To be honest, the very premise of SAO sounds like a rubbish mid 90s techno horror written in response to the video nasty scare (KILLER COMPUTER GAME) so I’ve little interest in watching but reading about the second episode is interesting.

As to Total Eclipse, you build well on what I think about it – and what’s really interesting is the main character is now the war scarred vet who’s usually the mentor.

Take for example Saber from Fate/Zero. She is the classic example of a failure of not “doing nothing”. By taking on everything, her people will never have any other hero because she is sufficent, yet all things die and when she is gone her people will suffer and die. Wu wei in her case, points to allowing people to raise their new heroes but the cost is not nothing. People will die as a new hero will fumble or the hero might even fail and die but that is natural. The simpleton will breakdown when sees people die and likely he will walk the path of Saber, not knowing that cost and result naturally come hand in hand.

This is why to understand wu wei is not as simple as it seems and the mind is actually one of the most important things you have to develop to reach wu wei as understanding is the first step. For imposing on nature, we should also recognise that it is the nature of man and animal to do so as every living creature will wish to survive and breed. The problem lies with humanity becoming too unbalanced with nature without understanding that extremes are not a good idea. More education would actually be helpful and simpletons would just reject the entire idea as they would focus on their own nature (that of personal survival and breeding).

For Daoism, obviously, there’s a stress on the wu wei (non-action) and non-striving. But on the bigger picture, it’s a resistance of the imposition of a false order on the natural world that’s already running properly. Now, for us unfortunate, unhappy humans, we have this cursed thing called the mind that makes us do things contrary to the natural order. That’s why there’s, in addition to the stress on taking the path to least resistance, a stress on spontaneous, flexible and fluid action. Is there really anything more in tune with nature than a simpleton who simply follows his instincts?

It’s the kind of thing that leads to Gisey being totally impotent in the crisis of the sky pirates being ambushed, but allows Fam to make the quick snap judgement to follow the sky birds to lead them out of their trap. It’s literally the pinnacle of putting your hands into the guidance of the natural world over attempting to “solve” a problem through brute force of intellect and cunning (which is Gisey’s specialty).

So my apologies, when I say “good”, I ultimately mean more in the sense that it is “correct”. After all, even Daoism prescribes a guideline on how one should act, even if much of it is through inaction.

In Confucianism’s case, it stresses that you must simultaneously heed her raw conscience and examples of history when considering problems. The famed Examinations of China to that is both harsh and complex, that was used to qualify the country’s bureaucrats, focused completely on rote memorization of the teachings of Confucius and supplementary works: not any sort of practical knowledge.

So the big focus is on neither creative problem solving skills or anything: your route to being a top official was drawn in the archived past and in your supposed mastery of the ethical teachings of a secular philosopher.

But in terms of popular culture, even these people were often the greatest source of misery for the common people, because frankly, most of the bureacracy was corrupt on some level. Mean Scholar-Officials who exploit the poor peasantry from the top, and the reviled merchants who create wealth while “doing nothing”, like parasites, which was the orthodox view for them, anyways. Who wouldn’t appreciate the idea of a down-to-earth, quaint, and honest person being a great hero whose great claim to fame is a strong sense of what’s right and wrong, but some sort of book smart doo-doo?

It isn’t to say all intellectuals are mistrusted, since in Confucianism at the very least, there’s a great focus on sages. But the moron with an unfailing moral compass enjoys a very strong monopoly on the hearts of people.

I would even venture to say that if you reject that you have a evil side of you, you would instead be out of harmony which would lead to bad effects particularly warped thinking such as everyone who does not agree with you is evil. No man is inherently in harmony and most tend towards one side, being 55% yang and 45% yin for example. The trick is to accept you have an evil side but not be a slave to it. The “doing nothing” means more of leting nature take its course, which actually requires a quite a bit of thinking to actually understand why. Rather i would say to become “simple”, one must first understand both complexity and simplicity.

I would say that the continual success of the “simple” main character is because it allows people to identify with the character and see the character succeed as an underdog. A well done character of intellect would have people admiring him or her but not feeling a personal connection.

For the King Wu part, i believe King Wei was already outnumbered by King Zhou because the people was not particularly happy about being abused so when Jifa showed up, people just opened the gate and let him do what they wanted him to do.

Anyway you are correct. War was a very different thing in the medieval period. We often think of war like World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and so on…but long before this idea of war become a part of our consciousness, there was the medieval view on war, which is based on the reality of the time, and you describe quite well. They would find it hard to imagine wars like today, and we find it difficult to understand theirs. Nice post man