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Neotaoism
Federation Age Penglaiese religion based on Old Earth Taoism and various Interplanetary Age memes.

In 1537 Yuan Guen, a Penglaiese researcher turned philosopher began presenting his view on how old taoist ideas could be combined with Information Age complexity theory, Interplanetary Age Emergent evolutionary mathematics, and the synergetics of Atomic Age visionary Buckminster Fuller.

His ideas, later called Neotaoism, saw reality as a complex system of systems, interlocking processes that created new forms according to certain emergent rules. These processes could be described using complexity theory and synergetics, but their applicability was universal, not just to physics and biology but also to ethics, society, design and engineering. The philosophy that emerged had many similarities with classical Taoist thinking in emphasizing self-organization and creating harmony, but it also had views on how to engineer it; it was in many ways a form of constructivist Taoism: the world is perfect in itself, but it can be perfected further.

Neotaoist symbolism and motifs remain a traditional part of some elements of Penglaiese culture, retained as a matter of national identity, but no longer a part of the common person's memeticity, having long since been superseded by later hyperturing and archailect religions. However, on some isolated polities Neotaoism is still followed as it always was.
 
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg, with some notes by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 09 December 2001.

 
 
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