When the World Stops Making Sense

Civilizations are often at their most creative when they are under pressure.

Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations develop through a process of challenge and response. A society encounters a serious challenge. If it finds a creative response, the civilization develops. But the response cannot simply be repeated forever. New challenges require new responses.

Ancient China provides a remarkable example.

In 771 B.C., the Zhou (Zhōu; /ʈʂoʊ̯/, pronounced roughly "Joe") dynasty lost control of much of its territory after an invasion. The dynasty continued, in what historians call the Eastern Zhou period, but the political order increasingly broke down. For centuries, different states struggled for power. Eventually this developed into the Warring States Period, when the struggle became increasingly violent.

Yet this period of political disintegration also became one of the most intellectually creative periods in Chinese history.

The Chinese faced a basic question: How can order be restored when the old order no longer works?

Different thinkers gave very different answers.

Confucius looked to the past. He believed that the ancient traditions provided a model for proper behavior. People needed to recover li—the social and moral norms that governed relationships and conduct. Confucius described himself as one who esteemed the old ways and pursued them zealously.

Others had given up on society altogether.

The Analects describes recluses who believed that the political situation had become hopeless. One compared the world to a swelling torrent and wondered whether anyone could possibly change it. Rather than continuing to participate in a disintegrating society, they withdrew.

Taoism developed another response.

The Lao-tzu probably took shape during the Warring States Period, when China had experienced political fragmentation and violence for centuries. Its pessimism about ordinary human pursuits makes more sense when understood in that setting.

People pursued power, and the result was war. They pursued wealth, and the result was competition. Different schools claimed knowledge and argued with one another about what was true and good.

The Taoist response was radical: perhaps the problem was the striving itself.

Rather than trying harder to impose order on the world, Lao-tzu emphasized wu-wei, usually translated as "non-action." This did not mean literally doing nothing. It meant refusing artificial action and returning to what was natural and simple.

Whether we agree with Lao-tzu's answer or not, his philosophy illustrates something important about Toynbee's idea of challenge and response.

The collapse of an established way of life does not necessarily produce immediate collapse. Sometimes it produces extraordinary creativity. People are forced to reconsider assumptions that previously seemed obvious.

That can happen in individual lives as well.

We develop ways of understanding ourselves, our relationships, God, work, success, and the world around us. Often those ways of thinking work reasonably well—until something happens that they cannot explain.

A relationship falls apart. A career ends. Someone we trusted disappoints us. Something we believed would make us happy does not. We discover that a way of approaching life that once worked no longer does.

At that point, we face something like the challenge that confronted ancient China.

We can simply try harder to make the old response work. We can withdraw. Or we can allow the challenge to force us to think more deeply.

Toynbee believed that challenges can destroy civilizations. But challenges can also be the circumstances in which something new and creative begins.

The same is true of us.