Does anyone know how the Eastern cultures justify this idea of such a balance in the world? Do we really find conclusive evidence that good and evil so perfectly counterbalanced? Evil definitely has an upper hand, in general. And, if the unpunished evil ever does get caught and punished, it is often far too late.
Perhaps the concept of ying and yang is theoretically the ideal? And, we must assume that, if all evil is eventually punished, then eventually (at infinity) all ying is balanced by all yang?
Does any SDoper know more about this, and how Eastern culture explains this concept of ying and yang?
Yin and Yang and Taoist concepts and I know very little about Taoism. Suffice to say, though, that Eastern and Western concepts rarely mingle all that well. “Good” and “Evil” are essentially products of a certain Judeo-Christian line of thought. As I understand Yin and Yang, it’s more a description of opposite aspects of the same phenomenon. Take hot and cold, or light and dark.
AFAIK, you’re right about balance. In traditional Chinese medicine, illnesses are caused by the imballance of Yin and Yang elements. The same idea of balance is also very important in Chinese cuisine.
Yin and Yang do not at all represent good and evil. Yin is considered passive, nurturing, soft, and containing aspects of the feminine. Yang is aggressive, hard, initiating, and contains aspects of the masculine.
Check out Lao Tse’s Tao Te Ching (Pronounced Dow duh Jing)
If evil had the upper hand, would the world(/universe?) still be here? - if there was an imbalance, would not the majority shareholding of evil lead to a situation that increased its foothold and caused a runaway spiral?
I’ve always felt the T’aoists were on to something with regard to explaining some of life’s mysteries. The T’ao didn’t start off as a religion (although it did develop religious aspects over time) as much as a philosophy. The Yin/Yang concept is rooted in the notion of opposites that form a whole. If you look at a monad (the yin/yang symbol) you see that each half has a dot of the other color in it. This suggests that in terms of cycles, each part of the cycle contains the seed of the other, and also that, in order to recognize something for what it is you have to contrast it with it’s opposite.
In other words, dark is only recognized as such by the absence of light, and vice versa. (think shadows) If you want to put it in terms of good/evil, bad things happen so we can see the good things.
I think it goes further than that. “Opposites create each other,” according to the Tao te Ching. What it is saying, I think, is that good exists as a result of bad’s existing, and vice versa. Without evil, there is no good; without good, there is no evil.
I don’t know much about this subject, but I work in the library at my university, and I checked out books to an Asian girl the other day who’s name actually was, I swear, “Yin Yang”. Anyone know if this is common, or if she just had really twisted parents?
Yes, and that’s just about the only part of Taoism I’m pretty sure about. Think of it that way: If you define darkness as a low amount of light, you can also define light as a low amount of darkness. The consequence of this is that if there is no light, there is no darkness either because darkness cannot be differenciated from anything. And vice versa of course.
As has been pointed out…yin and yang aren’t good and evil. They’re simply the two “essences” that the world is made of. One creates the other, and back again. It’s great!
That said, all this talk about Taoism reminds me of the South Korean flag. It’s one of the best!
tracer: I learned in Korea (back in 1978) that the local term for “69” is “Um-Yang” (which is what the Koreans call “Yin-Yang”). You just have to like a nation that has its symbol for 69 on the flag!
Daoist philosophy is on most levels much more sophisticated than Judeo-Christianity ones.
Yin-Yang, as many others Dopers have pointed out, are not necessarily oppose numbers. In some ways they are, but in others, they are also complementary. If you look at the Taichi (that’s the circle thing) you see it is not simply divided into two halves. This represents the dynamics of Yin and Yang shifting, converting to one another.
In fact, both Yin and Yang are essential. Yang represents light, but Yang represents water, both are essential to life.
Speaking of water, it embodies some of the major Daoist philosophical thoughts.
