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Develop instincts actually need thinking... At least for develop good instincts without being hurt and without have to rediscover the wheel a generation after another.

In my homecountry, Italy, there was an ancient theathral novel named "Re Travicello" (King little beam, literally) that say having thinking subjects it's a big problem: they contest, protest, convince other, they develop working solutions against throne interest etc. So he invented two concept: "trust the system" and "use your instinct" to stop people thinking...




Incidentally, all this zen stuff came about during autocratic rule of China when the emperor outlawed logic...


I'm not so sure...

Zen, in China, chan, is a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, with Taoism originating in the 4th century BC during the warring states period along with most other influential Chinese philosophies (and, weirdly, much of Greek philosophy).

One rival was Mohism, sort of a mix of logic and sophism (logic has origins in rhetoric); Zhuangzi has some points about "disputation" that make me feel more kindly to modern analytic philosophy.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/zhuangzi/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/

See also Arthur Whateley (?) and especially Angus Graham.


Yeah, Mohism was outlawed because of its use of logic. Emperors don't like subjects that can think through the national policies.


I do not know when or where they came out in the world, however thus "zen" exists and are used even today... In actual formally democratic society.




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