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Will_Newsome comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion
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"Instead of creating utility, which is hard, we should all train ourselves to find utility in what we already have."
This is my fairly gross simplification of a lot of Eastern philosophy, and it is antithetical to the "Western memeplex" of achievement and progress.
However, relatively few practitioners of Eastern religions really seem to carry through the logical implications of a totally passive philosophy.
I admit the above imperative doesn't seem as horrifying as the ones listed in the OP, but if you really think through to what the consequences would be, I suspect it would be a future we would never choose.
Eastern philosophy has a lot of emphasis on things that don't needlessly grind against other things. For example, Taoism shares many themes in common with mechanism design and institutional microeconomics generally. In some ways a frictionless mind frictionlessly engaging its environment might be described as "passive", but though the Buddha might've been "passive" in that sense he sure ended up doing a lot of stuff and arguing with a lot of people. Contrast with Nietzsche's mirror men.
Do you mean this? I see some connection, but the emphasis and background assumptions seem extremely different from Taoism.
Perhaps I should have said "contrast with Nietzsche's mirror men".
That makes more sense.
Sorry. It's the result of my junior year AP History class. The teacher said "'compare and contrast' is redundant, as comparing implies contrasting". Which while true in a sense doesn't change the fact that 'compare' is often taken to mean 'find similarities'.
My impression is that outside of the contexts where "compare and contrast" is said, the word "compare" always means "examine the differences of these two same-kind-of-thing things" — e.g. comparison shopping, or comparing values in programming — and the "find similarities" meaning is dead. Am I wrong/unobservant/in a niche?