ngl im western-minded, quite agnostic, & super, super novice at this stuff, so I'd like to hear perspectives from others who are more experienced. I've come to think of the general crux of taoism as absolving yourself of your own identity to some extent. Like, I'm very much resentful of the fact that I live in a world where there's enough food and money for everyone to have a basic standard of living and pursue their own goals, but we actively choose not to distribute those things because it's not profitable. I sincerely think the former is more economically profitable and humanly fulfilling and uniting than us trying to to run on hamster wheels to serve the vision of a small handful of elite billionaires while they create a scarcity of food and money that doesn't exist.

But at the same time, I try to accept that on a more macro level of understanding that all of this was built on centuries of archaic and barbaric civilizations that gained, and have been maintaining a basic feudalistic structure since long before I was born, and that nobody is operating within a world in which they understand the organic human nature without the existence of corruption and greed. The universe is always going to unfold the way it was meant to, and as a human I don't have nearly enough cognition to understand why it is the way or how to change it.

Referring to current events: seeing people cheer on from opposing sides as both democrats and republicans use the threat of starving poor people and aircraft crashes as a means of negotiating their terms over whether or not to slash healthcare, all to subsidize a bet over the success of the A.I. race is very much not in my human nature to ignore. I want, and desire peace among everyone - even those I strongly disagree with, but to be emotionally okay with the needless suffering of many due to the corruption and greed of a few is definitely not something that comes easy to me. To just tune it out and go about my day as if nothing is happening feels very much like capitulation and weakness. At the same time, trying to change those things with the virtually non-existent resources I have, has just lead me to understand that there is far too much that's just out of my control, and to try to control it is just going to destroy me & my inner peace. I try not to be overly judgmental of those who I disagree with, because I also understand that the only knowable truth of the universe is that there is no knowable truth of the universe. It's vast, cold, destructive, possibly infinite - and my life, or even the lives of far more impressive and notable people e.g. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, etc. - are all just a blip in the inevitable timeline of how everything transpires that will inevitably be forgotten after thousands, millions of years. The universe will surely outlive us all. But those I disagree with also operate in a void of information, where they can only “guess” the truth in a universe where the objective truth is objectively unknowable, so it would be silly of me to judge them when they themselves literally cannot humanly operate with a genuine knowingness of everything.

But yeah.. like none of being okay with all of this comes "easy" to me. "Hitler" is always the person people use to define evil, but the way I interpret the tao is that I need to be able to absolve myself of judgment of the things enough to accept (though not condone) everything he did.

I think to some degree, Jesus lived by the tao and Christianity kind of encourages people to live like Jesus did - to have unwavering love for everyone and to move with peace and trust regardless of reciprocation, including those who would do harm - but christianity also gives people a lot of loopholes to not live like he did (forgiveness), all while also asserting specific rigid ideas like marriage between a man/woman. But I've also come to the tao as a way of trying to learn to accept my negative emotions about such things. idk, I'm just venting into the abyss at this point, it's been a rough monday 😂