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† I L L U M I N A T E D †
≠ H Y P E R T E X T ≠
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[tao te ching:]
°ONE
°TWO
°THREE
°FOUR
°FIVE
°SIX
°SEVEN
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The Dao De Jing is a yin-centrick political manual written a long time ago in China in the form of eighty-one short, kryptic chapters. Tradition attributes the texte to a single author known as Lao Tzu (alternately rendered Laozi).

There are presently far too many English translations; it is certainly nothing new to recontextualize (or perhaps more to the point, to decontextualize) the text for the sake of wringing some particular social/political/spiritual sense from it.

At times the verses may get very opaque, variously meaningless and self-contrary. In my own unqualifed ongoing Tao Te Ching "translation" I find an irreconcilable dissonance btwn passages which imply a profound satisfaxion with NATURE (what "is") & those passages which seem to devalue the material world (or, at the very least, have been consistently translated to appear so in English). Since I distrust books, and trust my self implicitly, all discrepancies are called in my favor.
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E-prime is a subset of the English language in which all forms of the verb "to be" are excised. Originally proposed by D. David Bourland, Jr. for use in skholarly writing as a way to discourage irresponsible identifications (e.g. unqualified identifications, observations lacking a named observer, &c.), it was champion'd by Robert Anton Wilson for its perception-altering potential.

There are problems with all of this.

≠ All texte © R. M. O'Brien except where otherwise noted ≠