I obviously study historical and dialectical materialism, but there are some others I’m interested in. I want to try to get into secular Buddhism, stoicism, existentialism, and maybe absurdism. Does anyone have suggestions on any of these subjects? (I’m already intending to read Simone De Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sarte, and the book ‘capitalism- it’s nature and replacement’ which is a synthesis of Marxism and Buddhism, but the author’s a bit of a leftcom)
I’m a big proponent of treating others the way you want to be treated, and for the most part live and let live.
I have sympathies with Daoism/Taoism, even though I’m a staunch atheist.
I’m a believer in a grounded, softer version of the Gaia Hypothesis.
What appeals to you in the Taoist position? I was just looking it up in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, and it was a little hard to understand. On another note, the Gaia hypothesis does seem interesting and somewhat reasonable. Do you have any reading you’d suggest for either?
Taoism appeals to me because it is theoretically possible to be interpreted as an atheistic and secular philosophy/psuedo-religion. It dates back to ancient China, and it feels like a way more tolerable and “sane” philosophical framework that helps explain aspects of existence and humanity and sociological interaction, and some of the teachings of Taoism resonate with me.
Namely there being a “flow” to the cosmos and human interaction and the complex relationship between thoughts and actions, respect, change, and individuality and the collective.
It can sound like spiritual woo, but I like to interpret it as a framework to view life through.
I don’t have any particular reading pertaining to the Gaia Hypothesis, its just something I find fascinating due to my research on the biosphere, biology, paleontology, complex feedback systems, evolution, and our dying Earth.