Taoist
Philosophy for the 21st Century
You-Sheng
Li
Taoist
Recovery Centre
Website:
http://taoism21cen.com
During the Warring States Period
(475-222 BC), the vast area along the
Once a man lost his bow, but was
reluctant to find it back, saying, “A man of state
Confucius heard this and said,
“It is okay if the words ‘State
When people meet unexpectedly far from their hometown,
they say, "It is a small world." People also say, our world has
shrunk to a village, a global village. Modern communication technology has
brought people unprecedentedly closer especially since the end of the cold war.
Airway services allow us to reach any corner of the earth within the same day,
and modern communication enables us to talk to our friends face to face in
spite that they are on the other side of our planet. We are facing a new world
that humans have never faced before. Do you think we need a new way of life?
Many scholars say YES, and they predict that different cultures will replace
nations to compete with each other on the upcoming stage of this new world. I
will list more evidences in this chapter to show that we are entering a new
era, and we need a new way of life. What is the new life style we are going to
adapt to? There is no simple answer, but it has to be friendlier to human
nature.
I believe that the ancient wisdom of Chinese Taoist
philosophy provides a good choice for the coming new era, since it emphasizes
the value of naturalness and simplicity, which are well complementary to the
Western philosophy of materialism. Some emerging trends indicate that the world
is coming close to Taoist ideology. Firstly, I tell you the lobefin fish story
to show where we are now in the bio-evolutionary world.
(1)
Lobefin Fish and Human Self-Transcendence
When I was in school, we were
taught that what distinguished between animals and humans was, humans had
conscious and animals did not. Animals were unable to think and unaware of what
they were doing. Now, we all know that animals can think too, and they know
well what they doing. They make choices in their lives just as we do in our
lives. They also have creative thinking. The gorilla Koko mastered over a
thousand words of American Sign Language and was able to link them up in
statements of up to eight words in a creative way. It happened in a laboratory
setting. In the wild, animals show creative thinking too.
In the African jungle, Jane
Goodall first observed that chimpanzees carefully stripped leaves of a tree
twig to make a stick and then use it to fish out termites from their holes.
Similar tool making was observed in other apes too, even in some birds. A
particular tool making is usually limited to certain groups and is not observed
in other groups of the same animals. It was apparently invented.
Scientists have been able to
observe the actual process by which behavioural innovations spread from
individual to individual and became part of a troop’s culture independently of
genetic transmission. This happened at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto
University in
As mentioned in Chapter 8, apes
and dolphins have self-conscious, and were able to recognize their own images
in a mirror. Then the question is why humans are able to build secondary
society while animals are not. The answer is humans have the ability of
self-transcendence: They are continuously looking for something higher than
themselves and their real life. This eventually lets them create new worlds for
themselves. Under certain circumstances, animals may be able to use language in
a creative way like Gorilla Koko did. However, they use language just as other
tools only to enrich their lives. Humans use language to create totally new
worlds such as many novels especially scientific fictions. Each novel literally
represents a new world created by humans. Our secondary society is also one of
those worlds created by humans. But this one is a real one, created not by one
person but by numerous people in thousands of years.
Here I show you animals have the
ability of self-transcendence too: the lobefin fish story. The long course of
bio-evolution is stagnant for most time but punctuated by short phases of rapid
changes, which are triggered either by environmental change or by major
favorable mutations including recombination and expressive alteration of genes.
The transition from aquatic animals or water animals to land animals
(terrestrial animals) combines the two triggering factors: mutation lead
animals to a new environment, which triggers more mutations.
From water to land, there are
several critical changes animals have to acquire such as limbs to support body
weights, lungs to breathe, necks to turn heads. Those changes could not take
place overnight but could not last forever ether, since it was an extra burden
to those animals that carried those preliminary changes. Lobefin fish carry
those changes and serve as a living fossil to illustrate how animals moved from
sea to land in ancient time.
Lobefin fish (coelancath, Figer
1) first appeared some 400 million years ago, and once flourished in shallow
seas all over the world but vanished about 70 million years ago. On
Some lobefin fish, such as the
Australian lungfish, have primitive lung in addition to gills. Their fins have
a muscular root base with bones, and are able to turn to different directions.
In comparison with other fish, lobefin fish have little advantage, since they
have to nourish and support those extra parts that are only useful under
special circumstances. On land, they may survive a little longer than other
fish but eventually die the same. Apparently, they are still aquatic animals.
There is a long way to go before they become a real land animal.
In history, lobefin fish did not
climb unto land themselves but were
trapped in enclosed water, which dried out later. They were forced to
land by environmental change. Under such circumstances, most lobefin fish died
off except for few with further mutations. The chance for those few may be in
the range of one millionth.
How was the life when lobefin
fish first moved unto land? The following have to apply:
1) They are forced unto
land by circumstances;
2) They have a hard
time, since they are not fully land animals yet;
3) Their future is
uncertain, and they are in a phase of rapid change;
4) Their evolutionary
pathways leading to mammals, reptiles, birds, or amphibians are determined by
nature not by themselves;
5) Once lobefin fish
become fully land animals, their lives are as comfortable as those of any fish
in sea.
All those except 5) also apply
to humans when they move from primary society to secondary society, which is
exactly like lobefin fish moving from water to land. Humans first formed
secondary society because population expansion, either the density exceeded the
limit or too many people crowded in one place. Secondary society is apparently
not the suitable social environment for humans, so that scientists have
recently found that civilization triggered rapid genetic changes in human, and
judged from the variation of the size of our brain, our brains are still in the
rapid phase of genetic evolution.
Both moves, man’s from primary
society to secondary society and fish’s move from sea unto land, are major
steps in their evolutionary process, leading to new directions and opening to
new dimensions. Dr. Shubin and his colleagues discovered a fossil fish on the
We can easily list out numerous
evidences indicating that we are having a hard time, which forces us to adapt
to rapid change, genetically and culturally. One of the obvious is that we are
doing a lot against human nature. We are born resistant to killing other human
beings, but such killing is not only institutionalized in our society but also
often accelerates into massive scale such as in the two world wars. Near a
hundred millions died in the Second World War alone. It makes us happy and
healthy if we live in a friendly atmosphere, but our society encourages the
opposite, competition.
Humans have been on earth for
two or three million years, and our species, the homo sapiens, appeared some
two hundred thousand years ago while our secondary society has a history only
of five or six thousand years. During such a short period, genetic changes,
though took place, are very limited. We adapt to our secondary society largely
by cultural modification and by switching on the survival kit, running on our
peripheral potentials. It is no wonder why suicide rate doubled in the twenty
century in
We face nature in primary
society, while we face ourselves, competitors and enemies, in secondary
society. Unlike the lobefin fish that first move unto land face environmental
challenges from nature, we face challenges from ourselves. As modern technology
has brought us so close that we literally live in one village, why cannot we
live a peaceful yet meaningful life as villagers did five thousand years ago in
primary society? We do not need to go through all the painful genetic changes
to become a full secondary society animal before we are as comfortable as those
living in primary society.
(2) The
War Civilization and its Ending
The phrase tragedy of the commons originally
describes medieval villagers sharing the same pasture ground. The size of their
pasture only allowed some fifty villagers each to raise 10 sheep. If one
villager raised 11 sheep to increase his income, everyone would soon find out
and followed his suit, and the pasture would eventually be ruined by over
exploitation.
Wars, violent conflicts among
different states, start and spread pretty much the same way, but much faster
along an upward spiral.
Only when survival was at risk in prehistoric
time, might humans wage a battle on their neighbours, so-called small scale
raiding, which was mostly hunger driven. When a conflict could not be solved by
other means in primitive society, they performed ritual fighting to settle the
dispute. Ritual battle perrmits the display of courage and the expression
of emotion while resulting in relatively few wounds and even fewer deaths.
Since violence is not part of our nature but part of our culture, hunger and
unsolvable conflinct were only triggering factors which might and might not end
in violence. Such fightings or battles happen in a primary society setting in
isolated cases with self-limiting power residing in human nature. They might
have been going on for millions of years but their scale remains the same.
However,
such violence is not the war we are talking here. War is a way to access social
advantage, get upper-hand in conflict-solving process. Such war is in a
situation similar to the tragedy of the commons. When a state came into an
advantageous position after waging wars on its neighbours, all remaining
states, whether their original culture is peace-loving or warrior-like, are
getting ready for war to protect themsleves. War soon breaks out everywhere.
Those peace-loving states are the first ones engulfed by others since those
people are lagging behind in a world of warring culture. When all the states
are balanced to the same military level, another state benefits itself by waging
a war on its neighbours after it is militarized to a new level. Other states
soon raise their military level too. The scale of war becomes larger and
larger. Meanwhile, other factors such as state size, new technology and so on
come into play as well. In the tragedy of the commons, the ruined is the
pasture ground, and it is the peace of life ruined in a world of war cutlure.
Our life is enjoyable only when there is peace. Everyone has to fight for his
survival during a war.
Such
wars that happen in a secondary society setting are only limited by such
factors like the size of our planet and exhaustion of resources. Human nature is no longer a limiting factor.
Anthropologists
define civilizations as those that have state structure, monumental buildings,
and written records. Those are all hallmarks of secondary society. People who
live in primary society can but have no need to build large monumental
constructions. Equally, nothing prevents primitive people from inventing
writing system, but it is not a useful tool in a primary society setting. Those
are the peripheral potentials of self-transcendence, and they are all higher
than the life in a primitive primary society.
Human
civilizations first appeared five or six thousand years ago in the Middle East,
and then in India, China, and in Europe. There is numerous evidences indicating
clearly that more peaceful cultures existed before or in the early years of
human civilizations in many places in Asia, Europe, and northern Africa. Here I
quote from two authors to support this view, since controversy still exists on
this issue:
“…for
millennia ─ a span of time many times longer than 5,000 years
conventionally counted as history ─ prehistoric societies worshipped the
Goddess of nature and spirituality, our great Mother, the giver of life and
creator of all. But even more fascinating is that these ancient societies were
structured very much like the more peaceful and just society we are now trying
to onstruct …… Contrary to what we have been taught of the Neolithic or first
agrarian civilizations as male dominated and highly violent, these were
generally peaceful societies in which both women and men lived in harmony with
one another and nature.” (1)
What
was the force which transformed such peaceful cultures into our warring
civilizations? According to James DeMeo, the second author I quote here, (DeMeo
2004), there was a dramatic climate change around 4,000 -3,000 BC which led to
desertification in vast areas along central Asia, Arabia, and northern Africa,
or so-called Saharasia.
“…it
can be seen how prolonged drought with its accompanying malnutrition, famine
and starvation, provides an important triggering influence whereby massive
cultural changes can be initiated, particularly when drought is widespread and
incessant, lasting from one generation into the next…And it was precisely
during this period of climatic transition that the first widespread evidences
of similar social trauma, armoring and patrism appeared within human culture.”(2)
It
must be pointed out that isolated aboriginal people who live nowadays in
left-over jungles surrounded by bustling modern world are pretty much in a
similar dread situation, shrinking territory and hostile cultural environment.
It is not surprising to observe an increased violence in those left-over tribal
people.
British
historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) raised the so-called
challenge-and-response theory. According to him, civilizations arose in
response to some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when "creative
minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their entire society. When
the Sumerians exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing
the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale
irrigation projects, their challenges and responses were physical. When the
Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new
Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community, their challenges and
responses were cultural or social. When a civilization responds to challenges,
it grows. When it fails to respond to a challenge, it enters its period of
decline.
When
the Saharasia was drying out, it was a physical challenge but once it formed
the first raiding army to exploit their neighbours, the challenge was not
physical or social but an ever-growing and rapid-upgrading hostile self that
humans had never faced before. It is a much tougher challenge as Arnold Joseph
Toynbee pointed out: “The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably
better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have
become defenceless against ourselves.”
When
humans knew how to wage war to their advantage, it set off the arms race in
human world with the most militarized and best equiped state as the winner.
William Eckhardt (1995) raised the so-called dialectical evolutionary theory to
interprete the process of human civilization. He so defines his theory:
A
dialectical evolutionary theory tries to relate the concepts of civilization,
empire, and war to one another in such a way that their interaction results in
positive feedback loops leading them ever upward and onward in a spiraling
motion, unless and until it leads them in the opposite direction by way of
negative feedback loops which reverse the direction of the spiral.(3)
William
Eckhardt found a close correlation between war measured in the frequency of
battles, empire measured in the total area of empires, and civilization measured in numbers of
geniuses whose superiority was established by the consensus of encyclopedia and
textbook authors. While the whole world tended to spiral upward, as a general
rule during the last 5,000 years, regional areas had their ups and downs, rises
and falls. When expenditures exceeded incomes in the evolutionary process, then
came the falls, which were characterized by decentralization, feudalization, or
foreign conquest. In all cases, the way up not only increased the quantity of
civilization, empire, and war, but also changed the social structure to one of
greater inequality, indicated by slavery, caste, class, social stratification,
and so forth. The following is a table to show the correlative data on the
three parameters along the five thousand years of human civilization:
Table 15.1 Civilizations,
Empires, and Wars Between 3000 BC and 2000 with Other Critical Data*
|
Century |
Nof of battles |
Imperial size(
sqare megameters) |
No of geniuses |
population (millions) |
Deaths of wars (millions) |
Energy consumption
(billion kilocalories per day) |
Deforested area |
|
-30 -29 -28 -27 -26 -25 -24 -23 -22 -21 -20 |
|
0.15 0.20 0.26 0.32 0.37 0.43 0.50 0.90 0.40 0.28 0.50 |
4 0 3 4 2 4 0 0 0 0 9 |
50 |
|
0.6 |
|
|
-19 -18 -17 -16 -15 -14 -13 -12 -11 -10 |
0 0 1 0 0 0 |
0.80 1.25 1.10 1.35 2.05 2.25 2.70 2.65 1.60 1.00 |
6 6 3 3 3 3 9 1 0 2 |
120 |
|
|
|
|
-9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 |
0 0 3 2 19 29 43 22 34 |
1.15 1.15 3.10 7.85 6.25 5.70 11.85 15.15 16.40 |
5 9 21 50 120 114 49 65 61 |
153 187 225 250 |
0.16 0.35 0.13 0.56 0.31 |
|
|
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 |
5 8 25 17 21 17 67 38 50 41 |
18.40 13.80 14.70 13.70 17.90 21.00 18.00 24.70 18.50 17.00 |
70 83 38 51 46 49 76 88 99 117 |
252 257 222 206 207 208 206 224 222 253 |
0.12 0.14 0.24 0.04 0.23 0.01 0.36 0.07 0.07 |
6.5 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 |
54 69 80 53 85 148 290 338 449 |
17.00 10.10 32.70 31.80 17.10 22.20 43.80 61.00 102.00 120.35 |
138 153 187 109 125 424 412 434 795 |
299 400 431 375 461 578 680 954 1,634 6,057 |
2.5 0.11 0.12 1.0 6.0 7.0 19 118 |
123 1380 |
25%(1700) 50%(1850) 75%(1915) |
|
Sum |
4,511 |
725.41 |
4,150 |
|
|
|
|
*Data on world population, deforested area, and
energy consumption are from David Christian (2004). The deforested area was
100% in 1985, the exact year when the data were collected is given in
parentheses. The No. of death in wars are from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.(3) (4) (5)
William
Eckhardt did not predict the scale of the next war according to his upward
spiral. Some people say, we have some six billion people now and will grow up
to 7.5 billions but the earth is only able to support 1.5 billion. Therefore, 6
billion human beings have to go, and the next war will be 60 times of the scale
of the Second World War measured by the number of deaths.
Fortunately,
there are evidences that such an upward spiral evolutionary process of warring
culture is coming to its end:
Humans were waging wars
continually along the history of civilization, and their wars were upgraded
continually in terms of numbers of people involved as more nations joined in.
The maximum size of war humans could have entered was when all humans on earth
joined in and when all nations divided into two huge campuses. This was the two
world wars and the cold war era, which can be regarded as the peak of this
upward spiral evolutionary process on war scale.
Similarly, the maximum size an
empire also peaked off in human history, that was the Mongolian Empire in the
13th century and the
The British
Empire was the largest empire in history and for a time was the foremost global
power. The European age of maritime explorations of the 15th century sparked
the era of the European colonial empires with the British as the most
successful. By 1921, the British Empire held a population of about 458 million
people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. It covered about
36.6 million km², about a quarter of Earth's total land area. It was often said
that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span
across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least part of
its territory. During the five decades following the Second World War, most of the territories
of the Empire became independent, but many of them joined the Commonwealth
of Nations, a
free association of independent states. If the most powerful empire is no
longer able to keep its vast territory, it is impossible to set up new empires.
The upward spiral of empire has come to its end.
When we are moving away from the two world wars,
people will become closer to human nature. War makes people work hard for
survival, and it makes people feel a sense of urgency. People forget themselves
when they have an urgent feeling. They also tend to be more rational and less
emotional. I think the relatively peaceful environment, especially after the
Cold War was over, will brace human nature as a whole not only parts that fit
in the high competitive society. Humans may be lazier than before, but that is
the human nature. From baby boomers to generation X, and to generation Y,
people are becoming more relaxed, more distanced from materialism but closer to
self-happiness or spirituality.
According to the Canadian author, Douglas Coupland,
and others, generation X who were born in the 1970s are quite different in
comparison with the baby boomer generation whose births followed the Secondary
World War. Generation X are less materialistic, less money-oriented, more
leisure-seeking, and put more value on individual freedom. In other words,
generation X people are closer to human nature while the boomer generation
closer to the Western culture. It is not coincident that in the Taoist view,
the young people are closer to nature, since they have not exposed to our war
culture for long.
The wealth-building
culture was also part of this upward spiral evolutionary process of war/empire/civilization,
as all those three, war, empire, and civilization, needed wealth to support.
Since the capitalist system was established, wealth building has been separated
from empires. Thus, it is widely accepted that capitalist expansion led to the two
world wars, it is not the other way round: wars led capitalism. I think the
wealth-building culture detached itself from warring culture only after the
Renaissance, because such a culture needs a large number of independent and
highly educated individuals. The
Renaissance created such individuals in massive numbers. The wealth building
culture is no longer motivated by war needs. The passing of the Cold War era
did not damp the wealth building enthusiasm but fueled up it.
This wealth building culture will be hindered by
resource limitation and environmental problems, and especially by the final
realization that wealth provides us convenience and comfort but not happiness.
It is most apparent if we consider that in
(3)
The Political Situation of the Modern
World is Similar to That of Chinese Early Dynasties When Taoist Philosophy was
Popular
The modern world with a powerless United Nations as a
platform for countries to work out their differences at various levels is
pretty much like the political situation of China from 2200 BC to 476 BC when a
relatively powerless king and his court were trying to keep peace among
numerous independent states and when human nature was highly respected in
politics and in life. If we consider Taoist philosophy as a way of life, Taoist
life style was popular from 2200 BC to 476 BC.
William Eckhardt’s upward spiral
evolutionary process of war/empire/civilization does not apply to the early
phase of Chinese civilization, from 2200 to 476 BC. Peace and morality were
apparently the main voices during this period. The first authoritative volume
of Chinese history, Historical Records, starts with such words:
“…When Godly Farmer’s (Shen
Nong) rule was weakened, states (tribes or federations of tribes) were fighting
and conquering each other, people were devastated, but Godly Farmer was unable
to punish them with military action.”
Now the academic circle considers Godly Farmer as a
period of history and not a specific ruler. During this time, agriculture was
developed and people lived together in peace except for its late years when
violent conflicts developed. The first real ruler in Chinese history was the
Yellow Emperor, who conquered two major federations of tribes, and ended those
chaotic years. As the above quotation implies, this superpower or super state
set up by the Yellow Emperor was to function as police to keep peace among tribes.
Great Yu was the forth ruler of this super state
after the Yellow Emperor. Great Yu established the first dynasty, Hsia
(2200-1766 BC), through cooperation against flood. An authoritative historian
believed that the Hia dynasty was in primitive society, lacking class
stratification. The people who established the Hia dynasty and the people who
established the Chou dynasty (1122-256 BC) are believed to originate from the
same tribal people. There are clear records indicating that this super state structure
was functioning as police to keep peace among tribes and states during the Chou
dynasty. The dynasty, Shang (1765-1123 BC), which was after Hsia and before
Chou, was different in origin, and they seemed to be more militarized and pay
more attention to gods and spirits. But Confucius and all other scholars during
Confucius’s time regarded those three early Chinese dynasties, Hsia, Shang, and
Chou, as a whole period of continuous culture.
Such a super state may cover a vast area, since many
tribes and independent states wanted to join in for protection. The social
structure of this super state was loose, and they lacked the modern concept of
territory. They allowed people to move freely, and requiring the rulers of
states along the bordering areas to report to the central government only once
in their life time. Contrary to William
Eckhardt’s upward spiral evolutionary process of war/empire/civilization, this
super state system allowed the quantity of civilization, empire ( the size of
this super state) to increase without the increase in battles and conflicts. In
Chinese ancient literature, this super state was often referred to as the world
(tian xia), since this super state was the only world that they knew. They knew
nothing beyond this super state. human nature was respected and primary society
remained intact or near intact.
Primary society is genetic coded
society, and therefore humans have a strong tendence to form primary society
unless they are forced to do otherwise. The following is this important
assumption:
Primary society or
quasi-primary society will form automatically if:
1). The population is less than
a few hundreds, and the population is free to divide when it is much larger
than the size of a primary society;
2). The population is engaged in
face-to-face interaction;
3). No contact with and no ideological influence
from secondary society;
4). No outside force threatening their survival.
Based on the above assumption,
we have reached an important conclusion that the societies were mainly primary
or quasi-primary societies during the period of early Chinese civilization from
2200 to 476 BC. A quasi-primary society was essentially a primary society based
on human nature but has started its transformation toward secondary society.
There was no typical secondary society emerged during this period though this
super state structure was rightly named as secondary society because of its
function as a secondary society. A typical secondary society consists of only
independent individuals, and the society is stablized by a well-defined
ideology and corresponding social structure. Primary society is stablized by
human nature such as instict and subconscious.
The social structure of the
period of early Chinese civilization from 2200 to 476 BC was idiographically
modelled as follows:
The King and his clan +
Intellectuals Quasi-primary society
│
The vassals and their clans +
Intellectuals Quasi-primary society
│
Villages and tribes Primary society
Although the kings and vassals
were in secondary society according to the definition of secondary society in
this book, but they were able to live in quasi-primary society, since all the
four “if”s in the above important assumption were met. It is further explained
as follows:
1). The king, vassals,
villages/tribes, and their clans all lived in primary or quasi-primary society;
2). The king, vassals and their
clans lived a better material life than the village/tribal people, but a ten
percent tax was well tolerated and was not enough to change their idle life
style;
3).
The king and vassals did not live together, though they engaged in face to face
interaction. Their numbers were within a few hundreds, and they formed a
quasi-primary society;
4).
Similarly, the vassal and his subordinate headmen formed another quasi-primary
society; The king ruled his vassals and the vassals ruled their headmen in the
same way as a headman ruled his subjects in a primary society, mainly by
persuasion and consensus.
5). The relations between the above primary and
quasi-primary societies followed the precinple of reciprocity and mutual
respect;
6).
Ideally, the adminstration and the military conflict were optmised to nearly
zero according to the Taoist precinple: govern by non-interference.
Under such a social structure,
human nature was the main force to stablize the society. The life style was
close to Taoist ideology. Although various life philosophies were established
much later, rudimentary ideology and philosophy were surely present. I tend to
think that the major ideology during this period was Taoism with rudimentary
Confucianism as the complementary non-official ideology. From Classic of
Poetry and Book of Mountains and Seas, it is clear that there was
not any forceful unified ideology, which is consisted with primitive life style
and Taost philosophy. Taoism regards neither the authority of heavenly gods nor
that of any secular power. It is generally regarded as a rarity that Chinese
mythology remained fragmentary even after the Axial Age started and rational
thinking was established.
Interestingly, the political
situation of the period of early Chinese civilization is similar to the
political situation of modern world. Both the king of ancient China and the
United Nations (UN) are relatively powerless, but they play a critical role to
keep peace among the local powers. The UN was set up with the same purpose as
the first super state in ancient China, and it is to keep peace, and break
tension among local powers.
The UN was founded in 1945 to
replace the uneffective League of Nations, which was blamed to have failed to
prevent the Second World War. Considering the third world war was widely
expected in the 1950s and 1960s, and many countries were struggling to prepare
for it, it is remarkable that this third world war eventually did not happen.
Without the UN, it would have been almost certainly a reality.
The Human Security Report 2005,
produced by the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia
with support from several governments and foundations, documented a dramatic,
but largely unrecognized, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human
rights abuses since the end of the Cold War. Statistics include: a 40% drop in
violent conflict; an 80% drop in the most deadly conflicts; and an 80% drop in
genocide and politicide.
As mentioned above, more
peaceful international environment cultivates the spirit of freedom and liberty
in the new generations. They may appear lazier, less disciplined, but it is our
nature. They would be unable to wage war on the same scale of the two world
wars even they accountered a similar situation. At least, we hope so.
(4)
The Taoist Ideal
Life and Society
Here I would like to say a few
words about the different states of human mind and their influence on our world
view and behaviour. As shown in Figure 18, those dogs have three different
mental states, namely, rest, goal oriented, and fighting with each other. If you ask those dogs what they see in their
world and what they want in their life, the dogs in rest would say they see the
whole world that includes themselves and they wants to enjoy life. If you put
their answer in philosophical terms, it would be Taoist philosophy.
The goal oriented dogs only see
their target that they run after and they want to reach their goal. Such goals change with time and with
different dogs, and it creates conflicts among dogs as their different goals
have the potential to interfere with each other.
When dogs are fighting with each
other, they see only each other and want to conquer each other. Since it is
impossible to conquer each other at the same time and the only outcome will be
that one is conquered by the other except for a tie. Fortunately dogs are still
guided by their nature, and they will stop when they are too tired to
continue. Civilized humans are beyond
human nature, and thus subjected to the upward spiral course defined by William
Eckhardt.
Humans and dogs are however
still the same that they enjoy themselves when there is nothing to worry about;
they switch on their survival kit to run on their peripheral potentials when
their life is at risk; they switch on death program when they are in a hopeless
situation: man commits suicide while dogs stop eating when they are terminally
ill and stop fighting when they are in front of a hunger tiger.
Science and technology have made
life much easier. Humans have every reason to enjoy their life unless they are
determined to fight against themselves.
Here
I only try to interpret the Taoist ideal life and society in modern terms. Lao
Tzu, Chuang Tzu and other Taoist classic authors all praised the ancient
egalitarian society in which there were no forceful authorities. They even
named those who lived in such society as the real people. It is clear that we
cannot accept any will forced upon us, whether the will is from authority
people, gods, or from faith in any pricinples. Accordingly, we do not need to
work either, since our remote ancestors did not.
In
real life, it is often difficult to determine whether an activity is work or
pure enjoyment and whether we are motivated by ourselves or by others’ will.
The moto to remember all time is: enjoy the process and do not care the result.
As long as you enjoy your work and the company of your colleagues at the
working place, you may work as long as you like. Do not force yourselve to work
hard for the payment.
From
the concept of separation of the primary and the secondary society which was
proposed by Lao Tzu and from the organization of our body cells, it is up to
the secondary society to assemble and integrate all the end products we produce
during the activities of our self-enjoyment into something useful and meanful
to us who live in the primary society. As to who have to live in secondary
society, and how they achieve this goal, it is beyond my speculation. Ideally
they live their lives exactly the same way as those who live in the primary
society.
You may say this is an
unrealistic dream. But if you read thoroughly the works by Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu,
and other classic authors and if you are able to shut off all the ideas your
culture has crammed into your mind and judge it objectively and precisely, you
will certain agree with me that my interpretation is exactly what Lao Tzu,
Chuang Tzu, and other classic authors meant in their works. You will also agree
that to keep this ideal life and society in our mind is useful to prevent us
from enduring meaningless endeavours. We do not have to labour ourselves like
ants before enjoy our lives. We do not have to drive each other into madness.
If
our remote ancestors never worked, we need not work either, unless the work
itself is enjoyment. With modern science and technology, such a goal, no work
except for enjoyment, is not beyond our reach.
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(1) Riane
Eisler(2002): Ecofeminism gives life purpose. In: Constructing a life
philosophy: opposing view points, ed by M. R. Schmidt.
(2) J. DeMeo(2004): Saharasia. Orgone: Orgone
Biophysical Research Lab.
(3) William Eckhardt(1995): A dialectical
evolutionary theory of civilizations, empires, and wars. In: Civilizations
world systems studying world-historical change, ed by S. K. Sanderson.
(4)
David Christian(2004): Maps of time: a introduction to big history.
(5) 1). List of
wars; 2). List of battles and other violent events by death toll; 3). List of
battles by death toll. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/)_files/image002.jpg)
Figure 1. Lobefin fish and their evolutionary prospects.
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Figure 2. Dogs and the three states of mind.