Posts Tagged ‘three chinese philosophies’
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Dharma. Many of us have heard the word in discussions of eastern philosophy, but few understand the importance of its meaning to people of all professions. Dharma is personal responsibility combined with one’s social, familial, or professional duty—all with the concept of equilibrium or balance in mind. In Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, she describes the inherent importance of dharma to those seeking success in any realm.
As westerners, we often like to define what is right and what is wrong in absolute terms. Killing is wrong. Feeding people is good. Stealing is wrong. Healing is good. But the idea of dharma states that there is a right and wrong, a “duty” if you will, for each individual depending on his or her station in life. If someone has joined the army and sworn to fight as his superiors direct, it is his dharma to do so. If killing is involved, it is his dharma to kill. That is the duty he must fulfill based on his station in life. It is also his duty to wear camouflage clothing and stay physically fit in order to protect himself from attack. Sacrificing himself is not the warrior’s dharma. After all, what good is a dead warrior? His dharma is to perform his job while building upon his ability to do his job effectively. That means self-preservation.
Meanwhile, if a physician has taken an oath to save all lives, he must do so no matter whether these are the lives of friendly soldiers or enemies. It is his dharma to do so—his duty. He must get a good night’s sleep; eat well; and never endanger his hands, the sanitation of the operating environment, or his own livelihood, as this would deter him from performing his dharma.
The dharma of a debtor is to pay back his debt as well as he is able—to establish a payment plan that does cause him to cut back on luxuries, does force him to take on a lower standard of living, but does not endanger his or his family’s livelihood. After all, the creditor also has to live and to support his family, so that is another dharma that must not be neglected. Meanwhile, the dharma of a creditor is to collect upon debt. This dharma calls for him to enable the debtor to establish a workable payment plan while still remaining able to recover financially. None of this is anything new to you, I’m sure, but many wrongly interpret their dharma due to short-sighted pressure from professional superiors.
Some folks in the credit industry seem to think it is their dharma to ruin the debtor. To take all they can get and leave the debtor with nothing—no money, no hope, no self-respect. This is a huge mistake on every professional level. Everyone makes mistakes. Life is not about avoiding mistakes and proving that you were born perfect and a genius. Dharma simply states that one must do the duty you happen to have in order to help put things right in the world—in order to bring things back to a state of equilibrium.
Tags: about dharma, achieve true prosperity, ancient chinese philosophies, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, dharma is, dharma means, eradicate fear, everyday dharma, four chinese philosophies, the chinese philosophies, the meaning of debt, three chinese philosophies, truth prosperity, ways to overcome fears
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Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Dharma—or duty in the interest of balance—is an interesting subject that brings up a lot of complicated issues. By the way, that definition—“duty in the interest of balance”—is mine, but it’s taken from the ideas put forth in Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart. Chu just defines it as “duty,” but all the examples she gives illustrate how duty, performed rightly, leads to balance.
In explaining the dictates of dharma, she gave one particularly good example. She was a manager in a manufacturing firm and had to travel to one of the firm’s branches, which was performing poorly. The manager of this branch was her friend, so she felt very torn in terms of whether she should come down hard on the company or be casual and friendly. In the end, she realized her dharma. (Remember it’s your duty, but always in the interest of establishing balance). Her dharma was to ask the company how she, as a representative of the parent company, could help them improve their sales. It required the company to work hard to come up with a plan for improvement, but offered all the support that was needed. In other words, a win-win solution.
Another good example of the concept was given to me once by a college professor.
He taught a philosophy class that seemed, well, purposefully confusing. I thought it was badly taught and that it frankly favored students who were total bullshit artists versus those who actually did the reading. About three out of ten students were the bullshit artists who enjoyed the class and the rest of us sat there dumbfounded every single class, utterly befuddled by what was being (supposedly) discussed.
After many weeks of this, the professor addressed the class one day, saying that several students had approached him and very frankly stated that they knew they would never excel at the class but wanted some directive as to how to simply pass. Their goal was to pass, not to excel, and they asked him what these basic requirements would be. He told the class that the only way to pass was to attempt to excel. That there was no shortcut. He then stated that graduate students were expected to be able to bullshit. That it was an art and a skill and that we would all do well to cultivate it. He basically admitted that it was a class in “how to bullshit your way through when you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I have to admit I didn’t agree with his philosophy, but I did respect that he was being perfectly frank about it. I do agree, however, that the only way to get through something painful with the least amount of pain is to attempt to excel, rather than to attempt to squeak by. I had to take the class to graduate, and it was my dharma to do my best in it, so that’s what I did. As someone famous once said, “If you’re going to be a whore, be the best one in the house.”
It’s not easy for anyone to understand his or her dharma. We all make mistakes and discover our true dharma through trial and error. And, of course, this dharma changes as life changes and our duties change. But if we keep this philosophy in mind—that solutions to problems are based on each individual’s duty or role in their company, their family, their friendship clique, or any organization—then we begin to be able to answer the age-old question of what is “the right thing to do” (morally, professionally, etc.). For those who are self-employed, their dharma is to serve their clients. For those who are unemployed or destitute, their dharma is to preserve and improve themselves without harming others, thereby preserving balance in all things. Everyone has a dharma.
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Saturday, December 26th, 2009
When discussing the idea of dharma—or duty with a view toward establishing balance—in the business world, it is inevitable that the subject of the disgruntled employee should come up. In Thick Face, Black Heart, Chu talks about this common dilemma: when one is duty-bound to serve a manager who is fool, then what do you do?
Dharma states that even if your boss is a fool, your duty is to serve him—or else have the courage to quit the job. Because changing jobs is stressful and difficult to achieve, many choose to remain in a bad position and complain about it rather than quit and pursue other options. Such cowardice is not admirable! It doesn’t serve you and it doesn’t serve balance. However, if you do need to stay in a bad job for some reason, dharma states that serving your (fool of an) employer faithfully is the best course of action.
When I say “your dharma is to serve,” I’m not laying a moralistic trip on you. I’m not saying that we must all deny our personal needs and emotions for some abstract concept of duty. I’m an American. I would never say such a thing. Please. What I’m saying is that your life will be better if you follow your dharma. You’ll be happier, achieve more, get where you want to go faster, and have a more balanced life overall. Refraining from complaining will prevent you from gathering groups of other disgruntled employees around you who all feed each other’s dissatisfaction until the only result is rampant unhappiness.
The thing is, you are also duty-bound, in such a situation, to offer any suggestions for improvement that occur to you. Perhaps you see how a certain plan could improve efficiency. Despite your knowledge that your employer is a buffoon who won’t understand the concept, you are duty bound to present the plan anyway. Your job is to serve that employer in the interest of the company. If your employer is too foolish to follow his own dharma by considering your plan, that’s his business, not yours.
Following your dharma is emotionally demanding. It requires a lot of thought as to priorities and obligations. It requires one to carefully consider before making commitments because of the dharma those commitments might contain. It requires one to take to heart the philosophy of “Thick Face,” which means holding high self-esteem and believing in your convictions without faltering. It also requires one to embody the “Black Heart” philosophy, which is that of ruthlessly doing what is right for a righteous long-term goal without letting short-term interests distract you.
It is often helpful to have a partner in the demanding process of pursuing your dharma. This is why in the old days they used to say “behind every successful man there is a woman.” Whether your support is a man or woman is irrelevant, the point is that we all need emotional support—someone to discuss the complications of dharma with and to encourage us to do the right thing towards balance. The same is true for business, and that’s why business coaches and the like abound. These support systems can be useful if they have the right approach—not an emphasis on short-term victory at all costs, but a view toward win-win situations that create balance.
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Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Chu hits upon an important point for all of us, no matter our profession, when, in her book Thick Face, Black Heart, she acknowledges that we are all driven by the dual motivation of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. For instance, we typically vote for politicians based on the pleasure and pain-avoidance they promise for our future. Unfortunately, this view of life is short-sighted.
Look at U.S. president Ronald Reagan: he turned the U.S. from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in eight short years due to his dedication to creating a false prosperity that made Americans feel good in the moment.
Chu suggests that we move beyond this pleasure principle in our own lives in order to achieve true and lasting prosperity. The key, she says, is to follow the example of great men and women in the past by having the courage of our convictions. So many aspects of our lives are simply cultural traditions. People do them because they are used to doing them. They can’t imagine life any other way. If someone stands up against these traditions, they face ridicule. Yet in the end—if they maintain the courage of their convictions to end harmful or useless traditions—they go down in history as heroes. Such daily heroes, one person at a time, have ended traditions as diverse as foot-binding in China, racist Jim Crow laws in the American south, and the legality of the glass-ceiling for women in business.
Another reason why the blind avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure does us harm in the long run is simply that it encourages us to object to change. Change is inherently painful in most instances. Even if your company is changing over to a more prosperous business model, the process of remembering new procedures and techniques, getting to know new people, and learning new software can be tedious and overwhelming.
Moving to a new and better home, as anyone knows, can be stressful. Possessions can get broken in the process. Movers may come into your life whom you don’t trust or who charge too much. The transition is fraught with problems and expenses, yet in the end you are in a better home with more of the features you enjoy on a day-to-day basis. It was the pursuit of pleasure in the long-term that drove you to go forward with the move, of course—a forward-thinking attitude.
But Chu’s primary point in all this is that most forward-thinking moves come not from the long-term pursuit of pleasure but from the courage of one’s convictions. A sense of right and wrong. A sense of dignity and integrity for a population of people, not just for yourself. Ghandi understood this, as did Martin Luther King. Of course we can’t all be Ghandi, but we can follow his example of moral courage in our lives—fighting for change as needed to make our little worlds—our offices, our homes, our towns—a better place.
Tags: achieve true prosperity, ancient chinese philosophies, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, eradicate fear, four chinese philosophies, the chinese philosophies, three chinese philosophies, truth prosperity, ways to overcome fears
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Fear is the most destructive of all emotions. It can destroy a successful person, prevent success in a striving person, and make people dependent on others, even to the point of obsession. There is a certain “bogi yogi” in my town, a man who presented himself as a spiritual teacher and gained an enormous, almost unprecedented following. I know some of his former devotees, and they have told me that he kept many of the people closest to him there by claiming to be psychic and predicting that terrible things would befall them if they left the organization. Many many people fell for this and stayed loyal to him for decades. They believed him to be psychic and, no matter how much abuse they received at his hands, were afraid to leave because of his predictions.
It’s just one example, and a rather extreme one, of how powerful fear can be and how people can use it to manipulate others and gain success at their expense. (Of course the yogi was receiving at least 10% of the income of each of his devotees as a tithe.) Now, you may think that these people were foolish to fall for such a stunt, but in their world it made sense, just as the fears that dominate you seem to be perfectly logical. The truth is that most people do not know they are afraid most of the time. But fear doesn’t have to be a negative entity. According to Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, there are six elements involved in handling fear. Let’s address three of those in this blog.
The first of those is acknowledging the usefulness of fear. After all, fear is what prevents us from leaping into a fire, jumping off a rooftop, confronting a hardened criminal, or taking unnecessary risks with your stock portfolio. Fear keeps us alive. That’s why it’s there. Nothing wrong with a little healthy fear. But remember: fear is there to guide and protect us, not to destroy and intimidate us.
Secondly, an irrational fear must be confronted directly. Some of history’s greatest warriors were once the greatest cowards. But they faced their fear—the fear of financial risk, the fear of public speaking, the fear of raising your rates—head on, confronted it, and conquered it, and became brave men and women. Says Chu, “the more fear you confront and conquer, the greater courage you will posess.”
Chu’s third point about fear is an unusual one. She states that fear sometimes takes the part of compassion. It is the fear of doing something morally wrong. For instance, a salesman may observe that his interest in making a dollar is the opposite of his client’s interest in saving a dollar. He fears to cause the client harm. Deep down he knows he is a noble person and doesn’t wish to be compromised by his job. Chu calls this a problem of diversity. In this scenario, the salesman sees his needs and the client’s needs as diverse and distinct. But if he were to instead work out a win-win solution he would see the unity between these interests and the problem of diversity would disappear.
The fourth point is simply a matter of mastering the art of detachment, or not being emotionally involved with what you have to do. In order to achieve this, it helps to give up your expectations and simply go forth and observe what the results are. (Yes, I know, easier said than done.)
The fifth technique for conquering fear is to simply ignore it, acknowledging that most of the things we fear really never do come true.
Finally, Chu sums up the previous five fear-conquering strategies by stating the sixth point, which is that no matter what technique you use for overcoming irrational fear, you must plod ahead and, ignore the fear, and do what has to be done. The more fears you face, the more fears you conquer, the easier this will become.
Tags: ancient chinese philosophies, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, eradicate fear, four chinese philosophies, the chinese philosophies, three chinese philosophies, ways to overcome fears
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Monday, December 14th, 2009
One of the chapters in Chu’s Thick Face, Black Heart affected me deeply. It was called, “Master the Distinctions Between Virtue and Vanity.” She used a parable to explain the concept: a holy man had taken a vow of honesty. He sat beneath a tree, meditating, when a man ran up. He told the holy man that he was wrongly accused of thievery and being chased by ruffians who would kill him. The holy man could see that he was, indeed, innocent. The man climbed into the tree and hid himself among the leaves. But when the ruffians came and asked the holy man if he had seen the supposed thief, the holy man ratted him out, all because of his vow of honesty. They dragged the innocent man from the tree and killed him. When the holy man died and went before judgment he was admonished for this act. God said, “It was not for the sake of virtue that you delivered the innocent man to his tormentors, it was to preserve a vain image of yourself as a virtuous person.”
In other words, in business as in life, do not adhere blindly to any dogma. Your belief in absolute truths only serves to help you gain praise from others with the same convictions. It allows you to be self-righteous about your supposed virtue and feel superior to others. Meanwhile you are living outside of the world, bringing suffering to others because of your selfish convictions as to absolute right and wrong. This belief in an absolute truth comes into play in every political election, where the various parties battle for the supremacy of one set of beliefs. Those who acknowledge that there are times to utilize each belief system appropriately are degraded as traitors, or worse: loathed “independents” with no chance to win.
Ignorance has guided the idea of virtue since time immemorial. In ancient China, a girl’s virginity was so sacred that if she was raped by soldiers in invading armies—a relatively common occurrence—she would be forced to drink poison to kill herself. When Galileo publicized his finding that the earth revolved around the sun, “virtuous” members of the Catholic Church condemned him and imprisoned him for contradicting their supposedly infallible beliefs. In the U.S., in the 1950’s, innocent citizens were impoverished and imprisoned because of senator Joseph McCarthy’s misguided obsession with capitalist “virtue.”
Chu makes the point that virtue, contrary to what most people think, is not something you wear outside of yourself for public display. Unlike the western philosophical tradition, where we try to guide our lives by absolutes such as those contained in the following aphorisms:
- Turn the other check,
- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,
- A stitch in time saves nine,
- The squeaky wheel gets the grease,
etc. . . .
The Chinese viewpoint acknowledges that these philosophies are never absolute, but that life, and morality, require more of a person than simple adherence to law. They require moment-to-moment mediation on one’s inner convictions.
Tags: against dogma, ancient chinese philosophies, anti dogma, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, conquering fear of failure, core conviction, detachment emotional, detachment mental, four chinese philosophies, inner conviction, inner convictions, selfish interest, subjective concept, subjective meaning, subjective moral, the chinese philosophies, three chinese philosophies, true motivation, true motivational, true motivations, true neutral motivational, women fear of success
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Saturday, December 12th, 2009
The fear of success is much more powerful than the fear of failure. So says Chu in her book on using the Asian mindset for success in business, Thick Face, Black Heart.
This is because success brings change, and change brings uncertainty. Most of the things you think you want will come at the price of leaving behind your familiar life and venturing into the unknown. As a result, most people think they are striving for success, but in reality are just going through the motions. They haven’t mentally prepared themselves for change.
Failure takes many forms. There is the failure of those who never attempt anything great. Their failures are comfortably private. The failures of those who attempt extraordinary things are public. Those suffering ordinary failures often feel free to comment on the grandiose failures of those attempting great things. Says Chu, “When we don’t pay our bills, a computer somewhere writes us a nasty letter. When Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills, it makes the six o’clock news.”
Putting yourself in the position to be criticized and ridiculed is, of course, unpleasant, but where would society be today without thinkers like Socrates and Galileo? They suffered deeply for their convictions, but were, in essence, more successful and satisfied people than their tormentors. Their ideas are now immortal. But how could anyone, today, stand to endure so much discomfort, pain, and persecution for the sake of an inner conviction? The key, says Chu, is to understand that the world is perfect.
An old saying goes, “If you don’t like the world you see, change the prescription of your glasses.” The point being: there is nothing wrong with the world but your view of it. I have a lot of friends who are at that age where they need to decide if they want to have children or not. For a woman, a certain time comes when (barring the use of a great deal of the latest technology) it’s simply “now or never.” A lot of them hesitate, saying, “is this really a world I want to bring a child into? Society is getting worse and worse every year!” Then they go on to cite everything from corn-fed cattle to the war in Iraq to support their theory.
I say hey, if you don’t want to have a baby, then don’t, but that is a preposterous reason. The world has always been screwed up. Think of the early sixties, when everyone thought an atom bomb could drop at any minute. Think of the thirties and the Great Depression. Think of medieval times and the black plague. And all through history, people have been saying, “How could I ever bring a child into this terrible world?!”
The world is perfect. It is ever changing. Every swing of the pendulum brings a counter swing. So, says Chu, have no fear of success and the changes it will bring.
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Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Not caring about the opinions of others—as is recommended by the Thick Face aspect of Chu’s Thick Face, Black Heart philosophy—means finding the courage to do what must be done without regard to what people think. It means examining the role you play in your company, your family, and your world, and freeing yourself from the domination of arbitrary ideals. This is the inner work that will make you truly a free person and a powerful person.
One reason that some of today’s most powerful people are that way is that they do what must be done to succeed without regard for the opinions of others. They are (to use a popular Zen Bhuddist term) detached. But this is not, as some might suppose, an insistence upon becoming amoral and self-centered. It is a recognition of the fact that you, as a caring, sensitive person, must pursue your own legitimate self interest in order to stay that way. After all, most thieves aren’t that way because they want to hurt people, they have simply turned to thievery out of desperation. They hit rock bottom and had nowhere else to go. Wouldn’t it have been better if they had exercised a little legitimate self interest along the way and kept themselves out of the red?
The key to this philosophy, of course, is the word ‘legitimate.’ When is your self interest legitimate, and when not? The key, says Chu in Thick Face, Black Heart, is to fully understand the motives for your own actions. If the motives are pure, then it is legitimate to engage in “warfare” to pursue them. In this case, I mean playing the various games of business and sales. Is she saying the ends justify the means? Not exactly. What she is saying is that what you do is not so important as WHY you do it.
Are you using manipulative sales tactics because you have been taught this is the way to success, yet it makes you feel bad inside? Then you are not working with your own inner convictions. You are following imposed standards of “work” for imposed standards of “success.” Are you enforcing a recycling program at work because you’ve been told that “going green” is the right thing to do, yet you don’t actually care about it and find the whole thing messy and inefficient? Then, again, you are not working with your inner convictions. The purpose of the Thick Face, Black Heart philosophy is not to tell you what is right and what is wrong, in terms of the actions you take in life—it is to urge you to follow your own inner dictates.
Will you make mistakes? Yes, you will. You will follow convictions that you find, in the end, were wrongheaded. However, and this is key to the philosophy—“Mistakes made on the path to self-discovery will correct themselves, while those made through blind adherence to subjective standards simply perpetuate the folly.”
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Monday, December 7th, 2009
In Thick Face, Black Heart, Chu relates modern business to the Asian concept of Yin and Yang. This belief is that all things are composed of two forces, and that things which are thought to be opposite are more intimately related than they may at first appear. Darkness cannot exist without light, nor good without evil.
With this in mind, it makes sense to note that there are also two aspects to human actions: the inward motivation and the outward appearance. Most people have experienced the shock of seeing someone do an action that appears terribly hostile and bad, but once they understand the inner motivation, it actually begins to make sense. We call it “what makes people tick.” People who deal with children understand the concept intimately: if a child hits and kicks, it usually means they are inwardly motivated to solve a deeply disturbing dilemma. Once you know what is going on in a child’s personal life, it’s usually pretty easy to figure out why they do the things they do. Good parents seek to address the inner problem and change the inner motivation in order to alter the outward expression. They know that forcing the child to suppress the outward expression won’t ultimately solve the inner problem, but cause it to fester, possibly for a lifetime.
Each person possesses both creative and destructive forces in equal measure. These complement each other. They can’t be judged by the common standards of good and evil, as they are all part of a whole. This is why, Chu says, the ideal Thick Face, Black Heart practitioner does not try to live up to any public or private image of himself. These practitioners allow their outward appearance to be dominating or submissive as the situation calls for. They follow their inner convictions.
An example from Asia is the classic Chinese saying, “Pretend to be a Pig in Order to Eat the Tiger.” It references one method that was once used in tiger hunting: to dress in a pig’s skin and wait in the woods. When the tiger comes close, looking for his lunch, the hunter shoots the tiger. Asian philosophy judges a man not on his strength and heroism in tiger killing, but on his ability to endure the humiliation of being a pig. Thus the inner conviction to kill a tiger is externally unknowable when one is dressed like a pig and shambling around, rooting in the dirt, but the hunter has his inner conviction and doesn’t care what other people think of him.
This is where the concept of “Thick Face,” or unshakeable self-confidence without regard to the opinions of others, comes in. Rather than attempting to be heroic—in war, in a corporate setting, in family life, or in sales—a warrior must be willing to do whatever is needed to overcome the opposition, even including yielding to the point of looking like a pig—in order to ultimately win.
Einstien said that a great person knows of his or her greatness long before anyone else does. If you do, don’t consider that to be arrogance. Also, don’t express it as arrogance. Simply know it. Keep that inner conviction, and let it drive you in your deeds.
Tags: ancient chinese philosophies, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, core conviction, four chinese philosophies, inner conviction, inner convictions, subjective concept, subjective meaning, subjective moral, the chinese philosophies, three chinese philosophies, true motivation, true motivational, true motivations, true neutral motivational
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Friday, December 4th, 2009
Axioms like “turn the other cheek” make us feel good. If we believe in them, it seems as if we can sum up proper human conduct in three seconds or less, then move on to more pressing matters. But in reality, human conduct, and business conduct, is never cut and dried like that. There are times to turn the other cheek, and there are times not to. Here I’m going to use Chin-Ning Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, to help sort it all out. Something she mentions quite a bit in the book is that Chinese philosophy, largely due to the way the Chinese language works, is very different from western, or Christian, philosophy. Chinese characters mean different things in different situations, and that is exactly the way the philosophy is: nothing is set in stone. Every moment is physically, financially, emotionally, and ETHICALLY unique.
If you get slapped (physically or metaphorically), and you turn the other cheek, this means taking an attitude of submission to aggressive forces. There are times to do this, certainly. You may decide that it is smarter to lie in wait until you have the chance to get the person back in earnest. You may decide that presenting an attitude of submission will help you get what you want. You may deduce that further provoking the aggressor would be too dangerous. You may even feel that you deserved the slap! So if you turn the other cheek out of an inner conviction, then you are doing it for the right reasons. However, a lot of people, when faced with blatant aggression, “turn the other cheek,” or refuse to fight back, for the wrong reasons.
If you have to suppress an impulse to strike back because you have been taught that violence or aggression are wrong, then you have allowed your actions to be constrained by others. You are trying to please others, whether they be your parents, teachers, priests, or friends. It is up to you and only you to make the choice as to what behavior any particular situation calls for. If you refuse to think for yourself, in the moment, and instead rely on “what you’ve been taught” about behavior in life in general, you are simply perpetuating the role of victim for yourself. Then again, if you turn the other cheek because you are simply afraid to hit back, then you are a coward. You aren’t morally superior. Don’t confuse the two! It all comes down to Chu’s belief that hitting back does not necessarily make you a bad person. In punishing violent behavior, you may be acting as a peacemaker. “The truth,” she says, “is that most of the commonly accepted standards of behavior are arbitrary, and the arbitrators themselves are often flawed individuals who, under the guise of virtue, have perpetuated their own weakness and fear.”
Tags: ancient chinese philosophies, business success 2008, business success is, chinese and western philosophy, chinese philosophy and religion, chinese philosophy religion, four chinese philosophies, subjective concept, subjective meaning, subjective moral, the chinese philosophies, three chinese philosophies, true motivation, true motivational, true motivations, true neutral motivational
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