Perhaps there has never been revealing future than the one envisioned by Aldous Huxley in his book Brave New World written seventy-five years ago (described in this New Atlantis article). In it, Huxley describes a world where the only goal of society is the perfect happiness of its citizens. However, in reading his description of that society, we are left with a feeling of horror, emptiness, and dread.

One of the least intuitive aspects of Sun Tzu's system of Sun Tzu's strategy is what we call "complementary opposites." According to bing-fa, all of nature exists, not as a steady state, but as a tension between opposing conditions. The climate and the ground, strength and weakness, offense and defense, male and female, emptiness and fullness, standards and innovation, group action and individual decision, knowledge and ignorance are all complementary opposites. Each condition not only creates its opposite but is a necessary condition of its opposite.