In the world of heaven and earth, each being has an end both for himself and for the being as a whole. In this sense, each being is both the center of the world and the center of the world. Based on the positioning of this role, man and nature are neither enemies nor subjects, but between friends and partners.
■ | Peng Fuchun
As far as human desires are concerned, there are many types of it. Some desires are universal, i.e. everyone has the same desire, or different desires. What I want, I want. I do not want, nor do I want. In this sense, one should follow a basic rule: do not do to others what you do not want. This is a negative expression. If it is expressed in terms of certainty, then it is: do what you want and do to others. In addition to this desire for identity, there is a mutual desire between man and me. That is to say, I desire others, I am the desirer, the other is what I want; at the same time, others desire me, others are desirers, I am what others want.
The mutual desire of man and self is typically expressed in the sexual desire relationship between men and women. Men desire women, women desire men. At the same time as common and mutual sexual desires, there are also different desires. Others are like him, and the desires of others are also like him. What I want is not what man wants. What I do not want, nor do I do what man does not want. In the light of this difference, another basic principle of people should be: do not do to others what you want, and you can do to others if you do not want. In order to satisfy this desire for pluralism, people need to be tolerant. Tolerance is not only tolerance for others who are one with oneself, but also for others who are different from oneself. That is to say, within the scope of the rules of the game, the different desires of each individual can be realized.
Symbiotic technology. Technology is the activity of man in creating and using tools to make things, and it has never been an independent activity of the individual, but a symbiotic activity of the group. From simple hand tools to current machines and information devices, technology has brought people and everything together in increasingly progressive ways. As a technology producer, man plays a different role in the activities of the whole due to the division of labor. People cooperate with each other and operate in an orderly manner. In the case of a factory, its production process is a succession of assembly lines; for an industry, its parts and their assembly constitute an upstream and downstream chain. A product is a finished being, a collection of different people and things. However, the consumption of products also has to go through distribution, circulation and trading. This process is fundamentally the transfer of products from one person to another. In short, technology forms an organic unity between the individual and the whole.
The Avenue of Symbiosis. The Dao is the truth about the existence of man and the world. This truth is nothing else, but a truth about birth and symbiosis. Heaven and earth have the virtue of good life, and people also have the virtue of good life. Man and I symbiosis is to let themselves be born, but also to let him live. The so-called birth is generation, is giving, is giving. This is the way of love. Love is neither the possession of desire nor the production of technology, but the generation of man and the world, that is, the existence of human life. Love is neither just an emotion nor a will, but an action to exist and generate. Of course, there are many forms of human love.
First, one should love oneself. Can't love yourself, how to love others. But loving oneself is neither selfish nor a kind of narcissism of self-pity, but rather allowing one's life to exist freely. Second, man is to love others as himself. Man must love not only his relatives, friends and lovers, but also all the people in the world. This is the so-called spirit of fraternity. To love one is to allow the lives of all people other than oneself to exist freely. If every individual loves himself and loves others so much, then he and I must love each other. I love people, and people love me. This also leads to the resolution of the contradiction between the individual and the whole, the individual becomes the individual of love, and the whole becomes the whole of love. #大道哲学 #
The author is a professor of philosophy at Wuhan University, and is the author of a series of academic monographs "Five Books of Guoxue" ("On Guoxue", "On Laozi", "On Confucius", "On Huineng", "On Confucianism and Taoism", all published and distributed by the People's Publishing House). This article is excerpted from "On Symbiosis", and the title is added by the editor.