Editor’s Note: Standing by your personal values is more important than ever. Charles Hugh Smith seems to draw them from Taoist philosophy, but everyone draws the practical applications of their values from something. Without God, it seems we raise the government into that fearful position. When the government becomes God the more we demand trust in it from others, the more respect of government becomes sacred and untouchable. Of course, we know government’s cannot solve the human condition, or the deep repeating economic cycles, which every empire has moved through in the past.
However, we can choose. We have agency as our constant. Choice as a weapon. It is a weapon against entropy. And we must take it. It is ours to replace the suppression of choice, which the veneration of government deprives us of. Everyone must derive their values from somewhere.
Decide where your values come from, and act. Or suffer the consequences of the lack thereof...
Here’s where Charles’ agency comes from.
When these are no longer valued as essentials for the common good, society is lost.
I’m thankful for the eight things to aspire to listed at the bottom of the right-hand column of the main blog page:
integrity
austerity
restraint
humility
responsibility
patience
sacrifice
thrift
When these are no longer valued as essentials for the common good, society is lost.
These aspirations remind of Chapter 58 of the Tao Te Ching:
When the country is governed through simplicity and leniency,
The people are genuine and honest.
When the country is governed through harshness and sharp investigation,
The people are more deceitful and dishonest.
And Chapter 9:
To hold things and to be proud of them is not as good as not to have them,
Because if one insists on an extreme, that extreme will not dwell long.
When a room is full of precious things, one will never be able to preserve them.
When one is wealthy, high ranking, and proud of himself, he invites misfortune.
Guest post by Charles Hugh Smith from his blog on OfTwoMinds.com:
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