Social Darwinism Tends Towards the Good

I was astounded by the sublimity of this vision [of social Darwinism in business], whose implications spread far beyond the business sphere. Thinking back to my first discussion with Riley, I wondered if this weren't the answer to the question he’d proposed: How was the Christian to reconcile the existence of evil with the unconditional benignity of God? Or, alternatively, how did the Taoist reconcile the existence of what was not Tao – which represented an affront to its essential nature, even contradicted it – with the primordial unity of all things in Tao? Was it possible that this was the answer? If so, then on both counts the objections were based on a simple narrowness of view. Once the Great Whole was seen, objections flew away like chaff. Evil, then, was the crucible in which the good was tried and proved. The unnatural was the fever which the body suffered internally to purify itself and become well again. The sores and the corrupt places of the economic world, as of the larger, were where the Tao had sent the legions of its influence, its platelets and leukocytes, its antibodies and white corpuscles, to eradicate diversity’s failed experiments, devouring the excesses of the blood. Diversity was necessary to insure the greatest possible perfection, and if it created a few monstrosities as well, then it also provided for their destruction by natural selection. That was the miracle! Everything was tending towards the good!

- David Payne, Confessions from a Taoist onWall Street, p. 577