Still avoiding my actual point and now you’re trying to hope that I’ll just be stupid enough to believe your story. - LaustenYour link is from a tourist agency. A more credible authority to cite in defense of your position and affirm my stupidity would be a widely respected academician like Professor Tu Weiming who taught Chinese Classics at Harvard and later at Peking University. He expounds the western version of Chinese philosophy and asserts that Confucius, a contemporary of Lao Tsu, was not a legendary but a historical figure. Professor Tu’s proficiency would be equivalent to that of the Mandarin, a scholar who aced the imperial exam at the academic level of a PhD in the Classics and applied the wisdom therein to the practice of statecraft (i.e. public administration).
Do you believe that Professor Tu Weiming understands ancient Chinese philosophy? What about the Mandarins, those learned advisors to the Chinese Emperors who, one after the other, ruled China through the centuries to eventual ruin? How did that happen if they had access to the wisdom locked in the ancient Classics?
Think, man. You are the one who reads and is stuffed with learning. I drink whiskey.