Pluralism vs. Monism

Pluralism asserts that the universe comprises distinct entities that exist independently, each maintaining its own unique essence. In contrast, monism contends that all seemingly separate elements are interconnected components of a unified whole, bound by an underlying, consistent foundation. While pluralism highlights the diversity of the world, monism emphasizes its unity. These perspectives reflect broader intellectual traditions—pluralism aligns with the atomistic and analytical thinking of the West, while monism embodies the holistic and integrative philosophy of the East.

Pluralism upholds the principles of individual distinction, autonomy, and self-determination, advocating for personal liberty, individual rights, private ownership, competition, and free-market economics. In contrast, monism views individuals as interconnected members of a unified society, emphasizing collective interests, cooperation, equality, fraternity, social responsibility, and communal well-being. These philosophical paradigms have profoundly influenced economic and political structures, shaping governance and societal values. Yet the fundamental question remains: which approach best serves humanity’s long-term interests and leads us toward a more sustainable and prosperous future?

Aristotle once stated, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Historically, monism dominated philosophical thought, as early human societies recognized unity and cooperation as essential to survival and prosperity. Over time, the rise of modern science and technology empowered individuals, fostering self-reliance and encouraging a shift toward individualism and pluralism. These ideologies champion personal liberty and diversity, shaping multiculturalism that embraces nonconformity, LGBTQ+ rights, same-sex marriage, and other iconoclastic values. They also contribute to broader philosophical shifts, including relativism, which questions absolute distinctions between truth and falsehood, morality, and aesthetics; skepticism toward intellectualism, reason, and science; and policies such as affirmative action, aimed at supporting marginalized groups and alternative lifestyles. While these cultural transformations have promoted inclusion and innovation, they have also contributed to heightened polarization, societal fragmentation, ideological discord, and partisan strife (see Tango and Individualism).

Individualism and pluralism, rooted in the "law of the jungle" mindset, lack respect for equality, morality, and the common good. This has created social instability not only within societies that champion these ideologies but also across the globe, as evidenced by the growing moral decay, societal fragmentation, political dysfunction, and widespread lawlessness in the United States, the lack of moral integrity among its political elites, and the destructive impact of their self-serving, hegemonic, and coercive foreign policies on the world (see Darwinism and Confucianism).

These ideologies overlook a fundamental truth: human beings are inherently interconnected and interdependent. The survival and progress of our species rely on cooperation and unity. A thriving society must be built on philosophies that foster cohesion, shared moral principles, social stability, and good governance. When individuals are set against one another in pursuit of personal gain, the result is division, animosity, and chaos. This has been evident in the turmoil following U.S.-led efforts to "liberate" populations, leading to humanitarian crises and refugee displacement—challenges further exacerbated by open-border policies and multiculturalism at home. If we continue to advance radical liberalism—prioritizing absolute personal freedom over collective welfare, rejecting any form of authority as oppressive, labeling democracy as “tyranny of the majority,” inflaming gender conflicts, politicizing education, media, and law, and fragmenting society into increasingly isolated identity groups—the social fabric will continue to erode.

While liberalism has historically played a crucial role in unlocking human potential and driving capitalism’s ascent in the West, its excessive emphasis on individualism has, in many ways, become counterproductive. As one reader insightfully observed, “Freedom and human rights movements have placed a heightened focus on individuality. As a result, an inflated self-image diminishes our ability to see the world as a unified whole. This inflated sense of self may also underlie many modern psychological struggles—loneliness, depression, and mental distress. If we can zoom out and recognize ourselves as a small part of a vast universe, a truth unchanged since the Big Bang, we may rediscover the beauty in ancient natural laws and adopt a healthier perspective on ourselves and the world (see A Wise Voice).” The outcome, unfortunately, has been a re-concentration of wealth, resources, and political power in the hands of a few, only this time it is done not under monarchies or aristocracies, but the guise of free competition.

Observing capitalism’s success in the West, the East—while remaining rooted in its holistic philosophy and Confucian values—has increasingly fostered human initiative and creativity, which has also brought positive changes to the East in recent decades. While the East seeks to integrate the strengths of the West, the West remains stagnant, refusing to learn from the East. It believes that, based on its past success, its way is the only right way. Instead of addressing its deep-seated ideological and structural flaws, it has doubled down on neoliberal policies. The West spends vast resources on media propogandas, NGOs, military, cognitive, trade, technological and financial warfares to defend its system and impose its ideologies on the rest of the world, which is unsurprising given that capitalism has a vested interest in sustaining these ideologies—without them, plutocracy risks losing its legitimacy (see Democracy vs. Plutocracy).

However, the balance of power has shifted. While the pluralistic West once held certain advantages over the monistic East, the East—having integrated Western strengths—is rapidly catching up and, in many respects, surpassing its counterpart. Individuality and sociality are two facets of human nature that must be balanced for the well-being of mankind and society as a whole. Neither authoritarianism, which suppresses individual freedom, nor individualism, which denies humanity's shared destiny, coexistence, and interdependence, can create a cohesive society. Successful society thrives on fraternity, solidarity, cooperation, and the willingness of its people to prioritize collective interests over personal ones and work together as a team. This is how families function (see Tango and Family Values). This is how tango is danced. This is how China is growing strong. And this is how America can regain its strength.

Despite the pervasive influence of individualism, tango offers a powerful alternative perspective. It reminds us that we are not isolated beings but members of an interconnected human family. Through its principles of love, cooperation, and mutual accommodation, tango reveals that true progress comes not from competition, but from collaboration—a lesson that extends far beyond the dance floor. Tango confirms that win-win cooperation and sharing are the true foundations of a better world (see Philosophies that Separate Two Worlds).

Champaign Milongueros Group Charter

Champaign Milongueros is a group of tango students who regularly meet here to study and dance the milonguero style of tango.

Our mission is to bring together like-minded local tango dancers, promote the milonguero style of tango, and foster a culture of fraternity, solidarity, cooperation, and community within the group.

We adhere to the tango protocols observed in the milongas of Buenos Aires, including personal hygiene, dress code, separate seating, cabeceo, navigation rules, and milonga etiquette. (See Milonga Codes.)

A rotating leadership team is responsible for recruitment, training, events, and liaison.

This group is open only to committed tango enthusiasts who want tango to be an integral part of their lifestyle, not to casual dancers.

The terms for joining this group are as follows:

1. Dedication to the milonguero style of tango.

2. Commitment to regular and long-term participation.

3. In addition to attending classes and dancing at this location, members take turns to host a biweekly group event, such as a potluck, picnic, hiking trip, seminar, tea party, sports activity, or milonga, at a separate time and location of their choice. These activities aim to build friendships and encourage team collaboration.

4. Applicants for membership must complete our training to attend our milongas.

Tango Music and Its Danceability

One

Tango music is written in 4/4 time, meaning each measure contains four quarter notes, counted as 1, 2, 3, 4. The first and third beats are strong, typically where we step. The second and fourth beats are weak and are often used for ancillary movements such as crossing, weight changes, hip rotations, pivots, or embellishments.

Each quarter note can be evenly divided into two eighth notes, counted as 1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and—resulting in eight eighth notes per measure. Further subdivision produces sixteenth notes, counted as 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, creating a total of sixteen sixteenth notes per measure.

The ability to divide the notes and predict where the subdivisions fall is important, as it expands the dancer’s range of possible movements. Feeling rhythm is an internal process. The rhythm must exist in mind before it can manifest in movements. Rhythm is the most fundamental element of music. It can exist even in the absence of melody, as seen in the drumbeats of early or primitive music. At its essence, dance is the body's natural response to rhythm. We instinctively move to the beat because those accents provide structure, guiding and enhancing our movements. Without rhythm, dance cannot exist.

However, feeling rhythm becomes more challenging when syncopation is introduced. Syncopation adds complexity to music by shifting, splitting, adding, or omitting beats. Examples include emphasizing even-numbered beats (1, 2, 3, 4), extending a beat (1 - - -), starting a note on an unaccented beat and continuing it through the next accented beat (1, 2 -, 4), splitting a note into subdivisions (1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and), accenting subdivisions (1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and), adding unexpected accents (1, 2, 3, 4), or omitting notes and replacing them with rests. While syncopation makes the rhythm more dynamic and expressive, it also demands more from the dancer’s sense of timing and awareness, making the music harder to follow.

Nevertheless, dancers welcome this challenge. As long as the music adheres to its time signature—allowing it to be consistently counted as 1, 2, 3, 4 throughout—it remains danceable. In fact, the most satisfying songs to dance to are not monotonous or overly simple, but rather feature intricate rhythms layered over a steady, predictable beat. This balance between complexity and danceability is a hallmark of classic tango (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango.)


Two

This began to change when musicians started experimenting with innovative concepts such as improvisation, counterpoint, cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, compound and asymmetrical rhythms, complex harmonies, and odd-numbered meters where notes are grouped unevenly (e.g., 5/4 and 7/8 time). They also began blending duple, triple, and quadruple time signatures; layering distinct rhythms across instruments; and combining instrumental and vocal lines with divergent rhythmic structures. While these techniques are undeniably creative, they often produce rhythms that are too intricate for dancing—one of the defining features of modern music.

It's important to note that classic music is still being composed today, meaning not all music created in contemporary times qualifies as "modern." What distinguishes modern music is the incorporation of unconventional elements. While there are certainly gray areas, modern compositions consistently include at least some nontraditional aspects that render the rhythm—or parts of it—irregular, unrecognizable, unpredictable, and, consequently, undanceable.

Some argue that all music is danceable, but this isn't quite true. Perhaps anything that can be followed using two legs qualifies in the broadest sense, but fingers can move far faster than legs. An orchestra, effectively made up of dozens—or even hundreds—of fingers, can produce music of immense complexity, especially when the goal is listening rather than dancing.

For music to be truly danceable, it must offer clear, predictable, and physically followable beats. Dance is the body’s natural response to rhythm. We are drawn to rhythm because it echo recurring patterns in our lives—heartbeat, biological clock, or muscle memory of rhythmic actions like walking，facilitating our movement. Millions of years of evolution have ingrained rhythm as an aesthetic and musical pleasure, making our bodies instinctively react to rhythmic sounds.

While highly trained professionals might be able to memorize and move to irregular or unpredictable rhythms, this is not feasible for the average dancer. DJs must remember that the music they play at milongas is meant for social tango dancing—by and for ordinary dancers—not as a platform for a handful of elite performers to showcase their skills. A good DJ must prioritize the needs of the majority and resist the pressure exerted by a select few. (As a DJ myself, I am all too familiar with such pressures.)


Three

The shift in modern music is not coincidental. We live in a culture where rampant liberalism and individualism drive many to pursue uniqueness at any cost, while profit-driven commercialism relentlessly pushes for innovation, repackaging, novelty, exoticism, and boldness to boost sales. Innovation, while beneficial, also brings unintended consequences. Every time I purchase a smartphone, a newer and smarter version is released the following week. Economists call this "creating demand"—a strategy that persuades consumers to discard perfectly functional products for the latest model, resulting in tremendous waste, as illustrated in this documentary. People raised in this culture often lack depth and enduring quality. They confuse novelty with beauty, favor spectacle over substance, and constantly seek change. The following reader's comment reflects this mindset:

“Most of us did not start doing the tango in order to get the ocho just right. Most of us saw elegant, dramatic, and erotic moves in a performance that took our breath away. Then we take tango lessons and dance among older people who look down their noses at beginners for not doing the details as well as they can, who are quite conservative in their tastes, who are uptight about the eroticism, who are offended when attractive young people look better at the erotic movements than they do, and who are too weak, inflexible, heavy, and cowardly to do the more dramatic moves... The idea of dividing tango into social dance and 'show' dance trivializes efforts to be more creative and to actually do the dance that we were attracted to in the first place. Performance is not just for tourists. It includes ballet, modern dance, jazz, and other rich, culturally important forms. It can be brilliant and revolutionary, changing the way we think. It can give tango dance its Isadora Duncans, Sergei Diaghilevs, Merce Cunninghams, and Astor Piazzollas. Tango and dance have always included a conversation between performance and social dance. Both should be respected as spaces where creativity can thrive. That's how art and culture evolve in living ways.”

While I won’t explore here why the milonga is not the place for performance (see Social Tango and Performance Tango), I do want to address the role of creativity. No doubt, creativity has transformed our lives. However, despite its many contributions, we must not overlook its dark side. Human creativity is a double-edged sword. It has given us automobiles, computers, GPS, and beautiful, danceable music like classic tango—but it has also brought us weapons of mass destruction, addictive substances, high-tech crime, and unlistenable noise. Creativity can improve life when wielded with wisdom, but it can also destroy life when pursued recklessly in the name of novelty, ignoring the forces beyond human control that govern our existence—whether you call them the Cosmos, Nature, Law, Tao, or God.

Already, human ingenuity has caused enormous harm: irreversible damage to our planet, pollution, climate change, environmental catastrophes, resource depletion, ecosystem collapse, chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, countless deaths caused by inventions such as guns, drugs, automobiles, man-made viruses, modern warfare, and the polarization and dysfunction of governments fueled by our “creative” politicians.

This obsession with novelty also drives many DJs to make their music selections unconventional. They curate music that is obscure, exotic, or difficult to dance to, prioritizing their personal brand over the dancer’s experience. They embrace modernism and dismiss the classics, despite the fact that classics are time-tested masterpieces, embodying what generations of dancers have deemed beautiful and danceable. They fail to recognize that, 60 years after the Golden Age, tango dancers still cherish classic tango music, while the “revolutionary” music of the same era has long been forgotten. They overlook the reality that every generation produces both enduring classics and fleeting rubbish. They fail to understand that creativity must serve humanity’s best interests, needs, and aesthetics to have lasting value. In dance, this means prioritizing danceability over outlandishness. Although they may love music and have extensive collections, they often lack an understanding of what makes music danceable. Worst of all, they tend to play unfamiliar, erratic, and undanceable tracks at milongas simply because the danceable ones are traditional.

Dancers are not opposed to innovation. On the contrary, creativity is at the heart of how we express ourselves on the dance floor. We welcome fresh challenges that enrich our dancing. But we also expect music that we can dance to. We want our DJs to prioritize danceability, to listen to every song from beginning to end and ensure it’s fully danceable before playing it at a milonga. And we want them to serve the broader social dancing community—not just a few elites or eccentric individuals. (See My Two Cents on Music Selection.)

Dancing to Melody - Poema

Stepping to the beat is a basic component of musicality, but it lacks nuance and sophistication. Beats are rhythmic pulses that define tempo—they are discrete, mechanical, and emotionally neutral. Stepping on the beat is like jumping: it emphasizes accents with vertical, fragmented, and percussive movement.

But the heart of dance lies not in the beat, but in the emotion of the music—and that emotion lives in the melody. Melody is continuous, lyrical, and expressive. It carries the sentiment, beauty, and fluidity of the music. To dance to the melody is to glide, not strike—to flow, not punctuate. The result is smooth, horizontal, uninterrupted movement that unfolds with grace and even pacing.

Dancers can choose to follow either the beat or the melody, each offering a distinct style.

When we dance to the beat, we wait for it and step on it with emphasis, producing sharp, disconnected, and punctuated movements. Consider the following example.

The tango Poema, like many classics, is infused with nostalgia and melancholy. As Enrique Santos Discépolo famously said, “Tango is a sad feeling that is danced.” The lyrics were written by Eduardo Bianco, who once played first violin at the Teatro Apolo in 1927. His life took a dramatic turn when he discovered his wife’s affair with the orchestra’s pianist. In a fit of passion and despair, he shot his rival. The lyrics of Poema reflect his sorrow, heartbreak, and regret. Below is an English translation by Alberto Paz:

                        It was a dream of sweet love,
                        hours of happiness and loving,
                        it was the poem of yesterday,
                        that I dreamed,
                        of gilded color,
                        vain chimeras of the heart,
                        it will not manage to never decipher,
                        so fleeting nest,
                        it was a dream of love and adoration.

                        When the flowers of your rose garden,
                        bloom again ever so beautiful,
                        you'll remember my love,
                        and you will come to know,
                        all my intense misfortune.

                        Of that once-intoxicating poem,
                        nothing remains between us,
                        I say my sorrowful goodbye,
                        you'll feel the emotion,
                        of my pain…

The music was composed by Mario Melfi in 1932 and arranged by Francisco Canaro in 1935. In Canaro’s version, only the final two stanzas are sung, performed by Roberto Maida.

When dancing to Poema, immerse yourself in the lyricist’s anguish—as if you, too, are saying a final, heart-wrenching goodbye to a lost love. While you must still be aware of the beat, do not let it dictate abrupt or fragmented steps. Let the melody lead. Move fluidly, keeping your pace even and continuous. Here's an example.

Notice how this couple is not chasing the beat. Instead, they dance slowly, their movements simple, soft, and melodious—filled with the sorrow of parting, perfectly matching the melancholy mood of the music (see The Elegance of the Milonguero Style).

I often find that when I try to express the melody, my partner still instinctively focuses on the beat. This is understandable—most dancers are taught to step on the beat from the start. But next time you dance to Poema, try shifting your attention to the melody. The key lies in controlling your movement so that your steps are smooth and continuous, never abrupt or disjointed.

This is especially important for women, who embody the melodic and feminine essence of tango (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango).