On Guidance

or How To Be A Good Communist and a Post Scriptum on Father's Day

Growing up and to this day I have missed guidance in my life. Parental figures, as I understand them today - and to be sure, this term does not solely refer to your parents but rather people that help you navigate the pitfalls this existence has in store for you - are there for just that purpose: to help you navigate your existence, to learn from their or other mistakes so that you may have the opportunity to increase the ripples of good in your life. Without a doubt, the sheer amount of mistakes I have made result predominately from a lack thereof, granted, coupled with my temper but here we are.

In retrospect it is no surprise that I have spent so much of my life in books, always looking for that or many anchors, to know right from wrong, to try to understand the purpose of existence and how not to give into my, and surely, our, most destructive impulses. Personally, it is has taken some time to get to a point where I, at least, feel like I have anchor points, references and even people in my life that help me step out of this destructive cycle of feeling lost and that’s the point of today’s newsletter.

Over the last few years I have increasingly spent more time on non-western philosophy and political philosophy, mostly out of curiosity and that most certainly includes Chinese Communist theory. Today, specifically, I wanted to share and hopefully ignite some interest in Liu Shaoqi’s work, to be exact, his work, aptly titled “How to be a good Communist”.

To be clear, this is only a very small piece of a possible puzzle. It is not an answer for all of your questions, but to be sure, a brilliant text, guidance even, for anyone looking for just that. Time to dig in.