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One opinion per like about metaphysics, calculus and the Tao. (While supplies last!) Will not be live-tweeting, will check back later and thread! :) https://t.co/0Vr78ePguc
1. Like you, like the sun, like Mount Everest and the world's reddest rose and your last scream, I am a process. The universe, is, in fact, a process. Do you see how it would make sense to say that the Universe process *contains* the You process, and the Me process?
2. What *is* a process, though? Ever watch Star Trek: Deep Space 9? You know how there's a giant wormhole floating in space, there, and every once in a while a ship or an alien pops out? It's a locus of change, a pattern of deviations against some backdrop. That's a process.
3. The Universe is the biggest process that we know how to refer to, right? Everything that ever was, is or will be, over time, anywhere. (Yes, yes, there is a concept of a multiverse but there's no canonical definition or Schelling point for what that means so it's unhelpful!)
4. Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese poet and philosopher, wrote beautifully and playfully about something he referred to as The Tao. Defining the Tao is tricky, though, you see -- because it's impossible to refer to it directly. https://t.co/VE9dTDsmNB
5. To refer to the Tao is to assign a human name to something that exists way beyond the scope of human comprehension. Although our words may describe the numinous they by definition cannot refer to it directly. The Tao contains each of us, but none of us contains all of it.
6. You and I and Mount Everest are all part of the Tao. It is composed of us. We are the pattern it creates. It is impossible for me to do anything, ever, except contribute to the Tao in the ways that only I can. From outside of time there is only Tao, not me and not you!
7. Do we see, at this point, and at least provisionally accept the thesis that The Tao and The Universe Modeled As A Process are both kinda the same thing? Can we stick a pin in that? Because how the Taoists use this insight can help us reason about metaphysics.
8. (By the way, anyone who wants to read the Tao Te Ching it's available here in various translations for free online and it's a genuine delight!) https://t.co/Sb3HxZ7n9m
9. Here's the core idea: As soon as you refer to some part of the universe process *as distinct from the rest of it* you are imposing *a human classification system* over something that defies human classification. Even naming the Tao means it's not the Tao, can you see it?
11. But surely we need some way to "select" some subset of the Tao, right? After all, I am a subset of the Tao, as is everyone I know. So like, so what if by referring to the Tao I'm no longer referring to it, right? That doesn't really *matter* except sort of philosophically.
12. Rather, the trick is to be *intentional* and *precise* in terms of how you subdivide the Tao, and you must *never forget* that those subdivisions live in you - not in the Tao. Everything you are is the Tao, but the Tao is many things that you are not.
13. So "I" am a subset of the Tao. I am a part of it, but also I am distinct from it. I am a subprocess of the Tao, and if you want to do some basic math you can say Tao = (Me + Not Me), right? (We are going to get more into math as I build this argument out, so buckle up!)
14. If you read Lao Tzu, linked above, you'll find a lot of passages like "The Sage does X", "The Wise Man does Y", etc. If you're reading this from a western lens informed by Christian hierarchical thinking you will mistake these lines for general advice. They are not.
15. Sages, to Lao Tzu, should act like Sages. They should strive to maintain a perspective that keeps one eye on the Tao, a detachment from the illusion of the material. But it would be a huge mistake for a farmer to act like a sage, because it turns out the rice really matters. https://t.co/MlMqgXdaDT
17. Anyway let me refocus a bit here, because that's kind of the important thing. Lao Tzu recognizes that we can't spend our entire lives contemplating the unity of the Tao, we have to do things like eat and sleep and talk to people. To do that we have to fragment the unity.
18. So he's not *moralizing* as far as I can tell. This isn't religion in the way Catholics understand it. This is metaphysics, right? This is an explanation for the underlying imperceptible relations that manifest as the physical reality we seem to inhabit.
19. So what does it mean to spend some of our time contemplating the oneness of the Tao, and some of our time ignoring that oneness and acting like things like Music and Donuts and Hydrogen Atoms exist? This becomes 100% a question of our attention and how we use it.