
Mozi: No Aggression, but Universal Love (2011) - ivank
http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/se/txt/2011-08/04/content_381521.htm
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PavlovsCat
> Unfortunately, the beneficence Mozi professed is often tagged as an ancient
> form of utilitarianism because he made the point that people should help
> each other on the grounds that they would eventually be aided themselves.

I have no qualms with that. In part, I don't just want to be a "good person"
so I get admired or rewarded for that, but so that I can look others in the
eye, and can observe them, without having to distort it. Just like honesty
makes things simpler and helps focusing, because you don't have various
"versions" of the truth to tell yourself and others. It's all on a spectrum,
nobody is innocent or perfect, etc. etc., but the principle holds: if I want
to suck life to the marrow, I gotta live it upright. If I want to be able to
enjoy good fortune, without telling myself fluffy lies, without cynicism,
without _any_ layer of crap on top of it, I have to wish well for others, too.
If I want to sleep well, I have to try to speak truth to both power and
obedience. No shortcut, no alternative.

Being only happy for myself, only caring about my own life, leaves me at best
with 80 years of this super smart, incredibly handsome and humble person.
Which is fantastic, I'll admit. But if I increase the range of my sympathies,
the ones I really feel, not the ones I profess or whatever, when I have a
wider horizon for what makes my heart happy or sad, then suddenly there is all
this Earth, maybe even universe, that's teeming with life. A lot to be sad
about, but also so much more to be happy for. I want the more, not the less. I
want the sublime, not the petty. I don't care how I'm remembered, I just want
to be in the first place, and know that I am. It's a journey towards a place
I'll never fully reach, but I want to be on no other.

> _I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was
> hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that
> circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn._

\-- Henry David Thoreau

~~~
emmanuel_1234
This is fairly similar to Buddhism _kamma_ : be good to the world, and the
world will be a better place for you to live too.

------
mcguire
Mohism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mohism/)).

Mozi, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
([https://www.iep.utm.edu/mozi/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/mozi/)).

