The second line, though… what on Earth is the difference between “good” and “right” or between “evil” and “bad”? They mean the same thing; “good” and “evil” have just migrated to slightly higher-brow-sounding language.
Are these two different quotes, or were they juxtaposed like this in the original? (i.e. “You must distinguish between ideology and knowledge. → There is no such thing as good and evil.”)
BEHAVIOR GUIDE (in order to avoid mere survival)
Intended for younger generations by JEAN TOUITOU
Although appearance shows quite the reverse the natural trend of the system is to turn you into a slave. Your mission is to remain erect and never crawl.
when learning, you must know how to make the clear distinction between what is ideology and what is genuine knowledge.
Be fully aware of the difference between making a compromise and compromising yourself.
Whatever happens, heart break hotel is sure to be your dwelling place, for one or several stays. This is no reason to overindulge in the pangs of love for too long.
Learn how to make simple and excellent meals.
Fear no gods, whatever appearance they may have.
For girls: all boys are more or less the same. For boys: all girls are different.
Keep well away from competitive sport that will only cause wounds that will make you suffer when you are over forty.
There is no such thing as good and evil. There is what is right and what is bad, what is consistent and what is wrong.
That is the entire original quote, but not all felt like it belonged here. It’s all part of the same, I think.
The first part seems rather applause lighty; I think almost everyone agrees that we need to distinguish between ideology and fact; actually doing so is the hard part, and the quote doesn’t provide any interesting insights in how best to go about doing that.
This is probably me projecting, but I took it to be about distinguishing between those which make claims about reality and those which don’t.
For example: If somebody says “You should be democratic, because the people have the right to rule themselves”—that’s not even claiming to be a fact, just an ethical position. If they say “You should be democratic, because democratic countries do better economically,” then that’s a about the real world, which I could even test if I wanted to.
In my admittedly limited experience, it seems that a lot of confusion in the greatest mind-killing subjects (politics and spirituality) come from people not properly distinguishing between those two kinds of statements.
And that issue often becomes circular. People often have both ethical and factual reasons to take a political position, and they don’t clearly split them apart in their mind, each reason propagating to reinforce the other.
I’ll take a personal example : I oppose death penalty for many reason, but among them one is ethical (I don’t approve of voluntary terminating a human life for ethical reasons) and one is more factual (I believe as a fact, from various statistics, that death penalty does not deter crime). But it requires a conscientious effort from myself (and I didn’t always do it, and I suspect many don’t do it) to not have each of two reasons reinforcing the other with a feedback loop.
The interesting question is how you evaluate proposed big changes. Democracy has turned out to be a moderately good idea, but trying it out for the first few times was something of a leap in the dark.
There are reasons for thinking that democracy might work better than monarchy—generally speaking, a bad ruler can do more damage than not having a great ruler can do good, but is the theoretical reason good enough?
From what I heard, the person who established Athenian democracy did so after first overthrowing the previous ruler in a civil war, having concluded that becoming powerful was the best way to become a Great Man. He then reasoned that, since everyone should strive to be a Great Man, then everyone else would also be obliged to do the same thing he just did—which would mean endless civil wars. Which would be bad. So he came up with the clever solution of making everyone a ruler, so they could all be Great Men without having to kill each other first. Hence, democracy.
Or something like that, anyway. Wikipedia doesn’t say all that much, so I suspect that the story I remember is more story than actual history.
True, however if I recall correctly, one of the lessons in The Teacher’s Password not everything is about the answer. A lot of the time I gain more from the question than being served the answer directly. We need more insights anyway, so how DO we distinguish fact from ideology? People claim that the earth was created by God in 6 days, and others claim The Big Bang caused the creation of what we know as the universe, but since I haven’t discovered either of these on my own, how can I be sure that either is true?
When learning, you must know how to make the clear distinction between what is ideology and what is genuine knowledge.
There is no such thing as good and evil. There is what is right and what is bad, what is consistent and what is wrong.
-- “Behaviour Guide (in order to avoid mere survival)”, Jean Touitou
I like the first line.
The second line, though… what on Earth is the difference between “good” and “right” or between “evil” and “bad”? They mean the same thing; “good” and “evil” have just migrated to slightly higher-brow-sounding language.
I’m not trying to defend the quote, but there are no evil microscopes. There are useful microscopes and not useful microscopes.
I’m confused why the original quote contrasts right with bad, rather than with evil, but I think that’s what Touitou is trying to say.
Are these two different quotes, or were they juxtaposed like this in the original? (i.e. “You must distinguish between ideology and knowledge. → There is no such thing as good and evil.”)
BEHAVIOR GUIDE (in order to avoid mere survival) Intended for younger generations by JEAN TOUITOU
Although appearance shows quite the reverse the natural trend of the system is to turn you into a slave. Your mission is to remain erect and never crawl.
when learning, you must know how to make the clear distinction between what is ideology and what is genuine knowledge.
Be fully aware of the difference between making a compromise and compromising yourself.
Whatever happens, heart break hotel is sure to be your dwelling place, for one or several stays. This is no reason to overindulge in the pangs of love for too long.
Learn how to make simple and excellent meals.
Fear no gods, whatever appearance they may have.
For girls: all boys are more or less the same. For boys: all girls are different.
Keep well away from competitive sport that will only cause wounds that will make you suffer when you are over forty.
There is no such thing as good and evil. There is what is right and what is bad, what is consistent and what is wrong.
That is the entire original quote, but not all felt like it belonged here. It’s all part of the same, I think.
The first part seems rather applause lighty; I think almost everyone agrees that we need to distinguish between ideology and fact; actually doing so is the hard part, and the quote doesn’t provide any interesting insights in how best to go about doing that.
This is probably me projecting, but I took it to be about distinguishing between those which make claims about reality and those which don’t.
For example: If somebody says “You should be democratic, because the people have the right to rule themselves”—that’s not even claiming to be a fact, just an ethical position. If they say “You should be democratic, because democratic countries do better economically,” then that’s a about the real world, which I could even test if I wanted to.
In my admittedly limited experience, it seems that a lot of confusion in the greatest mind-killing subjects (politics and spirituality) come from people not properly distinguishing between those two kinds of statements.
And that issue often becomes circular. People often have both ethical and factual reasons to take a political position, and they don’t clearly split them apart in their mind, each reason propagating to reinforce the other.
I’ll take a personal example : I oppose death penalty for many reason, but among them one is ethical (I don’t approve of voluntary terminating a human life for ethical reasons) and one is more factual (I believe as a fact, from various statistics, that death penalty does not deter crime). But it requires a conscientious effort from myself (and I didn’t always do it, and I suspect many don’t do it) to not have each of two reasons reinforcing the other with a feedback loop.
The interesting question is how you evaluate proposed big changes. Democracy has turned out to be a moderately good idea, but trying it out for the first few times was something of a leap in the dark.
There are reasons for thinking that democracy might work better than monarchy—generally speaking, a bad ruler can do more damage than not having a great ruler can do good, but is the theoretical reason good enough?
From what I heard, the person who established Athenian democracy did so after first overthrowing the previous ruler in a civil war, having concluded that becoming powerful was the best way to become a Great Man. He then reasoned that, since everyone should strive to be a Great Man, then everyone else would also be obliged to do the same thing he just did—which would mean endless civil wars. Which would be bad. So he came up with the clever solution of making everyone a ruler, so they could all be Great Men without having to kill each other first. Hence, democracy.
Or something like that, anyway. Wikipedia doesn’t say all that much, so I suspect that the story I remember is more story than actual history.
True, however if I recall correctly, one of the lessons in The Teacher’s Password not everything is about the answer. A lot of the time I gain more from the question than being served the answer directly. We need more insights anyway, so how DO we distinguish fact from ideology? People claim that the earth was created by God in 6 days, and others claim The Big Bang caused the creation of what we know as the universe, but since I haven’t discovered either of these on my own, how can I be sure that either is true?
By looking at the views of those who have been right about this sort of thing in the past, i.e., physicists.
Given more time, by asking/searching for the evidence that convinced that group.