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Notes on video lecture:
Mozi's Religious Fundamentalism and Organized Activism
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on January 15, 2019 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
thousand, civilization, grass, equally, elite, police, activist, contributions, condemned, minority, watched, Sundays, Zhuangzi, order, pretend, private, medal, house, depersonalized, act, defensive, literally, humans, sacrifice, spirits, ideal, surveillance, advantageous, good, watching, cheating, revive, Mencius, present, anthropomorphic, impartial
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Mozi (470-391 BCE) as a fundamentalist and                 
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two chapters: "On Ghosts" and "Heaven's Will"
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understand these chapters on the background of two trends of the growing            as the Warring States period moves on
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agnosticism
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becoming unclear if ghosts and                exist
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Mozi wants to              this
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that ghosts and spirits are alive and active agents on the Earth
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he wants it to be a kind of invisible              force
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Confucius says: sacrifice as if they spirits are               
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one way to read this is that Confucius believes that the spirits are not there but you have to                they are there
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Mozi thinks that's a terrible idea
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in his chapter "On Ghosts" he presents his position that he wants to make sure that the people                    believe in ghosts
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his key argument why people should do this is that it is                         
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it increases            in the state
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an increasingly                              view of tian, or heaven
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or the Shang and the Zhou dynasties
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tien is an                                being
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an active being who sends down mandates
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becomes more of a generic force
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it's doing something
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but doesn't have intentions
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not acting like a person
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Mozi is upset with this trend
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for Mozi, tian is up there and                  you
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tian practices impartial caring itself and wants us to do the same
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ghosts and spirits were like a police force
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makes people behave
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people behave better when they think they are being watched by invisible agents
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supernatural                          in human behavior
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research: Haley, Kevin, Fessler
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when they replaced random patterns with eyes, you are much more generous, i.e. cues of being               
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research:Bateson
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offices, if you take coffee, put in some money
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when you manipulate the image, i.e. have human eyes,                            went up
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research: Piazza
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children in situations where they could be                 
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princess Alice lived in the lab
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watched people are good people
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research: porn consumption
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where there is high levels of Christianity, people watch less porn on               
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Mozi argued its a crucial tool you need in your toolbox if you are going to get people to act in accordance with                    caring
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Mozi and his followers were activists
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"killing one person is condemned, but killing a                  people in war is encouraged"
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if you kill people on a large scale you get a           , if you kill one person, you get thrown in jail
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stealing some peaches and plus from an orchard is                   , but not stealing an entire state
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Mozi is against offensive warfare
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it doesn't increase the wealth, population, and order of the state
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wants to stop the warfare of the warring states
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argumentation
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action: going to the defense of attacked states
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became experts in                    warfare
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Mozi saved a weaker state in the Warring States
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Chu was a large, aggressive state
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Chu developed a scaling ladder to scale city walls
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convinced another king not to attack
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Mozi was an activist, unlike typical Confucian followers
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believed you had to get out in the world and       
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made his followers do the same
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took as the sage king Yu
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a vigorous and tireless worker who rescued China from the raging waters of the flooding Yellow River
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made it inhabitable for             
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created                         
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he was so dedicated to his task that he passed his            three times
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so dedicated to the public          that he didn't even stop to say hello
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this, of course, appealed to the Mohists, who believed one should not be concerned about one's                life but only the public life and others
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Mohists described
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from the last book of the                 , Book 33, "Under Heaven", a description of the Mohists
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"Many of the Mohists of later ages wear furs and rough clothing, clogs and            slippers, never resting day or night, taking self-sacrifice as the highest. They say one who cannot do this is not following the way of Yu and doesn't deserve to be called a Mohist. Thtey press each other forward in self-sacrifice until there's no flesh left on their calves or hair on their shins.
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so they are described as kind of crazy, fanatic activists
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but they have an inspiring           
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concerned only by objective concerns for other people
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we are concerned only impartially with what is good for everyone
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we think things through logically
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it's hard to argue against the Mohists
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people make fun of them because they are uncomfortable
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there is something about self-                   in an extreme way
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it's hard to argue against people who say you should help all children               , not just your own children
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criticism against Mozi
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he doesn't take into account human nature
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               (372-289 BC)
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argued against Mozi
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not logically or intellectually
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human beings are just not built in a way that they can follow this idea
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yet there are some people who do self-sacrifice
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but they seem to always be a                  of human beings

Ideas and Concepts:

Fifth Century BCE Chinese fundamentalism via this evening's Ancient Chinese Philosophy class:

"Mozi (470-391 BCE) wrote two chapters in which he expressed his religious fundamentalism in response to the growing trend among the Warring States era's elite and common people regarding their increasingly depersonalized conception of tian, or heaven, and their general agnosticism.

In his chapter "Heaven's Will", Mozi criticized the current popular belief that tian was merely an abstract idea. Instead, Mozi advocated the literal beliefs of the Shang and Zhou dynasties in which tian was an active anthropomorphic being who sent down real mandates to Earth for people to carry out.

In his chapter "On Ghosts", he argues similarly that spirits and ghosts are literally present and active on Earth:they're watching you, you're not alone, they are agents of heaven who watch to make sure you practice impartial caring and will punish and reward you accordingly, functioning as a kind of invisible police force.

One cannot help to see Mozi's pragmatism in these arguments, his key reason for advocating these literal beliefs in both elites and common people is that such beliefs are advantageous to the goals of the state."
On early psychological tools of pragmatic mass manipulation, via this evening's Ancient Chinese Philosophy class:

"Mozi (470-391 BCE) argued that supernatural surveillance was a crucial tool a leader needs to instill in the population if people are going to consistently act in accordance with impartial caring, i.e getting people to care for others impartially. People behave better when they think they are being watched by invisible agents, ghosts and spirits acting as a kind of ubiquitous police force.

One important question is whether Mozi himself believed in these entities himself. But in understanding his pragmatic approach, at a certain level it doesn't really matter, since his point was that it has good effects in the society and so we should at least purport to believe in these things and we should make sure that the common people believe in them."
The Definition of Religion
Mind/Body Dualism and Cognitive Control
Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics
Wu-Wei, Dao, Tien and De
The Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
The Beginnings of Written Chinese History
Eastern Holistic Thinking and the Paradox of Virtue
The Golden Age of the Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE)
Philosophical and Conceptual Innovations in Zhou Thought
Confucius and the Analects
Confucius: I Transmit, I Do Not Innovate
Confucius' Use of Ritual as a Tool
Confucius' View on Learning vs. The Enlightenment
Confucius and Holistic Education
Confucius and the Art of Self-Cultivation
At Home in Virtue
Non-Coercive Comportment, Virtue, and Charisma of the Zhou
The Transition to Becoming Sincere
The Primitivists in the Analects
Laozi and the Daodejing
Laozi: Stop the Journey and Return Home
Laozi and The Desires of the Eye
Laozi: He Who Speaks Does Not Know
The Concept of Reversion
Laozi on Shutting Down the Prefrontal Cortex
The Guodian Laozi
Mozi and Materialist State Consequentialism
Mozi's Idea of Ideological Unity
Mozi's Doctrine of Impartial Caring
Mozi's Anti-Confucian Chapters
Mozi's Religious Fundamentalism and Organized Activism
The Language Crisis in the Warring States Period
Yang Zhu and Mid-Warring States' Focus on the Body
The Guodian School of Confucianism
Qi and Self-Cultivation