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The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life

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Michael Puett

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“A parallel comparison helps to capture the similarities between existentialism (especially Nietzsche's) and Daoism (especially Zhuangzi's). Both discover the practical pointlessness of universal or absolute meaning (purpose). Nietzsche, from his perspective as a disappointed Christian yearning for absolute, transcendent, dependence on God, experiences this awareness with existentialist angst, a sensation of looking off a cliff into a bottomless abyss. The angst is caused by the vertigo impulse, the fear we will jump or drop off our perch into that nothingness. Zhuangzi, from his Daoist sense of the constraint of conventional authority, does not think of any cliff as a reference point. If the abyss is bottomless, then there is no such thing as falling. The cliff and Zhuangzi are both floating free. Leaving the cliff and entering the abyss is weightlessness―free flight―not falling. From his relativistic perspective, the cliff is floating away. Zhuangzi's reaction is not "Oh no!" but "Whee!”

PhilosophyNihilismNietzscheZhuangzi
Book:A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation
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“It is rank, wealth, prominence, prestige, fame, and advantage that arouse the will. It is appearances, actions, sexual beauty, conceptual coherence, emotional energies, and intentions that entangle the mind. It is dislikes, desires, joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness that tie down Virtuosity. It is avoiding, approaching, taking, giving, understanding, and ability that block the Course. When these twenty-four items do not disrupt you, the mind is no longer pulled off center. Centered, it finds stillness. Still, it finds clarity. Once clear, it becomes empty, and once empty, it is able to “do nothing, and yet leave nothing undone.”

DaoismZhuangzi
Book:Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries
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“Tonight the thoughts were about how to end things, with a heavy emphasis on the how. The process of suicide isn't exactly easy. It takes preparation, scheduling, and a certain level-headedness to kill yourself. A person has to be ready for it. He has to make the necessary plans, take the necessary steps. And, most importantly, he has to not only feel like dying, but also like killing. And the two feelings couldn't be more different.”

PtsdKilling YourselfSuicide ThoughtsPtsd QuotesSuicide QuotesSuicide AttemptsSuicide NotesVeteran Suicide
Author:Michael Anthony
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“Lies to induce suicide • Children are told that it is honorable to die for the cause of the abusers (common with “soldiers” or religious alters). • Children are told that since the group knows what survivors have said and done, traitors must kill themselves quickly before the group finds them and kills them slowly and painfully. (Note the theme of double binds.) • Children are told that their lives will always be so unbearable that it is better to die • Certain alters are told that if they kill the body when it is traitorous, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. (This is similar to the belief of extreme Islamic suicide bombers.) • Demon or alien or ghost alters are told that they can kill the body without themselves dying, or that their special powers will bring them back to life • One of the ways that organized abusive groups guarantee secrecy is to train alters to commit”

Dissociative Identity DisorderMind ControlMultiple Personality DisorderBrainwashingRitual AbuseSuicide AttemptsAbusive Cults
Book:Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
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“Today the causes of suicide are similarly unknown, but evidence from multiple sources suggests that certain types of treatments and interventions can reduce suicidal behaviors better than status quo practices, which often conceptualizes suicide as a symptom or outcome of mental illness. Consistent with this perspective, status quo practices target a patients diagnosed mental illness based on the assumption that reducing these symptoms or eliminating the psychological or behavioral disorder also will reduce or eliminate the risk of suicide.”

SuicideSuicide PreventionSuicide QuotesSuicide Attempts
Book:Rethinking Suicide: Why Prevention Fails, and How We Can Do Better
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“If for example you are diagnosed with depression, then your clinician might prescribe therapy to reduce your depression and or recommend anti-depressant medication. As we have discussed previously though, reducing the symptoms of mental illness does not seem to reduce the probability that someone will make a suicide attempt. Two treatments in particular, dialectical behavior therapy DBT and cognitive behavioral therapy for suicide prevention, CBT-SP, have demonstrated the ability to reduce the probability of suicidal behaviors in multiple studies conducted by multiple research teams. Other treatments that share many of the same characteristics and components as these treatments via attempted suicide.”

SuicideMental HealthSuicide PreventionSuicide AttemptSuicide Attempts
Book:Rethinking Suicide: Why Prevention Fails, and How We Can Do Better
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