The Art of Strategic Non-Action
Learning to go with the flow
David Tuffley
Published by David Tuffley at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 David Tuffley
Non-action gives access to a deeper intuitive awareness than that gained through action, since knowledge that comes through action is obscured by situation-specific reactions.
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Contents
The Art of Strategic Non-Action
Harmony with the evolving world
Avoid becoming too specialised
Give me freedom or give me death
Appendix: How to recognize a psychopath
The Art of Strategic Non-Action
Strategic non-action is a powerful yet under-rated method of influencing worldly affairs. In cultures where action is favoured over inaction, like in many western countries, direct action is considered a virtue while inaction is little more than laziness or cowardice. Let us be more subtle and nuanced in our understanding. There is a time for both action and inaction.
Non-action gives access to a deeper intuitive awareness than that gained through action, since knowledge that comes through action is obscured by situation-specific reactions.
Non-action can be understood as an aspect of going with the flow, not resisting the larger forces that govern a world of which you are a small part. Non-action acknowledges that events are governed by the laws of Nature, and it is often best to simply allow those laws to operate and play out in their own time, in their own way. Taking action often amounts to interference which creates its own problems.
Non-action can help us towards our goals by encouraging patience and taking the long-view. Humanistic Psychology says that it is within our reach to create the life we want for ourselves. As we think and believe, so we create our world. This is indeed true, but only up to a point. We can transform our lives in goal fulfilling ways, but the transformation is relatively slow, its progress measured in months and years.
Introduction
We know that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; at least we know this is true in Physics if we did not sleep through that class in school.
Less recognised is the truth of Newton’s Third Law of Physics in human affairs. Just as in the world of inanimate objects, when we do things to people, we get a reaction. This then causes its own reaction, and a pendulum-like cycle is set up. Think of how people and tribes get into feuds with each other. Strategic non-action recognises the danger of this pattern of behavior and offers the only means of avoiding it.
Non-action gives others nothing to react against. The ideas in this book derive from the ancient Chinese concept of Wu Wei, as expressed in Lao Tzu’s classic Tao Te Ching*. First published around 2,500 years ago, it is probably the oldest book still in print, a testimony to the force of its message.
Wu Wei literally means without effort. It describes natural action that occurs without contrivance or effort. It simply happens. Think of how plants and animals grow, rivers flow and planets orbit. No-one makes them do this, it just happens without effort or control in accordance with the laws of Nature. Such action is what we should strive for, while avoiding the kind of action that causes counter-reactions.
The chapters that follow investigate the ways that Wu Wei, or strategic non-action, can be understood and practiced.
* The corresponding chapter number from the Tao Te Ching is shown in brackets at the end of each chapter in this book.
Selflessness
As the world evolves, what was low becomes high, what was in the background comes to the foreground. Every object in the physical world, the world of phenomena, is subject to this law in which it is transformed into its own opposite, and then back again. We live in a dualistic world.
In the natural world, mountains erode to become alluvial silt in the rivers and seas, and then with the passage of time and tectonic movement, what was low becomes a mountain again.
In human affairs, in politics, the party that is in opposition becomes the government, and then returns to opposition when the electorate is tired of them. There is an old saying in politics that governments are not elected, they are defeated. Even when a tyrant seizes control and out-stays the natural course of his tenure, he is always brought down eventually. In human affairs, it is the ego that is the agent of these phenomena. In the case of the tyrant, his ego becomes identified with the country. He is the country in microcosm. He honestly believes it is his destiny to be the leader and that no-one else could possibly do it as well as him.
Evolutionary Psychology tells us that the human ego is a survival mechanism, and a very good one at that. It evolved to develop survival strategies in a hostile environment, going back a million years. It categorizes what it encounters as either helpful or harmful to its survival. The ego perceives a world of dualities, of polar opposites. It is correct in doing so, yet often it does not know when to stop categorising, when enough becomes too much.
The ego is especially strengthened and defined by conflict. In the absence of conflict, it will create conflict in order to strengthen itself. Look around at the people in your world, on TV and movies. Everywhere, people’s lives consist of one conflict-driven drama after another. They are locked in egoic thinking, dancing to the war-drums that have been beating in the human psyche for a million years. Selflessness is the way to turn down the volume of those war-drums.
Selflessness is about the diminution of ego. Spiritual traditions like Buddhism are clear that the ego is the greatest impediment to spiritual growth through its tendency to become attached to the impermanent things of the world (and that is everything). It is good to remember that given the cyclic nature of change, whatever we lose comes around again later in another form.