Quantum-Daoist Theory of Change
Discussion
Nathan Gardels:
"The Daoist scholar Dingxin Zhao ... offers a dialectical frame for understanding how history unfolds that is deeper than Hegel’s Western conception precisely because it disavows any set destiny.
Zhao recounts the Daoist perspective that history does not progress toward some teleological terminus that can “lay claim to universal or eternal truths … because the significance and function of any causal forces invariably change with different contexts.” The elusive Way unfolding across contingent time “not only rejects the imposition of a direction onto history but also negates the existence of any specific, law-like forces underpinning the apparent cyclic patterns of historical events.”
As Laozi wrote in the Tao Te Ching “the Dao that can be stated cannot be the universal (or eternal) Dao” because the concrete circumstances of existence are always in flux. It is all about the conjunction of relations revealed at a moment in time and a place in space.
This understanding of the indeterminate direction of history not only departs from the modern paradigm of historical progression rooted in Judeo-Christian eschatology, or theology of destiny, but embraces its opposite in the “principle of reverse movement.” History can go forward, backward or sideways.
Just as every phenomenon contains its opposite, so too, by this principle, every achievement of power carries the seeds of its own undoing within.
“In the Daoist principle of reverse movement, as one actor in military or economic competition progressively secures the upper hand, opposing actors would also gather momentum,” Zhao writes. “For instance, the dominant actor becomes increasingly susceptible to various errors — over-expansion, underestimating adversaries, disregarding internal vulnerabilities and potential crises. Meanwhile, weaker actors respond to their more formidable opponent by intensifying their desire to change, including learning from their opponent and striving for ‘self-strengthening’.”
The principle of reverse movement also “cautions us against the hubris of making linear predictions about upward-trending social tides and urges us to embrace the intricacies of complexity and acknowledge the multifaceted interplay of diverse forces. By doing so, we are compelled to appreciate the heterogeneous nature of historical change.”