The University of British Columbia: Taoism [Daoism] and pop culture
““I was always interested in Taoism,” Professor Edward Slingerland says, “and now that I’m a scholar of this stuff, I find a lot of the students who take classes from me have similar motivations to the ones I once had.”
Slingerland, parallel to many of his students, was motivated to study Taoism by its influence on pop culture icons, like the celebrated 1950s and 1960s American writers of the “Beat Generation” troupe. Having studied it formally, he’s found that his initial motivation was somewhat misdirected as these influences are basically mistaken about Taoism and Zen.”
“Meet Dr. Edward Slingerland: Taoism with a twist,” The University of British Columbia, November 4th 2010.