Practical Taoism

Now that we know who you are... I know who I am. I'm not a mistake! It all makes sense. In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch-villain's going to be? He's the exact opposite of the hero, and most time's they're friends, like you and me. I should've known way back when. You know why, David? Because of the kids. They called me Mr. Glass.

The American discourse is often constructed as a series of binary and antagonistic opposites.  One of which I am particularly fond is the progress vs. tradition binary, which forms a base on which other binaries stand: atheism vs. belief for example; urban vs. rural; electronic media vs. print media; walkable cities vs. suburbs; or rock music vs. classical music.  There are countless examples, and these are all part of a greater false dichotomy, for in between progress and tradition lies not antagonism but symbiosis.  

All the things we think of as traditional are traditional because something changed.  For example, we value antique furniture, old houses, and black and white movies as traditional because now we have Ikea, mass-produced homes, and Avatar.  The frontier, the Western Movie, and Manifest Destiny serve as components of our national mythology because the American West is now criss-crossed with highways and Internet cables and peppered with fast food restaurants and Wal-marts.  Indeed, there would be no tradition without change.  The very concept would be meaningless.  It helps to remember this when we imagine an idyllic and rosy past that does not exist outside of our modern framing.

Likewise, there can be no happiness without sorrow.  If we were simply given the necessities of life instead of having to work for them, there would be no reward.  We would simply take them for granted.  Therefore, if we are sad, we should console ourselves knowing that it is a relative and temporary sadness, and we will soon be happy.  If we are happy, we should appreciate our happiness knowing that we may soon be sad.    

This basic, dialectical understanding applies across multiple fundamental facets of our society - from sports, where we must break our muscles in order to build them - to jurisprudence, where two sides passionately argue their positions - to religion, where we must suffer to avoid causing suffering for others - to academia, where we consciously subject our ideas to attacks from others with the goal of refining them - to art, where patterns and paradigms are defined only in relation to other patterns and paradigms, whether those patterns and paradigms are contained within our chosen medium or external - and elsewhere.  (Of course, the culture war requires the zealous participation of both sides in order to continue.)

Indeed, if we look at nature itself, we find this pattern of symbiotic binary opposition to be universal.  Death is a necessary condition for life in the literal sense: if unfit bacteria had not ceased to exist, the eukaryotes that ultimately gave rise to the first cells would not have existed either.  If sexual reproduction had never developed, slightly altered genetic material would never have been passed on to the next generation, mutations would have never spread, species would have never diverged.  Indeed, death is the lynch-pin on which the entirety of the diversity of the biosphere hinges. 

For the most part, human culture structurally and functionally mimics nature.  This does not entail that we all be conscious of the symbiotic relationships we share with those with whom we profoundly disagree.  What is not at all universal is how we look at these binary forces shaping our lives.  

UPDATE 1/18:

Dyske Suematsu writes:

"Indeed, if we look at nature itself, we find this pattern of symbiotic binary opposition to be universal."

That's how WE interpret it; not because it's "universal". You can't look at "nature" to validate your position, as our concept of "nature" is created as opposition to "culture".

"Death" is a label we create in our minds in order to communicate a certain event, but we do not necessarily have to interpret it that way. Even when we die, the only thing that changes is our form. If you burn my dead body, it turns into ash, water evaporates into air, and some matter converts to energy through heat, etc.. These forms keep changing. It's actually all continuous; nothing starts or stops. We happen to mark certain points as birth and death, but that's just our interpretation.

Fair enough.  This is a very good point.  All we can really be sure of is our interface with the external environment, but I think my analysis is a more parsimonious description of that interpretation, which, as the title of the post indicates, is fundamentally a practical one.