See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 53 (Unpublished):
Returning to common sense
and common practice,
I walk Its way.
Suffering follows—
when from It, I stray.
See courts adorned magnificently,
while fields grow weedy,
the people hungry,
the granaries empty.
Abundance for some:
lavish robes everywhere,
great weapons on proud display,
basics for all sealed away—
when from It, we stray.
—
Most societies do not unravel because people stop cooperating. They unravel because cooperation drifts too far from what cooperation is for.
Yuval Noah Harari argues that human beings became the dominant species not because we were individually stronger than other animals, but because we learned how to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Shared stories—religions, nations, laws, currencies, markets, and institutions—allowed strangers to trust one another enough to organize food systems, trade networks, governments, healthcare, education, and collective defense.
That capacity changed human history.
But every civilization eventually confronts the same question:
Cooperation for whom? Or perhaps more honestly:
Under what conditions do we all thrive?
That question sits underneath Chapter 53.
Lao Tzu does not begin with ideology or economics. He begins with patterns. Courts become magnificent while fields grow weedy. Symbols of success multiply while the conditions necessary for shared flourishing deteriorate underneath them. The spectacle expands while the foundations weaken.
Once you see that pattern, it becomes difficult to stop seeing it.
Healthcare systems where insurance companies post record profits while families ration insulin.
Housing markets where investment firms accumulate neighborhoods while teachers and nurses struggle to afford rent.
Educational systems where elite institutions expand endowments while public schools deteriorate.
The surfaces shine while the granaries empty.
This is where Either/Or-thinking becomes dangerous—not because Either/Or-thinking is wrong, but because it becomes insufficient when interdependent systems are forced into rigid ideological camps. Either/Or-thinking remains essential. A firefighter evacuates OR stays. A pharmacist dispenses OR refuses. A bridge either holds OR fails. Clear distinctions matter. Limits matter. Consequences matter.
But societies cannot remain healthy through binary logic alone when survival depends on tensions that must be leveraged together over time.
This is why the endless capitalism versus socialism argument so often generates more heat than wisdom.
One side (the proverbial 99% — recall the “Occupy Wallstreet” protests) sees exploitation, concentrated wealth, and systems that abandon vulnerable people while rewarding accumulation without limits.
The other (the proverbial 1% — the “job creators” and “trickle-down” economics) sees stagnation, dependency, overreach, and systems that suppress initiative, innovation, and freedom.
Both perspectives contain truth.
Both also contain dangerous incompleteness.
Barry Johnson explored this dynamic in Chapter 29 of And through stacked polarities like Abundance for Some AND Basics for All, Claim Power AND Share Power, and All Are Accountable AND All Are Loved. The moment these become ideological enemies instead of interdependent tensions, systems begin destabilizing themselves.
Abundance for Some to the neglect of Basics for All eventually produces distrust, instability, resentment, and forms of suffering that no amount of private wealth can fully escape.
But Basics for All to the neglect of Abundance for Some creates different dangers. Innovation weakens. Incentives distort. Creative energy contracts. Systems drift toward stagnation, overcontrol, and dependency.
The same pattern repeats across the larger polarity field.
Claim Power to the neglect of Share Power produces domination.
Share Power to the neglect of Claim Power produces fragmentation and drift.
All Are Accountable to the neglect of All Are Loved becomes cruelty.
All Are Loved to the neglect of All Are Accountable becomes incoherence.
These tensions do not disappear because one side wins an election, dominates a news cycle, or gains temporary control of institutions.
They remain.
Oliver Libby’s work around “Strong Floor, No Ceiling” points toward something similar. A strong floor provides enough stability for people to survive, participate, and take meaningful risks. No ceiling preserves the freedom to create, innovate, build, and contribute beyond imposed limits.
(See Cliff’sNOTES for Strong Floor AND No Ceiling: Part I and Part II)
Neglect the floor and societies fracture under instability and distrust.
Neglect the ceiling and societies lose the creative energy and adaptive capacity required for renewal.
Neither works sustainably alone. This is not compromise for the sake of comfort. This is how interdependent systems actually function.
And once multiple polarities begin destabilizing simultaneously, trust starts eroding across the entire system—trust in institutions, leadership, neighbors, and even in the belief that sacrifice and contribution will still matter in the future.
That erosion matters because trust may be one of the most important forms of infrastructure human beings have ever created. Without trust, cooperation contracts. When cooperation contracts, fear expands. Fear narrows identity. Fear justifies hoarding. Fear turns neighbors into threats and strangers into abstractions.
Soon the weapons return to proud display.
Harari makes another observation worth paying attention to: budgets often reveal the true values of societies more honestly than speeches do. Where resources flow reveals what systems actually protect.
For most of human history, enormous portions of collective wealth flowed toward war, conquest, and protection from enemies. More recently, some societies began investing more heavily in healthcare, education, and human well-being. Imperfectly and unevenly, but still reflecting an important shift: a recognition that sustaining life may matter more than dominating rivals.
But fear changes priorities quickly.
And now these tensions are being amplified by systems capable of accelerating fear, certainty, and tribal reaction at unprecedented scale.
Systems optimized for engagement naturally amplify outrage, certainty, tribal identity, and emotional reaction because those responses generate attention. The Radical Middle—the place where most people actually live and where wisdom often emerges—gets suppressed because nuance rarely performs well inside outrage-driven systems.
Human Judgment AND Artificial Intelligence is no longer a future polarity.
It is already reshaping economies, democracies, trust systems, and human identity itself.
This is where the deeper Part AND Whole polarity becomes unavoidable.
Plato warned that the part can never be well unless the whole is well.
But living systems reveal something equally important: when enough Parts are neglected long enough, the Whole begins deteriorating from within.
When communities lose trust, nations weaken. When workers lose dignity, economies destabilize. When ecosystems are treated as expendable parts, entire civilizations become fragile.
First trust weakens. Then shared sacrifice weakens. Then coherence weakens.
Eventually reality itself fragments into competing stories no longer capable of sustaining cooperation across difference.
And still the courts remain magnificent.
The Tao keeps pointing back toward something far less glamorous and far more difficult:
common sense
and common practice
Not simplistic answers. Not ideological purity. Not fantasies of permanent solutions.
Stewardship. Relationship.
The disciplined work of leveraging tensions that do not disappear simply because one side temporarily gains power over the other.
Perhaps wiser societies are not the ones that try or who think they can eliminate or solve the tension. Perhaps they are the ones disciplined enough to leverage interdependence before suffering forces the lesson upon them.
Because suffering follows—
when from It, we stray.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Abundance AND Basics:
INVITATIONS:
See Barry Johnson’s Chapter 29 discussion of stacked polarities including Abundance for Some AND Basics for All. And_V1_PEEK_C29_Poverty_Racism_Sexism
To use an “AI-trained Chat w/Cliff for Step 1, Seeing” CLICK HERE.
Ready for the Polarity Advantage? Go deeper into Polarity Thinking, see our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice or in-person training with Barry Johnson and me at Kayser Ridge by CLICKING HERE.
