On the one hand, Taoism may be too inherently passive about government intervention in preserving security, developing the economy, and meeting the needs for health and education. On the other hand, Taoism is eager to collaborate with others in ecological concerns and encourage ways of achieving justice and peace.
Individual's generally live in communities. If you transform the nature of the parts this will affect the nature of the whole.
Speaking as an ignoramus, I think this hinges on a good understanding on the meaning of wu-wei, doing without doing. Taoism would find social goals desirable, but would seek the least costly, interventionist means to achieve them. This would imply patience. The dark side of wu-wei would be, for instance, waiting a couple more decades for desegregation. The light side would be that when racial equality would be eventually achieved, it would be done in a more permanent way, without lingering traumatism
Depends of course on which "Taoism" we're speaking of.
The works of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu to my mind suggest the prospect of social transformation through "personal" naturalness - but the sense of "person" in China then (and largely now) entails a much more community/ nation/ Nature -integration than do modernist western individualistic presumptions about the self.
So, while the Confucians and others looked rather explicitly at the ideals of a social harmony - understanding society in effect as a family writ large - my sense is that Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were also "family men," but with their attention focused more towards a kind of naturalness that entailed an embodiment of, and integration with, Nature writ large.
And I'd suggest the sort of natural "laissez-faire" orientation within their Taoism has a different quality than a social "passivity." They appreciate the Tao as a current within, and expressed through, all things, which we can come to participate in, and become an expression of, through "non-unnatural-doing."
Not altogether dissimilar from Gandhian "satyagraha" or MLK's "soul force" - those Taoists looked to enact the Tao, through communing with their most fundamental and natural truth.
Individual's generally live in communities. If you transform the nature of the parts this will affect the nature of the whole.
....but the individual's transformation must have a social dimension.
Thanks to German, David, Colin, Michael, and Charles for your valuable insights!
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