Virtue

"When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder." 

Lao Tzu

One of the amusing side effects of reading fanfiction for a Chinese show is that I'm remembering a lot more of my Chinese philosophy class lately. Especially when fanfic includes quotes like the one above. 

Actually had an interesting conversation with a few others, based on a scene in the show. 

See, translation is hard in the first place, so I knew there were nuances I miss. Our language doesn't force us to specify the nature of our relationships as much (as a simple example - when I talk about my aunts they're all referred to as 'aunt', and other people have no idea who is an aunt by marriage, or an aunt on my mother's side or father's side. Not unless I add that detail. Just like I have to clarify if a sibling is older or younger.)

There are apparently also a lot of cultural references that I don't have the context for, especially famous poems.

But getting back to that discussion, they were trying to explain some of the context for an argument, and talked about 'position'. That there was an entire "positioning and collectivism source of dynamics".

Which doesn't explain anything at all, I know. I'll try to put it in my own words, based on what I got out of that conversation. Any and all errors are my own, as I'm not at all confident I understand. 

Its like - Confucius had all these guidelines you're supposed to practice. To be righteous. I've written plenty on that before (from my undergrad class), but I don't tend to focus on the many, many rules you're supposed to practice. (many of them are culturally specific, for one thing. Then there's my whole thing about rules being there to serve us, not to make us blindly serve them, and I also think people can get so focused on the rules that they miss the forest for the trees. But I digress).

Those widely accepted beliefs on what is right means that they have a shared set of rules, and so when they watch an encounter its like there's an invisible score keeper keeping track of the score, of their position, and as the encounter unfolds there are things you can do to improve your position. And the reverse, ofc.

Its not like your subjective opinion of the encounter. Not like our presidential debates, where we can argue with each other over who we thought did better. Everyone apparently agrees on who did or didn't have the best position (??? I'm not even sure that's the right way to phrase it).

Anyways. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth.