Month: June 2022

Chapter 77: The Bow

“The Way of heaven
is like a bow bent to shoot:
it’s top end brought down,
it’s lower end raised up.
It brings the high down,
lifts the low,
takes from those who have,
gives to those who have not.

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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A dozen years ago, a video went viral in which a man camping in Yosemite witnessed a “double rainbow.” It went viral less due to wonder at the phenomenon, and more due to his stupefied reaction: “what does this mean?” The hive mind’s reaction to his reaction is instructive.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 77: The Bows that Bind (or, Taste the Rainbow)”

Chapter 76: Hardness

“Living people are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and stiff.
….
So hardness and stiffness go with death; tenderness, softness, go with life.
And the hard sword fails,
The stiff tree’s felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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Of the many things that puzzled me about the Biblical stories growing up, one always stuck out: when God is hurling plagues at the Egyptians in Exodus, and Moses asks for his people to be let go, God repeatedly “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart. It puzzles for two reasons: first, it seems to relieve Pharaoh of responsibility, and second, it prolongs the Hebrew’s bondage and increases the suffering of the innocent Egyptian people. Why doesn’t God just snap his fingers and zap them to the Promised Land?

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 76: The Militia Industrial Complex”

Chapter 75: Greed

“People are starving.
The rich gobble taxes,
that’s why people are starving.

People rebel.
The rich oppress them,
that’s why people rebel.

People hold life cheap.
The rich make it too costly,
That’s why people hold it cheap.

But those who don’t live for the sake of living
are worth more than the wealth-seekers.

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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When Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he is neither romanticizing poverty nor attacking the rich. This is not a primarily economic statement, though economic proposals can be derived from it, and sure, it’s fair to say that Jesus was neither a neoliberal nor a commie. Jesus was not an economist—or rather, he called us to rethink what exactly an economy is.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 75: Daoist Economics”

Chapter 74: The Lord of Slaughter

“When people are normal and decent and
death-fearing,
there’s always an executioner.
To take the place of that executioner is to take the place of the great carpenter.
People who cut the greatest carpenter’s wood
seldom get off with their hands uncut.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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We often focus on Jesus’ metaphysical status as the son of God. We seldom attend to the details of his social status as a carpenter. The son of the greatest carpenter was a carpenter, a profession that demands an exacting attention to detail.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 74: Playing a Playing God”

Chapter 73: Daring to Do

“Brave daring leads to death.
Brave caution leads to life.
The choice can be the right one
or the wrong one.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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Today’s selection is a reminder that the mind is a wonderful thing to lose. It scrambles our conventional categories and catalyzes a number of confusions. Remember that from the Daoist—and Socratic—perspective, confusion is something to seek and exacerbate, not to flee and eradicate, because it is a birth pang of enlightenment. Confusion is not a sign that there is something wrong with you; it is a sign of what is wrong with you, and is therefore useful.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 73: Daring Do”

Chapter 72: The Right Fear

“When we don’t fear what we should fear
we are in fearful danger.
We ought not to live in narrow houses,
we ought not to do stupid work.
If we don’t accept stupidity
we won’t act stupidly.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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Aristotle famously defined virtue as a mean between two extremes, and courage as the mean between cowardice and recklessness. The courageous are not fearless. They feel fear toward the right objects, at the right time, in the right amount, in the right way.

The Obama doctrine on foreign policy was striking in its simplicity—it could have fit on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt—and, for a politician typically regarded as a liberal, ironically conservative:

“Don’t do stupid shit.”

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 72: Stupid Is As Stupid Was”

Chapter 71: The Sick Mind

“To know without knowing is best.
Not knowing without knowing it is sick.
To be sick of sickness is the only cure.
The wise aren’t sick.
They’re sick of sickness,
So they’re well.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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There is more to this than Socrates’ famous insight that his wisdom consisted in knowing what he did not know. That is what you might call existential ignorance. Socrates connected this with self-knowledge: he realized he was not just grasping some fact about his own psychology through introspection, but gaining insight into human nature and, beyond this, into the relationship between humanity and the cosmos. To “know thyself” is not to acquire comprehensive knowledge of your own psychology, but to discover where you are in the cosmic order.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 71: The Power of Ignorance”

Chapter 70: Being Obscure

“Words come from an ancestry,
Deeds from a mastery:
When these are unknown, so am I.
In my obscurity
Is my value.
That’s why the wise
Wear their jade under common clothes.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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Francis Fukuyama’s new book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, ends on a rather uninspiring note: a plea for moderation, a virtue whose personal and political value was not lost on the Greeks:

“This emphasis on moderation has been largely discarded in modern times: university graduates are routinely told to “follow their passions,” and people who live to excess are criticized only when it harms their physical health. Moderation implies and requires self-restraint, the deliberate effort not to seek the greatest emotion or the fullest accomplishment. Moderation is seen as an artificial constraint on the inner self, whose full expression is said to be the source of human happiness and achievement.”

The “inner self,” an idea that derives from the Christian tradition and attains its modern expression in Martin Luther, finds its political correlate in classical liberalism. The state protects my external self—life, liberty, and property—and leaves me free to pursue happiness and salvation however I please, so long as I do not obstruct others’ attempts to do the same. Central to this project is a healthy sense of boundary and differentiation between the private and the public spheres, between civil society and the state, between the personal and the political. Though connected, and in some ways overlapping, each sphere has a logic and integrity that commands respect. It is understood, for instance, that there are some things you simply do not do or say in public.

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 70: Moderate Modernity”

Chapter 69: Using Mystery

“The expert in warfare says:
Rather than dare make the attack
I’d take the attack;
Rather than dare advance an inch
I’d retreat a foot.
….
Being armed without weapons,
Giving the attacker no opponent.
Nothing’s worse than attacking what yields.
To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.”

~ Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, trans. Ursula K. Leguin (Shambhala, Boulder: 2019)

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There is a war going on, but not the one you think.

Yes, there is the kinetic war in Ukraine. Yes, it is part of a broader conflict we can fairly call a new Cold War between Russian and the West. Yes, that is part of a deeper struggle between democratic and authoritarian capitalism. Yes, overlapping with this is a Code War, a #spacerace to gain dominance in information and disinformation technologies. And yes, at an even subtler level, it is all part of the Hot War—a planetary drama about resources, energy, and the climate. What do you think powers all those computers?

Continue reading “Dao Du Jour II, Day 69: Immense (Culture) Wars of the Spirit”