210207 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

Why does everyone value the Tao so much? 

Isn’t it because you find what you seek and are forgiven when you sin? 

Therefore this is the greatest treasure in the universe.

From The Daily Stoic: 

 

“Many are harmed by fear itself, and many may have come to their fate while dreading fate.”—Seneca, Oedipus, 992

Fear drives me to do the things I must not do. It robs me of my agency, letting that which is not up to me control me. 

Fear of fate is all too often both worse than the fate in my mind and can cause me to bring about the very thing I wish to avoid. 

From Eric Hoffer, Part III, Unifying Agents:

Leadership 

If the people are free to choose a different leader, the leader must follow from the front. 

[The leader of a democracy] must, as someone said, find out where the people are going so that he may lead them. 

If the leader can force obedience and blind faith, no such requirement exists. They can go wherever they please, knowing that coercion and propaganda will support them and make the members of the Movement toe the line. 

Things are different where the leader can employ ruthless coercion. Where, as in an active mass movement, the leader can exact blind obedience, he can operate on the sound theory that all men are cowards, treat them accordingly and get results.

(The True Believer, XIV-95)