“I’m curious of a similar breakdown of the teachings of other major religions or

—“I’m curious of a similar breakdown of the teachings of other major religions or philosophies, as you did with stoicism and christianity. Say Islam or Confusianism in China?”— Carl Persson

I did confucianism but it was really easy, because it’s not complicated structurally, has no lies or woo woo to overcome, and is limited only by their language, the early concentration of power possible by their martial aristocracy, their failure to solve the problem of politics, and therefore they directed the entirety of the society into a ‘harmonious hierarchy’. If you look at chinese philosophy as Sun Tzu (Rule), Confucian (Administration), and Lao Tzu (Labor) and Buddhsim (complacency), you see their tripartism+ very close to ours: Military and Scientific Epistemology ( Machiavelli-Clausewitz-Keegan, Aristotle-Hamilton-Adams-Jefferson, Locke-Smith-Hume-Darwin-Menger, and the christian theologians. Like most older civs the chinese started with a hierarchy ad river valley, but because they were homogenous, kin, they didn’t have the problems of the middle east. So the difference between west and east is agrarian concentration there and distribution here, our language which is technological and legal (Later) rather than agrarian and ‘wisdom lit’ (earlier), and market (unconsolidated power) vs monolithic (consolidated power), but otherwise they are not that different … other than have taken neoteny a lot farther than we have and… well, they have no choice but to wall off the rest of the world.

The only hard one is Hinduism which isn’t really a religion it’s a wisdom literature that they practice as a way of life.

Buddhism was a reformation of hinduism, but over time the ‘god thing’ crept back in there and ruined it.

I’m kind of anti-buddhist because it’s a recipe for inaction (withdrawl) while stoicism is one of empowerment but vulnerable to woo woo, so I’m sticking with the stoick method of self authoring virtues and the epicurean program otherwise.

That’s the best personal philosophy(means of decidability).

For social philosophy (means of decidability) it’s hard to beat christianity’s five natural laws.

For political philosophy (decidability) it’s hard to beat rule of law by natural law, the judge and jury and commons.

I mean, I’m all up for inventing predatory and parasitic cults – and I”m happy to return to the predation of my ancestors. But if you want cooperation instead, well, we know how to do it.

Natural law.