ZHUANGZI - ON CHANGING THE MEANING OF SOME CONVENTIONAL WORDS
Preamble: (from the book, ‘Zhuangzi: Basic Writings’ Translated by, Burton Watson).
P5 - "…the man who has freed himself from CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS of judgment can no longer be made to suffer…"
P6 - "Man becomes one with Nature, or Heaven as Zhuangzi called it, and merges himself with Dao, or the Way, the underlying unity that embraces man, Nature, and all that is in the Universe." i.e. the 10,000 things.
P9 - Zhuangzi - "his customary weapon was parody and ridicule, rather than polemic."
P14 - "Zhuangzi…rejects all conventional values, and as a result, like so many mystical writers, he REJECTS THE CONVENTIONAL MEANING OF WORDS as well, deliberately EMPLOYING THEM TO MEAN THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THEY ORDINARILY MEAN, in order to demonstrate their essential meaninglessness."
With that in mind, let’s use this method with contemporary words, with this:
A SHORT GLOSSARY OF WORDS AND THEIR NEW MEANING
Government - A means of passing laws against the people: legitimising the oppression of the poor and the outcast; of passing laws to favour the rich, privileged political class in order to concretise the injustices of the system they perpetuate by the system.
Democracy - "the voice of the people" Now it means the validation or legitimising of a form of government that oppresses and exploits the people - through taxation & the restrictions of freedom.
Patriotism - The means employed by politicians of the system, to legitimise war.
Education - A means not to ‘draw out’ (the true meaning of the word) but to ‘put in’ - to indoctrinate its citizens, forcing upon them a role to feed the system and its economy; redefining humanity as just another cog in a vast machine.
God - the ultimate metaphor of control. The Supreme Deity works in a totalising way to form distinctive tribes of inclusion/exclusion. The eternal is turned into the mundanity of temporal drudgery. Love is transformed into a transaction and faith into a magical means of conjuring Divine acceptance and validation. When the metaphor becomes the thing itself - we have created an idol.
Religion - not about the connection of Divine and Human, but the disconnection of Humanity from any inner experience of the Divine. Therefore, we need an intermediary, a priesthood to reconnect that which Religion has disconnected from the Divine and thus validating their redemptive role.
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All of these are a means of control over the vast majority of the population, to gain their will and in the final analysis, to pay the ultimate sacrifice of their lives as well as their families. This reinforces the disparities of life, economy and education. Each one plays a role as forces of manipulation and coercion. Children sense this at school, they rebel in the only way they can; through dissent and an adolescent belligerence. They drop out; they don’t check in. The circle is complete.
Geoff Hall
