A short essay and some late night thoughts on chapter 80 of the Dao De Jing. I will probably revisit this topic more in the future, and there is still plenty to say on this chapter, especially on the last line, which I am constantly puzzling over. But this is a 5 AM blog post, and while I am all for rigorous thinking there is a time and a place. This might be the place, but it certainly isn’t the time.
My music recommendation for today is Labor Days by Aesop Rock
The second to last chapter of the Daodejing (DDJ) portrays Laozi’s utopian vision. I’ve been thinking a lot about these lines and what kind of world they paint, especially in the world we live in right now. Obviously, today is very different from China over 2000 years ago but the instability and struggle between empires that constantly threatened and cost potentially millions of lives in the Warring States period seems very familiar to the world. It does not seem like a reach to assume that one of the driving factors behind the text as it is presented to us today, was to provide a path to end the violent wringing of blood from every vein of the land.
Small territory; few people.
Though the people know of engines and instruments, they don’t use them.
Though the people know of distant lands, they value life and don’t roam far.
Though they have ships and carts, they don’t ride.
Though they have weapons and armor, they don’t war.
They return to the time when tying knots in strings was all the help memory needed.
The food, delicious; the clothes, beautiful; the houses, secure; the customs, joyous.
Dogs bark and roosters crow across borders;
The people of neighboring states, however, never meet even unto death.
~ Laozi’s Dao De Jing: A New Interpretation for a Transformative Time by Ken Liu
What seems to be at first glance a sort of isolationism and primitivism is undercut by the element of choice. The people of this land know how things work, they are aware of technological advancements and techniques, they may even develop new ones, but they choose not to use them.
A recurring theme of the Daodejing that is difficult to grasp from the perspective of western philosophy is the existence of such a thing as the dao that can be acted in accordance with, that may provide a path, but does not provide a teleology. This is similar to the idea of a horizon of possibility that I think I’ve written about somewhere before. As the DDJ repeatedly states: There is no goal to head towards. There are simply paths of least resistance to follow. I forgot where I read this, but I’ve seen Laozi described as the most indifferent Philosopher. He does not make a case for his arguments or attempt to justify them, or even try to convince you of the existence of the dao. This refusal can seem like mysticism, but I don’t think that is the case. The dao doesn’t need to be proven because the whole word is a placeholder for the way things change when not being forced into shape. A flower blooms whether you watch it or not. The water flows on and you never step into the same river twice. These are not things to be proven. Even the progress that is made scientifically to describe theses processes in more detail still has underneath those mechanisms the simple truth that they unfold and occur everywhere and ceaselessly. There is no intelligent design hidden in that philosophy, no Laozi’s wager. The text asks you to listen and stay, or to leave it. The choice remains yours.
And this is what this passage picks up. It’s about choice and desire. It’s about least resistance and the path of the water. War is exhausting. It is effort. It is anxiety and death. An affront to life and comfort. No one would choose it. Even if the knowledge of it existed. So too the second line: the effort and labor exerted by us today towards industry and production of goods, towards efficiency is immense. The tools we use make production cheaper, faster, more effective, but they also alienate and obscure the effort that goes into producing the machines, extracting the resources, making the products that seem so effortless to consume.
To construct a tank or a bomber was so difficult and so unnecessary that it really cannot be spoken of in terms of the Valley economy. After all, the cost of making maintaining, fuelling, and operating such machines at the very height of the Industrial Age was incalculable, impoverishing the planet’s substance forever and requiring the great majority of human kind to live in servitude and poverty. ~Always Coming Home. p.380, Ursula K. Le Guin1
I think that is what this chapter is primarily about. It asks of us to consider what we have in our lives that we do not actively choose. What we have been coerced into by social conventions, morality, rulers, and “the grind”2. It’s asking us: What would you actually choose, free of those coercions? What efforts would you actually exert?
Further Questions
- If we read different translations, do other points crystallize out of the text?
- Why does the text presuppose a state in the first place? Historical context aside3.
- As opposed to other chapters, there is no mention of direct leader here.
- What is anarchy if not a world where everyone leads themselves?
- That last line.
Further Reading
- Always Coming Home. Le Guin, Ursula
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One of my favorite books is “Always Coming Home” by Ursula K. Le Guin. She has described herself as an “unconsistent daoist and a consistent un-christian”. She has ina similar way stated that she greatly sympathizes with anarchism, but wouldn’t claim herself to be one for the respect of what goes into that label, though she is humbled if anarchists claim her as one of their own. I like this unwillingness of hers to be anything. Especially a capital A Anarchist or a capital D Daoist. It makes her more of both in my eyes. Anyway: The Kesh, the post post-apocalypse people “Always Coming Home” is about, seem to directly follow the path laid out in chapter 80 of the Dao De Jing. There are a lot of themes of returning, coming and going, these cycling journeys that are the motor of subtle change. To me the book is a focal point and a conversation with the Daodejing. It weaves back and forth through time and stitches together those things held onto in Warring States China, through the Empires of now, their inevitable downfall, and the same lessons still being learned and relearned in the year 20000 of the novel. I think this excerpt illustrates my point. ↩︎
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I’m officially going to use this as the opposite of wu wei or the principle of inaction. “The grind” or “grind culture” is the epitome of trying to force certain circumstances into existence to the detriment of one’s own life and health. ↩︎
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For a note on reading the Daodejing in or outside of its historical context see Michael LaFargue’s “Recovering the Dao De Jing” ↩︎