Paper presented at the “International Forum On The Daodejing”, April 22-29, Xi’an and Hong Kong, jointly sponsored by the China Religious Culture Communication Association and the China Daoist Association.

Managing Democracy By The Application Of Daodejing

By Alice Chung-Chau Tang, Ph.D.

Introduction and summary: Daodejing as Management Tool for Global Democracy

In the past 60 years, the majority of the member nations in the United Nation have adopted Constitutional Democracy, whether they are of the socialistic or the democratic types.  Modern Democracy had been mankind’s hope for a world of peace with justice when WWII ended.  People yearned for peace amidst a burnt out landscape.  Democracy was believed to be the best safeguard against nations ever going to wars wantonly again. Yet in the past 60 years, America, the first modern democracy, initiated over 100 military actions all over the globe.  Since 2000, it has launched a perpetual war, as “War on Terror” can only be, that is now viewed by all nations to be threatening to the very survival of mankind. America’s 60 years-long official policy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has accumulated enough fire power to destroy the world many times over.

Not until the democracy of the world rescues American democracy, can there be hope for mankind’s future.  To do so, all the democratic nations of the world need to critically evaluate how can democracy be managed better in order to fulfill its most important goals.

This paper present, I hope, first a compelling history of why and how we got here. Through that understanding, in the words of Nobel Scientist Madame Currie “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” and psychiatrist Judith Lewis Harman “Like traumatized people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future.”, I believe mankind can find its way back to the world of “Da Tong” (The Great Harmony) in the east and “Christian commune” (Heaven on this earth) in the west.

We may best begin from the end:  Reclaiming our future of global peace with justice as humanity’s birthright.  For without that, nothing we do may matter any more after another generation.  The only way to achieve that, I believe, will be through the teachings of Daodejing to all citizens under democracy today.  Daodejing has been proven, with 2500 years of historical success in China as the only super power nation that never engaged in first strike war against another nation, to be best at instilling simplicity and harmony into both the individual citizen’s and community’s way of lives. Without the foundation of simplicity and harmony as a way of life, there can be no true democratic voters, hence no true democracy.

This is actually not new insight at all.  In our collective past, over 600,000 polities all over the planet earth have been known to have lived that way of life over hundreds of thousands of years as an ancient democratic way of life of the hunter-gatherers (Ref. 6).  Mankind began to lose that from about eight to ten thousand years ago as food resource became inadequate.  Thanks to China’s Lao Zi and Confucius, they wrote down our past to ensure that ancient memory be kept alive.  With the progress in science and technology in modern times, mankind again achieved food sufficiency.  That condition enabled the Founding Fathers of America in a new land to create the modern Constitutional Democracy as a governing form to ensure life, liberty, and happiness for all.  They are mostly deist Christians of their time and Thomas Jefferson originally wrote that most famous sentence in modern democracy as: ”We hold these truths sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. …”  It was the much older Benjamin Franklin who argued for the unfortunate change to “We hold these truths to be self-evident. …”

I say “unfortunate” because in today’s hindsight, Jefferson’s original sentence would have carried the spirit of democracy through together with its form.  American democracy might even have been properly named as “Deist Christian Democracy”.  It would then have had a much better spiritual foundation to ensure its success.  The following two facts I believe support my thesis amply: (1) the fast deterioration of democracy in America to the point of near demise today. (2) The desperate attempt by Americans to revive their democracy through the rise and dominance of the “Christian Nation” movement by born-again Christians in recent decade. At over 85% surveyed believers, America is now the most Christian nation on earth in history.

The closest translation of the “Deist Christian Democracy” in universal spiritual context, as well as in the context of China’s advanced ancient democratic political traditions by her religious leaders Lao Zi and Confucius, would be “Daoist Democracy”.  It is that simple.

More Extended Essay on “Daoist Democracy”

Now that democracy has become global with both socialist and capitalist stripes and every shade in between, might not “Daoist Democracy” be 21st century’s political model to succeed the missed opportunity of “Deist Christian Democracy”?

Had a new phrase “Daoist Democracy” been coined, its honorary founder would have to be Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, father of the Republic of China of 1911 and the first constitutional democracy of the East. That is properly so because he is the only political leader who was truly bicultural, of both East and West, having grown up in Hawaii during his formative teenager years, yet thoroughly versed in his native Chinese culture.  A life-long devout Christian, his Christianity is at once also Chinese and universal. His most extraordinary visionary experience on top of a sacred mountain recorded by him can only be described as vintage Zhuang Zi.  In a list of “Daoist Christians” who have contributed most to democratic traditions of mankind, both across the global divide and the historical timelines, Dr. Sun would be in good company with Emperors Huang Di, Yao, Shun, Yu, Teachers Confucius, Menfucius, Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Jesus, Wang Yang Ming, Father Matteo Ricci, Leibniz, Rousseau, Locke, Montesquieu, Hume,... as well as modern democracy’s George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, Gandhi, Simon Bolivar, President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Tutu, President Mandela, ...  And that list can go on and on with worthy representatives from every race, culture, and nation in the human family, many famous, even more unknown. 

The introduction of Daoist tradition into the modern democratic tradition would instantly both broaden modern democracy to all cultures and deepen its roots back to humanity’s pre-historical shared past, yet still preserve the best of the modern western democratic tradition much adopted by the world in form already.

It is interesting to point out that President Kennedy was reported to have only three books by his bedside, and one of them was Dr. Sun’s “Three People’s Principles”, a systemized and expanded version of Lincoln’s democracy of “Of the People, By the People, For the People”.

Democracy and Dao are really two words that need to be used as a compound word before either can truly benefit mankind; much like a coin with either side left blank is but a useless entity. Democracy is the form, the vehicle; Dao is its moral foundation and guiding spirit. Only when the form (the hardware) and the operating manual (the software) are used together can we have a well managed social and political system that benefits mankind through first achieving global peace with justice, then enable people to live simply, harmoniously, and sustainably.  Only then can mankind’s awesome ingenuity give us hope eternal to enable us to solve all the seemingly unsolvable problems with ease.

As the Mayan Elder who came down from his mountain cave to deliver the keynote speech at the international peace conference in 2003 said: “Global peace is possible. However, only if you keep it simple.” -- Words that could have been taken straight out of Daodejing.

Let us be reminded what democracy guided by Dao would be like.  It is the great fortune of mankind that China’s Confucius not only insisted on recording his famous “Chapter of Great Harmony (Da Tong)” in the Book of Rites, but also admonished all future Confucian scholars to commit that chapter both to memory and to heart, as they aspire to men’s highest purpose in life – that of public service to all the people.  It is his further great wisdom that he prominently pointed out, as the first sentence in the Chapter, that Dao guides the world of Great Harmony: "When the Great Dao prevails, the world belongs to all.  Men of great virtue and talent are elected who will cultivate mutual trust and promote universal understanding.  Thus, men do not regard as their parents only their own parents, nor treat as their children only their own children.  Sufficient provision is secured for the aged till their final hours, employment assured for the able-bodied, and funds provided for the loving care of the young.  The widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, and those who are disabled by diseases or mishaps are all adequately cared for.  Each man has his duty and each woman her man.  While they detest those who throw away things wastefully, they do not hoard things for their own self-gratification.  Disliking idleness they labor, but not alone with a view to their own advantage.  In this way, selfish acts of cheating and profiteering are discouraged and find no way to arise.  Robbers, burglars and the undesirables of society have disappeared.  Therefore, the front doors remain open and need not be locked.  This is the state of what I shall call Universal Harmony and Peace (Da Tong)." (Richard Low Translation)

The reason that humanity has this shared undying vision of global peace with justice is exactly because that vision had been both mankind’s birthright and original state of socialization.  It is also still preserved in every good family, as in Tolstoy’s famous edict that “All good families are alike”.  The human race lived under a Leaver culture/ Kinship religion system that was the norm for the estimated over 600,000 polities covering all corners of the earth that archeologists ever studied, for at least couple hundreds of thousands of years until as late as eight to ten thousand years ago.  Theirs, not surprisingly, is a form of consensual decision making with direct interpersonal interactions.  Again, that form of social organization was very much like what Lao Zi described in his ideal community.  It is not merely coincidental that all the great masters emphasized that Daoism is a uniquely “Orthopractice” religion rather than an “Orthodoxy” religion that more aptly describes organized Christianity and Islamism.  Deist Christianity and Daoism are compatible to all other religions, hence are more suited as unifying guide to global democracy.

Daodejing as Management Tool to Save Mankind in the 21st Century

I begin with a quote by Dr. Ben Franklin:” Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.... Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."  By that, he pointed out that “democracy” is the second most difficult word for mankind to define.  The first, of course, is the word “Dao”, made famous by China’s Lao Zi more than 2500 years ago, with his opening sentence: “Dao that can be defined is not the constant Dao” in The Book of Dao (Daodejing).

The incredible, yet undeniable, fact is: Those two words have gone on to become the most invoked today, translated and spoken almost daily in every language.

That fact offers as good a proof as any long dissertations can: That ultimately human beings are ruled by our subconscious. We may not be able to define those two words, but we still “know” that they are the most important two words for all of us.

Verse 60 of Daodejing offers us the best wisdom for “the affairs of the public” -- Dr. Sun’s definition of politics. This verse is at once the eerily prophetic history of mankind during the past 60 years, as well as a recipe to cure what ails American democracy today:

“Governing a large state is like cooking a small fish,

(Frequent stirring crumbles and ruins it).

When large state is ruled in accordance with The Way (The Dao),

Evil supernatural (Devil) cannot assume the disguise of good supernatural (God).

Then the Supernatural does not harm the people.

Not only does the Supernatural not harm the people,

The wise leader, in accordance, also does not harm the people.

As neither does harm, virtue blooms abundant in mutuality.”

American leaders at the crucial junction of becoming the leader of a multicultural world in 1945 when WWII ended did not heed the advice in Verse 60. In fact, they did everything that the verse had warned against. They tragically ignored the plea by the nation’s religious leaders in 1946 to attune its “grievous sin against God” by using the atomic bombs wantonly and deliberately on “an already defeated nation”.  In order to cover up that crime, President Truman entered into a devil’s pack with Japanese Emperor and secretly split the trillions that Japan looted from the 12 Asian nations it invaded instead of returning it. Since the only cover for crimes of that magnitude is war abroad, Truman knew that the only war he could possibly sell in 1947 would have to be a religious war based on massive deception.  He used the black gold to manufacture that “religious war” against Communism, itself not even a religion.  Aided by the secret trillions in the hands of a secret agency formed in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with an orchestrated Red-Scare and atomic-paranoia McCarthyism, the war was successfully disguised as the “Cold War”.  The past 60 years’ history of America has been one of killing fields abroad and destruction of democracy and economics at home. (References 1-11, appendix