Taoism in Modern Society

Preamble

Before I get to my main point which I have written before writing this introduction, I have to say that one thing that is certain, is that not everything is certain. No world ideology should be applied, let alone imposed to everyone, nor could all of them encapsulate nor explain every life situation without overlooking individualistic aspects. If the cause of a problem affects presumably a large portion of the population, it is on us to research upon its specific solution. 

Some issues that I want to address, are things that are only possible in specific standards of living, life situations that have developed because their environment allowed them to develop. Some people will never have a use for a solution, when there is not the same problem to fight in the first place. But just because there is not the same problem and maybe, even more severe precursory challenges to tackle, it does not mean that its solution should be disregarded. Quite the opposite, there should be a learning from those solutions to either find potential solutions for the own problems, or to prevent the same problems from happening in the future, since we all (different groups, different places) go through a similar social development as people. We can learn from everything, but we also can’t learn from anything, and especially solutions to problems that impact a majority of a population are always worth learning from. 

Every greater religion and philosophy on this planet, no matter how dark some of their aspects might be, have fundamental learnings to offer which we should take on us and use, to develop from there, by combining ideas, by learning from their mistake, by observing their development. Our goal should be to collectively gather and think forward, to allow the crystallization of the best ideas, to be picked up by future generations, and thought even further for us, to find out what true balance means, be it between machine or nature, between right and wrong or theism and atheism. 

With this point made, I would like to elaborate my take on Taoism in the modern (mostly western) world.

Main Content

Taoism, would work in a world in where all humans are Taoist. 

A utopy in which we are almost one with nature, where every human is at peace because they have found their purpose, where things are done because they wanna be done, not because they have to be done. 

But include just two fundamental aspects of humanity in this equation, things that are inevitably there, and you’ll be back to our modern society pretty quick. 

Money and primitive drives. 

Money is one of the main instances of what puts value behind actions and goods, one thing that Taoism in terms of human behavior does not like to do. In Taoism, it is on us to fulfill ourselves, not swimming against the stream of the river, but flowing in it, doing what we can and want and not trying what personally opposes our inner feelings. Because swimming against the river, is a stressing learning curve, when new knowledge that we don’t have any affinity towards, is fierce fully acquired.

And looking at the first paradigm of money and it, valuing things, and then looking at the other side, a reality in which people not necessarily having the same output in terms of what their affinity is allowing them too. We would end up with a society where sitting and watching movies or meditating all day long is on par with an architect constructing housings for people. 

It is utopic for me to say that the output of every human, could be comparable just by the achieved inner peace of the produced output. Hence, there would not be any sustainable value system for activities with a strict and direct implication of it onto society. Feeling of fairness would not only not exist, but the attempt to create fairness wouldn’t be welcome, and one would be more or less defined by what their genetics and environment allowed them growing up. Something that modern society, once above survival level, counteracts rather decently (reminder that I'm talking about western countries). 

Someone who is not talented in a certain area, can grind and work their way through, to achieve a dream that they couldn’t achieve otherwise. And they often do, by stressing and swimming against a river, and not only by flowing in whatever is given. Flow can be found in anything, not only in what brings peace to ourselves and in things we have affinity towards, but also in stressful activities and ways. And though the state of flow is something everyone should experience from time to time, the output of someone can be for a short term higher and more groundbreaking for the personality when it’s stressed out beyond the state of flow and also beyond the state of inner peace. And in the end, we have only one life, why wouldn’t we be allowed to break through every limitation that nature gave us, when we can take care of nature not being hurt, when we can literally make most of our dreams come true just by aquiring something that society values. When we can make everything happen, just through the use of cognitive abilities that differentiates us at least a bit from animals. 

Coming to the paradigm of our primitive drives, which allows us to act in such frightening manners sometimes, I think it is our very job to distance us as society, from our natural being and not give into it fully. By setting rules and along the way not forgetting where our roots our scientific biology, comes from, in order to achieve the best possible result that considers our natural being, but in an advanced non-primitive, freedom based, equal societal frame. Where you can decide to be unequal through acquiring of what this society values in a certain "absolute", namely money. And live life without any boundaries, so long as they are not damaging to society, which is usually taken care of by the instance of law. 

It’s your choice in the end, and you can accept that you have a choice within your choiceless life, which basically is choiceless because you can’t choose to not die. Or you can just blend out the factor of death and a life full of choices will open up to you. And what we often do in reality is just a swinging between a life of choice and not having choice that are mirrored in our actions. Walking towards death through unhealthy chase of habits that create short term happiness in our brains and escaping death through taking care, eating and sleeping, chasing dreams, stressing and working. And one thing that crystallized out of centuries of history is that those that bring the most change are the ones trying to escape death most fiercely. Mostly even trying to achieve an eternal life through titles, monuments and comparable instruments. Hopefully not to be understood wrong, because most of those examples are also examples of insane cruelty and wrong doings which should not be thrived for or taken as a right thing. But the point is to look at the correlation between the amount of inner drive that arises and possibility of change that comes with it, when trying to escape death. And when change is wanted and the power is needed to change the world or your environment for the better, the want to escape death should be greater than you giving into whatever brings death, everyone has their own ambitions and should act accordingly in how much they have to escape death, meaning discipline themselves.   

I would like to add, that I don’t appose Taoism despite the points I made. I support it in its core idea (or whatever can be interpreted as core idea, at least that there is good in the bad and bad in the good), enough so to not want people to get confused by it making their lives more difficult, by having to give up on things, because of the personally acceptable consequences, that comes with such a mindset.

Generally, it should be our goal to flow along the river of life, enjoying the stream. But I would think it’s a toxic thought if swimming against the river and not enjoying life in every one of its moments as a struggle of our lives, would be looked down upon and or lead to drawbacks in our mental state. Because not everyone starts within the same river, not everyone has the same difficulty, not everyone has the same fundaments, not everyone wants to reach the same place along that river. There is no balance, and we have to thrive towards it, by sometimes walking ways that are unbalanced, not to be confused with morally wrong but a stresswise disbalance within, which should be welcomed instead of fought to get rid of. Something that is achieved more or less in a better way through money, and not the absence of its valuation of things. The problems that are caused by the existence of money are problems that are there due to our immaturity in handling such a powerful device as humanity. Something that as a consequence can bring out the worst in the individuals, that can make use of the inner struggles of that very humanity. Something that affords a lot of mental development together as a people, into the right direction in order to allow us individually and as a group a better control and education over it. And it has to be said, that if we would wait until every human adapts the right mindset regarding money, our civilization might go extinct because there will always be a small percentage that oppose whatever system and belief there is, no matter how rightful it might seem, even heaven is for some a hell they’d want to escape. What we need is enough maturity of the majority to be able to stamp such learnings into solid ground through governmental devices that can provide law and order. Obviously, not disregarding the happiness of the few, but also not allowing the devastating results that money and other regulations can and are creating in the world with those few. It is a development that we are doing for centuries and there is still a lot to learn for humanity in order to find the right set of rules, that can counteract the issues, without intervening too much into core aspect of what makes money a good device in the first place.

So my take on Taoism in modern society would be; to differentiate in how to apply it in what context;

To society: by setting century long crystallized rules that work, not only morally but proven by the good that was produced in the world, and allowing the people to have money as a free device and merely teaching the right way of handling it peacefully, only to be controlled in its both extreme ends. 

To our personal lives, especially for depressed and over stressed people; to realize that if what you are earning is enough to make you survive and allow you at least an hour every day just for you and your thoughts, you can calm down for a second. Breathe and realize that you don’t have to match any given standards of society and people, to let go of any expectations other than those that you want to oppose on yourself. 

Once that is reached, you can look out for things to try out and experience, things that could actually spark that affinity inside you, with the mindset that there is something that will spark that affinity, but you haven't found it yet. Though, this only applies if you have come to the realization that what you are doing will not lead to the happiness you desire. Taking your time, if you can, will help you understand your own feelings and wants better, not only the ones you feel now, but the ones that you feel deep down in your core self that was mashed together through your life experiences and genetics. 

The art of not trying, should be mainly applied towards other humans, because they are the one thing we cannot control in our lives, assuming a healthy social dynamic. And what you can't control you should let go, as it was also healthy when the idea was established. It should also be applied to fast-paced standards of modern society, which mostly originate through the quick back and forth bouncing of ideas on the Internet. 

This fast lived bouncing of ideas, is something that makes it nowadays even more difficult to find this very affinity towards things. We see everything on the Internet, and we are burned out by this instant sensation in our brains. We subconsciously fantasize during videos, books, or conversation with friends and let the ideas go, caused by the new influx of information that sweeps them away without even making us mourn after it. It gets lost among the millions of possibilities of the modern world and it’s flow of ideas, and we can’t find anymore, what would be truly ours. Like when someone asks you suddenly what your favorite movie is, when someone asks you what your favorite animal is, when someone asks you what your favorite food is. And a lot of people will have an instant answer to this, people who had thought about it before, not when this question is thrown at them, despite having one. And those who don’t know the answer to this question, will be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possibilities in their brain, and without actively wanting to find out, it will not be found. And in comparison to what would spark your inner affinity in the world, this is just a tiny mental visualization of some small information, to which some of us can’t even give an instant answer to. Not that the “favorite” aspect has to be limited to just one favorite thing, we are complex enough to have several points, so it is more about feeling drawn towards some things as opposed to other things that we can actually mentally grip. 

As to the aspect that society is burning out with the internet; positivity and positive mindsets that would have been a blessing to hear back in times when there was no internet, became somehow toxic through the over supply and wrong application of it. We apply things to ourselves and change without a necessity of change, making ourselves to puppets of “positivity” instead of creating it ourselves by finding it through solving mentally what does not allow the positivity in first place. The “middle” that is being described in Taoism, to which we should move along, is decided nowadays by marketing people because we become the collective output of what different companies wants us to see and feel. And “private companies” such as streamers and influencers belong heavily into the category of our individual output and dream possibility. Of course, there are a lot of entertainment factors in why we watch and cheer people, but that very entertainment is often enough to satisfy the want to achieve something more with that dream. When the watching isn’t done purely for entertainment factor after having found peace in life, it will be something that will never fill the gap, but just prolong it and just allow bits of that true happiness to be taken in. Money is a good thing, but its flaws in combination with the Internet can have enough influence to inevitably destroy the soul of humanity, reducing our value to only what is written in code on various servers. Words read in memes or pictures we face, create thousands of new seeds of thoughts every day, some of which grow to become not only subconscious thoughts but ways to live. And those are thoughts created more through a device and less ourselves by necessity in our personal lives as well. 

And though it can be described as an output that money allows, it is a possibility that we humans allow with the money through the untamed existence of our primitive drives, since it caters to them, which is collectivelly a natural occurence and fine but individualistically a potential poison to be taken in with the knowledge of its toxic nature. Inevitably, killing some of our ability as sophisticated beings to have a true inner sophistication, but one that is led by this enormous stream of thoughts, hungry for mental stimulation and satisfaction in the form of humor, sexual arousal, nostalgia, or status. 

Though the internet has applications that will eventually make humanity leap again in the future, the way it is now for a big portion of its “heavy” users is determining of so much more than it should be, fate changing and soul killing exactly the same way as an overuse of drugs, just that it’s not frowned upon when the entire world is doing it.  

So if we take those two paradigms of money and primitive drives in front of us and manage to distance ourselves mentally from that, from the fear that society by now perfectly controls and creates in us and ourselves in our hunger for cheap stimulation - if we stop trying to find satisfaction online and even in some forms offline through games, songs, or movies which manage to capture and express our primitive drives in unprecedented excellency, we can look at the world with a Taoistic perspective and achieve our inner peace through finding actual activities that will fulfill us and our environment and achieve sustainable happiness. 

The internet and connectivity of people and our modern value system, makes trying to a new art of not trying, because not trying in today's world, will potentially chain you onto the flow that is decided upon millions, on our phones, on our screens, in our ears, through our peers, which can mean sustainable happiness for some, but not all. And after years of this same cycle, without trying, we will continue this stream of mass individuality, disposing of anything that creates intrinsic happiness originating by our own affinity towards something. Some people are able to do it online, due to their affinity to establish themselves better through binary than through real life. Some who reached the highest self-fulfillment on the internet already, famous influencers, YouTubers, bloggers, pro players, programmers. But this message goes to those that haven’t found their place in life and think there is no place for them to achieve it, some of which give into their hunger hence into this cycling giant stream of thoughts… there is a place, you just can’t see through the smoke that those paradigms created with the help of modern connectivity. Take a step back from this river of modern life, sit yourself down onto the side and watch this river of millions flow. Look at the ideas that flow around, look at the origin of those ideas, the reason those ideas are there in first place, the reason you like consuming them, look at yourself, look at the things you were looking at…and eventually you will know what feeling you want to come to you that you can create in yourself without trying more than you have to, and that is the true beauty in this idea. In a world that is not only just white but also black and not only to be found by themselves or individually together, but in different shapes, mixed up like gray.