I mean..

t.f.

quality vrs. quantity of footprint and wakernagel.

quality vrs quantity of footprint and wakernagel.

lets not be too high-brow. the success of the past 50 odd years of credit expansion was based on the American dream (consumer life-style. ) it was the green-back that spurred the growth of economies that emerged from the wreck of 1945. oil was the fuel and it was bought with us dollars. it's fecked the planet.

greed was good. more was better.

as a philosophy it sux. get over it.

its quality that refines the spirit. it is the realization of this that is set to define the period we are entering.

so. what is quality?

there are 6 point something billion individuals on a small planet. quality thinking determines some kind of an equitable share of it for everyone. this is a fundamental decency... like the air we breath.. quality thought and action determine that the impact on the planet for each individual must be sustainable in this context of 6 billion souls.

the math would apportion a space for each person. less than some are using.. more than others.

Mathis wakernagel, a swiss born sustainablitity advocate, has developed the concept of ecological footprint. ( in the early 1990s .) it is a measure of demand on the earths resources/ecosystems. how much land and sea is needed to regenerate the resources used by one white-bread eater?

there are differing ways to measure it.. different qestions on the quiz.. but it is a sound idea. human demands vrs the biosphere’s regenerative ability. a real attempt at makeing a standard to come to terms with our self destructive behaviour. (because that is what the problem is)

consumption is converted into normalized land areas called ‘global hectares.’ ecological footprint (EP) is a new tool that can inform .. we need to learn to use it.

it is the means to deliver quality as quality of life is to be determined by the EP of our thoughts and actions.

this is one foundation for new thinking about quality of life. it has to be grasped if quality is what we aim for. i do.

when the charade that we are now in a recession is over, and people take a long hard look at where they are.. then the jackboot of the market will take on a new meaning.. it will be the footprint of that jackboot on one’s lifestyle that we will need to come to terms with.

tejas fu

tejas fu.

the real zoroaster...

the real Zoroaster

an ancient Iranian prophet and religious poet. the author of the gathas, the liturgical core of zoroastrianism.

also called zarathushtra and known in modern Persian as zartosht.

the language of the scriptures is avestan, very close to the language of the vedas in India. (vedic sanscrit)

there is some controversy about his name’s meaning in avestan but in greek where it first appears (mid 5^th century b.c. )there is a definite association with astro*.. star. zar is said to mean ‘gold’. It could be the star of gold which is of course the sun.. sol. who knows? some people say it means 'camel' something.. i doubt it.

dates vary also. but the association of his language with vedic sanscrit certainly argues for his alignment with some very old tradition. there is little to say that there hasn’t been several zoroasters… (though people put him at about 1000 yrs before jesus Christ, its not that important. the words are ancient and deserve a truly respectful hearing.) (one native source indicates that the origonal Zarathustra was reincarnated 13 times, the last one a while before alexander ….) lets just say long long ago…..or once upon a time. shall we?

the place is also not specific.. but lets say iran. several regions like Rai, are said to claim him.

part of the avesta dealing with his life are no longer extant. though there are Iranian legends from later times. he is said to have had a wife and 6 children. he is said to have been murdered at the alter by turanians in the storming of balkh.

the important thing is his place in the development of thought.

a word of caution must be given. for a sustained period, the niche reserved in popular imagination (particularly in the Hellenic world,) for the exotic sage was occupied by the name/image of Zoroaster..(lost ancient wisdom scam) as a recipient of ‘western tradition’ on the subject one must be careful to avoid the vortex of fantasic distortion in his case. the priests of Zoroastrianism were magi and have long been associated with the weird and magical.. chaldean astrology... the magi even appear in the nativity story of jesus son of mary and have enjoyed a huge reputation from long before that event.

it seems that some greeks, rather than seek to understand the perfectly good sources of their own philosophical tradition found it necessary to look to some fanciful ideology said to be from Zoroaster.. in my view nietzche was continuing in this vein.

so as for his ideas, there has been considerable misunderstanding.

the gathas were first translated into English by martin haug (german orientalist) in the 1850s who seems to have misunderstood some basic ideas re. monotheism and dualism. like all sacred writ, its the space between the lines that is to be seen in terms of order of magnitude..

ie.. the living tradition is where the real dirt is.. the text but the map.

his system was revealed to him by God.. Ahura-Mazda in avestan..

the universe is a cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood.

the purpose of mankind is to sustain truth while participating in a life of virtue.

it doesn’t seem that difficult but due to obsessions about monotheism and the nature of good and evil by idiots with no idea at all, his vision is very easy to obfuscate.

there may be some truth in the idea that he makes one god out of the ‘ahuras’ (asuras in sanscrit) ---mazda and another pole of chaos from the devas.. which reflects different usage--- at least different from that of the hindus and others who see the devas as good/divine. (though ‘devil’ (and cognates) is way close to be a coincidence.)

it seems that mazda created two spirits who were free to choose.. one chose to be good .. the other to be evil. so god didn’t create evil.. god created freedom which became perverted. I think this is the crux of zoroaster’s teaching. these are issues so profond that the human mind can only conjecture.. reason falls dumb at majesty.

like islam, zohar and other faiths, Zoroastrian thought upholds the perennial religion’s creed of the sevenfold nature of creation, the angels, the priesthood, 5 daily prayers the community etc.

his followers have been harried a lot by fanatics over the years.

somehow I doubt that anyone much would be interested in him if they knew that all he was promoting was a life of virtue.

* the greeks saw zo as related to ‘life’ and ro as flux. (as in revma.)

tejas fu