In a recent interview, I said that Sun Tzu’s philosophy could clarify any situation
and was challenged to tackle the topic of gay marriage. While this is not normally an area I concern myself with, I was surprised to discover that the philosophy had quite a lot to say about the topic.
The root of Sun Tzu’s work and
all Asian philosophy is the union of opposites. The Art of War is
composed almost entirely of opposing and complementary concepts (as we explore
in detail in our new Amazing Secrets book). This concept is known
popularly as yin-yang, but Sun Tzu called it quan, which means “completeness.â€
The heart of Sun Tzu's idea is that nothing is complete in and of itself
because everything has weaknesses and strengths (xu sat).
In English, we also have
this a term for this (other than marriage). Scientifically, it is called heterosis, which is used, primarily in biology but also in a many other sciences, to describe how a union of two different
but complementary types is stronger and more robust than examples of one type
alone. Heterosis is a scientific fact, a description of reality, not a theory.
A practical example: steel is stronger than either iron or nickel, which are combined in it.
The idea of marriage is that
neither sex is whole. We need the other (hetero means “the other†in
Greek) to be complete. Women and men perceive the world differently, think
differently, remember differently, and are better at doing different things.
Together, two people of the opposite sex working as a team have a greater
RANGE of abilities that two people of the same sex working as a team. Before
marriage was a social institution, it was biological necessity. Teams of
paired sexes survive and prosper better than any other grouping. You can
believe this came from several million years of evolution or God’s plan, the
reality is the same. The union of opposites works. Society recognizes this
fact in marriage. To cast marriage as a based on sexual proclivity rather than
heterosis is to miss the whole point of the institution. By its natural,
marriage is a union of opposites, quan, and yin-yang.