Taoism
Planted Jan 2021 Tended 4 years ago Linked from 7 notes
Contents
The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.
—The Tao Te Ching, first line
The Tao (“the way”) is the flow of the universe, a unifying oneness that in systems thinking might be considered the system of all systems. Taoism advocates for wu wei or effortlessness, the principle of aligning ones actions with the Tao, rather than fighting it. From a systems perspective I see parallels with Donella Meadows’ “dancing with systems,” in which she advises working within a system to understand it before intervening in the system, in order to avoid making things worse.
A key concept from Taoism is interdependence.