A Cure for Cancer?

“Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Half of all men and one third of all women in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes.” ¹

Many of us have been unfortunate to experience cancer directly or indirectly; may it be personal, family, friends or colleagues. In my short lifetime I have lost my father and a friend to cancer and 2 of my friends are living with cancer.

Scientists are hard at work, looking for a cure to this disease using everything at their disposal. What I am offering is not a cure to cancer, but maybe the means to finding a cure by using Daoist System Theory (DST).

The DST premises is: Every situation has two states and the potential for the opposite lies at the centre of any state.

To find these two states in a situation, we first have to define what cancer is.

“Cancer develops when cells in a part of the body begin to grow out of control. Normal body cells grow, divide, and die in an orderly fashion.” ²

State 1: Cancer
State 2: No Cancer

Because of this assumption, all theories are based on destroying cancer, but is “No Cancer” really the opposite of having “Cancer”?

“No Cancer” is like being “Healthy” but so is “No Flu”, “No AIDS” and “No Malaria”. According to the Daoist definition, a relationship between two state (in a particular context) cannot be shared with a third state. There is black and white, yin and yang, hot and cold, good and evil. Which means that “No Cancer” cannot be the opposite of having cancer.

Daoist Principle 1: The Dao Exists in Everything
If we follow Daoist principle that the Dao exists in everything, “Cancer” cannot be seen as abnormal growth, because everything is connected to the Dao. Maybe in relation to “normal” accepted growth, but that immediately puts cancer in a box, which limits your options in dealing with it.

Daoist Principles 2 & 3: The only constant is change and stillness is momentarily.
Normality is a state we rarely experience as our body is under constant pressure from our environment and even our own thought processes; just like the balance between yin and yang; a brief state.

The opposite of a cell that continues to grow and divide, is a cell that doesn’t divide (which maybe merges with other cells) and doesn’t die. Maybe the solution lies here?

How do we deal with cancer and how does Daoism deal with opposing forces? We deal with cancer by trying to destroy it. Daoism deals with a force by using the energy of the one state to facilitate the movement towards the opposite state.

First we have to accept that cancer is natural, even so far as to say that it is “normal”. Cancer is a natural growth. The question is, how do we direct it’s energies so that it is to the benefit of the human body (a higher order Dao System – see The Method for more details)?

An alternative view point

“Cancer happens when a tiny part of the cell’s mechanism goes wrong.” ³

What if this hypothesis is wrong? What if cancer is an evolutionary next step? Wouldn’t we be able to live longer, if not forever, if our bodies continued to rebuild itself and not die? Life in nature continuously evolves to a more complex state and when it cannot overcome it’s natural obstacles, it dies and becomes part of the larger Dao System (Earth) it is part of.

Maybe cancer is a desease or maybe it is a cure to a longer life. The potential lies in your hands and only you can shape it. This is what makes humans unique; our ability to influence the flow of life’s potential energy.

¹,² Cancer.org