I have converted to Taoism and I quit this website.

More like 1:800 odds

(1:1 is 50%)

This return will surprise very few. Sure, you were probably thinking I’d wait to 10 days apparently (or just under that being the placement of ‘bets’) but I am back in 2 days or whatever.

The problem isn’t that, in fact I had ‘quit’ the website if you analyse my activity before that statement that I was quitting. That statement was an out for me. I have quit a few websites and games recently and contrary to what most are experiencing during this coronavirus era, I have found extreme focus and direction in life to evolve from the events.

This isn’t about me IRL though and I never want it to be about that. It’s a huge reason I was (and I stress ‘was’) addicted to this website. I no longer am addicted to almost anything. I have cut down how much I consume energy drinks to a manageable minimum, I am genuinely happy and calm (though I’ll never be a passive pussy type and everyone knows that) and finally, I would say that I have developed that ‘thick skin’ that I was told to develop. The ‘thick skin’ concept, in my eyes, is not about actually having thick skin to criticism and mockery, it’s about how you go about handling it after it offends you. The difference between thin skinned vs thick skinned people isn’t even that the thick skinned don’t pick fights alone, it’s that the thin skinned pick wrong fights far too often and go about it all wrong too (the how, not just the when, is erroneous).

I haven’t truly ‘converted’ if we discuss the epistemological aspect of Taoism, though it doesn’t really contradict my original Pagan view of reality all that much. Instead of there being a being evolving from a random generator (complex concept that I will explain to you later or you can go back on my posts and/or questions to find out), there is simply a duality in Taoism instead and it’s more like a creator vs destroyer, with the destroying entity being the more cryptic and feminine one while the creating entity is the more blatant and masculine one. I don’t entirely agree to this notion, the duality I depict is one of both a creator and destroyer as one random generator and that there is a controller (former hijacker, present genuine captain/mistress of reality) and ‘she’ plays the more feminine role as she’s mothering reality, whereas ‘fate’ itself is the more masculine one if anything, as it is aggressive, unpredictable and not at all mysterious (it can’t be, it doesn’t even have any logic to it to begin with to then uncover).

Epistemology aside let’s get onto the morality of Taoism and outlook it has on how to go about life. These elements of Taoism have, over the past week of my life, nearly single-handedly ‘cured’ my anxiety and depression issues. I am talking of effects to the brain you’d expect only after months of therapy and medication. It is about flowing and understanding that we cannot change a lot of things in reality but what we can do is embrace that chaos and be orderly in how we adapt to it. This even fits so well with my username, RationalMadman. If you honestly want to tell me that you think it’s a toxic thing to convert to and whatever else, that is your right to feel and express. I understand why it’s compared to Buddhism but there are significant differences that I will elaborate on in later posts if I find people willing to seek and understand it.

I have spent so much of my life fighting in all the wrong ways with all the wrong people when I should have been expending that same amount of energy in ways that enabled me to strengthen relations with those I am close to and which helped enemies genuinely respect (not so much fear, literally respect) me for the mature way I handle things and how I empathise with them even in the heat of ‘war’. Sun Tzu was a Taoist, he was also a war strategist, the two are not contradictory. I read someone saying that Taoism preaches humility but that’s a misconception of what it preaches, as opposed to a lie. Buddhism preaches humility and deems ego a bad thing, Taoism talks about toning the ego down so it is a caring beast, as opposed to just a straight up monster that you can’t handle.

All I can tell you is that I see life so different now but I haven’t ‘changed’ at the core level of my inner drive and even my taste in music shockingly hasn’t altered much at all, I just can enjoy slower and calmer music than before but I still love all I used to love even more intensely as I’m paying more true attention to it. I meditate regularly, literally any moment I can take deep breaths and just relax I take the opportunity until it becomes boring (boring isn’t a bad feeling once you master meditation, it’s actually what you want to strive towards to build an inner barrier of ‘boredom’ when shit hits the fan in life and your boredom will make you almost giggle at the struggle ahead with each set of obstacles). Taoist meditation involves filling your mind and hyperfocusing it, not emptying the mind. You can even think sexual thoughts, of food cravings you have and the approach Taoism takes is to simply make your addiction a ‘thing’, it’s just there and you fully are aware of it and accept it and say ‘hello addiction, I wish to work with you to make us both have a healthier relationship’. That’s how you begin your journey to lowering your dosage or whatever. Sure, you can go cold turkey if you can afford to be that irritable, it’s not about the speed or the destination but about your journey being balanced enough for you as a person to remain calm and ready for whatever lies ahead, at all times.

We spend so much time on this website ‘battling’ to prove others wrong and I still don’t understand why. You can’t fight someone to change their mind, the audience are not likely to change their minds either. I must learn the Taoist way of debating. Using the opponent’s logic against them is something that’s Taoist that Sun Tzu preached a lot but I am getting into more purist Taoism and not just warlike stuff, so Lao Tzu and teachings like ‘the angry warrior has something the prove, but the best warrior is never angry.’ To really take it serious, not go ‘pseudo-intellectual philosophical waffling’ but appreciate the deep truths of Taoism and apply them to my life and debating and just everything. I will learn but for now I don’t want to debate, to me it’s not fun and is toxic for my wellbeing. I feel no contradiction between admitting that and remaining here as an active forum member who at times will debate but seldom so. That’s my new MO and any who have an issue with it are free to enjoy my high quality forum posts as they complain.