The Way Through, Part 2: Understanding Our Lightness and Darkness

Our last article suggested the era of Enlightenment—signaled by the French Revolution—saw the objective values, for example, of science and the logic of reason as the source of light that would lead us though the darkness produced by the subjective values behind religion/spirituality, intuition and emotion. We saw in Brexit and the rise of populism that this emphasis of enlightenment is now producing its own darkness in the form of an economic, social and political infrastructure that undervalues whole segments of the human experience that contribute to the “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" of the United States Declaration of Independence.

So, the question in proposing any set of values as the light, the way forward, do we automatically create a complementary set of values—the darkness—that is in opposition to our lightness? As humans are we bound to a constant state of demonizing those who oppose our values? Are we constantly trying to create groups, organizations and institutions that foster those values while making life more difficult or even impossible for those who don’t support them? 

I recently watched a presentation suggested by Stuart Umpleby of George Washington University in which Prof Steven Pinker of Harvard, at the Cato Institute, extols in brilliant fashion the tremendous progress made as result of the Enlightenment: longer and better quality of life, the “Best of Worlds” scenario as referenced in the previous article. 

However, Pinker illustrates the more subjective values with humorous language and with the four negative images below. Belief in God is illustrated by ISIS. The belief that all we have to do is to get rid of evil people as illustrated by Putin. Tribal or local values are illustrated with a picture of an anti-fascist riot in Berlin. Belief in a past of order and harmony that we must restore to greatness is illustrated by the picture of Trump appearing to mouth the F word. The message is that the subjective values behind spirituality, social movements, political persuasion and cultural identity are “delusional and have always been wrong”. They are not really serious components of our progress. 

After finishing the presentation I found, serendipitously, one of my favorite books, The Tao of Power, R. L. Wing’s translation of Lao Tzu’s classic guide to leadership, influence and excellence. My wife, Deborah, had brought it out on the coffee table for some art work she was working on. Written close to 3,000 years ago, it addresses a time of great unrest very similar to our own. Hundreds of provincial chiefs were vying for political primacy. Every aggression from one province created more aggression from another till the country was in danger of becoming a wasteland. In essence Lao Tzu advocated a holistic philosophy based on the universal laws of nature. The key values behind Lao’s enlightenment were:

1.      Know who you are and understand the laws of the universe as they operate in you, others and your world.

2.      Sense the world around you directly and contemplate your impressions.

3.      Cultivate your intuition in order to deal with the future.

4.      Do not rely on ideologies because they will rob your life of meaning.

5.      Rely on your experience to give you an independent perception that will allow you to balance the extremes of others instead of being a cause of them.

Lao Tzu’s philosophy, then, included subjective values arising from intuitions about future possibilities and our sensing of realities from our past experience. He combines them with objective scientific values in understanding our universe. It is our experience that unites the two. It is contemplation of our experience that gives us the independence of mind necessary to balance both. We are both subjective and objective actors not merely objective observers of our world. We co-create our world using all of our human values. 

Each of our values gives rise to a corresponding opposite value. Values promoting openness give rise to values advocating closedness. Values of subjectivity give rise to values of objectivity. Each of us has to make our own resolution of these conflicts in our own particular context and in doing so we transcend both our lightness and our darkness.

Lao Tzu’s philosophical offering from almost three millennia ago is still widely read and has been printed more times than any other book apart from the Christian Bible.

·        What does this say about our ability to transcend our darkness and lightness?

·        What does this say about our process for reflecting on our experience?

·        Where can we see Lao Tzu’s philosophy in action?