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To dominate is to destroy

Updated Mar 24 2025

The Taoists are saying, then, that seen as a whole the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when it is looked at section by section we find conflict. The biological world is a mutual eating society in which every species is the prey of another. But if there were any species not preyed upon by another, it would increase and multiply to its own self-strangulation, as human beings, through their skill in defeating other species (such as bacteria), are in danger of disrupting the whole biological order by overpopulation and thus of destroying themselves. For this reason anyone who sets out to govern the world puts everything, and especially himself, in danger. —Alan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way