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The Tao of Dow
“East meets West” has become a popular slogan
nowadays reflecting the reality that many aspects of the Eastern cultures,
particularly from China, Japan and India, have occupied a permanent place
in our vocabulary and lives. Chinese restaurants, acupuncture, karaoke,
yoga, Tai Chi & meditation, as well as “Made in China”
labels are a few examples of such integration of the East into the West.
Western technology, management practices and the exponential growth of
manufacturing due to abundant supply of cheap labor are just a few examples
of such integration of the West into the East. The next step in the fusion
of cultures is integration of their underlying philosophies and values.
After all, the Dow, which became the symbol of the Western philosophy of
the free market economy, and the Tao, the Eastern philosophy of ancient China, are
not that far apart from each other and, perhaps, can help create a true
fusion between the East and the West.
Let’s take a look at some principle differences
and similarities between the worldviews of the East and the West in order
to understand how they can work together. The foundation of the Western
thought and science is based on the Cartesian philosophy of dualism. In practice
this means that the Western science attempts to understand the world around
us by studying its individual components and continuously breaking them
down into smaller parts. The Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, is
primarily concerned with the relationships between the individual parts and
the roles they play in the overall system. A classic example is the
difference between the approaches in Western and Eastern medicines: the West generally focuses on diagnosis
and treatment of individual organs, while the East traditionally views
symptoms as a sign of the dysfunction between organs and attempts to
restore balance of the whole organism. It can be argued that both
approaches are important and really complement each other. Full Text
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