#chuangtzu — Public Fediverse posts

"Chuang Tzu wrote, ‘The common people have a constant nature; they spin and are clothed, till and are fed... it is what may be called their “natural freedom”’. These people of natural freedom were born and died themselves, suffered from no restrictions or restraints, and were neither quarrelsome nor disorderly. If rulers were to establish rites and laws to govern the people, ‘it would indeed be no different from stretching the short legs of the duck and trimming off the long legs of the heron’ or ‘haltering a horse’. Such rules would not only be of no benefit, but would work great harm. In short, Chuang Tzu concluded, the world ‘does simply not need governing; in fact it should not be governed’." — Murray N. Rothbard.
#chuangtzu #rothbard #aphet #economics #history #naturallaw

🦋"Once upon a time, I, Zhuang Zhou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhou. Soon I awakened, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man." - #Zhuangzi, Ch 2 tr Burton Watson

#dao #tao #daoism #taoism #zhuangzhou #ChuangTzu #doist #taoist

> Henry David Thoreau said,

“All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

An on-line article with Harper's(?) had Socrates say this line about Progress in an imagined dialogue with Steven Pinker.

#Thoreau 's quote from #NeilPostman has be thinking of the #WellSweep story by #ChuangTzu or ##ChuangTze #荘子