EDITOR’S NOTE: Every society has its mainstream trend of thought and divergent currents as well. Every cultural tradition has its positive and negative sides. Every civilization needs to carry on and develop its own good tradition and learn and assimilate what is good in other civilizations. And human civilization as a whole, in today’s globalized and crises-ridden world, is in urgent need to draw from all ethnic civilizations what has been proved to be true and good through the test of time for the survival and a better future of the mankind. The following essay represents a conscientious effort along this line, one among many made by Easterners and Westerners as well.
(This essay is in two parts and will be posted in installments.)

THE TEXT

Introduction

          This essay is intended to analyze and criticize mainstream Western social science in the light of Chinese Daoist philosophy and call for its return to the right path.

          In Western thought tradition, there is no such conception as dynamic balance through mutual interactions between mind and matter, between different levels and different spheres of social existence, and between various social groups and individuals, still less the conception of a comprehensive equilibrium within the multi-dimensional whole of natural and human existence. On the contrary, through almost all academic areas runs a line of thought characterized by what this author terms as “monopole-reductionism”, represented by the “elementary particle” view (or atomism)” and the “mosaic” view.

     Monopole-reductionism means to reduce the dynamically balanced two-pole (Yin vs. Yang) relationship in anything to centering on either one single pole without considering its dynamic relationship with the other pole in viewing things. It finds expression in either idealism or materialism or inconsistently and opportunistically switching between the two extremes (as seen in mind/matter or divine/secular dualism/split/dichotomy), and in some other thought systems viewing things from the exclusive angle of a specific individual or social group or constituent part or aspect of social existence (e.g., egocentrism, ethnocentrism, racism, anthropocentrism; economic determinism or other kinds of unilateral determinism), or from that of an indivisible whole (e.g., monolithic collectivism, which disregards the relatively independent nature of each constituent individual, group, or community).

          When applied to social science, this reductionism views the society as a bunch of separate individual human entities (known as atomistic individualism, as typically embodied in economic and political liberalism), or a mosaic-like piecing together of different parts or aspects of a society). Both the atomistic and the mosaic view are based on the belief that the whole equals the mechanical adding up of the parts, disregarding the mutual interactions, the overlapping or mutual infiltration and transformation between them (individuals, groups, spheres, aspects, levels, and other dimensions) and between parts and the whole in a multiple of dimensions. As this approach views the society exclusively from the angle of only one of the artificially separated parts, disregarding all its internal and external relatedness, it is a kind of monopole-reductionism.

        The two major reflections of the mosaic view are: (1) regarding the relative distinction between the political and the economic spheres and that between the political-economic and the spiritual-cultural as between two totally self-contained entities, as exemplified by the public-politics-vs.-private-economy dichotomy, and by the so-called cultural-pluralism, which treats all different cultures as of equal value irrespective of the different value standards embodied in the corresponding economic-political institutions; and (2) regarding all nation-states in the present-day globalized world as totally self-contained entities and deliberately ignoring their existing relatedness when analyzing and judging their respective domestic situations, thus covering up the imbalanced relations between them and the impact of such relations on their respective internal affairs.

          This essay will show how the above line of thought results in fallacious theories in political economy leading to the world capital hegemony and in erroneous views on culture leading to the worldwide domination by an ideology serving the world capital church of money-worshipping fetishism.

I. Eastern vs. Western Worldview

         Diametrically opposed to the above line of thought is that developed by Chinese Daoist philosophers and generalized in modern terms by this author as viewing all existence including human society as a “dynamically-balanced multi-dimensional whole (DBMDW)”.

Chinese Daoist Philosophy:
Dynamically-Balanced Multi-Dimensional Whole

           The “Dao” (Tao道) as a philosophical term in the Daoist discourse represents at once what is ultimately intangible and what appears tangible in human eyes.

          Laozi says: “The ‘Dao’ that can be verbalized is not the eternal Dao.” (Dao De Jing, Chapter 1.) That means that in the final analysis the eternal Dao can only be sensed but not to be put in words, i.e., intangible. When Buddhists say “Finally speaking, nothing is tangible; nothing can be held onto” (万法性空, 无可执着), they mean the same. If we put it in modern philosophical terms, we can say: What we call “existence” actually represents infinite potential possibilities of mind-matter unity. This can be understood if we are aware that the world in human eyes is changing all the time with the ever-going on change of the human mind itself and if we do not limit the extension of the concept “mind” to that of the human only nor the concept “matter” to that in the human eyes only, because human life, the human mind and the world in the human eyes are but partial manifestations of ultimately infinite possibilities. Since the possibilities are “infinite”, of course there is nothing eternal or everlasting to speak of, nothing tangible to hold onto. An awareness of this intangibility of all things can help us give up egocentric prejudices and conscientiously follow the “Dao” of all existence.

          Meanwhile, the Daoist philosophical proposition that “All carry the opposites Yin and Yang, approaching harmony through moderation.” (“万物负阴而抱阳，冲气以为和。” Dao De Jing, Chap. 1) provides the ultimate metaphysical view of all phenomena as observed by the human eye, which actually underlies all major Chinese traditions of thought including Legalism, Confucianism, etc. Therefore, it can still serve today as the most general guiding principle for viewing all relative forms of existence in learning about, managing and reforming the world society and in learning about, changing and using Nature in a limited way while complying with it on the whole. This is the “tangible” side of the Dao and Daoist thought.

     The “intangibility” of all existence mentioned above is the ultimate and absolute reality we all have to face, whereas the “tangibility” of the world in the human eye, the world as the physical support for human existence and as the object of recognition and manipulation by humans, is only relative, i.e., depending on the human mind. We humans take the world which is recognized by our senses as “real” only from expediency out of the need for temporary survival. The idea of relative tangibility vs. absolute intangibility of all things is itself a perfect expression of the Daoist Yin-Yang concept at the highest level of existence. The infinite potential possibilities of mind-matter unity constitute the ultimate background against which emerges our DBMDW world.

      To us humans, dynamic balance finds primary expression in the never-ending spiral process of interactions between human consciousness and its objects from continually recurring imbalances between them (such as cognitive errors, failure of plans, man-made disasters) to continually returning relative balances. The relationship of mutual penetration, interaction and transformation between the human mind and the world is the origin of all Yin-Yang relationships in the human-perceived world, and the primary one of all the multiple dimensions of social and natural existence. 

     Determined by the structural characteristics or limitations of the human mind, the human-perceived world appears as an agglomeration of separable things, separable, among other ways, into vertical “levels”. The DBMDW worldview sees all the “individuals”, ”parts”, ”levels”, ”aspects”, and all the ”group entities” and ”wholes” as well in the world society in both ways at the same time: on the one hand, they are all seen as relatively self-contained and independent entities with either Yin or Yang characteristics based on their respective status relative to their opposites in all kinds of Yin-Yang dyads, dyads either mutually parallel or overlapping or intersecting; and on the other hand they are all seen as mutually interrelated -- penetrating into each other, interacting on each other, and transforming into each other.  The two sides make up the DBMDW of all social and natural existence.

     The Dao as explained above in the Yin-Yang balance perspective unifies mind (spirit/soul/God) and matter on all levels of human cognition till the highest level human intelligence can ever reach so far and thus provides the most inclusive explanation of all existence, leaving no room for any unexplainable spiritual entity that is dissociated from and floating over everything else. 

Western Philosophy: Mind-Matter Split & Monopole-Reductionism

     Either the Christian God, which, detached from the world or all existence (otherwise He could not have created the world), is actually the personification of human consciousness, or Hegel’s “cosmic spirit”, which is also absolutely detached from the material world, (otherwise it could not have “determined” the latter in the final analysis), or the “objective existence” in the eyes of materialists, which is absolutely detached from human consciousness (otherwise it could not have “determined” the latter in the final analysis) – all of them, either as mind determining matter, or as matter determining mind, are embodiments of monopole-reductionism, which denies or distorts the way of dynamic balance between mind and matter. Even the so-called “dialectical materialism” still unifies all existence in “matter” as the primary reality, considering “mind” as only secondary. Actually, this “matter”, either in the form of the whole human-perceived world or as an agglomeration of certain “elementary particles”, is not the ultimate “reality”, but only one of the possible forms of materialization out of the ultimately infinite potentialities of existence, a sort of materialization specifically through the work of the human eye-and-mind. Such a  “dialectical unity” of “primary matter“ and ”secondary mind” is in fact primarily based on human’s mental image of the world, and so actually materialistic only in appearance but idealistic in nature. The “dialectic” nature of the unity is recognized only in the partial analysis of the human-perceived world, but not in grasping the totality of the ultimately infinite potentialities. Only the Dao of dynamic balance, which is not detached from the world in any way but immanent in all existence, can unify and explain everything on the highest level of cognition human intelligence can reach so far.

     The search for the “elementary particle” in the West started from the time of ancient Greece and is still going on today. In exploring the micro world,  it might be necessary and beneficial to scientific research to expediently assume for the time being that the tiniest particle recognized at a specific time is “the elementary particle” while well aware of the expedient nature of the assumption; but on the philosophical-ontological level of cognition, which is supposed to present a total picture of existence, to view the world as an infinitely huge conglomeration of numerous “elementary particles” is opposed to the Daoist DBMDW worldview in the following two senses: 

     (1) Finally speaking, there are no such things as “elementary particles”. It is the limitedness of human cognition which has brought about the distinctiveness of all things, fragmentizing the world into separate beings and into tinier and tinier “particles”; it is also this limitedness of human cognition that restricts the distinguishing power and the result at a specific time. This means that, If cognition could potentially be developed without limit, then any particle could be divided again and again infinitely. Therefore, by finally designating a certain particle as “elementary”, human beings are actually denying the basic principle and fact of the ever on-going dynamic balance between human consciousness and its object, i.e., between mind and matter.

     (2) By considering the particles at the lowest micro level reached at a specific time as the ultimately “elementary unit”, human beings tend to see only the constituting role of these particles within the larger “holding” particles or within entities on higher levels but fail to recognize the governing influence of those “holding” particles or entities on those “elementary” ones, thus ignoring the “elementary” truth about all things: What is of “elementary” significance is not a certain kind of “elementary particle” but the dynamic interactions towards relative balances ever going on, and ever to be observed and studied, within and between the numerous levels of existence.

     When the above distorted worldview, commonly known as “atomism”, is applied to the observation and analysis of social phenomena, “a miss is as good as a mile”. The atomistic social outlook one-sidedly stresses the relatively independent, self-contained and autonomous quality of all individuals, parts, and aspects while turning a blind eye to the mutual complementariness between these individuals, parts and aspects, and also turning a blind eye to the status of a variety of social groups and communities on the many levels of human society as relatively self-contained social entities, relative both to the smaller constituting groups and individuals on lower levels and to the larger holding groups on higher levels.

     The above atomistic view, though sharing the same reductionist idea of “whole equals sum of parts” with the mosaic view (such as viewing the society as a mechanical piecing together of political, economic, and cultural “plates”, or viewing the world as that of separate nation-states), reductionist in ignoring the interpenetration and interaction between the parts and between the parts and the whole – in spite of this, the atomistic perspective is misleading in one more way than the mosaic one: while the latter recognizes more or less differences between the parts/pieces/”plates”, the former looks at all elementary social “particles”, i.e., human individuals, as identical copies out of one same cast like a new bunch of chopsticks all of which have the same size, same shape, same quality, same color or same artistic design. The “individual” in Western economic and political discourse is indeed such a “copy”, a “chopstick”.

     The mosaic view, however, is no less misleading and that in its own way: while there are innumerous “atomistic” individuals in a society and it does not matter much to count one less or one more, in the case of functional social “plates” there are usually considered to be three, i.e., political, economic, and cultural, of which none should be ignored because not only each of them but the interrelatedness between them as well bears heavily on each other and on the whole of society. And the mosaic view prevalent in mainstream Western academia usually misses their interrelatedness.

(To be continued)