Why Taoist non-action requires iterations

I prefer to solve problems in one go if possible, but this will prove impossible on many occasions. Why? Because of lack of information, resources or self-discipline. On many occasions, I will discover too late that problems are more complex, serious, and wide-ranging than originally estimated. Lao-Tzu must have come to the same conclusion when he wrote the Tao Te Ching because, in Chapter 48, he enunciated that principle of daily learning and practice of the non-action principle. The more we know, the more precisely we can identify what to let go. It is an iterative process in which we learn as we go. I regard it as unrealistic, for most problems, to come up with the perfect solution at the beginning. Unless you are very familiar with the problem at hand, you won’t grasp its full scope in a first approximation. Even in the unlikely case that you do, chances are that you will not be able to forecast the side effects and indirect costs of each solution. As a result, you may need to go through a few iterations until you get the problem solved. Chapter 48 exhorts us to gain knowledge each day, and then use the knowledge to discard the unnecessary in our lives. The term “unnecessary” should be given a broad interpretation. It’s meant to encompass the redundant, the inconsistent, the broken and the ineffective elements in our lifestyle. When discussing the need for iterations, the psychological and motivational elements are rarely mentioned, but they play a central role. They explain why, even if we exert large efforts, we will still need several iterations to solve our problems. Everybody would like to possess sufficient self-discipline to turn his life around, but in practice, few people do. One thing is to know that we should improve our nutrition and do sports more often; another thing is to be able to modify our lifestyle overnight. https://johnvespasian.com/why-taoist-non-action-requires-iterations/