Pluralism vs. Monism

Pluralism maintains that the universe comprises various distinct entities that exist independently. In contrast, monism posits that seemingly disparate elements are interrelated parts of a whole, unified by something fundamental and consistent. While pluralism emphasizes the diversity of the world, monism underscores its unity. The former reflects the micro or atomistic thinking of the West, whereas the latter embodies the macro or holistic thinking of the East.

Pluralism is often used by capitalists to justify and champion individuality, freedom, independence, and personal autonomy. It advocates for self-interest, liberty, individual rights, private ownership, competition, and a free-market economy. Conversely, monism views individuals as interdependent members of an integrated human society, prioritizing collective interests, coexistence, fraternity, equality, cooperation, responsibility, and the overall well-being of society. These two philosophies have led to the development of distinct economic and political systems. The question of which philosophy better serves humanity's interests and guides mankind toward a brighter future remains unanswered.

Aristotle stated, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Historically, monism was the predominant philosophy, as early humans understood that unity and cooperation were vital for the survival and success of the species. However, the rise of modern science and technology empowered individuals and encouraged self-sufficiency, leading to the emergence of individualism and pluralism. These ideologies celebrate individual liberty, diversity, and choice, championing multiculturalism that embraces iconoclastic values, LGBTQIAPK rights, and same-sex marriage, endorsing relativism that denies distinctions between true and false, right and wrong, good and evil, and beautiful and ugly, supporting anti-intellectualism that resists science and reason, and promoting affirmative action that protects marginalized groups and alternative lifestyles. This has led to reverse discrimination against mainstream culture, traditions, and conventional wisdom, and has exacerbated inequality, polarization, dissension, societal fragmentation, and disunity (see Tango and Individualism).

Individualism and pluralism, rooted in the "law of the jungle," lack respect for equality and morality, posing a threat to both societies that embrace these ideologies and the world at large, as evidenced by the growing moral decay, societal fragmentation, and widespread lawlessness in the US, 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).

What these ideologies fail to recognize is that humans are inherently interconnected and interdependent, and the survival and progress of the species require cooperation (see Tango and Gender Interdependence). A cohesive society must be built on philosophies that unite rather than divide, underpinned by moral codes, governance, and order. Turning people into individualistic rivals only fosters conflict, animosity and chaos, as evidenced by the unrest resulted from US-led efforts to "liberate" people, and the ensuing humanitarian disasters and refugee crises, which are further aggravated by the open-border policies and multiculturalism at home. The situation will only worsen if we continue to propagate radical liberalism, assert absolute personal freedom, prioritize individuals over society, oppose any order that we consider authoritarian, call democracy the tyranny of the majority, label one gender the oppressor of the other gender, radicalize education, media and law, and fragment society into more and more conflicting factions (see Lessons from Tango).

While liberalism once played a positive role in unleashing human creativity and potential, contributing to capitalism's success in the West, its excessive emphasis on individualism has proven counterproductive. As a reader insightfully commented, "Freedom and human rights movements led people to put a lot of emphasis on individuality and as a result, the inflated self-image lessens our ability to view the world as a connected whole. This inflated self-image is also probably the root cause to many modern psychological ailments and problems: loneliness, depression, and mental disorder. If we can zoom out and see ourselves as a tiny one, rather than the one, in this big universe, a fact that has not changed a bit since the big bang, we may again find the beauty in the ancient natural law and adopt the right perspective towards the self and the rest of the world (see A Wise Voice)." The result has been a re-concentration of resources, wealth, and political power in the hands of a few, only this time this is done not under slavery, monarchy or aristocracy, but under the guise of free competition.

Observing the success of capitalism in the West, the East, while adhering to its holistic philosophy and Confucian values, began to encourage people's 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 becomes increasingly neoliberal. 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 not surprising given that capitalism has a vested interest in these ideologies, without them plutocracy loses legitimacy (see Democracy vs. Plutocracy).

However, the balance of power has shifted. Initially, the pluralistic West may have certain advantages over the monistic East, but the monistic East, enriched by Western strengths, is catching up with and in many ways surpassing the pluralistic West. 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 individualism's pervasive influence, tango offers an alternative lens. It teaches us to see ourselves as interconnected and interdependent members of a global human family. Through its principles of love, cooperation, and accommodation, tango demonstrates that collaboration, rather than competition, paves the way to 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 leadership team of four elected members 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 are required to host a biweekly group event, such as a potluck, picnic, hiking trip, seminar, tea party, sports activity, milonga, etc., at a separate time and location of their choice. These activities aim to build friendships and encourage team collaboration.

4. Newcomers must agree to this charter, complete the training, and meet the group's standard to become a member and attend our milongas.

Tango Music and Its Danceability

One

Tango music is written in 4/4 time. There are four quarter notes in each measure, and each quarter note represents one beat, counted as 1, 2, 3, 4. The first and third beats are strong beats, on which we step. The second and forth beats are weak beats, on which we do ancillary actions such as cross, weight change, hip rotation, pivot, and embellishment.

Each quarter note can be subdivided evenly into two eighth notes, counted as 1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and, resulting in a total of eight eighth notes per measure. Similarly, a quarter note can be divided into four sixteenth notes, counted as 1-e-and-a, 2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a, producing 16 sixteenth notes in a measure.

The ability to divide the notes and predict where the subdivisions fall is important, as it allows dancers to expand their footwork possibilities. Feeling rhythm is an internal process. The rhythm must exist in mind before it can manifest in movements. Rhythm, the most fundamental element of music, can exist even without melody, as seen in the drumbeats of primitive music. Dance, at its core, is the body's response to rhythm. Naturally, we step to the music's beat because these accents guide and enhance our movements. Without rhythm, there can be no dance.

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 engaging and dynamic, it also makes it harder to follow.

Nevertheless, dancers embrace this challenge. As long as the beats adhere to the time signature—meaning the entire song can be consistently counted as 1, 2, 3, 4 from start to finish—the music remains danceable. In fact, the most enjoyable songs to dance to are neither arrhythmic nor monotonous but feature complex rhythms with regular, recognizable, and predictable beats. This is a defining characteristic of classic tango (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango.)


Two

This began to change when musicians started experimenting with new ideas such as improvisation, counterpoint, cross-rhythms, polyrhythms, compound rhythms, asymmetrical rhythms, complex harmonies, and odd-numbered meters in which notes are unevenly grouped (e.g., 5/4 and 7/8 time). They also blended duple, triple, and quadruple time; layered different rhythms across instruments; or combined instrumental and vocal parts with divergent rhythms. While these techniques are undoubtedly creative, they often make rhythms too intricate for dancing—a hallmark of modern music.

Classic music is still produced today, meaning not all music made in contemporary times qualifies as modern music. Only music incorporating unconventional elements is considered modern. Of course, there are gray areas, but modern music consistently includes at least some nontraditional elements that render its rhythm—or portions of it—irregular, unrecognizable, unpredictable, and, therefore, undanceable.

Some argue that all music is danceable, but this is untrue. Perhaps all music that can be followed with two legs is danceable, but fingers can move far faster than legs. An orchestra comprised of dozens—or even hundreds—of fingers can create music of extreme complexity, especially when intended solely for listening.br />
For music to be danceable, it must feature recognizable, predictable, and followable beats. Dance is the body’s natural response to rhythm. We are drawn to rhythm because it facilitates movement, echoing regular occurrences such as our biological clock, heartbeat, or muscle memory of rhythmic actions like walking. Millions of years of human evolution have ingrained rhythm as an aesthetic and musical pleasure, making our bodies instinctively responsive to rhythmic sounds. While it is possible for highly trained professionals to memorize and dance to irregular or unpredictable beats, ordinary dancers cannot do this. DJs must understand that the music they play at milongas is meant for social tango dancing by ordinary dancers, not for a few highly skilled individuals to showcase their abilities. A DJ must prioritize the majority of dancers and resist the pressure imposed 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 society 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. While innovation enhances life, it also brings unintended consequences. Every time I buy a smartphone, a newer, smarter version is released the following week. Economists call this "creating demand," encouraging consumers to discard perfectly functional devices for the latest models, resulting in tremendous waste, as highlighted in this documentary. People raised in this culture often lack depth and lasting quality. They confuse novelty with beauty, prioritize flashy appearances 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 delve into why the milonga is not the place for performance (see Social Tango and Performance Tango), I will focus on creativity here. Undoubtedly, creativity has transformed our lives. However, despite its many contributions, we must not overlook its drawbacks. Human creativity is a double-edged sword. It has given us automobiles, computers, GPS, and beautiful, danceable music like classic tango. Yet, it has also produced weapons of mass destruction, narcotics, high-tech crimes, and undanceable noise. Creativity can improve life when used wisely, but it can also destroy life when pursued recklessly for novelty’s sake, ignoring the forces beyond human control—whether you call them the Cosmos, Nature, Law, Tao, or God. Indeed, human creativity has already caused significant harm to our existence: irreversible damage to our planet, pollution, climate change, environmental catastrophes, resource depletion, ecosystem collapse, chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, and 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 creativity also drives many DJs to make their music selections unconventional. They curate collections of abnormal, rare, exotic, and difficult-to-follow songs, prioritizing their brand over danceability. 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 songs at milongas simply because the danceable ones are traditional.

Dancers do not reject innovation or creativity—these are integral to what we do on the dance floor. We welcome challenges that make our dancing more engaging. However, we also desire music that is danceable. We expect our DJs to prioritize danceability when selecting music, carefully listening to each song from start to finish to ensure it is entirely danceable before playing it at a milonga. We want them to cater to the average social dancer, not just a few elites or eccentric individuals. (See My Two Cents on Music Selection.)

Dancing to Melody - Poema

Stepping on the beat and dancing to music are not the same thing. The former represents the basics of musicality, but it is not the most sophisticated form. Beats are rhythmic stresses that dictate the pace of the music. They are discrete and unemotional. Stepping on beats is akin to jumping, with a focus on the accents; the movement is vertical, sudden, fragmented, and dry.

The most important aspect of dancing is to convey the feelings of the music, which reside not in the beats but in the melody. Melody is the sweet, emotional, and continuous tone that captures the sentiment, beauty, and fluidity of music. Dancing to melody is like gliding on ice; the focus is on the flowing tone, resulting in movement that is horizontal, smooth, uninterrupted, and even-paced.

In dancing, we can choose to focus on beats or melody, each leading to distinct styles of dance. When focusing on beats, we wait for the beat to arrive and step on it forcefully, producing movements that are interrupted, brief, and disjointed. Here is an example.

The song Poema, like most tango compositions, is nostalgic and melancholy. "Tango is a sad feeling that is danced," said Enrique Santos Discépolo. The lyrics were written by Eduardo Bianco, who played first violin in the orchestra of Teatro Apolo in 1927. Bianco discovered that his wife had cheated on him with the orchestra's pianist and, in a fit of jealousy, shot his rival to death. The lyrics reflect his regret, grief, and pain. Below is the 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 one intoxicating poem,
                        nothing is left between us,
                        I say my sad 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 last two stanzas were sung, performed by Roberto Maida.

When dancing Poema, you need to put yourself in the lyricist’s shoes, as if you are overwhelmed by the pain of saying goodbye to a lost love. While you still need to step on the beat, it should not be done in a sudden or fragmented way. Instead, focus on the emotions of the melody, allowing your movements to remain fluid, even-paced, and continuous. Here is an example.

Note that this couple is not chasing the beat but dancing slowly, as if they cannot bear to be separated from each other. Their steps are much simpler, softer, smoother, and more melodious, perfectly matching the melancholy mood of the music (see The Elegance of the Milonguero Style).

I often find that my partner still focuses on the beat when I try to lead her to dance to the melody. This is not surprising, given that most students are only taught to step on beats. The next time you dance Poema, try to focus more on the melody. The key is to control the speed of your movement, allowing your steps to be even-paced rather than sudden, short, or disjointed—especially if you are a woman, who represents the melodic or feminine essence of the music (see The Characteristics of Classic Tango).