Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything

This doesn't make sense for all kinds of reasons. We're all immigrants in the U.S. Is there anybody who doesn't understand this? If for no other reason, most educated people understand the coming demographic tsunami that is beginning to devastate Europe, China, and has pretty much done-in Japan. I don't know anybody who believes that you can allow the immigration process to get out of control.

Additionally, why are so many AA and Hispanics now drawn to him?

Trump may be a lot of things, but being anti-immigrant makes no sense.

 

With all due respect, you are missing the point. Trump, like all caudillos, cultivates ENEMIES and his enemies are in the end all the same. They are anyone who doesn't support him. It's the SUPPORT he requires, this is why LOYALTY to him is the first, last, and always characteristic of his whole movement.

Only HE can fix it. (He has said exactly that)

 

periclean athens had their own version of trump

According to Plutarch, Alcibiades had several famous teachers, including Socrates, and was well trained in the art of rhetoric.[a] He was noted, however, for his unruly behavior, which was mentioned by ancient Greek and Latin writers on several occasions. It was believed that Socrates took Alcibiades as a student because he believed he could change Alcibiades from his vain ways. Xenophon attempted to clear Socrates's name at trial by relaying information that Alcibiades was always corrupt and that Socrates merely failed in attempting to teach him morality.[

 

Ok, so you see Trump as this super-powerful dictator wannabe type character. Even if this was the case, if nearly the entire established political and corporate system is anti-Trump, how could this come to be? Who are these enemies and how has Trump threatened them? And how do you explain what the others got away with over the past years? Could Clinton/Bush/Obama have sold out the American middle class to any greater degree? Didn't Trump go to bat for the same people?

 

There may be a thread of truth in that (actually a lot of truth in some of it), but Trump made his mark, maybe or maybe not in the most corrupt, in the toughest most difficult business anywhere -- commercial real estate in New York (though Chicago gives them a run for the money). There certainly was a lot of corruption involved but Trump would have been the corruptee, not the corrupter

 

I get the spirit of what you say, but in the end, one can only serve a single master. The fact that Trump seems like the best alternative shows how far we have gone down the drain. The fact that he is able to tell the truth at times [concerning various issues] demonstrates just how putrid this system has become. Several decades ago, Trump [saying the same things he says today] would not be taken seriously in the least.

I agree with many of his policies but disagree with him in that he would only like to clean up the swamp that fails to work for him. For instance, he seems to have little problem with the money printers at the Fed and all the real estate laws which have made it possible for property ownership to be used against the majority of the population.

In other words, he's got his, so now he's going to flick a few crumbs off the banquet table to the plebs [whereas the establishment elite desire to keep every penny for themselves by telling the herd that they'll be a lot happier owning nothing].

 

Some truth in what you say, but if Trump wanted to make money he sure as hell would not have run for president (and given away all his salary after winning.)

 

I appreciate some of the things Trump was able to accomplish [against enormous odds] but the swamp he refers to is only the superficial muck that hides the ocean-sized pit of depravity below [which is where the serious monkey-business goes on...like fractional reserve banking, corporations with rights of individuals, etc.].

We need to get rid of 200 years of laws and regulations and taxes and all the other non-sense that transformed Washington DC from the poorest city in the U.S. in 1950 to the richest one today. Return Detroit to that honor by rebuilding it as the manufacturing hub it was mid 20th century.

Having to look to Trump to bail out our sorry asses is like having Bill Gates assume the intellectual and moral leadership of the Church of Apocalyptic Climate Change. The guy had four decades to fix Windows and couldn't do that. What happens when the planet goes blue screen on us?

 

Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Adolf Hitler were all wealthy men either before they went into politics or early in their careers. Trump's golf trips cost something like 160 MILLION dollars, more than 100x his $400,000 salary.

 

Meh, apologies for being pedantic, but, um, it was over half of half, hahaha....

74,223,744 voters wanted more of the same.
Some wanted it simply for the entertainment value, according to my buddy Chris.

 

Curious, you cribbed part of your philosophy from T.H. White? I'm trying to recall if I recall this correctly, but if I do, he was the author that wrote some philosophy disguised as fiction about how many evils and especially war can be attributed to social (evil) versus anti-social (good) animal behavior. Ants, Evil: Owls, Good.

I rarely tossed aside a book when I was younger. T.H. White if I recall correctly may have been the first.

Some possible flaws in your point of view in this thread, interesting as it is, I suppose first off is assuming that 0 and 1 have any metaphysical or philosophical value more profound than simply their fundamental definition. Yep, can't have a zero without a 1 and can't have a 1 without a 0.

The modern equivalent of yin and yang is much more accurate as it is simply off or on, and yes, there are volumes of opinions that conflate this basic concept with good and evil - but good and evil are comprised of many complicated things so it is likely a mistake to use these terms as equivalents to concepts derived from yin and yang. Yin and yang I think was mostly about sex, something that the Chinese are obviously experts at.

Next...?

 

You're not being pedantic, that's well over half.
What I should have mentioned was I have good reason to believe that not all Trump voters are real "Trumpers", at least I hope so otherwise, I wonder how this country keeps going, (or even got started really)

 

Unlikely that the current civil organization of the planet will extend to a 1000y from now, eh? Even all the folks I have on ignore here might likely agree. Trump is a complete f'g tool of a human being. One of the very few seemingly honest folks here that support him that I haven't ignored just recently asserted that he supports him because he thinks that bully is being bullied by the establishment. This place is good for a bit of mind fk, from time to time. However, to get to my point, the US history is far far removed from being the shining beacon of light and hope that some would have us all believe. Ask a Cherokee, if you can find one.

 

the swamp must be drained, and you may even have a few species of crocodile identified correctly, but trump was never into draining the swamp, merely replacing the native alligators with his pet reptiles.

 

I have been to Indian casinos that remove all 20s from circulation because they have Jackson's picture on them.

 

I agree. But don't underestimate the threat of draining the swamp. It is the cause of the Republican never Trumpers for instance.

 

Never heard of him. I was not really getting at the good/evil of it but simply the productivity aspect.

The way I look at numbers is that there is only one number, "one." After all, technically, all things in the universe are unique, so what would "2" mean? Or even zero?

 

I don't know the guy and even though I believe he seems kind of bizarre in many respects, he has been an incredibly successful business person and seems to have a very together family. These are two enormous accomplishments.

The fear that liberals have for this guy is simply unfounded. Even if he was interested in such, how would he gain such power. All the institutions are firmly in the Democrats pockets.

 

I completely agree. With the entire system is pretty much corrupted, there are millions on the take and that's a lot of enemies.

 

I suppose I am guilty of assuming that the basis of your thread title is yin and yang.
What is the basis of your assertion?

 

Yin\yang covers a lot of territory, intellectual and non-intellectual. The basis is that all things contain all things. The duality that is the intellectual holds for all things knowable.

If you accept such, then it's a good time to recall this idea (as things continue to come somewhat unglued).

 

Yin and Yang is to my knowledge humanity's oldest concept of the duality of nature, but your thread title goes beyond this concept by equating good and evil as equivalents of yin and yang, so I'm specifically asking what your basis is for this correlation. Nietzsche seems a likely culprit, but I'm only familiar with his work from far removed pop-culture references. What defines something as intellectual v. non-intellectual?

 

Actually I was referring to good v bad which is considerably different than good v evil. Bad is simply a general subjective category whereas evil connotes intention. Also, keep in mind that Yin/Yang are non-intellectual, so opposites really isn't what it is. It's just the closest you can come.

The non-intellectual is generally used as a spiritual term. It is that which is unknowable intellectually, e.g., God. This can be broadened to include all things [which is a more accurate usage]. The intellectual is knowable, has a birth and death, and is permanent. The non-intellectual is unknowable [intellectually], has no life or death and is impermanent.

Where I get this from is my own life experience. I have been a very serious Zen student for 30+ years so after years of meditation, this begins to make a great deal of sense [beyond the intellectual]. There are many paradoxes we all confront every day in life and most of us just blow them off. Meditation allows you to see things much more clearly and the paradoxes begin to resolve themselves.

 

I've always found yin and yang to be of interest to me, personally, on an intellectual level. But, there were a lot of of attributes assigned to yin or yang that ultimately just made little to no sense. Of course having been first introduced to the concept more or less in 11th grade in 1981 it was a good cultural fit. Together with Dune, it helped me understand that Prince thought he was the Kwisatz Haderach, but everyone knows that was already taken by Percy with Brenda being a close follow up. Oh, back up a bit, it also was interesting learning about this concept that Frank Herbert cribbed into Dune, the legend of the Kwisatz Haderach, the man that had the inner strength of a woman - powerful enough to conquer the water of life. Really excellent stuff. Seemed to justify my wearing parachute pants and **** like that at the time too. Nowadays it's dudes like Chris Pine stepping out to the gym in "womens" leggings or even the whole trans issue that gets alot of attention around here at PF. Personal pronouns, meh.... Bit too much for me to be quite honest, but if I meet someone and they are somewhat rational about it, I don't particularly mind making an effort to accommodate their somewhat narcissistic need for attention. The caveat to this is that I don't meet or even know anyone that I personally interact with that creates any significant effort on my part to have a heightened sense of gender awareness. Everyone I personally interact with has been easily identifiable as male or female on my part and as far as I know they have the same opinion of themselves.

What I find more interesting is translating yin and yang into zero and one. To a large extent many of the attributes carry over, passive v active, dark v light, but not female v male or bad v good or even negative v positive. Instead, this modern version is simply off v on and aside from your somewhat condescending assertion that most of humanity has a very difficult time performing very simple tasks laid out in a step-wise fashion, I doubt very much that you have the ability to even understand how the power of off and on is harnessed by the all the chips that are involved in allowing this type of communication to occur: given that you posted this gem:

Not to catfish you and then slam you by drawing you in and then hammering you on this statement, but really, **** of here with such nonsense as posting something like this about math. On an internet forum, using a mouse and a keyboard and a monitor, or a phone and a screen, or a tablet and a screen. You demonstrate a lack of awareness of the importance of math, and 30+ years of Zen experience and meditation seemingly was insufficient to prevent this faux-pas.

So, whilst the 0s and 1s swirl around in their electronic dance providing us this unique and almost magical platform to carry on this dialogue, assuming I haven't completely pissed you off, where exactly should brilliant above the fray sort of folk look toward to establish a position of advantage from their expected outcome of the current nationalistic political trends sweeping the headlines?

Is there a good bet on a particular segment of the stock market, or is that whole thing not to be trusted as it is part of the establishment that needs to be burnt to the ground?
How about land, maybe go agrarian and get a place in the country to form bonds with the neighbors and establish independent food supplies?
What's your recommendation?
Anything specific?

***
Also, I appreciate that carrying forth with creating a thread of this sort can come back to layer difficulties on your attempt to follow through proving your point, there is one in particular that stands out.
In post 5 you made the observation that the US response to the evil of the two world wars resulted in what you seem to have viewed as a good thing. But then in post 58 you assert that we need to get rid of all of that, and even more! 200 years of stuff in fact! Which is it Sir? For it cannot in this case be both.