Thanks for another great, in-depth response. Before actually responding to anything you said, I'd like to extend an offer to participate in the main post if you're interested. Or keep doing comments, that's great too :-)
Your point about our sensory organs being limiting by their very nature is something that I resonate with quite a bit, and have focused on in MANY conversations about reality, truth, and anything else that we "know". Many friends have asked that double-sided question of "Is there absolute truth, and can humans know it?"... to which I generally say something like "probably... and absolutely not".
If we create distinctions, we are then presupposing Earth (yin) to be the answer; if we create absolutely no distinctions ("all is one") then we presuppose Heaven (yang). This is what the perpetual Dao is.... it is both of these.
The "yes, and" is so key! One of the places I see this debate which really annoys me is the idea that sovereignty/individuality doesn't leave space for communalism/collectivism. In the very first article I ever published online (The 6 Facets of the Paradigm Shift), the first two facets were sovereignty & unity, because thay false dichotomy causes so much suffering & violence.
What amazed me when I first read this was how it encapsulates Structuralist theory (from semiotics and linguistics, and also anthropology) over 2000 years beforehand!!
There was a time that these things surprised/amazed me; at this point I've come to the belief/understanding that everything society is discovering now is so very old and was simply lost/obscured by empire/religion/violence.
Haha.... Thanks for the offer, I'll participate in the comments section. Maybe just shoot me a DM in discord when you post with a link, it took me 5 days to find this one.
All those points you raise are precisely why I'm fascinated with Dynastic China. They have remained consistently autocratic for thousands of years (I'd say their version of Communism is a modern extension to their version of Imperialism), and yet Daoism envisions something different. I think its probably because the notion of sovereignty can logically be extended to every single individual, and some thinkers recognised this early on.
Imagine a world that is a collective of sovereign individuals... it's a tricky balance, but I think we have plenty of road maps and guides to be able to achieve it now, with 5000 years worth of human wisdom to draw on.
Sounds good :-) What's your discord S/N? I tried searching for "metametheus" but nothing came up.
That's a really great point about China's history as compared to this ancient philosophy that has been present and influential in the culture for so long.
I would say that the world already is a collective of sovereign individuals, although so many of those individuals have been tricked into acting as though they aren't sovereign.