THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

A Taoist viewpoint: All is about balance
‘Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.’ – Alan Watts
The first concept has been available for several millennia. It is the
Taoist view of the available synergy when we cease to oppose
polarities.
Our modern culture, our information sources our values, even the
words with which we communicate and think, always tend to
polarise things. Whenever we make a distinction, 'it rests on an
assumption of opposition and a logic of negation'."' For instance, in
any Indo-European language when we think 'cold', we are
automatically implying 'not warm’. The word 'health' means the
absence of disease and so on.
The Taoists, in contrast, do not view opposites as inevitably
mutually exclusive. For instance, their best-known polarity is Yin-
Yang. We tend to translate this oriental concept as an expression of
our familiar opposites. We, therefore, assume Yin-Yang to represent
opposites: black or white, cold or warm, night or day, female or male,
etc. Our normal interpretation is that black excludes the white, cold
excludes warm, night is when it is not day, etc.
Taoists see Yin-Yang as connected to each other, as necessary
components to make the whole possible. That is why they never refer
to 'Yin or Yang', but always to 'Yin-Yang'. In this way, they point to
the link between them rather than the space that separates them. Yin
is black only to the extent that Yang is white. Yin is cold only to the
extent that Yang is warm. Yin is night only to the extent that Yang is
day, etc. This difference in world-view is subtle, but critical. The
Taoists look at the whole at the same time as the parts. Each part
exists only because of the interface they create in the whole. In
contrast, we tend to take one part and oppose it to the other.