The Four Monsters and its Cures

Eastern and Western ways of thinking, or any kind of cultural characteristics, are usually separated as two distinct modes of interpreting what one understands. This supposedly contrary division might make sense in certain regards, though sometimes their analogous and complimentary nature is taken for granted while focusing too much on the differences. I think a good way to see how common sense can come from anywhere, from any groups of people in superficially disparate circumstances, is to go back to the classics of whichever subject you're trying to figure out.

I'm always amused when I find old records of hedonism, egoism, or the more broadly termed individualist philosophy. The general understanding of the ancient times, or at least by your typical publicly indoctrinated person, is that they were full of collectivist and religious doctrine and it wasn't until the modern era that these myths become distilled through "science". Far from this being the case, you'll find true ideas being written or passed down through oral tradition in all corners of the globe. The two that come to mind representing a realistic view of human nature come from Taoism and Epicureanism, yet this is not forgetting others including the Charvaka from ancient India.

Yang Zhu, a precursor to the more complete and widely known Taoism of Laozi, was a Chinese philosopher who expounded ideas that human action is based on self-interest. This sounds particularly similar to how Epicurus understand things as well, which would later influence many subsequent thinkers in Western Civilization, especially the materialists and classical liberals like Mises, among others who saw that humans are self-interested beings; yet this about 100 years earlier and in the other side of the world.

When Yang Zhu said, "There are four things which do not allow people to rest: Long life. Reputation. Rank. Riches", a couple hundred years later, his Western counterpart, Philodemos, expressed the Epicurean four-part remedy:

Don't fear god,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure.

You can see the correlations here and decide for yourself if both these individuals from different time and places compliment each other as two sides of the same coin—yin and yang. The common thread is not letting yourself get caught up by externals as life will always seem frustrating and you'll constantly be in fear of monsters which don't really exist; and this of course is like other spooks out there which try to take away your autonomy and make you live a life of devoid of tranquility and peace.

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