Unfortunately, Taoist practitioners are not fully up to speed in all areas. If Taoism was a perfect philosophy, it would have spread and conquered the world a long time ago, but that is not the case.
Twenty-seven centuries after Lao-Tzu wrote or dictated the Tao Te Ching, Taoism remains a minority point of view. If we look at its influence on a planetary scale, it is negligible. I fear that, one day, Taoism might become extinct.
What’s the reason for Taoism’s arrested development? Is it sheer bad luck or the result of active opposition? What has prevented Taoism to grow into a major cultural force, shaping the lives of many communities across the globe?
Taoism has failed to develop and spread worldwide due to its ethical imprecision. It is great to speak about aligning our lives with the Tao, but what does it mean exactly? Taoists call for respecting natural law, but what does natural law entail?
Lao-Tzu, Yang-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu erected the pillars of a worthy philosophy, but the pillars alone are not enough. Even a little chapel needs more than pillars. It also needs a roof, walls, and a solid front door.
An incomplete building
In the absence of the minimum elements, a building remains incomplete. The same can be said of any philosophy, religion, or conviction. In the absence of a detailed, consistent ethical code, the practice of such ideas will become hesitant or erratic.
Let me give a real-life example to illustrate my point. Take a look at Ancient Roman law and what it took to shape it in a period of five hundred years, starting in the 5th century BC.
Ancient Roman law constitutes one of the most successful, enduring and sophisticated intellectual creations in history, but it was hundred percent the output of a Pagan culture.
Taoism has proven unable to build a similar intellectual edifice. Lao-Tzu, Yang-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu have provided us with deep insights and inspiring stories, but those alone cannot carry the weight of a growing civilisation.
Why was Paganism able to produce Ancient Roman law, a system of principles that functions like clockwork? Because it possessed moral strength and accuracy, two elements that are absent in Taoism.
Chapter 78 of the Tao Te Ching praises the characteristics of water and elevates them to an ethical standard. It speaks of the softness and flexibility of water, and its capacity for dissolving the obstacles that block its path. Then it commends us to adopt the traits of water.
While the Ancient Romans were figuring out the principles of property rights, contracts and family law, the Taoists praised the qualities of water, especially flexibility.
Similarly, while the Ancient Romans were determining the precise limits between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, the Taoists preferred to live and let live. Individually, they kept going and enjoying life, but culturally, they remained stagnant.
Moral strength and accuracy
In contrast to Taoists, Pagans had precise ideas of what they would tolerate and not. Their convictions were anchored in old history and natural law, and when someone infringed on those convictions, Pagans were willing and able to settle the score.
I acknowledge that their ethical and legal convictions were neither unanimous nor pure, but over time, their findings compounded. It took five centuries to develop Ancient Roman law into the body of principles that became the backbone of Western civilization.
In the 12th century, the north-Italian monk Johannes Gratian compiled the first formulation of canon law to complement the Ancient Roman legal codes prepared under Theodosius (346-395) and Justinian (482-565). All of them rested on the original legal insights gained during the Ancient Roman Republic.
Century after century, the Western world kept increasing its legal expertise, agricultural output and financial sophistication. The Pagan quest for moral certainty has shaped Ancient Greek and Roman law, and over time, Western culture as a whole.
I regret to say that Taoism has not produced any comparable achievement. If we examine the texts written by Chuang-Tzu, it is easy to understand why. They call for flexibility, softness, and harmony, but fail to give us a strong sense of direction.
At one point, Chuang-Tzu argues that our priority should be to let things flow, so that each element can find its place, but if we let things flow without human intervention, is it realistic to expect all pieces to fall into place?
Is it realistic to expect the Tao to take care of all aspects of property rights, contracts and family law? Similarly, if there is no moral and legal certainty in society, is it realistic to expect people to develop ambitious goals, invest and work hard?
The genius of Ancient Rome is to have purified, sanitised, and homogenized the law by removing all magical elements. It came to embody the moral fervour of Paganism but without its supernatural elements.
I wish that Taoism would have been able to build something similar, but the moral strength was never present, and without moral strength, it becomes impossible to achieve philosophical accuracy.
Despite the valuable insights contained in the Tao Te Ching, we should not overlook its weaknesses. When it comes to long term projects, it’s difficult to draw motivation from the Ancient Chinese Taoist masters: they are too willing to add up negative and positive elements, and pretend that they do not cancel each other out.
Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching praises the void as useful by invoking far-fetched examples. If we drink liquid from a cup, it doesn’t mean that the emptiness inside the pot is more valuable than the pot itself. Nor that the living space inside a house has value if taken in isolation from the house walls.
Those examples make little sense, and help me illustrate the deficiencies in the Taoist mentality. I find the insights of Lao-Tzu, Yang-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu extraordinary in some areas, but let us not be blinded by their poetic brilliance. I am afraid that real happiness requires real achievement, not just poetry.
If you are interested in applying rational insights in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Rational living, rational working.”