Eastern Zhou History

In ancient Chinese history there was a time period when main China was ruled by what is known by the Zhou Dynasty. Since the landmass of China is so huge, when analyzing from a historical standpoint, one often divides this dynasty into two fronts of East and West.

The Eastern Zhou Dynasty had three main schools of thought which affected the leadership and how the culture of China was to be shaped in the present. There were the Daoists, Confucianists, and Legalists.

Daoism: Fundamentally, and very generalized, is the belief that leaders should not put emphasis on anything and should instead seek to inspire virtue and tranquility within their kingdom. The idea behind it was that if the leadership didn't promote competition there would be no greed and deciet for if there are no defined terms of value, then what would be the point of stealing?

Confucianists: Practiced vigirous ritual and sought to establish the gentleman. To honor your ancestors and practice fealty to the divine Emperor was to shape the human behavior and thereby establish peace. The divine Emperor was above the law and everything would be balanced out by Heaven and Earth.

Legalists: Those who practiced the strict following of rules. For without rules to define human behavior then humans would go amiss and not work together for the common good. Strict laws to move to the greater good would always look towards the long term good of the people, even if they may resent it now.

We can learn alot from history and as I learn more and more about the philosophies in Ancient China, sometimes, on the very rare occurance you can actually take what you learn in the classroom and model your own life after it.

I won't pretend to be a philosophier or to be completely knowledgable about these schools of thought at the time, but the more I think about it, I'd have to say that if I was a Zhou scholar at the time, I would be Daoist.

Daoism is hippy ridiculous nonsense because everything has value to it and I believe it is a very basic instinct for people, especially in America to automatically assign value to things, and thereby shapes how one acts. But I think that that's the problem. Everyone is so caught up with what is valuable, what isn't. What's ugly and what's beautiful, when in reality, in defining and voicing what one thinks is beautiful or ugly, you really are finding what is ugly in the beauty.