Daoism as a Way as Systems Thinking - Coursework Example

Humans model themselves on earth, Earth on heaven, Heaven on the Way, And the way on that which is naturally so. - Laozi (Lao Tzu) (http www.taoism.net/enter.htm) Emergence of the first philosophical schools brought special interest to study inner and outer world of a human being. It happened that all things in the world were complex of sub-things, which ran the whole system. Very soon philosophers came to the point that a human being consisted of different sub-systems, while a human being itself was a part of social, political, economical and biological systems. And one part couldn’t exist without other systems as well as systems without its parts. Developing ideas of the ancient and medieval scientists, philosophers from the nearest past made conclusion that forwarded them to system thinking: we are surrounded by interdependent natural and non-natural systems. Complexity of our lives makes us to face great number of natural and non-natural systems, which are often difficult for our understanding but we cannot escape from their effect. To generalize, we can say that our live is a period when we learn how to face, co-exist, comprehend or overcome systems that creates problems on our way. So we watch and deal ever changing systems that form us and we form them. As mentioned earlier system thinking appeared long ago it was defined in 1956. In the essay I will turn to system thinking in Daoism and how the ideas touches modern world. I will overview the following points in Daoism in terms of system thinking: nature, human being, technology, and organization. Daoism is often considered to be an important argument when talking about nature and environmental problems. And it is quite true, if you overview different world wide religions, as Christianity or Islam, you are unlikely to find so many statements about nature and importance of nature in the system of human life. Therefore Daoism it taken as a first source of ecological research and promotion of co-existence with nature in the world complex. Though environmental trends in Daoism have been revealed only recently and up to the 80s texts of the Daoist teachers, e.g. Daode jing and Zhuangzi were only magical and mystical for the common public, only in-depth research of the text and in some way fashionable feng shui trend in the western countries, helped to show the public that Daoism was on much extent study about fears what human activity could do with nature and why people had to think before proceeding with any actions on the natural sites. The Taoist philosophy doesn’t take nature as a whole substance; Daoism treats it as a complex of elements that creates a whole system. In Daoism elements of nature are considered to be more important than human being and to have features of life: constant flow of water and sky is an important element of contradicting equality between yin and yang sides, at the same time earth and clouds ensure constant refurbishment of energetic substance qi. Building of mines, premises, cutting of forests were sometimes restricted as it was believed that such disturbance may change the total balance of the world system and interrupt constant flow of magic substance qi, which can destroy surroundings. A place to build house or temple was chosen in regard to the practice of feng shui, or influences of wind and water. For example the ideal place for a premise was the one that was situated between mountains and stream of water that helped to be in harmony with the natural complex, preserving all rules of nature. Such location of the premise was the main prerogative to achieve resurrection of spirit “topophilia” - which means respect and endless love to natural harmony as well as natural necessity not to disturb the natural world. Coming to the end with the Daoist view on nature, I want to mention that for Daoism complexity in nature is the core subject for study, this uncovers deep roots of system thinking. The next point is the Daoist view on a person or human being. Daoism doesn’t have special study concerning a role of human being in the world, as it considers human being to be an unimportant part of the natural complex. According to Daoism we shall think that we are minor part of the world and our role is to a part of the natural world. If we look on ourselves with eyes of the modern social science we can see that a human being is a biological, social, cultural, spiritual, physical part of the world. This is a complexity that reflects and identifies a place of a person in the modern world. And separate research of each person’s side can simplify its whole natural role. In this case complexity of a human being in the modern social science as well as in Daoism is assigned to put together a person and nature, to set close links, which can identify their cooperation. Another important pointing Daoism is a role of research.The main point of Daoism is to achieve immortality. The way to this goal is constant involvement in Daoism, which menas constant improvement of already developed things. This is true for inner world of a human being for example Daoism requires physical and breathing exercises, concentrated contemplation, and. And also Daoism prescribes outer improvements, which gained form of elixirs. The goal of both trends in Daosim improvement is to achieve immortality through inner and outer perfection. Laozi and Zhuangzi had reinterpreted the ancient nature worship and esoteric arts, but they crept back into the tradition as ways of using knowledge of the Dao to enhance and prolong life. A Taoist should always look for isles of immortals where he can find necessary stuff for immortal elixirs. Very often the Taoist were involved in development health care techniques; they were involved in herbal medicine and pharmacology, making great contribution to this arts; Daoism created still known rules of macrobiotic cooking and other healthy diets; the Taoists introduced and promoted styles of new gymnastics and massage to make a human strong and youthful. Taoists were promoters of science in the ancient China, as they were involved in magic and developed principles of proto-science. Anyway the Taoists presented their research as an important part of the overall natural complex. Nowadays development and advance in technology requires the same to times of Daoism, as systems thinking that can help to achieve and ideal mix of all ingredients in one scientific gain. To be short, development of new technology requires the following 1) dedicated employees, as the Taoists, 2) small achievements during a project, for the Taoists the project was immortality and small gains like gunpowder and gold melting were these small achievements, 3) scientific achievements should satisfy needs of the common public, in the Taoist period it was healing product, which were widely used throughout China 4) a desire to achieve more than at the moment, for the Taoists it was journey to the “isles of immortals”. All this requirements forms a system of new technology and should be considered. Nowadays such principles are considered in all hi-tech industries such as: electronics, aerospace, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, instrumentation, nano-technology, robotics, decision support systems, genetics and biotechnology. The main problem in the systems thinking for hi-tech is a fast changing surroundings of the industry. That means that technology should be always in pace with knowledge of the society. Knowledge is a center of interlinked complex characteristics: modern technology is complex, simplicity lost its role, knowledge is always opposition to established thinking, knowledge always looks for more and very often keeps unfinished started projects, knowledge is ever changing, it is fast and rude , knowledge requires system thinking, it is contingent rather than linear. As mentioned above knowledge needs systems thinking; it cannot be estimated through one lens. Also, high technology knowledge is contingent on which aspects of the technology have most recently been developed and which gaps in the developed and which gaps in the development knowledge domain people choose to fill next. The technology in both modern world and Daoism is a complex thing that demands from its developers complex, systems thinking. Now I want to turn to organization in Daoism and in the modern world. The Taoist study has very complicated understanding of universe and we even can compare it to the structure and processes in the modern organization. The Taoists imagine the universe to include 36 heavens above and 36 hells below. The highest heaven is called Da-luo Heaven. The next three heavens are the Realm of Absolute Purity; the four heavens after that are the Four Brahmas; while the rest of the 28 heavens include the Immaterial Realm (four heavens), the Material Realm (18 heavens), and the Realm of Desire (six heavens). As we can see this is a typical hierarchy of a modern organization. The main level, Da-luo Heaven, is the same to the board of directors, it is a place wherein lives the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning, the Celestial Worthy of Numinous Treasure and the Celestial Worthy of the Way and Its Virtue; the Realm of Absolute Purity is the abode of nine grades of saints, realized beings and immortals. Four Brahmas, in modern organization, are managers of an corporation departments, they are accountable only to Da-luo, and in Daoism are free of the pain of life and death; those in the Immaterial Realm, for modern organization – senior managers, who usually stays for a long time with organization, enjoy longevity but they suffer the pain of life and world and death; and the Realm of Desire is a place wherein common staff works they experience initial desire to move to the highest levels but they have to suffer all pains of the day-today operation. The whole system of organization depends on the people who work there and levels it have. Other influences that increase complexity of the modern organization, and these threads where not introduced by the Taoists, are: quantity of counterparts on a market, legislative situation in a country, trade regulations of the country, and other issues that reflects peculiarities of business in the global scale. To overcome these threads different formations of organizations where developed, for example technopolis, consortia, and strategic alliances. These formations created perfect system of organizational management, leaving behind competition and moving to cooperation, they linked different companies in a system where systems thinking dominates, that improved the whole process of strategic decision making. At the same time such systems increase complexity of operation but they have inexplicable impact in the modern world. One of the examples of system thinking and development of an above-mentioned system is an assembly line of Henry Ford. The Ford Corporation required revolution decision in the sphere of automobile manufacturing and after systematic analysis the decision was developed. Within analysis, Ford understood that the manufacturing of automobiles couldn’t function properly as an separate task, and it had to be organized as a chain of interlinked and non-stoppable tasks. For this instance Ford had organized the car manufacturing process in the way that all processes were interdependent that permitted for and promoted the highest efficiency in the manufacturing of cars. Thus, systems thinking of Ford helped to change the whole concept of production and estimation of its efficiency in the world. The conclusion of this essay will be mixed: Daoism and modern times. As we can see many ideas of Daoism can be studied through lens of systems thinking and then implemented in our modern world. Daoism teaches us to make decisions considering ideas of other people or necessity of such decisions in terms of the natural complex. We shall always realize that our ideas may be correct for us and false for other parts of the system, and false idea may harm the system and thus influence us. And I want to finalize this essay with a quotation, which, to my mind, perfectly depicts modern world and necessity of implementing the Taoists concepts in the modern world: "End-to-end business processes are dynamic systems, but todays business professionals are generally not trained in general systems thinking. Too often constrained to a perspective limited by ingrained business practices, rigid scripts and structured input-output work, few professionals have a wide-angle view of, or experience dealing with, end-to-end business processes." "Business Process Management", Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, 2003. Reference "Business Process Management", Howard Smith and Peter Fingar, 2003. http://www.taoism.net/enter.htm Read More