Money and Sustainability: Appendix E

This appendix uses philosophical language to

shows that, for the first time, Western science is

demonstrating the validity of the insights of

ancient Chinese philosophy. Specifically, it shows

that Taoism provides a better insight into the behaviour of

living systems than the Aristotelian linear cause and effect

model.

“When Yin and Yang combine appropriately,

all things achieve harmony.”

Lao Tzu

Rudyard Kipling observed: “East is East; and West is West.

And never the twain shall meet”. Yet today, met they have

and interact they do, with vital trade and financial exchange.

However, we are not only referring to the geopolitical and

economic realities of the awakening of China, that Napoleon predicted would “astonish the

world”.1 What we are referring to is the epistemological lack of understanding between two forms

of common sense about the way nature operates: the Aristotelian approach that is underlying the

1 Napoleon is purported to have made two comments about China. The first dates to 1803, before he was emperor, when

he pointed to China on a map: “Here sleeps a dragon [or a lion in another version]. When it awakens it will astonish the

world”. The second dates to 1812 during his exile in Saint Helena: “Quand la Chine s’éveillera, le monde tremblera” [when

China wakes up, the world will tremble]. The French politician Alain Peyrefitte, after his visit to China in 1971, took that

second quote as the title for his best-known book, first published in 1973. In it, he forecasts that because of the sheer size

of its population, when China decides to equip itself with 20th century technologies, it will return to a central economic

and political role in the world, which it had held for several millennia, before the Industrial Revolution.

A Chinese Insight

West’s common sense and most Western science; and the Taoist viewpoint which is part of the

Eastern common sense and tradition.2

The Aristotelian approach that has long predominated in the West is based on a linear mental

chain of cause and effects; it would have us move from point A to point B in linear fashion. That is

why Western philosophy tends to look at the origin of everything for a “primordial cause” which

can take the form of the creative God, a Logos, the Monad of Leibniz, or a primordial Big Bang

hypothesised in Modern cosmology.

In contrast, Eastern philosophy sees at the origin Nothingness, the Void. 3 According to Taoism,

what emerges out of this Void is a dynamic interaction between the two polarities of Yin-Yang.

These concepts, always combined as Yin-Yang, as necessary complements to each other, have a

history of thousands years, with its origins traced back to prehistoric shamanism, and in written

form to the Yi Jing (the Book of Changes, often spelled also I Ching), attributed to King Wen of Zhou

(1099-1050 BC). The explicit Weltanschauung in Chinese philosophy is the necessity of an

appropriate balance between Yang and Yin energies, in all aspects of nature and life.

New insights from the study of complex flow networks provide clear evidence that Taoism

contributes a more fertile approach than Aristotle, at least to explain the conditions of

sustainability for living systems. We will be using here the Yin-Yang vocabulary, at the risk of

appearing exotic, simply because we don’t have precise equivalent words in our Western

languages. C.G. Jung was one of the first to express regret that our Western culture is not more

familiar with this concept: “Unfortunately, our Western mind, lacking all culture in this respect,

has never yet devised a concept, nor even a name, for the ‘union of opposites through the middle

path’, that most fundamental item of inward experience, which could respectably be set against the

Chinese concept of Tao.”

In the Chinese philosophical tradition, respectively yang and yin characteristics were assigned to

all natural systems. Oriental philosophers have developed an infinite number of ways to describe

the Yin-Yang relationship and polarity. The following figure offers those selected as most relevant

for our purpose.

2 A view close to the oriental one was developed in the West by the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca.

535 - 475 BCE) about whose work we have unfortunately have today only fragments quoted by others. The most relevant

fragment has been preserved via Diogenes (3th century ACE), who claims that Heraclitus stated “All things come into

being by conflict of opposites, and the whole flows like a stream” (Diogenes Laërtius: Lives and Opinions of Eminent

Philosophers. Book ix. 8). However, the Eleatic school of Greek philosophy (including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle)

completely overshadowed Heraclitus’s contributions, to the point that the earlier approach was practically lost in the

West, until Hegel recovered part of it with his epistemology in three steps: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

3 This view of a primordial Void is shared by Hinduism among others. What Hinduism calls Purusha, pure

consciousness without any manifestation, “The Absolute Truth is that from which everything else emanates”, according

to the Bhagavata Purana [Sutra.1.1.1]

Yin-Yang Characteristics

Competition

Hoarding, accumulating, concentrating

Goal Setting, Performance-Growth

Having, Doing

Peak Experience

Rational, Analytical

Logic, Mental, Linear

Pursuit of Certainty

Technology dominates

Bigger is better, Expansion

Independence

Hierarchy works best

Central Authority

Planning , Control of future

Cause and Effect

Parts explain Whole(Reductionism)

Yang

Coherence

Yin

Coherence

Cooperation

Circulating, giving, connecting

Caring, Quality of life (not quantity)

Being

Endurance-sustainabililty

Intuition, Empathy-Synthesis

Paradox, Physical-Emotional, Non-linear

Ability to hold ambivalence

Interpersonal Skills Dominate

Small is Beautiful, Conservation

Interdependence

Egalitarian Works Best

Mutual Trust

Self-Organizing “Chaos”, Faith in Future

Synchronicity

Whole explains Parts (Holism)

Figure 1: Yin-Yang Coherences and Polarities

This figure can be read vertically, emphasising the internal coherences. Or it can be read

horizontally, emphasizing the polarity between them. One advantage in using the Yin-Yang

vocabulary is that Taoists never separate such polarities. They emphasise the connection between

them – their Yin-Yang complementarity. In clear: both are indispensable!

These ways of looking at reality are not competing ways to relate and interpret reality, any more

than your right eye competes with the left one. Instead, because of their differences, together they

provide you with range and depth of vision, something which neither one can do by itself.

For the past millennia, all patriarchal societies have tended to impart legitimacy to the vision

contributed by only the Yang half of its “eyes”. We have thereby projected a hierarchical duality on

concepts such as activity/passivity, creative/receptive, state/flux, culture/nature, mind/senses,

spirit/matter; invariably claiming the former to be somehow “better” than the latter. What matters

here is not to deny the qualities inherent in the Yang viewpoint, but to empower the Yin to an

equal level. A shift in consciousness towards giving equal emphasis on both views is about more

than fairness; it may be the key to provide a synergistic impulse towards the sustainability of our

species.

A paper that obtained the Vickers Award from the International Society for the Systems Sciences

expressed the Yin-Yang approach in gender terms: “The feminine and the masculine are not

objects, not things, not simply biological bodies we are attempting to unite, but rather complex,

archetypal organisations of consciousness…What is needed is a recognition of the synergy

between these polar opposites. Synergy is evident everywhere in nature, and is an important

source of causation in the ongoing evolutionary process. Since the relationship between male and

female is fundamentally synergistic, it is essential that we rethink and recreate our cultural and

symbolic understanding of the feminine and its relationship to the masculine to increase the

possibility that the human species will co-create an evolutionary change that is advantageous to

the entire biosphere. If we do not, we are in danger of bringing about our own extinction…”4

It is only recently that Western science has reached this conclusion. However, some Westerners

understood this much earlier. For instance, the poet John Keats coined the term “negative

capability” for the often overlooked Yin trait of human personality and experience: the capacity to

hold uncertainty without angst – the capacity to live with the unknown as an ally rather than

something to be eliminated. Such “undecideness” is not hesitant fence-sitting, indifference or

laziness; nor is it a skill in the usual sense of the word, although it can be cultivated. It is more like

a connection to an undifferentiated ground that resists form, which continually invokes questions

and reflection and is potentially multi-dimensional, a space of “both-and” and neti-neti, the Hindu

concept literally meaning ““neither this, nor that”. Such a new approach would give a chance to

Taoist master Ho-Shang Kung's two-thousand year old claim to “take care of the spirit without

effort, and bring peace to the world without struggle”5.

Returning to the claims made about the conditions under which any complex flow network can be

sustainable, we have seen that natural ecosystems are sustainable because they have both sufficient

self-directed order and identity (Yang) and absence of the same attributes (Yin) to provide

flexibility to change. The polarities necessitate each other in an appropriate balance in harmonious

complementarity. Let us remember that nature must have solved many of the structural problems

in ecosystems. Otherwise, these ecosystems simply wouldn’t exist today. They are our best living

examples of large scale sustainability in action.

When will be willing to learn from these myriad natural examples to apply their lessons for our

human-made complex flow networks?

This is Appendix E to

Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link.

To read more about the book or to order a copy, visit:

http://bit.ly/TPMissingLink

4 Dwyer, Molly “Complexity and the Emergent Feminine: A Cosmological Inquiry into the Role of the Feminine in the

Evolution of the Universe” (Winning Paper of the 1999 Vickers Award International Society for the Systems Sciences,

Asimolar, CA)

5 Ho-Shang Kung: Heshang Gong (ca 159 BCE). English translation : Eduard Erkes: Lao-tzu-chu (Switzerland: Artibus

Asiae, 1950). Red Pine: Lao-Tzu's Taoteching with selected commentaries (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009)

p. 2.