The earliest writings in China are the Shang Dynasty oracle bones, where the kings of then asked his ancestors (presumably in heaven) whether rain would fall, or how the harvest was gonna turn out, or whether it was advisable to go to war.
Lavish tombs also go back to the neolithic; so it’s not like people starting worshipping the ancestors because Confucius said so. If anything Confucius just said that it was a nice thing to do, and kids these days don’t respect their ancestors like we used to.

There’s also an interesting side in how southern China’s society evolved through colonization by northerners, who organized themselves in patriarchal clans which formed larger “surname associations” as a sort of fictitious kin groups who cultivated their cohesiveness by joint ancestor worship (although they had no actual ancestors in common for the most part).

At any rate this is all the realm of folk religion, and it’s usually just called that. It is not an outgrowth of Confucianism which was explicitly the state philosophy for the bureaucracy; not a bottom-up movement like Taoism or Buddhism was.

I associate Confucianism with ancestor worship, which I find attractive, and which I think makes sense in terms of Jungian psychology. Is there also a separate term in Chinese for mystical stuff that has grown up in loose association with Confucianism?

Confucianism is obviously not a religion; in its most basic form it’s a theory of government, and it became the basic ethos of government in China. Making it into a religion would be quite fallacious; and it would mean the Chinese government is choosing sides when it gets around to promote it officially.

Mandarins had this ritual about visiting the Confucius temple every year; but it’s not like people prayed to the guy or did miracles in his name. There’s nothing supernatural or mystical about Confucian ideas.

Of course his ideas used to be taken with as much faith as the Bible in Europe; but that doesn’t mean it’s equivalent. People didn’t obey their parents *because* Confucius said so; they praised Confucius for making such a good point.

Also people tend to confuse Taoism the religion with Taoism the teachings of Laozi. Those are separate words in Chinese; the original philosophical school of Laozi-Zhuangzi, centuries later sorta evolved into a countryside animistic religion, with plenty of gods, alchemy, ghosts, and strange rituals with had little to do with the original Laozi. But they claim to be Taoists, and have been doing their thing to this day, although it’s much weaker than Buddhism or the other foreign imports.

This is a follow-up to some comments on the Morality post regarding Confucianism.

I’m confused by an early Research on Religion podcast (confirmed by the Wikipedia page on “Religion in China”) that China has five officially recognized religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism.

http://www.researchonreligion.org/christianity/koesel-on-religion-politics-in-china

What’s up with that? Why doesn’t Confucianism make the cut? Is it considered a “philosophy” rather than a “religion”? Or is it too tainted by association with Chiang Kai-shek?

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/duped-by-innocence-project-milwaukee-man-now-free-b99386015z1-281852841.html?ipad=y

But how to make this robust to it seems smart, a starting point I would say would be grugq’s work.

a) revealing every one
b) giving the media something to rally around for destruction
c-z) everything else

this is not effective risk management

Everyone.

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joSbg5pY6ag

Go’mint sound!!!

You can’t go wrong with the first Hanatarash album, because the word ‘cock’ is in every song!!

And let’s also not forget the Incapacitants, who were making economics cool for the kids LONG before NRx:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKCBNtSYSmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=occ1rdivxto