Common principles among flow, Taoism, fifth discipline, and emergent properties

Csikszentmihalyi examined happiness and defined the term "Flow" as the unification of specific human psychological states that result in optimal experiences. Tai Chi is a physical practice that embodies the Taoist philosophy of balance and harmony through the union of complementary opposites---Yin and Yang. "Systems thinking" is a term used by Peter Senge which unifies the principles of what he calls the "component technologies" of the Learning Organization: Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Building Shared Vision, and Team Learning. "Emergent Properties" are those properties that are manifest when an entity is a system, and which are absent when the system is dismantled into its constituents. This paper investigates and demonstrates the commonalities among all of the above concepts, and postulates that adopting the principles of these systems results not only in elevated individual experiences, but elevated group experiences and organizational functioning as well.