Laozi — "The five colors make one blind in the eyes; the five tones make one deaf in the …"
The five colors make one blind in the eyes; the five tones make one deaf in the ears.
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"One who makes promises rashly rarely keeps good faith; One who is in the habit of considering things easy meets with frequent difficulties."
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About Laozi (c. 6th century BCE (semi-legendary))
Reputed founder of Taoism and author of the Tao Te Ching, whose wu wei (effortless action) shaped East Asian philosophy. Closely associated with Zhuangzi (later Taoist who extended Laozi's framework). For an intellectual contrast, see Confucius, near-contemporary Chinese sage of social ritual and duty — Confucius systematized social order through ritual and hierarchy; Laozi argued that all such systems were the disease, not the cure — the two founding poles of Chinese moral philosophy.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Overwhelming your senses with constant visual stimulation and noise dulls your ability to truly see and hear. When you chase endless variety—bright spectacles, loud entertainment, nonstop input—you lose sensitivity to subtle beauty and quiet truth. Excess doesn't enrich perception; it numbs it. The more you consume, the less you actually experience, because saturation replaces discernment and appetite outpaces satisfaction.
Relevance to Laozi
Laozi advocated simplicity, stillness, and returning to the uncarved block—a natural state uncluttered by artificial desires. As the legendary keeper of Zhou archives who withdrew from courtly life to write the Tao Te Ching before vanishing west, he rejected ornate ritual and sensory indulgence favored by aristocrats. His philosophy of wu wei and minimal desire treats sensory excess as a distraction from the Tao's quiet presence.
The era
Laozi lived during the late Zhou dynasty (6th century BCE), as ritual order decayed into the chaos preceding the Warring States period. Courts flaunted elaborate music, dyed silks, and banquets to project power, while Confucians prescribed more ceremony as the fix. Laozi pushed back, arguing that this sensory and ritual inflation corrupted natural virtue. His critique targeted the aristocratic excess of a society drowning in performance while losing its moral center.
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