V. Conclusion
Money is the treasury of human freedom and at the same time the yoke of freedom—an intractable thing that cannot be unraveled except through circulation.597) Yet, although the present is the age of capitalism, an age that most reveres wealth, it is relatively an age that conceals economics. This is because economics that has moved beyond the neoclassical school clearly reveals a secret of circulation regarding the operating mechanism of society that one would rather not disclose. The heavily skewed neoclassical, libertarian economics of supply and demand curves—which is generally regarded and taught as “economics”—conceals the secret of monetary circulation and its connection with Yu-Bul-Seon.
Modernity, which set out from the acquisition of freedom, has today reached a point where the meaning of freedom has faded, economic motivation has gone missing, economic ethics have disappeared, economic ideologies have collapsed, and even a serious environmental crisis is felt on the skin—yet there is no clear remedy. This is because environmental problems are the point at which all economic problems are concentrated in multiple layers. The problem of economic ideologies that divided the world into capitalism and communism now becomes a question of how efficiently one can respond to environmental problems.
The ultimate economic motivation of human beings lies in freedom. But freedom is possible only when circulation is presupposed. Freedom is grounded in a sound social contract; the social contract is grounded in the common good of the community; and the common good of the community is grounded in the very existence of the community. Therefore, in order to attain freedom one must pursue the common good. Today, libertarianism, which is exclusive toward society and community, has lost its proper function because problems have arisen in the three economic dimensions of justice, public interest, and community. Having lost community, humanity today finds that libertarian freedom has been commodified, and human beings are losing their economic motivation.
Daesoon Thought seeks to resolve today’s economic problems by circulating Yu-Bul-Seon. It is not satisfied, as communism is, with the formation of community, nor, as capitalism is, with freedom for the sake of freedom; rather it calls for forming community according to the principle of circulation and then once again walking the path toward freedom. For, as in Russell’s paradox, all things circulate and so can never settle upon any single one. Freedom matured through the circulation of community is what can become the ultimate economic motivation of human beings. Indeed, Daesoon Thought values both propriety and emolument,598) and calls for synthesizing the two—economy and ethics—stating that the sage and the hero (saint and warrior) must be combined so that the positions of ruler and teacher become one stream.599) Here the sage (聖) and propriety (禮) may be called ethics, and the hero (雄) and emolument (祿) may be called economy.
Daesoon Thought, which integrates economy and ethics, presents a cyclic economic view that offers the finest solution to environmental problems. First, Daesoon Thought, through the Taoist truth of Eumyang Hapdeok (Harmonious Union of Yin and Yang), frees the modern person—who has fallen into gambling capitalism and today has no desire to work for freedom—from gambling capitalism. One who has escaped gambling capitalism comes to think of a Buddhist economic ethic, then a Confucian economic ideology, and finally a Western-Religion environment. Through its cyclic economic view, Daesoon Thought proposes that economic problems can be resolved: economic motivation through the daedae-type (polarity) libertarian view of wealth grounded in Eumyang Hapdeok; economic ethics through the hoegwi-type (return) social-contractarian view of distribution grounded in Sinin Johwa; economic ideology through the junghwa-type (neutralizing) utilitarian view of labor grounded in Haewon Sangsaeng; and environmental problems through the yuhaeng-type (flowing) communitarian view of goods.
In fact, Korea—on which Daesoon Thought is grounded—has recently, even amid the global economic crisis, overtaken the Japanese economy that many said it could never surpass, and the Korean Wave (Hallyu) that no one anticipated has set off a worldwide boom and astonished the world. It is said that until the eighteenth century Korea maintained an actual economic power second in the world after China.600) The world wonders just what the secret of Korea’s economy and culture is. The secret of a Korean economy and culture that has overtaken the once-strongest Japanese economy and culture in Asia cannot be explained by the Confucian capitalism or Bodhisattva capitalism once used to analyze the growth of Asian economy and culture. Since the Lehman crisis, humanity’s economic problems have steadily worsened, yet the Korean economy alone enjoys a boom amid global recession. Korea’s exceptional economic development offers one new answer amid the global economic crisis.
Like the cyclic thought of Daesoon, Korean thought has as its greatest characteristic the circular theory of the threefold union of Yu-Bul-Seon.601) That a distinctly cyclic tendency appears in Korean thought can find one answer in Korea’s indigenous equestrian (horse-riding) culture, which has recently come to light through China’s Northeast Project.602) Korea’s equestrian culture, highlighted recently alongside China’s Northeast Project, explains the environmental origin of the cyclic thought that Korean thought possesses.603) It is said that historically Korea is the only nation that hunted by striking a moving tiger from a running horse. Korea’s equestrian culture is also said to have become the foundation of the equestrian culture of Mongol Yuan.
Indeed, the ceaselessly circulating universe is like hitting a moving target from a running horse, so that a static reductionism such as that of the West does not apply, and a cyclic theory such as the theory of relativity is required. Korea is a nation filled with the Five Phases (ohaeng) and the Three Powers (samjae)—cyclic sciences—so much so that it is called the nation of the Five Phases, and not only because of Daesoon Thought.604) Circulation can present answers that Western process philosophy (Whitehead, Deleuze, etc.) and depth hermeneutics (psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, etc.) cannot resolve. Along with the horse, the bird—which also symbolizes circulation—is said to occupy a large share of Korea’s indigenous place-names.605)
The theory of circulation is, moreover, possible only when there is community. Korea, which emphasized circulation, has become the nation that most treasures the family and the only remaining country in the Confucian cultural sphere in the world. The recent rise in Korea’s suicide rate can be said to stem from the dissolution of the community of the family—accelerated by the loss of circulation, the temperament of reaching conclusions quickly as if from a running horse—and so the restoration of the family is most urgent. The human mind, too, manifests mental illness when circulation is paralyzed. Daesoon Thought, which values the ancestral spirits in accordance with the idea of human nobility (injon), takes the family as the basis of economy and makes the family the foundation of all communal circulation.606)
In Daesoon’s cyclic idea of human nobility, which values the family, particular attention is paid to the siru (steaming vessel) and the sot (cauldron), the source of the Korean household economy.607) From Wonhyo’s thought of harmonizing disputes (hwajaeng), Korea possesses a tradition of the siru and sot that integrate all things cyclically.608) In Daesoon’s idea of human nobility, the human being becomes the center of circulation and ripens all things as in a siru.609) It is said that the only being able to ripen all things as a siru does is the human being, who can perform self-referential feedback through the yin-yang of mind and body. The economics of circulation through the human being may be called siru economics. Siru economics, in which the human being at the center circulates all things, can become an Eastern alternative that surpasses the cyclic philosophies of the West—process philosophy and depth hermeneutics (psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, etc.). Indeed, Daesoon Jinrihoe, which practices Daesoon Thought, practices a cyclic economic view in medical care, social welfare, scholarship programs, and the like.
In studying a new cyclic economic view of Daesoon Thought, this paper has summarized existing economic thought within the overall framework of circulation. If each of Yu-Bul-Seon is an economics of partial circulation, then the cyclic economic view may be called the economic view that integrates Yu-Bul-Seon. Yin-yang and the Five Phases constitute another scientific principle, namely circulationism, and the cyclic economic view may be called a study that applies the scientific principle of yin-yang and the Five Phases to the field of economics. This paper may be summarized as follows.
First, Chapter I showed that existing prior research can be divided, within the framework of individual–community and economy–ethics, into the framework of libertarianism, social contractarianism, utilitarianism, and communitarianism. Chapter II examined the common characteristics by comparing Taoism with libertarianism, Buddhism with social contractarianism, Confucianism with utilitarianism, and Western Religion with communitarianism, since existing economic thought, viewed from the aspect of circulation, also shares common parts with Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion (Seogyo).
Chapter III concretely compared Daesoon’s cyclic economic thought with the cyclic characteristics of Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion shown in Chapter II. Through this comparison, it examined how, in the economic cycle of saving–production–distribution–circulation, Daesoon’s cyclic economic view can newly resolve problems that existing Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion cannot.
Chapter IV showed that the characteristics of Daesoon’s cyclic economic view clarified in Chapter III become one method for resolving the contemporary economic problems derived in Chapter I—the crisis of economic motivation, the collapse of economic ethics, the confusion of economic ideology, and the environmental crisis.
In the Chapter V conclusion, it was shown that Daesoon’s cyclic economic view is a case applying a new cyclic methodology of Daesoon Thought, contrasted with the reductionist methodology of existing science, and that when Daesoon’s cyclic methodology is applied to various sciences in the future, new facts such as the cyclic economic view may be revealed.
It is said that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. The economic ethics of society as a whole can apply equally to the individual economy. This paper does not discuss in detail the concrete process by which a cyclic economic view can improve each individual’s economic situation, nor its practice within Daesoon Thought, leaving these to a future task. Siru economics—a cyclic economics—is a Korean economics and can become a new economics capable of resolving the difficult problems that contemporary Korean economics cannot solve: the economic problems of the individual, and the last division of economic ideology of a humanity split by the DMZ.610) In a world where everything has been monetized, if money circulates, the freedom of humans and of all things can be attained.
A frame, which leaves a more powerful trace than a paradigm as a methodology of scholarship, survives—like a paradigm—regardless of the truth or falsity of individual facts.611) There may be room for disagreement as to whether the cyclic economic view of Daesoon Thought corresponds one-to-one with theories developed by reductionist methodology. Yet the cyclic frame of Daesoon Thought, which interprets and transforms the world fractally (in terms of self-similarity) through the circular theory of Eastern science left as a complexity science, will, together with the development of modern science, become an ever more spotlighted theory that fills the blind spots of reductionist scientific methodology.
Examining the cyclic economic view of Daesoon Thought thus far is not in order to claim that it is a thought superior to the economic thought of Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion, or that only Daesoon Thought possesses a cyclic economic view. It is rather because, in overcoming the problem of self-interpretation that today drives countless people to suffering and suicide, the cyclic economic theory can become a new therapy. The modern person, however low-income, lives a life more abundant than any past emperor ever enjoyed, yet no one feels happier than the past emperors. As Frankl, who survived the Nazi camps, said, in the end a person’s happiness and survival depend on self-interpretation and the discovery of meaning, and what one’s frame of self-interpretation is determines happiness.
Most people’s economic views are likely confined to the categories of libertarianism, utilitarianism, communitarianism, and social contractarianism, and are thereby wounded. Circulation is a frame of healing. Just as our old siru, like a pyramid, when it steamed spoiled food restored the spoiled food to normal, circulation calls forth a self-interpretation that gives courage to a wounded existence. Like the doctor who healed the protagonist of the film “Good Will Hunting” with the cyclic logic of “It’s not your fault,” the wounded modern person—recognized only by possessions and abilities—needs a siru that can circulate the wound.612) The cyclic economic view of Daesoon Thought imparts the complexity-science principle of circulation to existing cyclic philosophical therapy and literary therapy, revealing the time when all things emerge anew and the hidden identities of oneself and others, thus scientifically healing the soul.
As the world grows ever more complex and high-tech, accepting oneself and others becomes increasingly difficult, and the intensity of wounds grows ever stronger. Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion, which once set the frame of human thought, have long since vanished from the world’s attention. But just as great thought always revives, with the emergence of complexity science and psychoanalysis, Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion are reviving—not as separate existences, but as beings that can exert power only when originally combined. Just as Einstein’s theory of relativity subsumed Newton’s theory, Yu-Bul-Seon and Western Religion viewed as a whole are revealed to have been a complexity science and an economic thought, and they appear as a path of scientific self-interpretation by which one understands who one is. The path long thought to be straight was a path returning to oneself. The cyclic economic view of Daesoon Thought is an economic view that tells the ugly duckling it was, after all, a swan.
“If one governs matters great and small by the divine way (神道), then a profound and unfathomable achievement is accomplished; this is none other than transformation through non-action (無爲化). By rectifying the divine way and bringing all affairs into accord with the principles of righteousness, I shall set the boundless fortune of the earthly paradise; and as each degree (度數) comes round in turn, a new framework will open. Had Choe Punghyeon undertaken the past Imjin War, it would have taken no more than three days; had Jinmuk faced it, no more than three months; had Song Gubong undertaken it, it would have been pacified in eight months. This was only because the methods of Seon, Bul, and Yu differ. In the past the board was narrow and matters simple, so even using one method alone could rectify the great chaos; but today, with East and West intermingling, the board has widened and matters have grown complex, so without combining all methods one cannot rectify the chaos.” (Jeongyeong, Yesi 1:73)