OSRS: A Brief Introduction

OSRS is often lovingly referred to as a “medieval fantasy clicker game,” and as any long-time player will remark, one never quits the game, but rather takes breaks. It has this tendency to burrow its way into one’s life, subject one to the most potent mind control imaginable, then make leave without an utterance. Speaking as an on-and-off player for the past eighteen years, it may be one of the greatest games ever created.

OSRS was created years after the original RuneScape 2 introduced the massively unpopular Evolution of Combat (EoC) update, paving the way to what is now known as RuneScape 3 (RS3), a version of RuneScape that coexists with OSRS, both designed and managed by the games company Jagex.

RS3 retained a decent number of players from RuneScape, but ultimately saw a drastic reduction in player count as everyone shifted their attention to other games, such as Counter-Strike, League of Legends, or other popular, upcoming games of the time. During this same period, dedicated RuneScape fans immigrated to private servers - independent servers set up through third party game clients - that used an earlier version of the game, allowing those in the know to reclaim the game they lost to a cataclysmic update.

However, upon learning of these private servers, Jagex spared no effort in bringing about their end, eventually getting them shut down through legal pressure. This resulted in a wave of impassioned backlash, to which Jagex, suffering from deflated coffers, made an offer: if enough of the playerbase wanted the older version, they would bring it back based off a backup snapshot of RuneScape as it was in 2007. Though the initial proposal just barely fell short of its stated goal of 500,000 votes, Jagex astutely responded to the popularity of the proposal. On February 22, 2013, OSRS was born.1

In recent years, the game has expanded beyond the paltry limits of its initial form; there are new continents, quests, achievements, skills, playstyles, interactions... OSRS is still primarily accessed through a third-party client, though the developer works closely with Jagex. This client offers all types of modifications to the game interface, such as the quest helper or inventory setup plugins, which enhance the gameplay experience or make up for player limitations. With frequent updates, a robust voting system, and close communication between developers and players, OSRS is a game lifted by the winds of nostalgia and propelled by the engine of possibility.

What is the point of OSRS?

A game is ultimately meant to be fun, by one definition or another. This notion is often challenged through games such as Pathologic, in which the dreary suffering from the bleak setting seeps into the clumsy controls, or in any of the FromSoft games, where lessons masquerading as death are the core gameplay loop. These games are often posited as masochism simulators, something I disagree with. The joy of Pathologic is found in its failure; if one maintains a curious, sharp mind, mysteries become revealed as one passes the days, and a complex web of hidden interacting forces shows its face for but a second - here is the hook. It then takes you on a journey of discovery, finding hope despite suffering while sketching out the mind-twisting history of the town. FromSoft games, such as Dark Souls or Elden Ring, deliver players the experience of overcoming incredible adversity in grand scale through honed skill. One must survive, learn, be crafty and precise; in short, it demands perfection, and rising up to meet its demands is an unbelievable high.

So, what does OSRS do for the player?

Put briefly, it gives the player open-ended, self-determined, consistent, and permanent progress mixed with games of chance and bouts of luck.

Viewed cynically, this could be seen as an addictive cycle of “number go up,” a phrase used to refer to the basic satisfaction of simulated achievement, a series of achievements that will essentially be fruitless once the inevitable death of the game arrives, a reminder of years spent chasing and attaining nothing real.

I do not view it this way. I figure if one’s relationship with a game does not become addictive and brings joy in some form, then it is not a waste of time. OSRS has brought me relaxation, challenge, satisfaction, frustration, and friends; it is a vibrant arena of self-expression. Besides, what achievement lasts forever? All things in life are transitory. If OSRS achievement does not fall within your value system, then set it down and chase after that which is the apple to your eye. I would never sacrifice a more tangible “real life” achievement for something in OSRS, but I’ll be damned if I don’t look back at what I have built in-game with incredible pride.

Progress: Time and Probability

This is where the beauty of OSRS shines through - progress, and its approach to such. Everyone has a set of 24 individual skills, which can be generalized into 7 (arguably 8) combat skills and 17 “skilling” skills, of which the latter contains further sub-categories. Each account begins their journey at level 1 in each of the skills except Hitpoints, which is at 10 by default. Each level increases up to 99, which requires just over 13 million experience (XP). This is the case for each skill, meaning that to bring each skill up to 99, a player needs to accumulate just under 313 million XP at minimum. Many players set maxing an account - attaining 99 in each skill - as a lofty long-term goal, one which requires multiple years of healthy, balanced playtime to achieve. Some players have turned maxing into a speedrun.

Every skill starts off easy. The player only needs 83 XP to reach level 2, which is completed within a mere few actions. For example, a player can reach enemy goblins within about 15 seconds after completing the tutorial. Killing four goblins and landing one hit on the fifth is all it takes to reach level 2. Level 3 requires killing four goblins and landing three hits. Level 4 demands the blood of five goblins to stain the soil, and so on.

If we keep scaling up, the time-sink nature of the game reveals itself: if one were insane enough to only kill goblins until level 99, they would need to kill 651,721 goblins, with the stretch from 98 to 99 itself requiring 61,441 goblins meet their end. This is, of course, an utterly absurd (and dull) way to play the game, but a totally viable path nonetheless.

The bottom line is: killing 651,721 goblins, without any external interference, will ALWAYS result in level 99 - it is consistent.

To further complicate things with a fun thought experiment, we can introduce time and choice of weaponry to the equation. Assuming a player can one-hit goblins with perfect accuracy and no downtime between kills (not feasible, but sets a base time), choice in weaponry can impact how much time this arduous goal needs to complete. If we compare two weapons, a scimitar and a longsword, we will discover that the former attacks every 2.4 seconds and the latter every 3 seconds, effectively adding 0.6 seconds to each kill. If 651,721 goblin kills are needed, then the scimitar can complete the task in around 1.5 million seconds, which translates to 434 hours, or 18 days. The longsword needs 543 hours, or around 23 days. Remember - this is 23 days of in-game playtime with zero downtime between kills, not a nerdy three week bender in April.

Congratulations! After spending a ridiculously long period of time in the same spot engaging with the lowest-level content in the game, you have now achieved ONE 99. Only 23 more to go - keep it up, gamer!

Now, unless the player is ridiculously masochistic (see: Limpwurt), level progression does not follow this path. As one levels up, a larger variety of resources are unlocked, which provide higher XP rates, better rewards, and alternative gameplay styles. One can play mini-games - structured activities with their own rules within the “big” game - play solo, with friends, and so on. Some skills level relatively quickly: Firemaking and Cooking are notorious for their easy 99s, as the best high-intensity methods of training can net the player upwards of 800,000 XP per hour, though the XP/hr is more likely to land between 200-350k for less sweaty methods. Some skills are much slower, averaging 20-75k XP/hr, demanding hundreds of hours to master.

Skills also tend to follow what can be called an activity-intensity scale, which operates under a simple tenet: the more intense a training method is, the higher its XP rate is. Training methods are split into high, medium, and low intensity brackets, as well as an additional training mode, AFK (away from keyboard).

High-intensity methods require the most active play with high APM (actions per minute - basically, clicking a lot), focus, and precision. Killing difficult bosses, completing raids, and some minigames, among other activities, fall under this category. Generally, these methods give the best loot and gatekeep the most powerful armor, weapons, and other items in the game. They also tend to give the highest XP rate and a ton of money, being an all-around boon for the active player.

As we move downwards, training methods tend to relinquish one or more of these qualities. Some retain mid-high APM but require no focus or precision and some lower APM and focus to the minimum. As APM and focus decrease, rewards and XP typically follow suit. Mid-high APM activities with little focus or precision include some Thieving training methods, Agility courses, and most of Herblore. Every skill or activity sacrifices something for another and are all available, valid means of training.

AFK training methods are exactly as presented - one can stand up and walk away from their keyboard and still be training. Some activities, like the Gemstone Crab, require one click every ten minutes. Shooting Stars are similar - they are up to nine-tiered meteorites that crash in specific locations at specific but randomized times used to train Mining. Each layer crumbles after seven minutes, leading to a super chilled-out training experience.

With 24 skills to train, each with training methods ranging from at least high-intensity to low-intensity, and often with AFK options, there is never nothing to do. And, since XP is aggregate, progress is never lost; in other words, low-intensity training is just as valuable as high-intensity, and each can be easily accessed depending on player preference, altered according to real life responsibilities. This cumulates into a simple, but powerful hook: no matter what, when or how you are playing, you are moving forward in an area of your own choice.

However, the game provides a fundamental framework: an customizable branching series of mountain trails leading to a self-determined summit. For example, a player can set a mid-level goal of gathering a set of powerful armor, which can only be attained through defeating a boss - a particularly tough enemy, typically with unique items that cannot be acquiesced through any other method. To defeat this boss, they need to fulfill prerequisite soft and hard requirements, such as getting their hands on armor, weapons, food, and potions that increase rate of success (soft requirement) and training combat or completing a quest that unlocks the ability to even enter the boss’ domain (hard requirement). Each of these prerequisite requirements have their own set of prerequisite requirements, such as fundamental quests, lower level weapons/armor, and so on. In essence, hard requirements gatekeep content while soft requirements make engaging with that content easier.

Weapons and armor have hard requirements based on Attack and Defence levels, respectively, while food and potions can either be locked behind hard Cooking or Herblore requirements, respectively. Food and potions can be mitigated by the soft requirement of having enough gold pieces (GP) to purchase them. As such, if a player wants to do something, they need to build their way up using time, skill, and often GP.

The boss will not simply hand over the object of the player’s avarice, this powerful armor, without a fight. Once the mechanics of the fight are mastered, the true fight isn’t the actual combat, but rather facing the futility of subjecting oneself to the “RNG gods,” better understood as droprate. This boss has a number of items that the player can receive upon defeating it. The item that is dropped is determined by how many rolls there are (will the boss drop one item or five?) and the droprate of all the items.

It can be viewed as a wheel being spun with each potential item taking up a determined proportion of the wheel. Each kill of the boss counts as one spin. If a player spins the wheel enough times, landing on the desired drop is statistically inevitable, though it can be a long, difficult process. Some desirable items have a droprate reaching as high as 1/5000 (with many even higher, but these trend towards the cosmetic), implying 5000 kills are needed to get one drop.

Of course, probability is not so straightforward, so the true 50/50 mark of the item dropping occurs around 3500 kills, but outliers exist, and this is never more apparent than being victimized by bad luck. Some will get their desired drop on the first kill at a 0.02% chance, some will put their nose to the grindstone and get it at 8000 kills (79.8% chance), and some will give up after not seeing anything at 10,000 kills.

To put time in perspective, in the perfect conditions described above, killing 3500 goblins takes 3.5 hours to complete, which would only reach 50/50 chance of a 1/5000 drop. If we assume a boss kill takes anywhere from 2.5 to 5 minutes, reaching a 50/50 chance on a 1/5000 droprate item will take 146-292 hours, NOT including recovery, restocking, and travel time. This is an extreme case, but one which clearly demonstrates the stakes and dedication necessary to reach certain milestones in account progression. Most examples are far more mild than this, requiring a fraction of the hours spent, though the time spent drop hunting is variable depending on luck.

Even if a player reaches the upper echelons of wealth and status, there often remains something elusive they have yet to complete, a prize frequently gatekept in the form of mega-rare drops. One example is Third Age gear, a set of items that can only be claimed piece by piece at a rate of 1/313,168 through the most difficult tier of clue scrolls, Master clues.

Clue scrolls (split into beginner, easy, medium, hard, elite, and master) are a medium-rarity item dropped by various creatures, from which Master clues drop at a medium-rarity rate. To receieve a Master clue, players must complete lower tier clues and hope they get lucky - the rates aren’t too bad, though.

Players have to complete upwards of eight successive challenges of variable difficulty to receive a casket, which then has a 1/313,168 chance of dropping a mega-rare Third Age item. These items are only as good as mid-level gear, so they’re purely for the flex. Attaining a single Master clue is a hearty endeavor, as it may require other rare items, high-level skills, or rewards from other achievements, and completing all eight steps is time-consuming. If one wants to get the item and have a permanent record of their immense fortune, the item must be received through this method; buying it won’t count. This is to say, even when you “beat the game,” you haven’t beaten the game.

Thus, in the long-term, the game is played out as an endless series of matryoshka-esque tasks interspersed with bouts of fortune and misfortune, all on the marathon quest of moving forward.

One Small Favour and the Gameplay Experience

I both appreciate and commend your patience and interest, dear reader. You would make a fantastic OSRS player.

The titular One Small Favour is a quest notorious both for its light-hearted, self-aware humor and bordering-on-infuriating tedium, leaving a poor impression on the majority of players, if not inflicting psychological trauma. However, there is a counter-current opinion that I will advocate for here: One Small Favour is a great quest and a perfect microcosm of OSRS. Reading the quest description, we can get a good feel for its character:

If you’re new to Shilo Village after solving the mystery (or even if you did it some time ago), you may like to check out Yanni Salika’s antiques shop.

He’s a busy chap, revamping antique items, checking out new stock from potential adventurers and maybe he’ll have a small⁽¹⁾ favour to ask of you? Probably nothing particularly large, Yanni isn’t a demanding⁽²⁾ person, should hardly take you any time⁽³⁾ at all really, something to do when you have a spare moment.

That’s assuming there aren’t any complications.

1: - Perception of the word “small” may be open to interpretation.

2: - In a recent vote, Yanni Salika was only voted the second most demanding person in Shilo Village.

3: - As everyone knows, time is relative.2

The description carries a tongue-in-cheek, whimsical tone and an underlying vague threat of (potentially infuriating) inconvenience. It’s posed as a small task, that’s all - a one-and-done, easy-peasy. It won’t take much time at all, but remember - time is relative! Don’t worry too much about it. It’s like Joe on a Boat asking you to trust him - don’t drink the RC Cola.

The quest is deceptively (or not-so-deceptively?) simple. All you have to do is run Yanni a quick little errand. He’s quite busy, you see, and all he needs is a few red mahogany logs from a forester just outside of town. So, you head out of town and find this forester, who happens to be standing a few steps away from the gate - nice! As it turns out, he would love to give you some red mahogany logs, but your timing is a bit unfortunate - mahogany is a hardwood and his axe is dull... Maybe you could help him get it sharpened? The boat captain knows a guy.

I suppose, you respond, and trek over to the boat captain, this time a tad longer of a walk. The captain convinces you to take his boat to a port on the other side of the world to find an axe sharpening specialist. After a lovely ramble over the sea, you make landfall and go looking for this specialist. Unfortunately, the specialist is currently experiencing a panic attack triggered by his friend being convicted of some crime, and as such, is too deep in the throes of distress to lend a hand.

Well, unless you agree to help him, of course!

You walk to the local potion shop a town over to find a witch the axe specialist mentioned could track down his persecuted friend. She is much more put together, blessing you a brief moment a respite as she agrees to play the part of witness in his court case.

Of course, you’ll have to free her assistant to earn this service, who is currently being held in a cage in the underground base of a local anti-monster racist cult, whose captor, upon your arrival, asks you to...

Wondering how long this quest will take, you take a quick peek at a guide.

Ah, step 4 of 21.

Oh, and once you reach the 21^st NPC, you have to work backwards, delivering each item to each NPC one by one.

One Small Favour takes the player on a wild goose chase, collecting items for arbitrarily selected NPCs, sometimes without clearly stating who to seek out, sometimes without explicitly stating which items they need, sometimes sending the player into labyrinthine, perilous cave systems, and sometimes summoning a gang of dwarf goons to kick their shins in. Task after task pile on top of each other, hiding within one another, with one ultimate goal resting so patiently in the center, distant and forgotten:

Yanni needs some damn red mahogany logs.

As a vast world of opportunity unfurls before the eyes of a new account, shining with aspiration, thoughts dart to and fro, and a plan begins to take form. Should this account train combat first? Or should I go fishing first? I need food. What is my current goal? What should I do to progress the account?

Start with something simple, attainable. I want to kill a dragon.

What do I need to kill a dragon? Work backwards.

First, I need a strong set of armor and a solid weapon. To get that, I need to kill certain monsters or muster up enough money to buy everything. I can get money by killing monsters, which will level up my combat skills, allowing me to kill a dragon - a win-win!

But I want to kill them quickly and kill stronger monsters for better loot and faster XP. For a better weapon, I need to level Attack, but I can level that more quickly if I first level up Strength for higher hits. To wear the armor, I also need to train Defence.

A decent way to train Defence is through quests - what do I need for the quests? One quest requires Woodcutting levels (attainable through a different, easier quest) and Thieving - I’ll train that, too.

In a blur, I find myself jumping between pickpocketing men and killing goblins before heading over to the trees to cut some logs. I level woodcutting up to 13, two levels away from being able to unlock oak trees. May as well get 15 and chop a few!

Filling up my inventory oak logs, my Woodcutting impulses have been satiated. I run back to the goblin hut to train up combat for a spell. It’s a bit of a shame to be missing out on Slayer, though - a skill which is leveled up through killing assigned monsters - while training combat, so may as well kill two birds with one stone.

I trek across the map to find a Slayer Master who will give me a task; he judges rats as an appropriate endeavor, but where are they? Lugging my over-encumbered inventory and hefty gear to the rat pit and back again, my run energy depletes in no time flat, protracting the journey by an intolerable margin. Luckily, the Agility skill is a relatively convenient and easy solve.

After banking all my items and running a few laps of rooftop agility courses, my run energy woes should be mitigated. Jumping off the eave of the final house, feet kissing the digital path, I suddenly realize,

I was trying to kill a dragon!

One Small Favour: RuneScape within RuneScape within Life

One Small Favour is an almost universally detested quest, and also reflects the realities of the core gameplay loop of OSRS. Players will become livid at the arbitrary, thoughtless requests of useless NPCs, though the game, when viewed as a smaller piece of one’s broader life, essentially demands the same.

One Small Favour hides tasks within tasks, then assigns sub-tasks, forcing the player to go on meandering tangents, backtrack, decode a riddle or two, and come up with solutions. OSRS is a game of setting tasks, splitting them into sub-tasks, willfully going on (occasionally patience-shattering) excursions, backtracking once requirements are met, learning the riddle-like patterns of bosses, all while combing out solutions to achieve, learn, and explore.

More than anything, One Small Favour is largely pointless; it gives a mediocre, obsolete reward, a meager nibble of XP, and unlocks a few non-vital quests. Likewise, the player’s dedication to completing the quest is largely pointless. With the exception of endgame there-is-nothing-left-to-do type achievements, it doesn’t progress an account much at all, certainly not enough to justify the headache.

Honestly, playing OSRS is ultimately pretty pointless, too.

Looking at the bigger picture, what is even the point of account progression? Why bother putting oneself through everything if it’s so tedious and irritating - especially if nothing tangible is gained in the material world? There will be nothing left behind to celebrate. All of the hours, days, weeks, years… gone, reduced to atoms.

To some, this is argument enough. If the game renders you frustrated and dissatisfied, the best move is to put it down. If you have goals out there: chase after your dreams, tiger.

Sometimes the game pisses me off, too. I have goals that take precedence over OSRS dreams. I would go so far to argue that real life goals are more difficult and more vulnerable to the whims of random elements of a workplace, a community, or an environment. It can be unstable, unfair, and unpredictable; worse, consequences in the real world can actually threaten your health and livelihood.

One Small Favour is indeed a microcosm of OSRS: an amusing but needless time waste. But, thinking about it, One Small Favour is almost more emblematic of real life responsibilities - endless, sometimes pointless, usually low in autonomy, and the rewards aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

The difference is that, in RuneScape, you can choose not to run errands.

Subscribe now

If you have made it this far, thank you for the read! This article is the culmination of some thoughts and feelings I’ve been cooking about my current obsession. I hope the technical breakdowns of basic in the beginning/middle were interesting - I did my best to simplify and tie them into the broader message. I wanted to bring together technical elements, a subjective perspective of playing the game, a bit of historical context, and a kinda-philosophical reflection into one piece. It was incredibly enjoyable, and I’m glad to be posting this article.

Thank you again!

If you are interested in OSRS, there are a few spectacular labor-of-love YouTube videos, as below:

Mote Plox - RuneScape Historical Timeline 1998 - 2020

Marstead - RuneScape is Awesome, And Here's Why

Image References:

1. Gratton, K. (2025, October 24). “A historic moment”: Old school runescape will get its first new skill in 12 years. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/old-school-runescape-new-skill-sailing/

2. Theoatrix. (2022, December 19). Fastest fishing XP in OSRS. OSRS Tips and Tricks. https://www.theoatrix.net/post/fastest-fishing-xp-in-osrs

3. The skills interface. (2026). OSRS Wiki. Retrieved February 28, 2026, from https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Skills#/media/File:Skills_tab.png.

4. Rune scimitar equipped female. (n.d.-c). OSRS Wiki. Retrieved February 28, 2026, from https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Rune_scimitar#/media/File:Rune_scimitar_equipped_female.png.

5. Blackjacking in action. (n.d.-a). OSRS Wiki. Retrieved February 28, 2026, from https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Thieving_training#/media/File:Blackjack_demo.gif.

6. Gemstone Crab. (n.d.-b). OSRS Wiki. Retrieved February 28, 2026, from https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Gemstone_Crab#/media/File:Gemstone_Crab.png.

7. Vorkath - OSRS Wiki. Old School RuneScape Wiki. (n.d.). https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Vorkath

8. Clue scroll (hard) detail. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2026, from https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Clue_scroll_(hard)#/media/File:Clue_scroll_(hard)_detail.png.

9. One small favour - OSRS Wiki. Old School RuneScape Wiki. (n.d.). https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/One_Small_Favour

I always admired his hands. Their skin was thick and coarse, but not unpleasant to the touch; they were gentle though tough, shaped by decades of working with the ground. Strong, but kind, bulky and nimble. They could till soil and clay, chop wood, tame a bestial machine, while possessing a touch light enough to pluck delicate berries off the vine or work with screws so small he could fit three on a pinky nail. His middle knuckles jutted out, a slightly bulbous burl on an otherwise lithe sapling, casting a unique silhouette, giving the impression of distributed strength.

My fingers have oversized middle knuckles, too, but they’re soft and thin. I have always thought myself lucky to have such balanced hands, both aesthetic and pragmatic. I sometimes hold one up, examining its shape and bends, and seeing a vague impression of his hands. They’re close, but not quite right. They’re not his; they lack a rugged character. I am lucky to have softer hands, the result of a different set of struggles, but I have always wanted his. His were reliable, competent, and open, wrinkled with the wisdom of a lifetime, tested by its tribulations, both gifting and commanding respect without expecting it in return. They were worthy of admiration.

On a call with my mom, she commented on the way he would jostle up and down in his jolly giggle fits, uncontrollable bouts of laughter borne from a tickled soul. My brother laughs the same way when you find him in good spirits. It’s a laugh that carries the torso, rising from the gut, shoulders bouncing and face squinched.

I can’t stop wondering what will become of his garden. It used to be quite large, housing a dozen or more types of vegetables and fruits; he grew potatoes, asparagus, tomatoes (the staple), raspberries, grapes, cantaloupes, and cabbage, weaving a daily routine around self-sustenance and cultivation. This year, my mom requested he save a row for her to plant potatoes, to which he obliged. They were her potatoes, but his responsibility, and he ensured their health with perhaps greater care than he would his own plants. By now, they’re dug up and distributed, enough to last a few months with proper rationing.

The garden fed grandpa, grandma, and whoever they hosted throughout the year. They used every part of the plant, savoring the drippiness of fresh fruit, squeezing grapes into juice, canning and snacking on tomatoes… A trip to grandma’s was a feast, a tradition which will continue, but without the same gusto of garden potatoes or fresh cherry tomatoes. I never loved the taste of tomatoes, but that garden, sunbaked and loamy, made them palatable.

Grandpa would collect sticks and toss them into a pile on the second acre, which would slowly gain mass as months passed by. Once large enough, he would burn them, a massive pyre roaring, purring, and then whimpering, leaving behind a ceremonial circle of ash. The sticks will continue to be picked up; as he aged, chores became burdensome for grandpa, so my aunt hired a service to lend assistance. The pile was his to burn, however, a task to which he remained loyal. Without him, who is right to carry out this duty? Maybe the lawn service will dispose of the sticks their own way. Maybe there was a last burn.

He was a simple man, a true man. He lived his entire life within a few miles of the home he died in. He was rooted, digging deep into the earth, stable and consistent, focused on the fundament. He did as he ought and didn’t ask for more; some might think this a naïve ethic in a cruel world, but it is softness that soothes anger and kindness that dissolves enmity.

He saw little of the world, with his most daring travels being a pair of cruises touring Alaska. Yet he reveled in his diaspora moving about in the world, finding joy in his “family in China,” eyes wide when listening to our stories. He knew well and loved deeply his corner of the world. He need not see it all, but rather the wimpy Crimson King sapling slowly growing into its stalwart trunk and magnificent canopy. His was a life of writing history; in all things around him lived his spirit. Life shines in its mundanity. It carries a passion unknown that guides the soul, teaching the eyes to see beyond the veil.

Grandpa, more so than any great man, lived life. Hardship molded his hands, working them into masters of their environment. He gifted his laughter, his care, and his camaraderie upon those blessed by his presence. His humanity was unwavering, and though unassuming in appearance, his depth imperceptible. He arrived without trouble and left without a fuss.

I stare at my hands. They seem so small.

Convenience is a word I have come to despise. Frankly, I don’t just hate the word, but rather grow weary of its primary station in society. Everything everywhere seems to be centered around convenience, with ease of living being an ultimate good, the One that redeems us all.

In some cases, this is a fair objective. If we wish to educate, we should give any and all the opportunity to become educated. If we want diversity in public spaces, convenience will allow any and all to partake. If we want effective services, we should make them easily accessible and minimize complications during various processes. The convenience of buying a bottle of water at a nearby store will trump the arduous journey to a distant well. Air conditioning has become a necessary amenity.

But convenience is nefarious. It whittles away at our patience, it accelerates our modern tendency to commercialize, it lends to commodification of experiences, it conditions us to become creatures of mostly-unchecked petty desire. For the most part, we can get what we want when we want with precision and expedition. In such conditions, minor lapses of convenience, that is, postponed desire fulfillment, can become rage-inducing. When we are stripped of our access to instant comfort, we come to face the prospect of discomfort, towards which our tolerance has been eroded to near nothing.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley speaks of the dangers of convenience becoming a core pillar of society, albeit with great imagination and exaggeration. Orgy-porgies, the Feelies, and soma are the pinnacle of convenience; there needn’t be the awkward struggle of dating, there is no need to engage with entertainment, and there is never a need to feel sad. All of these terrible inconveniences - sadness, boredom, jealousy - and their derivative insights into human life are eliminated. But without experiencing sadness, what value does happiness have? Is happiness possible without knowing sadness? Regardless, what the people of New London and the future world seep themselves in is not happiness, but rather its shallow cousin, pleasure. They have sunken into an intoxicating hedonism, one which caters to any whim, necessary or not, and muffles the soul, preventing divergence from the eternal imperative of pleasure seeking. If any thought beyond the superficial is reflexively stamped down before it bears fruit, then there is nothing but material comfort to turn to, the very comfort that doesn’t merely prevent reflection, but demands one stifle their own development.

[Spoilers!] The end of the novel reflects something encountered more and more over the years: the commodification and sensationalization of the now-novel at the expense of its mundaneness. John the Savage, a naturally birthed young man (a major taboo), after doing his best to acclimate to the soulless culture of the new world, runs away to ruins just outside the city in an attempt to reclaim his humanity through solitary self-sustenance, rejecting the addiction to immediate carnal pleasures society enforces. In no time, the news of the Savage and his primitive lifestyle reaches the city and travelers come in droves to gawk at him, tossing soma and other treats at him, invading his space and trying to seduce him. John has little tolerance for his commodification, and lamenting his naivety, ends his life.

We see echoes of this death of nature reverberating in our modern world. In many cases, the supposed turn towards reinvigorating and conserving nature tends to have a practical, anthropocentric twist. So often do we reduce any movement, such as reforestation, to its absolute base function and call it good. For example, reforestation around Inner Mongolia or Beijing and the surrounding areas is seen as an unequivocal good. I am not here to deny such claims, to my begrudging admission, as more forest cover will result in net positives for the soil and creatures of the land. But these are not done for the good of the creatures; they are an afterthought, a lovely benefit on top of the more central goal of preventing erosion and desertification. These are mostly neutral phenomena, the natural result of changing ecosystems. Granted, these changes are mostly spurred by human excess, and thus can be viewed as unnatural, but the solution still fails to remove humans from the focal point. We prevent desertification because it would be disastrous for cities; we work to undo our own failures, not out of deep-seated respect for nature. It is still a tool of environmental control. This is a contentious subject, as those planting trees can likewise be seen as the yin to the yang of deforestation around the world, a balancing force. I would attest that most who participate are likely doing it out of the good of their hearts, but that does not change the fact that the program they work for does not necessarily carry the same romantic sentiment.

Another example that rubs me the wrong way is the flight of the cranes in Zhalong Natural Reserve. The reserve itself is magnificent; it acts as a home for migratory birds and is an optimal breeding grounds for a few of its three hundred species. It’s largely untouched, managed only to prevent external interference, with preservation at its core. Even in such a place, commodification of experience finds ample room to expand. A group of red-crowned cranes is held in captivity for conservation purposes, which is a complicated topic itself, but generally reasonable. These cranes have been trained to fly between different stations over a popular path in the reserve to provide an exhilarating experience for visitors. Rather than allowing them to roam free, they are used to promote an experience, posed for pictures to be uploaded onto social media. This is not “nature” - it is not exploring the outdoors in hope of a serendipitous sighting or surveying an area for signs of life, but rather a convenient, effort-free delivering of a “nature experience.” There is no seeking the animal out, sneakily catching it in its daily goings-on, gawking in awe of its beauty. There is no work - one goes to the reserve expecting a thrill, like going to an amusement park, and promptly fails to enjoy it more thoroughly by viewing it through the screen of a phone. The phone records it all; who needs to remember when we’ve got an album to scroll through? It’s so convenient - even memory isn’t needed!

As far as typical treatment of animals is concerned, this is neutral, if not kind. Maybe it sounds nitpicky, but these things bother me. To me, a walk in a reserve is an act taken for its own sake, carrying the hope of coming across spontaneous beauty, not snapping photos of canned experiences. These canned experiences seem to dominate so much of what is available to us today. Another natural park I went to - one with relatively significant cultural value - had a miniature theme park nestled between trees, carefully planted in straight lines and painted white halfway up the trunk. Down the path was a lake, surrounded by cattails and tall grasses and discarded paper and plastic coffee cups. Castle ruins are opened to commercial interests; on the stalwart castle walls, you can not only enjoy a view of the city, but also the guilty pleasure of a cheap hot dog as speakers blast repetitive advertisements for unnecessary trinkets without end. Call me puritan, but I long for an experience that isn’t bombarded with sales, mascots, cheap products, canned experiences, and photos upon photos. This isn’t to call out photography as an art or hobby, but rather that nagging impulse to take a picture of anything and everything at the expense of living in the moment.

Convenience has this tricky tendency, as it extends into every realm within our lives, to instill a notion that everything should, in some way, be in service to us. Things previously convenient, now demanding a bit of effort, can create meltdown and outrage; this is understandable when living in such demanding societies, but this very demand spawns from a worship of efficiency. When efficiency is prized above all else, corners are cut and processes are simplified, and as we see from all the conveniences of calorie counters, daily trackers, performance indexes, and the like, activities in which to find joy or express creativity or vigor are reduced to numbers and goals; we become mechanistic, striving for a smooth ride in all things, and then become accustomed to it. It is a double blow - we soften ourselves and reduce ourselves to metrics, a nefarious frame of mind that we extend to the rest of the world. Though we no longer propagate the extreme anthropocentric fervor of early industrialists, the remnants of that ideology remain, taking on a new form as individuated convenience-seeking and excessive self-monitoring.

Any-and-everything is dealt with through phones. The grocery store is open with reasonable, if not generous hours, but it’s easier to order from an app. The app seldom provides the full array of products, nor can one personally pick fresh fruits, vegetables, or meat, but one’s front door never need open until the delivery guy comes ringing. Paperwork is done through apps, sparing the painful experience of in-person bureaucracy. Of course, if a document is slightly off or one is of special status, troubleshooting is more difficult and often requires a visit to the office anyhow. Payments are all completed with a quick scan of a QR code, but now battery management is an ever-present concern, or an external battery adds unnecessary weight to an ideally light pocket.

Share

Simply having a phone as the core hub for everything in social life forces one to use it with increasing frequency. Using it more frequently, one becomes accustomed to the screen and begins looking for something to keep the brain occupied. Social media often fills this role, but it could be any number of things. One returns to these distractions over and over; paying for a meal can turn into a half-hour doomscroll session; scanning a code to get on the metro is the foot in the door for enticing content to barge its way in. The subway is boring, anyway! Never a moment without sensation.

I know multiple people who use their face to pay for nearly everything, where applicable. Not everywhere has face-scanning tech for payment - how inconvenient! - so they must settle for their phone scanning their face to pay through an app. They scan their face at metro station vending machines, at arcade coin dispensers, and at restaurants. The same system carries this data from place to place, all shared in one central system. Is it convenient? Without a doubt. It’s even more convenient than scanning a QR. There is no need for a wallet, let alone a phone; the world sees you and consequently opens doors. But we live in a world of constant surveillance, and the data you provide these scanners can and, almost without a doubt, is being used to train incredible face recognition technology, which is in turn tested out in public.

LLMs and other AI innovations are quickly replacing some of our more basic artistic drives. Students turn to ChatGPT or Deepseek to write essays, AI slop is dumped into every social media platform in great bucketfuls, and those who use these conveniently claim the title of writer or artist. In some cases, I can see the appeal; in fact, I would argue that AI is a welcome invention in reducing effort spent on pointless communication. It cannot, however, meaningfully replace necessary communication. Rejecting thought, students turn towards LLMs to write for them; long gone are the days of actually reading, actually thinking and analyzing, actually honing the craft. Students have arguably been doing this since the advent of learning, but the process of slacking involved a bit of research, summarization, and paraphrasing. Lovers use apps to generate responses to each others’ gripes, smoothing things over without actually engaging with the issue. An artist no longer needs tool nor medium, just a thought and a subscription. Everything is streamlined, convenient, and without depth.

This high-tech convenience comes at a cost, as all conveniences do. The convenience of the face scanner requires surrendering yet another slice of one’s privacy; the convenience of the flying cranes denies exploration. Using an LLM to write saves time, but sacrifices cognitive development. Getting around the world and communication both flourish, but each loses that bit of struggle that makes the task so satisfying.

Convenience has shaped our modern lives, whether it be cashless payment, the dishwasher, the automobile, or what-have-you. Many conveniences create a net positive for society; it is natural to seek convenience. Nobody wants to deliberately live as difficult a life as they can, apart from some nebulous sub-category of existential masochists. However, convenience is a ridiculous, if not dangerous, goal when considered for its own sake. The convenience mentality has seeped into our bones, convincing us to look for easier and dumber solutions to problems that could often be better handled using our naturally gifted capabilities or an otherwise more cognitively demanding approach. Being a living thing means seeking convenience, but living things must likewise temper themselves either for the sake of survival or, for many of us, the sake of excellence. Art and skill - life in general - is hard-won; excellence is forged through effort.

If our tools become the center of our world, replacing our own thought, central to maintaining our lifestyles, who has become the new tool?

曲則全，枉則直，窪則盈，弊則新，少則得，多則惑。

是以聖人抱一為天下式。

不自見，故明；不自是，故彰；不自伐，故有功；不自矜，故長。

夫唯不爭，故天下莫能與之爭。

Daoism was dialectics before dialectics was given a name. It evokes elements of idealism through materialist paradigm, building frameworks of thought through deconstruction, revealing profound truths disguised in humble clothing. Chapter 22 of the Dao De Jing emerges as the epitome of this sagacious simplicity. It is primarily a guide to morality, emphasizing the importance of humility attained through the understanding of the ever-changing conditions of life.

In this chapter, Laozi adopts a dialectic framework using superficially antithetical concepts to elucidate the interdependent, mutually reinforcing organization of reality, which is further adapted to establish a basic moral framework for the follower of the Dao. In simpler terms, he uses apparent opposites to prime the mind of the reader to see the larger picture, aiming at truths so commonplace that they are often overlooked. These truths illuminate the interdependent nature of all things, and in particular how some states rely on other states. By internalizing this principle, one learns how to better interact with oneself and the world, which is expressed as Daoist virtue.

It must be said up front that there is contention over both the translation and the original text of this chapter. English texts tend to fall short due to the heavy reliance on specific imagery evoked by the original Chinese characters, as will be expounded upon below. The other problem is with the Chinese text itself - the first two lines, specifically - which some scholars and practitioners believe have been altered from the oldest version of the Dao De Jing.

To clarify these issues, we will borrow Gia-Fu Feng’s translation, a typical go-to:

Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.

To best understand the chapter, we will extract the first six lines. Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight... Both lines, if not all six, can yield vast differences in interpretation. Does yield refer to passivity or compromise? Does it mean by yielding to an oppressive force, one has the potential to one day overcome, or perhaps only overcome prompt corporal punishment brought on by defiance? Bend and be straight implies some kind of flexibility; maybe by bending a bit, one won’t lose their overall form. This is not to mention empty and be full - is it a call for minimalism, is it promoting asceticism?

Precision is always important, but never more so than for this chapter. To reach a clearer understanding, we can turn to the Chinese version, in which characters will prove to be more concise. The first six lines are as follows:

曲則全，枉則直，窪則盈，弊則新，少則得，多則惑。

We will further extract the first two pairings: 曲则全，枉则直 (qū zé quán, wǎng zé zhí). The English translation of the first line, yield and overcome is close in meaning, but fails to capture the essence. It can better be understood as “bend and remain whole” or through the Chinese idiom, 委曲求全 (wěi qū qíu quán), “compromise out of consideration of the general good.” Thus bend and overcome transforms into a quasi-egalitarian ethic, promoting a bit of sacrifice and an acceptance of one’s place and social responsibilities. The second line is, by comparison, slightly better encapsulated by its translation, bend and be straight. Bending, in this case, means either to literally bend, to mistreat/frame, or to lower one’s status. Straight means unbent or honest/upright. With generosity, the most likely interpretation would then be closer to “lower one’s status and become honest.”

Share

Both of these re-translations are satisfactory in a vacuum, but as stated above, there is contention. In 1973, the oldest known version of the Dao De Jing, the “silk book,” (帛书 bó shū) was unearthed in Changsha, Hunan, titled Laozi’s Five Thousand Words1. To some, by virtue of its age, the “silk book” is the definitive most true-to-the-author version available, and thus is the standard for studying Laozi’s message. The text has massive overlap with modern versions of the Dao De Jing, but it is less structured and has many instances of alternative diction.

Naturally, what we now call chapter 22 is one of those instances. The first two lines covered above are given slightly different wording, which imply quite a different meaning. In the first line, rather than 全 (whole/overcome), it is 金 (jīn, gold/metal), which can mean a number of things. Jide Yang, an expert in I Ching studies, believes “gold” represents excellent character2. A revised translation would then yield, “yield and be virtuous.”

Bend and be straight was originally “bend and stabilize/settle” (枉则定 wǎng zé dìng). He reverses the previously stated definitions of yield (曲 qū) and bend (枉 wǎng), preferring yield to refer to an active lowering of one’s status and bend to be the intentional releasing of one’s subjective thoughts so as to allow the ideas of others in.

Borrowing concepts from the I Ching, he relates yield to a king departing his palace to walk among the people. If the king’s presence brings a chill to the hearts of the people, then he is not “golden.” How can the king appeal to the masses such that they open their hearts to them? He must be like them. In order to be like them, he must lower his status, if only for a short time. He bows to them, yielding his body, and walks among them as if a commoner. This is “golden.” At the same time, he must have the humility to earnestly hear out the needs of his people. If he does so, he bends his will to theirs, accepting ideas he may have never otherwise thought up, hopefully to enact more suitable laws. A dialogue is taking place; hearts have been opened. Compared with the potential negative connotations of “compromise out of consideration of the general good,” which reads as reluctant or reticent, an atmosphere of mutual respect and dignity is retained, acknowledging the right of each party to their thoughts and wills, and coming to a conclusion that suits each party.

He finds this reading to be more consistent with the rest of the passage, as he contends that in these lines, there is only one subject, whereas in the final four lines, there are two subjects of comparison. For example, in the third line, Empty and be full (窪則盈 wā zé yíng), empty is the shape of a hypothetical vessel, whereas full is the form of water. Likewise, old and new are old goods and new goods. There is a concrete distinction that can be drawn between each half of the pair. There is an initial and transformative state in each. A vessel will initially be empty, but holds potential to be filled; goods will always age, but can only become old if they were once new. A link is created between two states of development.

Yield and overcome, by comparison, speaks of a single action, positioning “compromise” and “the greater good” as means and ends, different parts of the same action. Bend and be straight is conflating bending with being straight, as if they are essentially the same action: Bending IS being straight. The vessel can be separated from the water; they do not depend on each other. Yielding or bending cannot be separated from their counterparts without sacrificing intended meaning. It is more difficult to come to terms with these two lines, as they share a similar form with the last four lines, but fail to evoke the same logic. Through swapping overcome/be whole with gold and straight with stabilize/settle, a distinction is created within each pair, allowing sufficient space to generate relevant examples or otherwise remain consistent with the logic of the following four lines.

This substantiates a significant difference between the “silk book” and modern copies. The re-translated “compromise out of consideration of the general good” can easily mislead one to indulge in excessive self-sacrifice or adopt overly self-effacing conduct, resulting in the precise opposite of the largely mystic-individualistic theme of the Dao De Jing. Compromising to keep the peace is often a submission to more domineering demands - it can ensure one’s temporary survival, but at the expense of one’s own will, and does little to subvert power. Is this in line with the rest of the Dao De Jing, the same book which implores the reader to treat people as “straw dogs,” painting an image of the solemn, powerful aura of the sage? Or does the call to humility ring more true? In addition, bending to stabilize is far more reasonable than to be straight. Yes, the tree can maintain its straight shape if it bends a tad in the wind, but straightness is of no consequence; trees can grow crooked and mangled but nevertheless be stable.

This alternative reading is even more relevant when taking the latter portion of the chapter into account:

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.

In these lines, Laozi is advocating for a Dao-based ethical framework. The one is the that unification of Yin and Yang birthed from the Dao, as explained in chapter 42:

The Tao begot one.
One begot two.
Two begot three.
And three begot the ten thousand things.

The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
They achieve harmony by combining these forces.

The sage, in embracing the one, expands their understanding of a given situation, seeing both the positive and negative aspects that can influence its development. Yin is the potential for change, where Yang is manifesting change. For example, if a loved one falls ill, the sage will rightfully identify their condition, taking it as it is, thus enabling proper measures to be taken, while simultaneously considering its potential to worsen or improve. By assuming a detached stance, they prevent anxiety, panic, or other passions from hijacking their judgement, even if they are deeply disturbed, and thus can choose the most appropriate course of action. This is wuwei - by “doing nothing,” in this case, not making rash decisions, everything that needs to be done can get done.

This extends to the examples he provides, namely not putting on a display, not justifying themselves, or not boasting. If the sage thinks up a good solution to a problem, they won’t boast. If they fail, they won’t justify their decisions. There is an aura of respect and understanding that permeates their actions and attitudes. There is a sense of responsibility and acceptance. They accept their choices as they are, accept the circumstances as they are, but do not listlessly allow them to occur. After all, the sage is still human; they have their hopes and desires and will act to see them come to fruition, but they hone expectation and temper greed so as to prevent overexertion and needless haste. Therefore, nobody quarrels with them. The result can manifest totally opposed to one’s desires; what is there to brag about?

To borrow from Byung-Chul Han3, the individual who most encapsulates the virtue of embracing the one acts without the “in-order-to” imperative, that is, they act without a specific end, instead acting alongside spontaneity, allowing the circumstances to inform their path forward. There can be a desired end-state, a determined goal, but gripping tightly to this ideal will work against one if the situation begins to develop in an unexpected direction. In such a debacle, one must hold true to what they desire, yet at the ready to amend the plan, while utilizing what chances are revealed through evolving conditions. The river will flow on, and though the molecule, temporally restricted, knows not its destination; there is always the next bend, the river mouth, the ocean... each of which are goals to be reached, but ultimately reductive of its path.

The wise understand this, and thus do not brag, boast, or self-aggrandize, not as an underhanded means of receiving appreciation through false humility, but because they understand that an endeavor coming to completion is serendipity, it is transient - momentous as it may be, it will nonetheless be swept along, recycled into the Dao, “standing alone and unchanging, ever present and in motion.”

As conceived by Laozi, the Dao’s function is that of return. It moves against itself towards one end, only to return back to its original state, constant in motion, thus eternal. The myriad things are its manifestations, and though they move, their forms are impermanent; they are downstream from the Dao, though firmly placed within it, just as the water molecule is the river, though for the means of analysis it is dissected as a part of a whole. The Dao is the whole. It is unchanging precisely because its motion is its essence; propelled by itself to fold back into itself, it embodies an eternal development, a type of development which in itself does not evolve. There is no need for it to do so - it is the origin of the force of evolution.

It is such that the Dao brings to life an emergent dialectic. It births Yin and Yang, both of which the sage embraces in their entirety and becomes a master in the world. Through attaining an understanding of both the negative and positive, holding them as one, rejecting dichotomous thinking, the sage attains potential for virtue. By applying this knowledge to their behavior, the sage attains virtue, which manifests as humble, controlled, and uncontestable.

the fucking cat

A rumble erupts
from his wretched gullet,
and my eyes adreamt
are forced open,
plunged into this
world of darkness. 

My spine tingles
as my neck tightens,
and my body attacked
is paralyzed,
given nothing
in dominating shadows. 

Once more
and again
do his dire calls
summon the storm,
and my ears aringing
are deafened by thunder. 

A playful nibble
scrapes my skin,
and my limbs inert
have no fight;
demon, you have won,
do what you will. 

Though all of Laozi’s words carry significance, in my opinion, the twelfth chapter of Dao De Jing is of particular importance to the humble student, both in virtue of its intuitive logic, but also in its potential for metaphysical reflection. This is the case for much of his writing; there is always a truth rewarded immediately upon the initial read, which, enhanced by further reflection, reveals labyrinthine layers of implications, self-referential or otherwise.

Gia-fu Feng provides an excellent translation:

The five colors blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavors dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.

The first five lines are quite straightforward - they are fives statements made plainly, each of which issues a soft warning. The five colors refer to green-blue (青), red (赤), black (黑), white (白), and yellow (黄). When combined in this statement, they refer to a cacophony of colors, a consolidated entity with the power to numb one’s eyes through overexposure. The five tones originate in the zither, an instrument played to elevate the leisure of listeners, a luxury which Laozi believes will deafen one’s ears. The five flavors are spicy, bitter, sour, salty, and sweet, in which overindulgence will dull one’s tastes, requiring greater and greater quantities to satisfy. Racing and hunting is a single act, that being hunting from horseback, wildly running to and fro. This is hunting not done for sustenance, but for sport, another manifestation of excess. The final line states that precious things - jewels, money, riches - will hijack one’s greedy impulses, leading one to rob and defraud.

In order to avoid these disharmonious consequences, Laozi contests, one must choose “what he feels” by letting go of what he sees. In the original Chinese, the statement is “是以圣人为腹不为目” - the sage goes by his belly, and not his eyes. He trusts his intuition, not external appearances; he chooses that which sustains his person, not that which pleases his senses.

The five colors obviously do not physically blind, but excessive indulgence in sensory pleasures, and in particular the crazed hedonism of the chase, will result in blindness towards one’s core needs. Most of us have likely struggled with the devastating doomscroll spiral, an impulsive, punishing act, one that leads us to self-neglect through the chase of evermore enticing content. We squeeze ourselves dry searching for something novel, but it is ultimately a fruitless distraction. The same goes for the remainder of his statements. A sweet tooth may lead one towards poor nutrition, robbing the simple pleasure of a satisfied belly; music brings joy, but likewise carries one off to worlds adrift, lending to flights of fancy, delivering an escape that may be malignant.

This brings up an interesting conundrum, that being the apparent maladaptive consequences of engagement with art, food, or other worldly pleasures. If we deny ourselves these most basic of pleasures, as Laozi appears to be advocating for, will we be better off? Most would argue that the alternate realities good fiction delivers upon the reader soothe the soul, generating more complex, fruitful connections to our world. Music is a means of communication; it is pure expression in abstract terms, a compulsion of leisure. Thus, if we dogmatically assume this apparent ascetic position, we deny our spirits avenues of expression, we weaken our connection to the abundance of life, adversely alienating ourselves from our root. To resolve this issue, it is fair to say that it is not the books nor the music itself, but the uncritical, alcoholic indulgence in them that erodes away at the person. Music ought not be something we drink ourselves silly on, but instead approached with the intent of expression, the hope to dance with another soul; comforting novels are not mere escape fantasies, but a refuge for emotional reflection. To mindlessly chase the highs they give is to forsake one’s spirit in service of one’s ego.

This is but the first interpretation. As previously stated, there are further layers of application, differing scenarios in which this wisdom can bubble up into one’s conscious mind.

A second scenario would be that of passive overwhelm. The above interpretation assumes one actively seeks sensory thrills, and instead should focus on sustaining their core. The second places the individual in a busy environment, one either of irresistible temptation or irritating noise. The five colors are mopeds whizzing by, advertisements blasting images of products sponsored by beautiful people, neon signs coaxing, begging for patronage. The five sounds are revving motors, chatting aunties, sound systems blasting until the end of time. This environment pulls one’s attention to and fro, kneading one into a docile consumer, controlling one’s actions merely by appealing to exploitable drives. In such a place, it requires particular effort to let go of that and choose this, as it is not only one’s desires waging war, but also social expectation.

Precious things, something perhaps more difficult to come by in previous millennia, have crept into our daily lives. A click is all one needs to satisfy any fleeting desire. We see others with their precious things through a pair of green eyes, but even if one tempers their envy, there is still the social pull to keep up with others, to join in on what is popular. This is not always harmful; in fact, following popular culture can help maintain friendships (shallow or otherwise) and provide fresh experiences, both of which feed the soul. The crux, as always, is on how much one is willing to sacrifice in order to achieve more superfluous ends. Do we stay true to ourselves while occasionally taking part in the thrills, or do we let the fervor of thrills override our awareness? Do we covet because others do, or because we need this object of desire? Do we believe ourselves entitled to chase, or do we reject this framework?

The third interpretation uses sensory experience to address the epistemological. The five blinding colors represent our lack of a more complete sensory capacity. We know the multitude of colors, all of which are attached to emotions, experiences, and concepts, delivered socially or through personal experience, forming an intuitive, subjective lens of perception. But light is not limited to only the visible spectrum; if our eyes could decipher infrared or ultraviolet light, how would this change our subjective experience? There could be a whole subset of experiences associated with this range of light of which we have absolutely no means of accessing. How would this change us, our intuitions and societies? The subjective human experience would perhaps feel similar (as we wouldn’t know any other way), but it would simultaneously impact us profoundly in comparison to how we are now. Would we need infrared goggles? Would we have to alter laser scanners to not irritate our eyes? And what of the five sounds? If we could squeak like bats, would echolocation be a common means of detection? What exquisite dishes could we create if our sense of taste were over tuned?

Our senses are limited and fallible, but reliance on them is our only option when engaging with the world beyond ourselves. If we believe all we see is all there is, that sound exists to serve our ears, then we have misapprehended the more complete nature of physical phenomena. If we stubbornly insist that this is what exists, and that cannot be the case, we have closed our minds to possibilities, given that such a rejection is based in undue confidence of one’s empirical knowledge. Our way is not the way, and we must understand that our senses and intuitions are likewise not necessarily indicative of things as they are.

Letting go of that and choosing this is a common theme in the Dao De Jing. In Chapter 13, he states, “Accept disgrace willingly... Accept being unimportant. Do not be concerned with loss or gain.” In Chapter 26 he continues, “To be restless is to lose one’s control.” In Chapter 29, he rejects the notion that one can shape the world as they please: “If you try to change it, you will ruin it. If you try to hold it, you will lose it.” Letting go is the decision to allow a situation to unfurl as it may, and choosing this is the conscious choice of dedicating oneself to resist desperation. We let go of the five colors in all their splendor, returning to centered existence; we remove ourselves from excessive sensory experiences which overwhelm our minds; we understand that we do not know. I would argue that this understanding should be the result of deconstruction rather than the embracing of ignorance.

In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Chapter 48

Learning is soul-affirming; it can be a path towards understanding the Dao. As we learn, we construct. We mend concepts into webs, then impose them onto or embed them into reality. There is never a perfect theory, never a perfect practice, because there is no way to create something that captures the complete essence of the whole. Scientific inquiry is a self-correcting construct, one that seeks to decipher reality, as opposed to prescribing qualities upon it. Even in this realm, it is necessary to relinquish much of what one assumes true to happen upon discovery. In this case, one has dropped what they have been taught, moved beyond the assumption that model equals reality. They understand the process of science, never forcing what they expect or prefer upon their test subject; they are pursuing the Dao.

LITERACY

Literacy is the cornerstone of education. In its most basic sense, the ability to read and write, serves as the basis for all learning. It begins with simple recognition of phonemes and morphemes (in segmental scripts), or more generally the ability to recognize and attach meaning to the fundamental building blocks of a given language. It evolves as one dives deeper into the world of words, encompassing broader concepts of meta-knowledge and general applicability. This refers to the ability to contextualize a given text, deciphering its various interpretations and the greater social environment which created it, as well as the ability to effectively apply language skills across a broad range of material, from newspapers to research papers, schedules, and even arithmetic in various mediums. UNESCO defines literacy as "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts,"1 whereas there are other viewpoints which view literacy as a social function, something done with purpose, tied closely to belief and value; in this sense, literacy is a mode of living, a cultural practice.

But literacy moves beyond this, as its definition has expanded to refer to knowledge or skill in any particular realm, exemplified by concepts such as financial, musical, or media literacy - an especially relevant skill to have today. These various literacies are built on the foundation of basic literacy; if one could not read, write, or comprehend texts, it goes without saying that cultivating more specialized skills would be difficult, if not possible. Expanding literacy to include a litany of skills widens its definition, leading one to interpret it not exclusively as the ability to read and write (basic literacy), but also a more generalized ability to receive, analyze, and communicate information to achieve communal ends. UNESCO defines this literacy, functional literacy, as:

the capacity of a person to engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective function of his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his or her own and the community’s development.

Functional literacy is thus an advanced skill set built on the foundations of basic literacy; it serves a social function and acts as a measure of competency. It also implies the existence of functional illiteracy. The computer illiterate elder is a common example. Many elderly people have difficulty navigating computer interfaces, let alone the internet, resulting in them facing difficulties when trying to engage with the ever-more digitalized world. Their inability to use such technologies, lagging behind community development, limits their potential to add meaningfully to the community and adapt to the changing times. A financially illiterate friend, likewise, struggles immensely.

From personal experience, it is not uncommon to happen across educated, professional, and otherwise savvy, yet functionally illiterate people in China. Those who do not know the local language either display primary illiteracy (inability to read or write) or, more commonly, functional illiteracy: the inability to use fluidly what little language they know to traverse everyday situations.

I digress; literacy is an infinitely captivating topic, something that ties in much more deeply to life outcomes than some may realize. Education, if stripped down to its most fundamental principles, is essentially the quest to maximize literacy. In achieving the educational outcome of functional literacy, one enables the student to effectively interact with the world around them, improving just about every aspect of their life. And, as stated at the beginning of this article, the prerequisite for functional literacy is the attainment of basic literacy - an undertaking which all countries shoulder, looking towards a brighter future.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF REVOLUTION ERA CUBA

To give an outline of the Cuban Revolution is far beyond the scope of this article, but there are a few important aspects of it that are relevant to this story. To start, the Batista regime was largely unpopular. He had suspended the Constitution, a document which ensured rights such as the right to strike. He gradually favored land-owning plantation oligarchs, resulting in the majority of Cuban land being owned by foreign entities during his reign. His government began to host American Mafia operations alongside the formal investors, leading to increases of prostitution, drug abuse, and gambling. Citizens became increasingly enraged at the state of their country, staging protests and revolts, to which Batista responded with state violence and suppression of growing socialist ideals. His populist dictatorship resulted in immense wealth inequality, restriction of rights, mass death, increased crime, and lowered autonomy. It was the perfect breeding ground for revolution.

The revolution was decidedly Marxist, even if not overt at the time, primarily due to the popularity of Castro. Castro and Guevara, the two main faces of the revolution, had Marxist proclivities, though Guevara was far more publicly explicit in his partiality. Castro had his misgivings in adopting a Soviet style model, as his loyalty was to Cuba first. Guevara was not as partial to any nation; he sought for worldwide worker revolt, as is apparent through his support of groups in Congo and Bolivia. The rest of the June 26^th movement (J26M) had a great variety of guiding ideologies, bound together by the hope for a freer Cuba. As Chris Slee writes,

...the J26M aimed at radical social change. But most of its activists did not regard themselves as Marxists. They were radical democrats. They were concerned about social justice, not just formal political democracy. But in the beginning most did not have a clear socialist perspective. Over time, many of them evolved towards socialist ideas. But some did not. Some later turned against the revolution as it began to enter the socialist stage. Fidel Castro, the central leader of the J26M, was a Marxist, but did not say so publicly. Some other leaders such as Raúl Castro and Che Guevara were also Marxists.2

The revolution was a slow-burn, starting first with civic unrest in the form of protests and strikes. These were met with imprisonment and suppression, a reaction which further stoked the flames. After his release from prison, Castro left Cuba for a time only to return and begin the guerrilla campaign against Batista forces.

The peasantry, workers, and students of Cuba played an immensely important role towards the success of the revolutionaries. The revolution was primarily carried out in scattered skirmishes, guerrilla warfare, in the countryside. In these regions, the peasantry was subject to landlord rule, deprived of ownership over the lands they toiled on, with little access to necessary amenities. The peasants would take in the guerrillas, providing food and shelter in the disjointed, arrhythmic battlefields. These moments of peace would often provide opportunities for recruitment, as peasants would join them in their fight, either by joining a roving band or staging uprisings, occurring simultaneously with strikes carried out by workers and students across the nation.

In short, the revolution was indeed a popular one, if not slightly unfocused and marked by internal contradictions. It was the culmination of years trapped in the shadow of oppression and the gradual loss of the Cuban identity. One major culprit in said oppression was the lack of resources and care diverted towards the education sector in Cuba. Education helps foster a collective identity and enables one to view the world in myriad lenses, thus its poverty of accessibility crippled the people of Cuba. This was a historical problem:

At the end of the Spanish-Cuban-North American War, in 1898, 57 percent of the Cuban population was illiterate. Fifty-four years later, according to the 1953 population census, illiteracy had declined to 23.6 percent of the population over ten years of age. This decrease was viewed as encouraging, but the fact remains that the absolute number of illiterates increased steadily during the pseudorepublican period of 1902-1958...

Six years before the revolutionary victory in 1959 there were more than half a million children in Cuba who had not attended school; the rate of nonattendance must have been higher during the years of the Batista tyranny (1952-1958). At that time there were 5,575 rural classrooms—not enough to serve even 35 percent of the rural student population. According to the 1953 census, 385,394 peasant children between the ages of six and fourteen had no schools to attend.3

Without schools, denied of the ability to read and write, the people of Cuba had few means of self-liberation; they were bound to their class, reduced to laborers for the decadent elite. The illiteracy rate of 23.6%, though never a good number, was acceptable considering the development of the nation, but a second layer to the issue must be addressed: the illiteracy rates approached 50% in the countryside, while in the cities, it was around 12%. Not only was there a general lack of education opportunities country-wide, but also a massive canyon in terms of general material development, amenities, and access.

THE LITERACY CAMPAIGN

The campaign began, bound with monstrous constraints. Initial estimates by the National Literacy Commission (NLC) identified just over a million illiterate citizens and a mere 35,000 teachers in scattered schools around the nation. They set a goal of achieving basic literacy (reaching at least a 50% score for grade one literacy tests, as defined above) in eight months’ time. The great challenge, then, was reaching this lofty goal within a strict time limit, restricted by a severe lack of resources. The NLC realized that, primarily due to the given time frame, large class size literacy courses would not be a sufficient method to succeed. Their ideal ratio instead came in at one to two, with one to four being an acceptable upper limit. Thus, at a minimum, they needed to scrape together a quarter million literacy teachers overnight, assign their posts, then send them off. It seemed an impossible task, yet they issued the call.

It was the Cuban youth who answered. Nearly every person who volunteered to take part in this grand educational campaign was under thirty years of age, with 47% of volunteers being between 15 and 19 and 40% from 10 to 14. The youngest recorded volunteer boasted a tender 8 years of age.

Their motivations for joining the campaign are difficult to explicitly designate. Johnathon Kozol claims it was a mass “ethical exhilaration”4, a pent-up energy, fermenting for decades, that found its release through the victory of the revolution. Something new was happening, and there appeared a means of releasing frustrated energy through constructive channels. He also attributes the recruitment success to both extensive propaganda campaigns and Castro’s charismatic image - he was seen as an older brother for a period immediately following the end of the revolution, and a common sentiment of the Cuban people was to not let him down: “I wanted so much that we would prove that we could keep the promise that Fidel had made before the world. I did not want it to be said that we would not stand up beside Fidel.”5 He had an incredible vision for Cuba, after all, and let it be known before the entire world. Joining the literacy campaign was an act of national pride and an opportunity to join in the revolution they were too young to fight in. As such, there were two simple guiding principles, steeped in an appeal to the common good:

...if illiterates are found among the people, so also can those who teach literacy be found among the people; and, second, that those who know more must teach those who know less.

Realizing universal basic literacy was not the only objective of the campaign. It is fair to call it the unifying goal, or perhaps the primary method, surrounding a set of secondary goals. The first of these goals was to inform the illiterate populace of current affairs, national interests, and reform efforts. For example, the first lesson was titled “The OEA,” the Spanish language version of the Organization of American States, a body promoting common values and cooperation among American countries, a reading with dual purpose; firstly, it was aimed at teaching vowels, and secondly, the content matter was of political significance, as Cuba had just been expelled due to its new stances on US imperialist activity. Other pieces covered topics such as land reformation, novel property relations, and a new national spirit, with titles such as “Each Cuban the Owner of His House,” “The Year of Education,” and “The Cuban Fisherman.”

The second of these secondary goals was to instill a sense of camaraderie between urban and rural citizens. In the decades leading up to the revolution, the urban and rural spheres had been becoming increasingly alienated in terms of values, culture, and investment. Urban dwellers were either unaware of or apathetic towards the toil of the peasants, benefiting from the economic inequality of bloated extractive governments. The revolutionary government sought to even out the divide through diverting resources towards the rural regions via investment in education, health, transportation, agricultural, and industrial infrastructure. The literacy campaign presented a unique opportunity to concentrate the wave of post-revolutionary fervor towards fostering unity of these two estranged demographics. The volunteers, for a short period, left behind the amenities of the city and the comforts of home to live among the least privileged in their country, not merely imagining their plight, but actively participating in it. Through this, they came to attain greater insight into the diversity of life hidden in plain sight, acting both to soften any sense of superiority they may have harbored, as well as strengthened their dedication to their fellow man. Likewise, the peasantry gained connections to the world beyond their own, and found fraternity in their new comrades.

Perhaps finding inspiration in the philosophy of Paulo Freire, the literacy campaign was thus not a movement with the meager goal of teaching the illiterate to read and write, but instead a multidimensional goal of raising political awareness, strengthening ties between alienated groups, and generating a new national spirit, all through the simple act of teaching.

RESULTS OF THE LITERACY CAMPAIGN

Speaking purely in data, the campaign effectively reduced the 23.6% figure down to ~4%. This feat was achieved over about a year, after which, at bare minimum, every now-literate person could read or write basic facts of their lives. By 1977, the illiteracy rate dipped to 2%. Further actions continuing to the modern day have seen illiteracy drop even lower alongside the strengthening of education. The literacy campaign was an incredible success by this metric.

Data does not explain the crucial, human element of the campaign, however. As Rosa Hernández Acosta recounts in this interview, before the revolution, media was sparse in the countryside; access to a radio was the best case scenario, but even so, there was a poverty of programs and a deprivation of free time preventing meaningful engagement. Newspapers were not distributed and most communities lacked proper educational facilities. Illiteracy was rampant to the extent that even an innocuous trip to the store became a stage for robbery; there was a widespread lack of basic arithmetic skills, which unscrupulous business owners abused to their own benefit. The literacy campaign was an objective data-driven win, yes, and also a spiritual and social win.

Rosa Hernández Acosta came from an impoverished, isolated community. She speaks of the life-affirming effect the campaign, and in general, the total social reformation had on her:

In the end, the revolution virtually eliminated illiteracy. People that lived even in the remotest mountainous areas totally isolated, with parents and grandparents that were totally illiterate, were suddenly able to get as far as studying at the University of Havana. I am an example of that. I am a Black woman. That a very poor Black person could end up studying at the University of Havana… it was really a huge feat. I have a doctorate. I’m a certified professor. Before the revolution, that would’ve been completely impossible. Unthinkable. I’ve traveled to many different countries in Europe and Latin America... And those were all things that would’ve been totally impossible for anyone from the countryside who, in the old days, would’ve hardly known how to count to ten, much less read and write. They used to even steal people’s money when they went to the store to buy things because they didn’t even know basic arithmetic in some cases. To see the difference that we made was an enormous thing for me. I saw it start as a child and I’m still alive; it’s been within our lifetimes... None of my classmates, people in my generation, ended up illiterate. The only illiterate people in Cuba are the “residual” ones. Those are the ones who learned to read and write in 1961 and really never went on to use that knowledge. That accomplishment, in a Latin American country like Cuba, was really tremendous. 6

The social progress catalyzed by the campaign is difficult to quantify or retrace, but Acosta provides a window for us peek into. Before the revolution, before the campaign, somebody like her would have few prospects, destined to work the soil. With the little education she received and this opportunity she was given, she commandeered her life’s vessel, sailing assiduously towards academic excellence. The early stages of the revolution were marked by sweeping educational reform, with one declaration given by Che Guevara being of particular importance: “Today the people stand at the door of the university, and it is the university that must be flexible. It must color itself black, mulatto, worker, peasant, or else be left without doors.”7 Racism, prejudice, and segregation ravaged Cuban pre-revolutionary society, abused as weapons of subjugation by the ruling class. Race was attached to class, which was itself determined by property, and property was worshiped above all. The push to end systemic injustice cracked open a path for her success, creating a more potent potential for class mobility.

Many volunteers went on to become teachers later in life, inspired by the transformative power of education, bolstering the education sector in Cuba. The campaign was one of the earliest large-scale projects of the new government to reinvigorate the atrophied body of the segregated, immensely unequal education system. Within a decade, enrollment rates rocketed from 56% in 1953 to 88% in 1970, eventually reaching nearly 100% in 1986, a trend which has remained the status quo to this day. Education and medicine became two significant focal points of development for the new government, each of which saw, and continues to see, dedication and investment from the government and people alike. In following years, experts from the literacy campaign went on to share their methods with 15 other countries, and have continued to assist up to this day, typically in other South American countries or African countries.

The Cuban literacy campaign was a huge push by the people of Cuba to deliver basic literacy to their fellow citizens, an objective they achieved through passion and tenacity. It set the foundations for lifelong learning and a healthy education system, fundamentally altering the structure of society itself, strengthening relations between people now dedicated to planting trees for the following generations - it empowered them to do so. Achieving basic literacy, many were confident in their ability to study, to traverse the world, opening the door to higher levels of functional literacy. They both gave and were given the means of digging deep towards the core of life, a gift they sought to entrust with others. Though Cuba yet struggles, it consistently shines brightly among its peers, in no small part thanks to the campaign that set its course.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

There are many other aspects of the literacy campaign that I did not explain in depth here. The general structure, curriculum, and administration of the campaign are interesting topics in their own right, each of which I decided not to weigh down the article with. If there is interest, I can write a follow-up.

Another element is its subversive nature. The campaign was a chance for previously oppressed peoples to actively take part in the reconstruction of their country. This extends beyond the strides in reducing racial stratification, as written above, into the liberation of women. Many of the volunteers were girls, of whom a large ratio had to fight against paternalistic, patriarchal desires to restrict them to the home. These young girls braved the pitch-black nights of rural Cuba, perhaps unknowingly in the midst of roving bands of counter-revolutionaries eager to kill, against the wishes of their fathers and social expectations, to liberate others and in turn themselves. This is written on more extensively, particularly by previous volunteers like Rosa Hernández Acosta. I would highly suggest reading into their efforts if the topic of this post has intrigued you.

SOURCES

1. Gee, J. (1991) ‘Socio-Cultural Approaches to Literacy (Literacies)’. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 12, pp. 31–48.

2. UNESCO. (2024) Functional literacy, UNESCO UIS. Available at: https://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/functional-literacy (Accessed: 31 March 2025).

3. Slee, C. (2008) Cuba: How the Workers & Peasants Made the Revolution. Resistance Books.

4. Kozol, J. (1978) ‘A New Look at the Literacy Campaign in Cuba’, Harvard Education Review, 48(3), pp. 341–377.

5. Morales, A.P. (1981) ‘The Literacy Campaign in Cuba’, Harvard Education Review, 51(1), pp. 31–39.

6. Rey, K.S. (2021) Rosa Hernández Acosta on the Cuban Literacy Campaign. Available at: https://daily.jstor.org/rosa-hernandez-acosta-on-the-cuban-literacy-campaign/ (Accessed: 31 March 2025).

7. The Militant (2000) ‘Che Guevara speaks to students on eve of first anniversary of Cuban revolution ’, The Militant, 64(1). Available at: https://www.themilitant.com/2000/6401/640158.html.

8. Perez, L.A. (1995) ‘Cuba Between Reform and Revolution’, Oxford UP.

The Rakata are contrasted with another civilization, the Je’daii, a society of force-sensitives contained to a single planet, one of immense beauty and brutal conditions. It had two moons, one which bathed in light, and the other shrouded in shadows. The planet itself was rich in the Force, and it reacted violently to imbalance between the dark and light. Thus, the Je’daii came to understand the individual’s relationship to the Force perpetually ebbs and flows between the dark and light; each exists within one another, and any strong preference shown to either would lead to imbalance, which on a large enough scale would be cataclysmic to their planet and way of life. The dark and light are complimentary and necessary. An individual should allow their emotions to run as they might, but avoid attachment to them (this goes for both anger and compassion), as either has the risk of destabilizing the individual. Their code is as follows:

There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no fear; there is power.
I am the heart of the Force.
I am the revealing fire of light.
I am the mystery of darkness
In balance with chaos and harmony,
Immortal in the Force.

We see ignorance paired with knowledge, a relatively obvious duo. We then see fear with power, a superficially odd duality. Just as knowledge overcomes ignorance, power overcomes fear. Fear thus implies a lack of power, but where does this power come from to topple fear? The author believes it is attained similarly to knowledge - understanding the duality of the Force, its self-reinforcing and intermingled nature, invigorates bravery, removes shadows of doubt, clears one’s mind, thus empowering the individual. There is a balance between ego and selflessness as one drifts between the roles of “revealing fire” and “mystery of darkness” - to master the Force is to master the ebb and flow of one’s situation, to apply the correct course of action to a given scenario. There are times to be selfish and times to let go. This is the crux of their teachings: to become one with the Force is to be unshakable as the earth, but tempestuous as the heavens. It is to be centered but nowhere, empty thus full.

The Je’daii understood this balance, and though they would falter on occasion, corrective measures were taken to restore balance to oneself and, by extension, one’s environment. There was a preference for the light side, as it is the more nourishing of the two, and the dark side has a tendency to invade, dominate, and corrupt the minds of its adherents. To fall too far into the light is self-destructive by means of excessive self-sacrifice, forgetting one’s root, whereas the dire plummet into the dark side is first externally destructive, then self-destructive, as alone it is ultimately self-defeating.

The Rakata would eventually invade the Je’daii homeworld, which erupted in Force storms of incredible violence to match the ferocity of their battles. The Rakata used a peculiar technology, the Forcesaber, as their weapon of choice. This weapon was akin to the familiar lightsaber, but with a twist - it could only be ignited through channeling dark side energy. The Je’daii borrowed this technology, using it to win in a display of great unity and power, but at the cost of amplifying their connection to the dark side. Their post-war society soon became stricken with unprecedented strife. Drastic measures had to be taken during the war, and the previous balanced peace had become a relic. A significant amount of Je’daii found themselves falling deeper into the great chasm of the dark side. They split. After a decade-long, planet-decimating war, one sect left to a far-away planet, eventually becoming the beloved Jedi. The other left to explore the dark side in more depth, eventually taking on the moniker of Sith, inspired by the ancient Sith race of dark side warlocks.

It is easy enough to claim the Sith imbalanced. It is simply true; they do not seek balance, but instead the subjugation of all for the sake of one. Their ultimate unity, their ideal of unrestricted freedom, is the ego, the concentration of power in one single point. They cared not for frivolous morality, nor did they care for the Force; to them, freedom and power had to be wrestled away from any- and everything, nothing was higher than the self. They sought eternal life in the material realm, having eliminated anything that could be considered a soul from within their hollow husks.

The Jedi are more difficult to criticize in this regard. The movies (and other media) mostly portray them in a good light. Their fundamental flaw has less to do with their philosophical framework, which was arguably incomplete, but their status as a political organization. Nevertheless, their philosophy had its issues. Their code slightly differed from the Je’daii, but carried much of its original intent:

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force.

Or,

Emotion, yet peace.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Passion, yet serenity.

Chaos, yet harmony.

Death, yet the Force.

The difference lies in the posing of each pair. The Je’daii set ignorance and fear as the given state of an individual. If one enlightens ignorance and conquers fear, then one has the potential to self-actualize. This is a holistic actualization, one that does not deny the passions or emotions of the individual, but rather sees them as additional avenues of expression. There was a preference for the light, as it builds and nurtures, but the dark was not shunned. By contrast, the Jedi show clear preference for the light. Emotion, YET peace; Passion, YET serenity. Read most generously, and likely as originally intended, peace and serenity are the eye of the storm. There is a swirl of emotion, passion, and chaos, and yet one finds their center. They are grounded, not swept away in the whirlwinds of panic, not blighted by the tendrils of malice. As time went on, as we see in much of Star Wars media, this transformed into a more myopic dismissal of passion and emotion; the quintessential Jedi was not one who could master themselves despite the inevitable tribulations of life, but one who buried their darker side so deep as to neglect its existence. In the Clone Wars series, Yoda dukes it out with his darker self, at first not recognizing it, and eventually asserts his mastery over it, but not without significant struggle. The Grandmaster of the Order had neglected to acknowledge this essential aspect of himself (Yoda plays not with me anymore), a microcosm of the greater trend within the Order: it had collectively neglected to face its dark side, ironically allowing darkness to flourish under deliberately blinded eyes.

Their rejection of all things dark robbed them of an essential truth: we all, as creatures, can be dirty, manipulative, and cruel. We are not above evil; evil is mundane. To face the dark side is to acknowledge this reality. We are in the world, not beyond it. We can be the order within chaos, but this fact does not discount the existence of chaos. We can be harmonious despite passions, but this is the fruit discipline bears - passions will come to rise in time. To indulge the dark side is to spoil a demon; to deny it is to split oneself in half. Either path results in an incomplete being. The Sith gorged themselves on the five tastes, deafened themselves with the five tones, while the Jedi lost their root, in denial of their self-indulgent benevolence, loyal to the Republic over the Force, multiple degrees separated from the beings they were meant to defend.

I figure it all comes down to power and our means of grappling with it. We see in the films that the Jedi Order is corrupt; it wields power and wishes not to let go, contrary to the axioms of their Order. They staunchly believe in the eradication of the dark side, not its careful control or sustained submission, but in the denial of its inevitability and necessity. The Jedi grow stagnant and inflexible, while the Sith essentially wage war against the Force itself in their attempts to channel it towards their own ends and in the process consuming it. As we see exemplified with a couple of prominent Sith lords - specifically Nihilus and Sion - this personal war of consumption invariably results in the Force consuming the individual, conversely subjugating any sense of self that they originally thrust towards omnipotence.

Power will ebb and flow from one place to another, and if one finds oneself gasping it, one must acknowledge there will come a time to relinquish it. Those who follow the light will know, and those who are consumed by the dark will eventually come to learn. But those of the light must be careful so as not to discount the dark; the will to power exists in all beings, and it is folly to reject the notion of darker instincts. We are caught within this duality; we are the universe reflecting on itself. To live in balance is to understand one’s worst instincts, to come to terms with them, and to find an outlet for their impulses while embracing the light. To be in balance is to be muddled, knowing but unknowing. Only with the acknowledgement of humanity as a confused whole can one find something approaching the truth.

These realities can be seen as general observations or potential topics of discussion. A major reality we grapple with today is that of freedom, for example. Liberty seems to be a core element of the majority of ideologies we adopt today, regardless of whether or not it is properly defined or actualized. Freedom feeds the trees of Liberalism, Marxism, Libertarianism, Socialism… And even if one finds the prospect of limiting oneself to an ideology disagreeable, they are oft to find devious fingers of “freedom” snaking their way into one’s values.

Freedom is easily desired. It allows one to act as one might, to express one’s person in totality, to be equal with the Other. A common trend of thought is to separate freedoms into freedom tos and freedom froms, or positive and negative freedoms. This distinction is a decent tool to encourage the thoughtful consideration of the essence of freedom, but is otherwise ironically limiting. It is no coincidence that some political pundits or shallow thinkers will claim either tos or froms are superior to the other. If we are to believe that there is such a difference, we should view it in the way we view Yin and Yang: every positive freedom will necessarily have a negative implication and vice versa. For example, my freedom to free expression is also a freedom from having my speech be suppressed, thus denying others’ absolute freedom. We can say that this is good, to which the author would agree, but the crux lies in their inseparability.

DAOISM AND ANARCHISM

Daoism and Anarchism, likewise, are two realms of thought that have significant overlap; they are fellow seekers of some form of liberty. In Daoism, we can see clear trends of anti-statism, or at least some type of vague libertarian-esque guiding spirit that forms a core phloem in the tree of Daoist thought. Anarchism is anti-statism brought into bountiful flourish; though fallacious to assume anarchist thought can be reduced to teenage anti-social angst, the typical anti-THIS-social-mode tendency constitutes much of its vigorous trajectory. This attitude is also found in Daoism, from its most fundamental text to its tertiary offshoots. What differs, however, are the focal goals and means.

Daoism can be interpreted as an individual’s quest for enlightenment, but can more accurately seen as a deconstructive social tendency. That is to say, Daoism in both its initial state and its many inspired texts acts as a means to question social organization as well as the the epistemological and ontological nature of mankind and the world. Daoism sticks out from the other major Chinese schools of thought in this exact quality: it is counter-cultural. Confucianism seeks to bring harmony to society through means of rituals and moral norms, questioning the morality of those in power, but never undermines the concept of the need for social organization, particularly vertical, hierarchical organization. It goes without saying that Legalism does nothing to question the role of government as a heavy-handed harbinger of justice and order. Daoism, on the contrary, questions the foundations of civilized society by emphasizing mankind’s folly in attempting to overcome nature and in suggesting that the people are freer and enjoy effortless order without a government apparatus imposing what it believes to be correct on their self-organized society. Though much of the Dao De Jing is addressed to the would-be ruler, the advice Laozi gives comes across as anti-authoritarian at the very least. There are passages in later Daoist texts which express an even more exasperated vexation at the idea of proper rule, such as this extended excerpt from Zhuangzi:

Horses’ hoofs are made for treading frost and snow, their coats for keeping out wind and cold. To munch grass, drink from the stream, lift up their feet and gallop—this is the true nature of horses. Though they might possess great terraces and fine halls, they would have no use for them.

Then along comes Po Lo. “I’m good at handling horses!” he announces, and proceeds to singe them, shave them, pare them, brand them, bind them with martingale and crupper, tie them up in stable and stall. By this time two or three out of ten horses have died. He goes on to starve them, make them go thirsty, race them, prance them, pull them into line, force them to run side-by-side, in front of them the worthy of bit and rein, behind them the terror of whip and crop. By this time over half the horses have died.

The potter says, “I’m good at handling clay! To round it, I apply the compass; to square it, I apply the T square.” The carpenter says, “I’m good at handling wood! To arc it, I apply the curve; to make it straight, I apply the plumb line.” But as far as inborn nature is concerned, the clay and the wood surely have no wish to be subjected to compass and square, curve and plumb line. Yet generation after generation sings out in praise, saying, “Po Lo is good at handling horses! The potter and the carpenter are good at handling clay and wood!” And the same fault is committed by the men who handle the affairs of the world!

In my opinion, someone who was really good at handling the affairs of the world would not go about it like this. The people have their constant inborn nature.

…...

When horses live on the plain they eat grass and drink from the streams. Pleased, they twine their necks together and rub; angry, they turn back-to back and kick. This is all horses know how to do. But if you pile poles and yokes on them and line them up in crossbars and shafts, then they will learn to snap the crossbars, break the yoke, rip the carriage top, champ the bit, and chew the reins. Thus horses learn how to commit the worst kinds of mischief. This is the crime of Po Lo.1

In Daoism, this spirit of things-in-themselves persists from beginning to end and back again. There is a fundamental trust for nature to sort itself out, for animals and people alike live in a balanced neutrality. This, of course, does not rule out the potential for violence; it seems foolish to assume naivety on the side of these thinkers, but rather understand that the peace they speak of is one without interference, without large-scale wars achievable only through coercion and control. The horse may become angry, and there may just be something standing behind them when they kick - this is nature.

However, this anti-coercive worldview is incomplete without a few additional fundamental ingredients: its focus on the individual and, in some cases, its primitivism, as well as a lack of clarity on whether or not the state should exist. Over its colorful history, Daoism has seen the rise and fall of numerous sects and prevailing interpretations. In its infancy, it was likely a collection of wisdom from elders, spiritual and philosophical, which in Zhuangzi became mythical and more explicitly political. There was a period of Daoist hedonism, an anti-government movement with the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” flaunting avant-garde lifestyles. This occurred after a period in which Daoism was abused to justify a ruler’s “rightful” position following a change in leadership. In protest of the new Jin overlords, the neo-Daoist hedonists refused to partake in bureaucratic work, as they followed Nature (自然, zì rán) and the leadership did not.

THE INDIVIDUAL

Daoist anarchism frequently turns to a individualist or primitivist viewpoint to either relay its parables or detail its logic. A particularly salient example of this is the above excerpt from Zhuangzi, or the numerous pleas in the DDJ and other books to keep the people simple, ignorant, and unbothered. On its face, this may seem quite undesirable; why shouldn’t people engage with knowledge or drink in the complexity of life? Upon further inspection, it becomes clear that the desire is not to shape a populous prone to manipulation, but to remove elements that promote their greed and push them to feel entitled to lead the masses. This logic on its own is strikingly similar to anarchist attitudes; however, it lacks the distinct anarchist imperative of the peoples’ self-empowerment and self-organization. Self-autonomy is there in spades, but generally speaking, Daoism lacks a unifying, revolutionary drive for followers to rally under.

As John A. Rapp discusses in his infinitely fascinating and nuanced book, Daoism and Anarchism: Critiques of State Autonomy in Ancient and Modern China2, the type of anarchism proposed by early Daoists, if anarchist at all, places emphasis on the individual over the collective. Speaking on both the DDJ and Zhuangzi, he writes:

Both texts appeal not to the masses to revolt, but only to rulers to govern through the dao rather than through coercive means. Above all, such critics would argue, the DDJ and especially the Zhuangzi call for transformation of the individual and not for genuine social revolution, and thus remain limited and ineffectual.

In this way, Daoism as a text meant to inspire revolution is totally inert. It cannot do so, and even if it could somehow inspire a mass movement through transformed individuals, it does not give clear enough directions so as to steer the ship. This is overlooking the pacifistic, hermitic practices of Daoist clerics, as well. How can one stage a revolution if one is sent on a journey of detachment? As with all things, this weakness is coupled with an advantage. Rapp continues:

Against this idea of inherent political limits to Daoist anarchism, other scholars stress that perhaps Daoism is superior and on a higher level more revolutionary than the ‘social and political’ Western anarchists. First, on a philosophical level Frederic Bender thinks Daoism has much to teach Western anarchism about applying a consistent metaphysical grounding for its claim of an essential ‘egolessness’ of human nature (e.g. what Alan Ritter would call Western anarchism’s search for ‘communal individuality’), a lack of grounding that has helped to weaken anarchism as ‘a practical movement for social transformation.’

The Dao is a mystical means of connecting oneself to the greater whole via profound introspection and spiritual training. Thus, if one can connect to the Dao, the great hub, one can connect to all other things with bountiful compassion. One must conquer oneself to reach the Dao, and in reaching the Dao, the unity of the world is revealed. The difficult balance between individual and collective is only such if one or the other is thrown into chaos; by becoming less concerned with oneself - which could be seen as “losing,3- one more vigorously becomes oneself, while simultaneously becoming one within the environment, among the people. It is not only the sage-king ruling class who can benefit the people if in a hierarchical system, but also the people who can use Nonaction (无为, wú wéi) to undermine oppressive rule. The indefatigable spirit of the autonomous individual and the collective she forms with others cannot be contained. The individual and collective are not diametrically opposed, they are not mutually exclusive; they are two perspectives of the same phenomenon. Through studying the Dao, one can solve this supposed ontological conflict and walk through life as an empowered One amongst the Many.

The person is brought to greater completion through this spiritual awakening, but is woefully unprepared to affect change. Anarchism, being primarily a materialist philosophy, arms one to reshape the byzantine structures of society with enough effort, but perhaps falters to instill spiritual urgency. The two practices can borrow from one another, as I will from a fellow writer; repurposing the wise words of Windblown Curiosities, anarchism for the society and Daoism for the soul.

Share

PRIMITIVIST DRIVES

The one piece of literature that most encapsulates the primitivist tendencies of Daoist anarchism would be the 48^th section of the Outer Chapters of Baopuzi (抱朴子), a text traditionally seen as canonical which details the intricacies of alchemy as well as houses a decent collection of various thoughts from its author, Ge Hong (葛洪, who took up the moniker Baopuzi), ranging from politics to literature. In this particular section, Ge Hong is critiquing the anti-ruler stance of one of his contemporaries, Bao Jingyan (鲍敬言). Though Bao Jingyan does not (as far as we know) have a comprehensive theoretical framework surrounding his distaste for government, his Wujun (无君, literally “no ruler”) stance is one of the earliest instances of anarchist adjacent sentiment we can find in Chinese literature. Due to an incomplete historical record, we can only learn of Bao Jingyan through the eyes of Ge Hong, but he does not seem to misrepresent the argument. Ge Hong argues against his view while allowing it credibility and grace; he does not, as so many often do, laugh at the face of the idea, but rather dives into the particulars and picks the argument apart.

Daoism trends towards a unique view on politics, culture, and economy, advocating for “小国寡民” (xiǎo guó guǎ mín), literally “small country, few people” with the intent of avoiding the catastrophic consequences that dominating ambition brings about, namely large-scale warfare, slavery, and corruption. There is a general belief that maintaining small-scale nations can not only simplify the bureaucratic process, thus making life for citizens easier, but also provide more ample opportunity for the ruling class to experience genuine ties with their people. In their eyes, the primitive societies which preceded their own were prime examples of such a state of affairs. Even better, actually, as there were no rulers and no distinct classes. In these times, as Bao Jingyan believes, people would “dig their wells and drink, plant their fields and eat, work when the sun rose, rest when the sun set, free and unrestrained, relaxed and satisfied, without airs of competition, without honor and without shame.”4

From this perspective, once the distinctions came into being and found a place to sink their blade, people began to “use strength to control the weak, use cleverness to deceive the foolish,” giving rise to states which levied heavy taxes, conscripted innocents to join senseless wars, and otherwise oppressed the people. These are unnatural conditions according to Bao Jingyan, and thus run opposite to the Dao. So long as there exists a ruling class, the people will never have a day of peace.

Ge Hong posits a totally contradictory claim: the rise of the state is the natural progression of the world from its primordial chaotic state (混沌, hùn dùn) and is generally beneficial for mankind. He claims that the world was also in chaos, and thus people were selfish and primed to harm each other for their own benefit. Resources were scarce, tribalism was rife, and thus inter-group or even intra-group violence would occur without much in terms of due process. He continues down this train of thought, stressing the importance of social systems such as the army and law, which allow for virtuous rulers to better serve civilized society and prevent those who are wicked from recklessly causing mayhem. Perhaps his most incisive rebuttal is the significant increase of living standards enjoyed in ordered society.

His arguments certainly carry a degree of validity, but his angle of approach is different. Bao Jingyan and Ge Hong are essentially talking past one another in this exchange. Bao Jingyan sees the horrors committed by cruel, petty kings and warlords whereas Ge Hong sees the fruits of the virtuous king’s labor. These two stances, “tyrant” (暴君 bào jūn) and “sage-king” (圣君shèng jūn) are opposing worldviews, but both are potential consequences from adopting a hierarchical social system. Seeing rulers as the tyrant is focusing on the downtrodden and abused, watching them struggle laboriously (even if in nicer conditions) as the king’s coffers burst from the seams. It sees how law can bind and abuse people, how it is not blind. The sage-king view, on the other hand, is considering the ruler in ideal situations; the sage-king is seldom achievable, but there are rulers who may come close or at the very least be middling. They will ensure peace and prosperity for the people, creating the safety so necessary to combat against the warlord-dominated chaos of uncivilized ages. Indeed, they help further the development of humanity in general; it was not until the Qin dynasty, one marked by brutal, callous, and petty leadership, that a standardized set of characters were created, allowing for ease of communication in a larger range than before. Ge Hong’s view is more favorable towards the ruler, as so long as they are not a tyrant, the benefits of society make up for whatever extraneous conditions are added to said society - in fact, to him, it is not only natural that the state would arise, but it is reasonable and basically good.

WHAT DOES LAOZI THINK?

Early Daoism in particular does not state a preference for or against the state existing. As Hsiao Kung-chuan5 writes,

non-action in government need not destroy and cast aside the ruler-servitor institution, and return to the total lack of restraints that exists among birds and beasts . . . in theoretical terms, what Lao Tzu attacked was not government in and of itself, but any kind of governing which did not conform to “Taoistic” standards

In a sense, this is true; however, there is another interpretation that is relatively compelling. Nonaction is inherently non-ambitious and non-binding. Being one of the most important concepts in Daoist thought, a rallying call or campaign undertaken would be against the nature of the Dao - it does not strive. Thus, the apparent lack of proper resistance against the state is “only justifying government on a literal level, but with a deliberate subtextual purpose of undermining political authority.” This is in line with the properties of the Dao. Like water, it flows to places men disdain. It erodes and carries sustenance to all living things. It is possible that a sage-king could embody the Dao, just as it is possible that the Dao could be far beyond the reach of his mighty empire. In this lens, Daoist anarchism is passive and pacifistic; it undermines and gradually brings about the proper state of affairs. The efficacy of this “strategy” can be contested, as there is always a new fool who believes he can tame the world, but it does not totally rule out the potential anarchist messaging of the fundamental texts of Daoism.

However, all of this is can be, at best, speculation. Laozi dedicates half of his scripture to the De, a virtue which is rooted in the Dao and expressed through mankind, a loose guiding force through which man can attempt to become a vessel for its purity, but never fully achieve. It speaks of the ruler as a given; it could be that Laozi believed that rulers were a necessary evil, a consequence of the splitting of the Heavens and Earth, or that he viewed them as a natural progression of human civilization. He may have believed both. From Chapter 306, we can begin to understand his complex point of view:

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.

…

Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of Tao.
That which goes against the Tao comes to an early end.

In this chapter, Laozi seeks to advise the ruler. He does not explicitly reject the notion of rulership, instead seeking to alter its methods and transform its philosophy. Let us continue with Chapter 59:

In caring for others and serving heaven,
There is nothing like using restraint.
Restraint begins with giving up one's own ideas.
This depends on Virtue gathered in the past.
If there is a good store of Virtue, then nothing is impossible.
If nothing is impossible, then there are no limits.
If a man knows no limits, then he is fit to be a ruler.
The mother principle of ruling holds good for a long time.
This is called having deep roots and a firm foundation,
The Tao of long life and eternal vision.

Here we can see the ruler posed as a natural outcome of possession of great virtue. Caring for others results in restraint, which enables humility, thus creating the conditions for a “fit” ruler. This is framed such that a person has to embody certain qualities in order for Laozi to consider them worthy. To the author, this implies an acceptance towards the position of the ruler in society; it is fine to have one, but they must be excellent. In fact, rulership is justified by the “mother principle,” a mysterious philosophical framework which upholds the legitimacy of sovereignty. This principle, of course, is “caring for others and serving heaven,” acting with restraint, allowing for the myriad things to flourish on their own without attempting to seize control.

Rather than opposing rulers outright, it could be that Laozi is world-weary, aiming his ire at his contemporaries. In Chapter 75, Laozi expresses a lamentation, depressingly relevant in our current world:

Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.

We starve because you rob us, we rebel because you control us, and we all wish to die. Clearly, Laozi has been living through some tyrannical times. However, this passage holds a tone that the English translation does not seem to convey: Laozi is issuing a warning towards those who would exploit their people. The one who knows better than to value life too much is one who has nothing to lose, not even his own life. He is starving, his children are starving, and he has been pushed to the edge. It follows, naturally, that violence will occur, and he who lives a life of violence will find his end in violence, for better or for worse.

IS IT ANARCHIST OR NOT?

In short, I would argue not. There are clear ideological trends that are similar, but anarchism is materialistic, political, and social, whereas Daoism leans towards mysticism, spirituality, and idealism. As seen above, there are instances where Daoism provides social critique, but its negativistic approach does not lend for explicit condemnation or approval of certain phenomena. Daoism takes a detached approach, one that lays out natural consequences, preferring the ordered chaos of nature and the simple, kindly nature of man, but never truly calls for action. Anarchism, by comparison, grabs the bull by the horns. It is about praxis, affecting change, transforming the world through concentrated, intended action. These are stances that Daoists would not adopt, if not reject outright, depending on the time period and flavor of Dao.

However, there are many similarities, as well. Both subscribe to a belief that mankind is generally capable of good, that the state can create a myriad of problems, that the lowly are closest to the highest good, and that men and women ought be left to be as they are. Unity through liberty of the individual drives the changes each seek, leading one to interpret that attainment, a “solved” dialectical attainment of the individual and collective, is the ultimate aim. Anarchism does this through reshaping the material world, using senses and social drives to change minds and thus action, where Daoism shuts one out of it all before reintroduction, elevating one’s mind beyond the material.

Anarchism and Daoism are not the same. They are similar trees in the same forest. Their roots cross paths, often drawing from the same source. As John Rapp illustrates, combining the two could result in a potent, comprehensive means of affecting autonomy of the individual and a freer society. It’s hard to say; nobody has tried.

In this post, I will complete my thoughts using two particularly weak chapters as the main discussion, namely family and domestic workers. The authors fumble terribly in these chapters, fairly pointing out significant flaws in previous hierarchical systems while not properly proposing an alternative or engaging with the inherent oppressive elements of hierarchy.

This can be a contentious subject, and I hope to spark conversation or inspire introspection in regards to the everyday relationships in which we find ourselves bound. This is by no means a comprehensive dive into the nature of hierarchy and there are many points in both articles that can be expanded upon and dissected. My angle is primarily normative and reliant on some aspects of my own worldview left unvoiced. I am more than willing to debate further in the comments or subsequent articles.

Enjoy!

FAMILY

It should also be said that these hierarchies extend to families, typically to a lesser, more informal extent. Their example of the dinner party hierarchy is based on Shandong traditions, the province from which Confucius hails. Confucius was a lover of social order, which he believed could best be maintained through adherence to relatively rigid hierarchical structures upheld by common, venerated rituals. In some ways, he is correct, and he was a fantastic thinker; it is no fluke that a culture necessarily has unique customs to define its qualities, acting as pillars for surrounding thought and economy. However, his love of hierarchy created a culture in which it was nearly blasphemous to go against the wishes of one’s parents.

In the past, elders controlled family property and finance, running the family almost like a business. The fate of the family lay in the hands of the eldest male, and thus was subject to his various whims. This trend is lessening today, perhaps subsumed by devotion to a greater authority and the emergence of globalization and ever-increasing, affordable means of travel, but this fact is ignored by the authors - both of its marginal weakening and its existence. It is because jobs are elsewhere and travel is easier that the youth can escape the grasp of their parents. It is an opportunity to do so, not a guarantee. Nor is it the case that all parents are controlling or harm their children; it is more accurate, in my mind, to refer to their relations as well-intentioned, paternalistic, and limiting.

This is the crux of the problem. Regardless of intent, regardless of ease of access to resources, sometimes even regardless of distance, the fixation of hierarchical social structures leaves an impression on the youth, preventing them from feeling the freedom to self-actualize. This can manifest positively in their dedication to loving their parents as their parents have loved them or giving back to their community. It can also be argued that there are not many choices beyond such, given the psychological limitations placed on the individual. If one internalizes their role in the hierarchy, they will feel compelled to fulfill that role according to what is expected or idealized. A sense of satisfaction can come from this, without a doubt. For many, it can be a fulfilling, good life. They are a greater part of the whole and accept their predetermined, traditionally-defined role. This is the attitude of the authors.

On the other hand, it will likewise be a source of great stress devoid of the weapons with which to combat said stress. For example, if one has even the inkling of desire for self-determination or cannot accept some part of their role, they risk damaging the system, letting others down, ostracization, feeling unfulfilled, pressure from those above, or cognitive dissonance caused by questioning accepted realities. It is a common occurrence to hear out the struggles of family life my Chinese peers face. A huge number of youth are doing their best to escape the coercive tendrils of familial expectation. Sure, they can resist it if they’d like, but it would result in psychological pain from departing with expected values, social pain from distancing from the family unit, and thus the financial unit, leaving one more independent but facing the world ever more alone. They can choose this, or deal with the nagging opinions of your superiors, eventually giving in maintain harmony.

What I have just described could be seen as an extreme case, but I am mostly relaying what has been told to me by Chinese classmates, coworkers, and family members. Reality is much messier, and hierarchical relations still exert their influence, even if they no longer strictly define the path of one’s life. The rituals meant to grease the gears of social relations feel compulsory and hollow. Those lower down complete what the higher-ups dictate on their own terms - but the task MUST be completed, or there will be consequences. A common phrase echoes through the dilapidated halls of employment: 上有政策，下有对策 - Superiors have policy, subordinates have countermeasures. It is a prescribed duty, not much of a joy, and much less a personal decision, to take in one’s elderly parents, engaging in role reversal as they enter and eventually depart from their twilight years. The family unit, while empowering the individual, assuring one’s safety, is also a significant source of imposed duty, a duty which frequently overshadows abuse and supersedes any other endeavor. This is not to mention the lack of an elder care industry, a reality which places extra social and financial pressure on the youth, essentially forcing their hand whether or not they want to take care of their parents. It is obviously admirable to do so, but it is once again defined by its lack of choice and filial pressure.

So long as they are happy, it’s fine, I suppose! Yet as someone with a near-obsessive attachment to autonomy, I can only agree with this sentiment if somebody has carefully considered their position with the condition of having access to other ways of living. The fact is that the family unit seeks to dominate the individual, as a social unit. To fight against this, it takes those in the privileged positions weakening its influence to free all the individuals involved, either by means of popular revolt or on their own volition. If everyone is freed from obligation, then choose to reform the unit out of a desire for self-fulfillment resulting from a greater understanding of their values as individuals, then can the hierarchy said to be just, in my view. It is unlikely that they will form such a strict and rigid hierarchy, however, as people tend to seek and enjoy autonomy.

Luckily, this seems to be more or less what the authors mean by “Just Hierarchy.” They state that lovers should, in passionate embrace, seek role reversal “frequently and unselfconsciously,” suggesting the means of escaping unjust patriarchal social norms is to engage in the coital wedding of Yin and Yang. This is apparently a reversal of hierarchical relations; a collection of passionate moments that totally undermine oppressive social expectations. However, if these moments should occur “frequently and unselfconsciously,” implying a conscious effort to overcome the socially-implanted shame of not fulfilling your proper role, as often as possible, would not that likewise imply that the means of coping with hierarchy is to seek egalitarian solutions? Their proposed “role reversal” is in reality a meeting in the middle, finding a place of oneness and equality - not “pure” equality of sameness, but equality of difference and passionate, profound respect. Just Hierarchy, then, is the mapping of egalitarian, progressive values onto an inherently unfair system.

This is the problem with Just Hierarchy: framing hierarchy in this way renders it basically nonsensical. The authors are attempting to make a case for hierarchy while holding on to egalitarian values. They find the Shandong dinners to be just because they don’t discriminate - fantastic, but greater academia does. The people in those meetings are the most privileged; what of the post-docs working for free? What about the exorbitant costs of education? What of the authority of seniority in entrenched roles?

They make an argument in the family section that swapping from a wealth-based status system to one based on age will work towards reducing wealth inequality - also fantastic - if that’s what we’ve decided to focus on. This leaves one quite twisted in the mind; from a contemporary progressive stance, wanting to reduce wealth inequality is good, and selecting a proper hierarchical structure can achieve that good, but it will necessarily swap one form of privilege out for another and structurally impose that privilege. If we switch to a gerontocracy, will we not still face the consequences of irrational or uninformed decisions of elders with no effective systemic means of combating their will? Besides, who is to say the elderly know better? It seems fair to say the wisdom of the old is greater than that of the young, but they often lack the vision and energy of the youth. Why is it better to prefer the elder qualities over the youth? It would be permissible if there wasn’t a power structure to enforce their qualities, but it’s hierarchical. We haven’t gone anywhere.

They continue, explaining how a child can influence their parents’ decisions in a morally Confucian way. The child can attempt to persuade, then cry, playing on their emotions, then eventually accept the will of their parents. Put in other words, it is an attempt to appeal to reason, which can inspire admiration or respect, followed by the backup plan of emotional manipulation, followed by forfeiting. Is this not the child seeking autonomy, attempting to wrestle away just a smidgen of power to live their own life? Does the parent not have near dictatorial control over their child, in this light? It doesn’t matter! After explaining most of this, they throw it away, opting for a age-based family hierarchical system on which to base relations, loosely based on the Confucian traditions. This solution, like all solutions in the book, takes an existing rigid, oppressive hierarchy and introduces softer egalitarian elements to increase the fluidity of the structure. As they say:

In short, age-based hierarchies between family members, like hierarchical relationships between intimates, may involve role changes if not complete reversals: That’s key to their moral legitimacy.

Hierarchy necessitates unequal distribution of power. Moral legitimacy hinges on potential for role reversal. The authors making a such a claim signals two things: they believe that power held by one individual or class for an extended period of time without checks or balances is immoral, but admissible, and that it can be better justified so long as there is fluidity between members of the hierarchy. If it’s age, it will take a lifetime, if one lives that long. If it’s wealth, there must be some mechanism for social mobility. If it’s throwing buckets of fish as far as possible, there must be some means of equalizing opportunity. As for fluidity, how much should there be? Is it fair to the youth if they never live to old age? If there is vast wealth inequality, is it fair if there is merely the hypothetical opportunity to move up, or do people actually need to be moving? How many people is the cutoff to proclaim justice?

Their adversity towards the unavoidable consequences of power imbalance combined with the attitude that hierarchy is generally good boggles the mind. That which makes hierarchy justified is precisely that which erodes hierarchical structure in the first place; why not skip the middle man? Their solutions do not imply the virtues of social stratification, even with the caveat of minimizing oppressive elements.

HOUSEKEEPERS

This section of the book is particularly egregious. It opens with a lengthy discussion of slavery. The authors go over Aristotle’s justification for slavery, in particular his distinction between conventional and natural slavery, a distinction which posits that some are born to rule and some to be ruled, and that warfare or similar conditions can lead to unjust slavery. They then compare his thoughts to those of Mencius, who believed that “some labor with their minds, and some labor with their strength;” it was those who had strong minds who ruled, supported by those of greater strength. Writing on and on about slavery, servitude, and the historically classist, supremacist values that many thinkers shared leads into a short paragraph that explains the authors’ more frank thoughts on the matter:

We will simply assume that the blatantly unfair treatment of housekeepers... is bad and should be curbed to the extent possible. It is difficult for the state to monitor such abuses because interaction with housekeepers takes place in the ‘privacy’ of the home, but it can enforce strict punishments for publicly exposed abuses... we need to recognize that the life of a housekeeper should never be viewed as more than a necessary evil, similar to Aristotle’s slaves and Marx’s proletarians in technologically undeveloped society. Housekeepers do it for the money, and overseas domestic workers and migrant workers from the countryside are deprived of interaction with their own family members while they live and work for their employers, so the system is a double evil.

The authors know that the housekeeping industry can be abusive, cruel, and is often a painful, isolating act of economic desperation for workers. They pose a question:

But what if the housekeepers are paid well above the market rates, given substantial time off, and treated with both respect and family-like care, and both employers and housekeepers are satisfied with such arrangements?

Reading this in a more negative direction, they narrate a hypothetical, largely improbable situation in which there is an immense gap in power, not just in their work arrangement, but also in social class, and force the justification for such an arrangement to be mutual consent. In a more positive light, we can see how this type of ideal arrangement might mitigate the suppressive elements inherent to the labor relations. We could argue that there is a callback to the notion that the one in power ought take responsibility and care for the ones below them, doing their best to limit exploitation. But if we’re trying to avoid it, then this appears to be yet another call for equal treatment! If an employer genuinely embodies the traits as described by the authors, it would be more appropriate to refer to the job as an act of charity over anything else. Remember - this type of work is only justifiable if certain rare conditions are met, and is akin to modern day domestic servitude.

They give two examples of housekeepers. The first one treats it as a job:

Housekeeper 1 is a Beijing-born resident. She is not poor but works as a housekeeper to earn some extra funds for her family. She is neither intelligent nor ambitious, lacks and sense of humor, does her job in a rigid but effective way, and her interactions with her employer and family members are kept to a bare minimum.

Nothing special, but nothing wrong. Thus, according to the authors, there is no moral imperative for the employers to act on, other than honoring their employee’s needs and fulfilling their end of the contract. The way the paint this individual is a bit cynical, and she would be a slightly below-average keeper, but if she gets the job done in this exploitative relationship (the authors’ framing), then she should be of value.

The second housekeeper is posed as a step up:

Housekeeper 2 is from the Chinese countryside. She is from a poor family and could not even finish primary school due to economic constraints. But she goes to Beijing of her own accord with an impressive desire to improve herself... She is hired by a Beijing-based employer without any formal contract. The employer hires her as a driver and a cook (she is an excellent and highly imaginative cook) and all-around helper. The employer’s son is very fond of [her], and vice versa. They eat meals as a family, discuss intimate family affairs, and the housekeeper’s moral insights help to smooth out family conflicts... After eleven years, the housekeeper leaves the employer’s family, taking up a new job as a teacher in an informal school that teaches the classics to young children.

The authors seem to believe that it is easier to have a more compassionate view of this housekeeper. They claim that, even if against the employer’s long-term benefit, they must, like Aristotle did for his slaves, “plan for the freedom of the housekeeper.” This sentence is absurd. I find it fair to chalk it up to erroneous phrasing by the authors, or perhaps an admission of discomfort for the arrangement. If they’re uncomfortable, why bother trying to justify it? As they stated above, they see it as a “double evil,” a labor relation close to domestic servitude that rips people away from their local social safety nets. It is even more incisive to explain that the housekeepers are “family-like” or “adjacent to family,” but are not quite family. They are never mistaken for family, do not fret. You also do not get brownie points for the adorable kids referring to the housekeepers as “auntie” - this is a general term of endearment for any woman of particular age in China.

Finally, they claim that the employers might just have to plan for a “role reversal” - their kid could be born stupid or with undervalued talents, while the housekeeper could give birth to the future boss of the now-employer’s son! So, in the end, the entire passage was an argument for virtue-based social mobility. Why was the first housekeeper less valued? Because she wasn’t pitiable enough, led a materially secure life, and lacked ambition. Why was the second housekeeper so valued? Because she was in a more ambiguous situation, more vulnerable, and more ambitious. Thus, she was like a child, full of potential, and the employers, in their virtuous superiority, sought to make her something more akin to an equal, but not quite. So not only are we once again relying on mutual respect and humanization of the weaker party (a beckon towards egalitarian values), but also appealing to virtue of the privileged as a means of ensuring class mobility, justifying the system as a whole. As I gather, the lesson to be learned from this passage is as follows:

The better-off will raise you up if they deem you sufficiently virtuous.

Is this justice? It can be argued that the employer’s ancestors went through similar trials, rags to riches, and that the housekeeper is the beginning of her family’s rise to wealth. It is possible, yes, but why is it we see generational poverty persist? Is it merely the outcome of unjust hierarchies enacted on these abused innocents, or is it that unjust power dynamics that inevitably form in hierarchical systems lead to fossilization of class?

This woman had to sacrifice everything, work a decade as a “family member,” rely on the good nature of her employer and better herself after hours, just to get the chance to reach a level of wealth and freedom still significantly lower than that of her original employer. Her child, or her child’s child, may have a chance to even exceed the employer’s child - it is fair to say that a parent can be satisfied by this notion alone - but what does the employer’s child have to do? They can drift primarily on inertia and yet have a greater chance for a materially richer and freer life, based on the circumstances of their birth and upbringing alone. If it is the case that they are born dull, then the family’s wealth may begin to falter, but even so, the access to superior education and other services will mitigate most of their failings. In China, where guanxi is a massive influencing factor, the argument for class mobility is largely null.

This also requires the better-off to be virtuous themselves. What if the second housekeeper found herself in an abusive situation? What if she had the personality of the first housekeeper, cold and distant, but still had all the intellectual and moral potential described? What if she was generous, but a bit dull-witted? It would surely be justified to leave her in a position of servitude, then, even if the husband of the employer was a dull man himself. After all, she didn’t satisfy the laundry list of hypothetical, idealized scenarios that would justify her “proper” treatment.

My only thought on how such a system could be seen as justified, based on their provided worldview, is if each person involved is in possession of virtue. They admit this themselves; the first example of the cold, work-oriented housekeeper seems to imply that she will not breach the barrier to softening the hierarchical relationship, thus rendering it harder to justify. She is not adequate in virtue; she does not want to grow, but instead sees this as a way to get by. She is not virtuous enough to free herself or benefit from the powerful party’s privilege.

But what if the cold housekeeper simply didn’t have passion for housekeeping? What sector, what position would properly pique her interest and spark her motivation? If she were put in that position, would she be as warm as the rural housekeeper? If so, she would likely be virtuous enough to better herself, thus move up to a higher social class, in turn justifying the hierarchy. But what if she never encounters this prodigal scenario in her life? Can we call it just if she was never given the chance to fully embrace her passions? We can call it fair, from the impartial position of nature; nobody, nothing, is owed anything. From a human perspective, it is likely fair to say most would find it unfortunate, at least. The authors tend towards essentialism and like to naturalize things; it is not that the first housekeeper disliked the job or saw it only as a means to get by, but rather that she did not have the passion of the second, and thus was not as worthy of the employer’s compassion and dedication.

What is especially odd, is that the demeanor of the cold housekeeper is more in line with the expected attitudes of those born and raised in large cities, accustomed to that mode of life, shaped by transactional social relationships. It is her demeanor which turns off the employer, that lacks potential to create beauty out of hierarchy, even if she has similar avenues for self-development down the line. There exists a contradiction here - if it is her attitude which somehow justifies the employer’s emotional distance, does the employer even have virtue? What is their virtue if it does not apply evenly to those below? Or is it that the virtue which justifies hierarchy only exists when the right people come across the right people, or better put, when the lower rungs adequately appeal to the dominating tendencies of their superiors? This would imply that outside of these situations, hierarchy is not as justifiable.

The first housekeeper is portrayed as unremarkable. It is not explicitly written, but what one gathers from the tone is that she doesn’t seem particularly deserving of a better future. This is incredibly rich, given in the previous section, the author writes at length the issues of Aristotle’s justifications of slavery, specifically how some are born to rule and some to be ruled. Portraying the unremarkable, unsociable, business-minded housekeeper as not achieving much due to her lack of warmth and intentionally not imagining her potential future shows clear bias and preference. Is this what a just hierarchy is - preference for demeanor and perceived virtue?

We could argue that these phenomena are unavoidable, which is acceptable. Why is it that, knowing this, we yet attach decision-making power and control to certain groups regardless? We can wax poetic about how sometimes good things can come out of hierarchy, that people can move between social classes and eventually become freer and wealthier and happier, but we are surrounded by instances and institutions which render this simply farcical. We are surrounded by those who struggle to keep up, or despite their best efforts, cannot. Are they merely lacking in virtue? Are they not properly industrious and clever? Have they simply not yet abased themselves to a proper degree or met the right wealthy patron? Why are these the benchmarks, and even if they are not, why do the people who struggle not likewise deserve a free life? We are nature, but we are also human - we can create the conditions for all to live free.

Allowing for strained class mobility is not freedom, but it may be the best hierarchy can offer.

Subscribe now

This post is a bit of a doozy. I have been writing this on and off for the past month between work and travel. Just Hierarchy is a book I have read three times over by now, and with each subsequent reread, my frustration grows. It attempts to justify the concept of hierarchy through a loose and inconsistent framework that both lacks the guts to embrace hierarchy in all its oppressive glory and progressive concepts in all their flowery, abstract pining. They instead appeal to the “progressive conservative,” somebody with traditional cultural leanings but a progressive moral outlook. The underlying justification, the one that spans all the various sections and arguments, is “hierarchy is inevitable and good.” Inevitable, sure. Good, eh, maybe. That said, the form their arguments take ranges from acceptable to ridiculous, and they seem to borrow from multiple schools of thought. There is a section that can best be described as Libertarian (like Rothbard Libertarianism) and another that loves strict Confucian social organization, but actually doesn’t. But it does.

Would I recommend this book? Why not. Read it for yourself. Even if you like hierarchy in one way or another, I would not doubt that you would find yourself utterly baffled by some of the arguments they make. It’s an ambitious idea that falls on its face frequently. I applaud the effort regardless; as they state up front, there is little research or conversation surrounding social hierarchy deviating from progressive lens, so it does have value in that regard.

This article is separated into four sections: Just Hierarchy, Conditions for Just Hierarchy, Family, and Housekeepers. The first two sections introduce the core concepts of the book and use examples to highlight the type of argumentation used. Family and Housekeepers are two sections from the book itself that were so rife with problems that I felt compelled to write extensively about each. The conclusion is tied into the Housekeepers section - the last three paragraphs more or less wrap up my main ideas.

I will split this entire article into two parts for ease of reading, as placed together, they add up to a 30 minute read time. This first part will include Just Hierarchy and Conditions for Just Hierarchy, with the second installment consisting of the two chapter analyses.

Thank you for reading! Let’s get started.

Just Hierarchy

Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World is a book by Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei which attempts to distinguish just and unjust hierarchical systems in a naturalistic lens. They posit that hierarchies will inevitably form in certain, if not all, social situations, and rather than attempting to force the issue of equality on this natural tendency, we ought consider which hierarchies are justifiable and which are not. Some of the arguments posed are quite persuasive; even someone like me, one who prefers localized, bottom-up methods of organization, struggles to deconstruct certain claims, if not appreciate their argumentation. With that being said, the majority of their proposed justifications fall flat. There seems to be a desire to paint hierarchy in a good light, which is commendable from an academic standpoint, but not enough conviction behind their words, nor is there enough incisive analysis of the essence of hierarchy. There is a significant focus on how things appear in a controlled environment and downplaying of extraneous variables that expose the numerous problems with hierarchy.

Their introduction is a salient example of this tendency. They open explaining the seating arrangement for formal meals according to Shandong customs, as shown below.

These seating arrangements are organized according to social status within the specific social context they are taking place in. For example, the Principal Host may be the Dean of a department, with various other VIPs taking their appropriate seats. The author states that these arrangements are perhaps just because there is no discrimination based on sex, nationality, or race. A foreigner could (theoretically) be in the Dean chair, or the Dean could be a woman, or even be black! This hierarchical seating pattern is based purely on social status. This is followed immediately by a caveat that this is only true in academic settings, and that external society is typically more patriarchal. They continue, detailing how the circular table, as compared to the raised, square tables at Oxford, does not discernibly reveal the hierarchical nature of seating, thus removing that unease caused by blatant flaunting of status.

On its own, this is nothing special. Ensuring hypothetical equality in opportunity and selection is venerable but not unique to hierarchy. In fact, it is an appeal to the opposite - equality - that allows for this hierarchy to appear just - and only in this specific social setting. The second point on the circular table is bunk; there is indeed an unease in differentiating class by physical differences in height or quality, but the circle does not magically remove the concept of hierarchy from the minds of those involved. Anyone familiar with this type of seating arrangement will know at a glance who is important and who is less so. Our reaction to hierarchy is primarily psychological; simply because people appear to be more equal does not imply everyone is of the same station, and everyone feels the difference.

They continue on explaining how such an arrangement is an example of a just hierarchy, providing supporting details. One such detail is that one’s status in a certain social setting is not universal. At home, they sit according to age, and at government functions, it’s based on rank. In addition, those at higher ranks have more responsibilities. They have to carry out ceremonial traditions, give speeches, toast, and occasionally serve food to those nearest them. To break it down to more basic concepts, the hosts must serve the guests, carry more responsibility, and their positions are not permanent. They complete their initial proposal with the following:

So yes, Shandong-style seating and drinking rituals are hierarchical, but what’s wrong with if they provide hospitality for the guests and generate a sense of harmony among participants? Perhaps such hierarchies are morally justified if they shift over time and if those with more social power end up caring about the needs of those with less power and eventually do more to serve their interests?

So, Shandong-style seating arrangements are being extended to the broader idea of hierarchy and some justifications for it are proposed. Hospitality and harmony are prioritized and a proposition of eventual, hypothetical dedication on the part of those in privileged positions justifies hierarchy. On its face, I can agree. It goes without saying, however, that hierarchy basically never achieves this lofty goal, certainly not in larger social systems. Another problem is that harmony and hospitality are not, in any capacity, limited to hierarchical systems. One could argue that hospitality is easier to achieve when there are specific responsibilities allocated to specific social roles enforced clearly by hierarchy, but it can just as easily fail. Harmony can be achieved by a communal understanding of universal equality - this is also not easy to achieve, but the potential for such alone is enough to remove harmony from the hierarchy equation. So what is it that justifies this hierarchy? I suppose the only answer is tradition, an arguably weak stance to adopt. In the end, the qualifications for “just hierarchy” come across as a desperate attempt to generalize a specific, flawed system of dining rituals.

The next paragraph is dedicated to one significant issue in their dining habits: over-consumption of alcohol. They describe how VIPs feel the need to toast often in order to keep up the joyful atmosphere of the party, and how lower-status guests may feel pressured to keep up with their drinking. Sure, one can request water, but this will seldom come without a bit of teasing or disappointment from the high-status people, the very people one feels compelled to please. Here is a situation where those up high are trying to “serve those below” by creating a festive atmosphere, while also finding room to flex their authority, two contradicting states of mind, while the low-status people are trying to please those up high while maintaining some sense of autonomy. The justification is that the high-status have the responsibility to run the whole operation. This can be used and abused in any number of ways by those in charge, as anyone should understand - “for the people.” All it takes is a big ego, a drunk mistake, or a bad day for the host to ruin the party, and everyone else suffers for it. Yes, a lower-status person can make a scene, but they are less important; if they get kicked out, everything else can run as it should. For all the “harmony,” there is equally the chance for suppressive stress and expectation. How many are dreading the “optional” dinner with their boss from time to time, in which they have to come up with a litany of excuses to avoid drinking? How much of the atmosphere created by the boss is what the employees want, and how much is his idea of what the event should be like? An incredibly complex, difficult, and damning situation brought to life due to power stratification is brushed over, and the authors prefer to stick to the topic of alcohol rather than bring up the messy reality of power dynamics. The authors do not consider any of this. They would likely call this an unjust hierarchy - or perhaps not, as we’ll see that their definition is rather fluid and consistently weak.

The Conditions for Just Hierarchy

It is evident that the so-called “Just Hierarchy” relies on a few conditions:

1) Everyone properly fulfills their given roles;

2) The contradictions between their duties are minimized (harmony);

3) “Equal inequality,” or role mobility exists;

4) The hierarchy serves a common or greater good.

For example, a simple, real configuration of a “just hierarchy” could be the foreman-worker relationship, in a vacuum. Each worker has the ability to one day become foreman (not all of them will, mind you) and the foreman role comes with more responsibility, requiring an eye for the big picture, ability to organize labor forces, and so on. This is obviously not without caveat. The foreman has lower risk of injury and likely better working conditions, will likely enjoy the benefits of higher status, get a bigger cut of the profit, and so on. The “risk” taken on by the leader of the group is indeed larger - only if the operation fails. The workers will not all become foreman, they are more prone to workplace abuse (abuse is something the authors frequently bring up but never expound on), they likely work in harder conditions and get less benefit from the operation, but will face less hardship if and when it fails. This pattern continues if the total labor force is split into even more levels; as one moves up, responsibility increases alongside one’s cut, and actual work tends to decrease. That being said, everybody knows their role with clarity, they are working towards a common goal with little conflicting interests to stir the pot (hopefully), and they all have a chance to be rewarded for their hard work by moving up in the hierarchy.

A harmonious workplace will ease potential tensions, but harmony does not come from the hierarchy itself. The authors seem to believe that a Just Hierarchy is proven systemically; that is to say, the structure of the hierarchy and its value system itself will justify its existence by creating harmony. The structure will clearly define roles, responsibilities, and consequences, while the value system will clarify the expectations for behavior within that structure. This is useful for efficiency, but does not imply harmony. It is just as easy to imagine a harmonious worker co-op with loosely defined hierarchical roles and shared responsibility or a group of equals in some capacity getting along just fine while dividing labor and without designating their roles in some arbitrary tier system. Likewise, issues could be handled smoothly or spiral into absurdity in either configuration. Harmony arises from any system working without major hiccups, something that hierarchy can achieve for a time. However, it requires frequent restructuring and suppression mitigation - in essence, it needs egalitarian drives in order to self-regulate or it will quickly stiffen.

This is an attitude the authors seem to agree on as well, but have condemned themselves to venerating potential virtue as hierarchy itself instead of recognizing its dualistic nature with egalitarianism - ironic, considering they speak of Daoism in the text. They describe how some hierarchies, like those in schools or companies or kingdoms, will implement compassion-building exercises for the leadership class: principals or administrators may have to teach a class every other year, the CEO may work the lowest ranked role for a day or two, or the king will act out the role of his grandfather at his father’s passing. If we ignore the fact that these are incredibly rare phenomena, it doesn’t take too much thought to understand that these are methods which, if actually taken seriously, would lead to the weakening of hierarchical relations. If a principal starts taking on enough classes, they will not merely experience a taste of the teacher’s role, but actually become a teacher. If the CEO spent more time trying out different roles within their company, they would actually understand its function and its workers on a personal, visceral level, opening their heart to seeing everyone as equals in some regard. Is it hierarchy? In the literal sense, yes. Is it the virtue of hierarchy itself that create such an ideal situation (as posed by the authors themselves)? To them, yes; so long as there is fluidity within the hierarchy, it can be justified. In the material world, would adopting such measures be seen as a hierarchy-strengthening endeavor? Without a doubt, no, as it is the negation of such and the gradual dismantling of oppressive relations that hierarchy co-opts to make itself more palatable. To justify hierarchy, they require egalitarian regulation.

Odd.

Chinese boasts quite a few instances of such words. For example, the word “土豪”(tǔ háo) combines the word for “dirt” and “extraordinary man” to create something akin to the English “hick” or “redneck.” However, the Chinese “hick” lives in a very different setting than his English counterpart. Material differences in rural culture and infrastructure between China and the United States lead to completely different caricatures of backwater fools. It would be more suitable to refer to the Chinese hick as a rich peasant: a person from a poor, rural region who has by some means amassed a greater amount of wealth than those in his area. He’ll own a car, have a bigger house, a bit more land, and a thriving business. The U.S. hick, by comparison, is poor, uneducated, and generally lazy. The Chinese hick is laughed at because he is “fake rich” - decently well off, but uneducated and unsophisticated. The U.S. hick is laughed at because he’s fat, dumb, and drunk. Social, material, and cultural context will significantly effect the way we interpret concepts expressed through relatively simple words.

Another such example is the titular 道 (dào) in the context of Daoism. In Chinese, it is a much more straightforward concept, as the surrounding poetry fills in all the extraneous details of the worldview. There is no need to stretch one’s imagination too far when original texts of the I Ching are there to teach one about Yin and Yang, to instill in one the unique value system of the ancient Chinese philosophers who took brush to paper. In English, or more accurately, the Western world, the concept of Dao is strikingly novel. It is not something that appears immediately reconcilable with the Western giants of Logic and Reason. As such, combined with the relatively vague, poetic nature of the Dao De Jing, Dao has proven to be a thorny concept to nail down with precision. I would argue that to do so is fruitless, but it is a goal of some translators nonetheless. In Chinese, it is the shapeless, formless origin of all things, something innate to nature. In English translations, it can take any number of forms, each of which cannot fully capture its subtle themes. It can be come to understood in a similar capacity, but this is something that comes after significant study not only into Daoism itself, but the world in which it emerged, the cultural context of then-China, the intricacies of its original poetry, as well as the sub-culture shared by poets and people of the time.

The Named and Nameless are Wrong

This is where the problem of The Named and The Nameless rears its wretched mug (to be dramatic). The first chapter of the Dao De Jing is likely its most important chapter in terms of setting tone, establishing core concepts, and acting as a punchy introduction. Poets in that era often employed a “Open door and see the mountain” （开门见山）strategy to their works in an effort to retain readership and thus increase potential for later propagation. Most of the lines are often translated without issue, if not with stirring eloquence, but there are two lines which are severely over-mistranslated. These two lines are The Named and The Nameless.

As is the case in innumerable English translations of the Dao De Jing, the lines following the iconic “The Dao that is named is not the eternal Dao…” often find themselves translated in some such wording as:

Tao Huang Translation

The nameless is the beginning of the cosmic universe.
The named is the mother of the myriad creatures.

DC Lau Translation

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad creatures.

or something remarkably similar. Other translations may grasp the concept, but lose the poetic flair, whereas some attempt to re-contextualize the ancient text to their lives, whereas some forego most of the text in its original form in an almost stream-of-consciousness-esque voice to explain their thoughts on the chapter. John Heider is one such person (translating the same two lines):

John Heider Translation

Tao is a principle. Creation, on the other hand, is a process. That is all there is: principle and process, how and what.
All creation unfolds according to Tao. There is no other way.

It is obviously totally different. That being said, Heider’s version is a riot and I would suggest giving it a peek if interested, as he gives the book a unique character. He takes few notes from the original text other than its content and directly describes his thought process in many of the chapters. There is always a new joy in reading a new author’s translation work; most of the time, their words reveal much more about themselves than the original piece.

Digressions aside, the problem of The Named and The Nameless plagues many translations. Given the Dao De Jing can be seen as vague or open to interpretation, some may view this as a non-issue. I don’t think it is severe enough to detract from understanding the book on the whole, but rather acts as an undesirable or inaccurate preliminary conditioning that may impede the reader’s initial study process.

The problem is as such: referring to manifestations as named or nameless is both a misunderstanding of grammar and incongruent with the rest of the text. As for the grammar, this mistake is not a prepositional blunder or forgetting to conjugate a verb, but rather an oversight of alternative (in this case, more accurate) potential meanings.

The original two lines of Chinese text is as follows:

无名天地之始有名万物之母 (wú míng tiān dì zhī shǐ yǒu míng wàn wù zhī mǔ)

This phrase can be understood in two significant ways, each of which relies on the grammatical interpretation of the character 名 (míng, name) in this given phrase. Generally speaking, Ancient Chinese had no standardized or widespread punctuation practices, and was normally written top to bottom, right to left. The original document would have been written similarly; as such, there was no specific marker to designate its meaning. The reader would have to rely on writing conventions surrounding rhymes and common phrasing to properly decipher the line. Thus, this line has two readings:

无名，天地之始。有名，万物之母。

The nameless, is the beginning of the heavens and earth. The named, is the mother of myriad things.

or

无，名天地之始。有，名万物之母。

Non-existence/nothing, is called the beginning of the heavens and earth. Existence/something/having, is called the mother of myriad things.

The only difference between the two is the placement of a comma. The comma decides the designation of the character 名 (name) as a noun or a verb. This character can flexibly be combined with the first characters to make nameless and named or split from them to separate the vital concepts of 无 (wú) and 有 (yǒu), which broadly refer to non-existence and existence, respectively. It is my opinion, as well as the opinion of many scholars and translators that the second option is the more accurate reading of the passage.

The main reason is that the thematic concept of non-existence and existence is used throughout the book in numerous ways, whereas “nameless” and “named” are never seen again. The linguistic convenience of separating “name” and its two would-be modifiers leads to a more accurate understanding of following passages. This is particularly true for those who rely on translations. For example, another central concept explored is 无为 (wú wéi, “nonaction”), in which the character for non-existence is paired with a second character to achieve a novel meaning. There is later on a chapter which expounds on the idea of nothing, or more specifically, the temporary absence of a thing, defining the usefulness of an object:

11

Thirty spokes unite in one nave, And because of the part where nothing exists we have the use of a carriage wheel.

Clay is moulded into vessels, And because of the space where nothing exists we are able to use them as vessels.

Doors and windows are cut out in the walls of a house, And because they are empty spaces, we are able to use them.

Therefore, on the one hand we have the benefit of existence, and on the other, we make use of non-existence.

Thus, existence and non-existence are far more potent interpretations when it comes to the first chapter of the Dao De Jing. They are not only linguistically and logically cohesive, but also begin to prime the mind of the reader towards understanding central dualistic themes to first build up the Dao, and then deconstruct it once more. In prompting the reader to consider non-existence as important (if not more important) than existence, or at least thinking of it as an element in any given place in one’s life, one is immediately given a means of concretely grasping that which is not there. In comparing these abstract concepts to material realities, and then returning to an abstract outlook, instills in mundanity the divine. This is, in some sense, the purpose of this work. Like the Dao, it cannot be fully appreciated using words alone; it is something to be understood in the gaps between thoughts, in the moments of nothing before something comes flooding back in.

Subscribe now

Personal Thoughts on the Matter

This is the end of the main text of this article. In the following few paragraphs, I want to go on a tangent about translated works and their relation to serious study of the Dao De Jing.

There are many flowery renditions of the DDJ. On one hand, these types of translations maintain the poetic prose of the original, tapping into the artistic notions of the translator. These types of translations are much more generous with their interpretation of Laozi and will often recontextualize his words to their own world. In some cases, they transform the piece from one talking about the greater world, the sage, and the reader assumed to be a future leader or politician to one of personal growth. These self-help type translations tend to adopt phrasing that is almost stereotypical of Western notions of Eastern religion and philosophy, at least from my perspective.

I want to state it here - the DDJ is not a book about your personal journey. It can be utilized as such, so as to make oneself a better person, but this is not its goal. It is relatively clear in its aim, as Chinese scholars tend to believe. The first half primarily covers Dao, whereas the second half speaks mostly of De, or “virtue.” This De is action in accordance with Dao, known as nonaction. Laozi would have been a contemporary of Confucius, the most celebrated philosopher from China, and one who was a bright voice amongst the warring factions of his time period. Laozi would most likely have seen war, poverty, cruelty, and terrible mismanagement of the government apparatus. Like most philosophers in his time, particularly those among the Hundred Schools, his words were aimed at potential governors or other officials. There is still abundant wisdom for the average person to gain (or lose) from his teachings, but it is not an accurate interpretation to base a translation on.

I don’t mean to be exclusionary or gatekeep-y in my words. I mean to say that texts which may come across a bit more dry are a better method of grasping Laozi’s philosophical worldview. Beautiful words and Dao-inspired offshoots still have their use, and are fun reads - I enjoyed The Tao of Pooh and John Heider’s translation - but they are not that great if used as primary study material.

I am personally partial to Gia-fu Feng’s and Red Pine’s translation, but highly suggest reading the original if you find yourself in the position to do so. As Ursula K. Le Guin states under her translation of the first chapter:

A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible.

I would agree, and extend the sentiment to the book as a whole. Thus I cannot blame anyone for picking the translation that most speaks to them and attacking it from their own angle of understanding. I do not desire to prevent somebody from finding these words and joining in a fantastic philosophical tradition. Beyond this, I do not also expect one to end their journey at the DDJ. Many of my gripes in this article are born out of a desire to have a more accessible, but accurate translation, so as to make the process of study more fruitful. Ultimately, once one reads other poets or thought surrounding Daoism, particularly from other Chinese thinkers, one can find that Daoism can be about one’s personal journey, but not necessarily the DDJ. It can also be a religion. It doesn’t matter - my concern is one of intent. I hope that potential readers will not approach with expectations of bettering themselves. I hope that readers will read with an open mind, reflect, conceptualize, and imagine. I fear that words inconsistent with Laozi’s own will not create such an effect, and if an effect is stirred, that it will not be one with precision of comprehension.

Please, read the Dao De Jing. Read as many translations as you can. Listen to Daoists talk about it. Get into the historical background, learn about Chinese society. Let it open the doors to the mysterious for you.

Subscribe now

Share

I was thinking the other day, or maybe it was today, of the Daoist sage - something I perhaps stumble upon every day, as if I am not already steeped in its essence. I am separate, indeed, as my self must find some kind of identity. It is purely reflexive; I, too, am caught in the mess of this and that, self and other. I would not dare believe myself to be anything greater. The sage, however, can be taken as an ideal of sorts. Given the nature of humanity, the sage herself cannot be beyond worldly limitations, but she can see through all that is and come to understand the world through the lens described in the Dao De Jing. It is one of a babbling brook, a stone so delicately balanced upon another, its inevitable descent, and its resting place.

In Chapter 63, Gia Fu-Feng translates the words of Laozi as such:

Practice non-action.
Work without doing.
Taste the tasteless.
Magnify the small, increase the few.
Reward bitterness with care.

See simplicity in the complicated.
Achieve greatness in little things.

In the universe the difficult things are done as if they are easy.
In the universe great acts are made up of small deeds.
The sage does not attempt anything very big,
And thus achieves greatness.

Easy promises make for little trust.
Taking things lightly results in great difficulty.
Because the sage always confronts difficulties,
He never experiences them.

The sage knows what must be done, and at what time. I would doubt that he is perfect; how could he be? His way is not one of perfection, not in the sense that we may conceptualize a forced, defined perfection. Perfection as an entity, a guide, is a piercing razor or a sturdy hammer. If understood in concrete terms, attached to a desire for a particular outcome or set of affairs, it is easily misused. I find it much more agreeable to look out of my window into the busy, messy world below, and upon releasing any judgement or wish I may have, finding a quaint perfection. Granted, such a contented phrase cannot be stated at any time and place, but it can be found if one is able to relieve one’s burden.

Laozi speaks of the appearance and demeanor of the sage:

58

The sage is sharp but not cutting,
Pointed but not piercing,
Straightforward but not unrestrained,
Brilliant but not blinding.

49

The sage is shy and humble - to the world he seems confusing.
Others look to him and listen.
He behaves like a little child.

64

Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire.
He does not collect precious things.
He learns not to hold on to ideas.
He brings men back to what they have lost.
He helps the ten thousand things find their own nature,
But refrains from action.

15

[The masters are]
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.

What is so powerful about the sage is her ability to take everything in. Her hollowness allows for any and all things to enter, her opaqueness prevents others from penetrating into the darkness and stealing anything out. She is ready, but not advancing. She allows the world to occur and thus has her pick of the passing-by treasures. But one look at her and it is obvious: she is truly one of this world, a master of how things are. She can become impassioned out of curiosity, compassion, or joy; if the baring of teeth were to become the proper course of action, her rage is righteous.

Now comes the question of self. Should I desire to become like the sage, in all his wisdom and mastery? I could, but in doing so, would be doing. Doing is the precise opposite of not-doing, or non-action. The sage is like the Dao, and the Dao gives birth to De, the highest good:

8

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

Thus, the sage is like water. It does not strive, as it need not do so. It flows into the crevices, moving creatures, minerals, and objects across vast distances, all without making any conscious, particular effort. If the sage is like water, then she must go to those places that others reject, must not strive.

It should be noted that “strive” does not necessarily mean “work hard,” but rather “work against nature.” A stream will make conscious right turns because it wants to take a shortcut. It waits for proper conditions to take a “shortcut” - a path which reduces unnecessary effort. This is what it means to not strive. It can be known, then, that striving to become the sage would be akin to slamming one’s head against the wall to make a helmet of one’s skull. It is far better to keep the words in one’s mind, to let them brew for a time, and then revisit.

To be rid of desire would be to cast away the self. As imperfect creatures of this Earth, we cannot be rid of the self, certainly not for any extended period of time. To vacate oneself would be to rob oneself of the beauty of life, as if desperate for the next. To be purely self-interested would be to deny the possibility of greater inner riches; we require the great mirror that is the world to show us what could exist within ourselves, to properly understand what we are. We cannot be fully divorced from desire. As stated earlier, the sage “seeks freedom from desire.” It is through this paradoxical striving non-action that she finds the sublime. To experience such a thing is beyond description; it is the gateway to understanding nothing, and thus understanding the world.

Share

Subscribe now

Gia Fu-Feng’s translation of the Dao De Jing: https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html

Parent website with many other translations and interesting documents: https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html

These relentless myriad forces rip and tug teachers in all directions, informing one today that they must be focused on the emotional well-being of their students, only to pop a U-turn and suggest that test scores are above all else, wrapped daintily in a subtle threat aimed at one’s employment. A teacher is meant to embody it all; the teacher is the guide and disciplinarian, sage and enforcer, whose duties, following the gradual commodification and corporatization of education, have only grown weightier yet oddly more precarious.

As contrary as it may seem, the undermining forces of corporatization both heighten and weaken the role of the teacher, lessening its value through increasing workloads and expectations, and thus enabling others to scapegoat or work-horse teachers. The concept is relatively simple: when external philanthropic groups, think tanks, or powerful ed-tech companies thrust themselves into the education world, and particularly when they gain reputation and sway, there is a notable swing of values within the education system, leading to corporate-driven restructuring.

In the specific case of AI, decision-making is transferred from those directly involved in the educational process to those who sell technological promises to the education system. Programs and curriculum are bought by the already two-steps-removed district administration to be enacted in their schools, effectively importing the very “solution” to our educational woes meant to inherit much of the teacher’s duties, if not eventually supersede them. The teacher is receiving commands from higher-ups whose loyalty is captured by those even higher still, who are then subject to capital; our technological solutions, our questionable curriculum, are products sold by typically short-sighted, profit-driven capitalists.

In the case of apparent kindly billionaires or educational groups, such as Bill Gates or Khan Academy, while there may be a forward-looking vision or purposeful, benevolent drive, the fact remains that they are not experts, at least not in the sense that they would know what to do in a classroom and what students need. The standards, testing methods, and evaluation systems proposed and pushed by private interests have come to dominate our schools, reducing the role of the teacher to data points and babysitters, while simultaneously blowing out of proportion the publicly assumed status of teachers. We are both everything wrong with the kids while being unworthy of tax dollars. We are the compassionate shapers of young minds while also inadequate and incapable.

The thorny ground on which we walk is prone to prick, and even when our own blood is drawn, the arbitrarily-assigned responsibility will still fall on our shoulders.

Subscribe now

Failings and Forces

We are attempting to create children in our image, not necessarily as we view ourselves, but as we desire them to be. This is a mistake; though it is not necessarily disastrous, in the process of shaping them as we see fit, we tend to overlook essential truths. For example, in my kindergarten, like any other school, we have set learning objectives that must be reached, positioned above all else. Our methods are built around reaching said objectives. If it is desired that a student knows one thousand words by the end of the year, then we must carve a way to achieve this goal. A simple question immediately and spontaneously arises from this arrangement: why do they NEED to know one thousand words? Does this benchmark signify real learning? As it is, striving for this goal results in numerous problems, each of which is detrimental to the learning process.

For one, it requires a vigorous, intense learning schedule. We are talking about kids aged four to five being pushed to focus, expend large amounts of brainpower, for three to four hours a day. This includes sitting nicely, staying quiet, computing, speaking, writing, and conversing. Play time, something which any cognitive scientist or learned educator will tell you is vital to proper development, is reduced to an hour or less per day. Does this thousand word goal work to fulfill the children’s social and emotional needs? Does subjecting them to ceaseless busywork, stretching their cognitive load to an extreme, result in more well-rounded humans?

A second issue is the effect this goal has on curriculum and lesson planning. If we have a quantified mark we must reach, it becomes the be-all end-all of our plans. It is the central thought which every detail must be oriented. As is with any plan, there must be sacrifices made to fulfill the directive. In our societies, where profit is God, any and all things bend to its will or the will of its arbiters. As such, superfluous nonsense such as common good or equality must be cast aside; there are far more important matters to attend to. In fact, focusing on such things would only serve to cripple the pillars of our temple to the Almighty, and as such should be suppressed. The thousand word doctrine sees students not as developing humans, with emotional, psychic, and social needs, but vessels to be filled, or unworked clay in need of an artisan. Does viewing children in this light, and then adopting a dehumanizing curriculum, work to better them as individuals?

Evidently, it doesn’t matter. As Kumar and Hill state in their introduction to Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences, “with great power comes great irresponsibility.” Speaking for my school, we aim for students that are “confident in expressing themselves,” true “world citizens.” In a more practical lens, this entails coercing Pre-K children into participating in speech contests, choral arrangements, and performative assessments, as well as creating beautiful scenes of play and expression. As it is with almost anything else nowadays, the scenes we work so hard to create for parents’ satisfaction are not without the behind-the-scenes, performative work.

Each shallow, lovely moment is balanced with three moments of stifling expression and five of demanded focus. Our most troublesome girl is only labeled as such because she resists coercion; her curiosity and imagination guide her, and she is strong-willed. It is a significant disappointment that these qualities are what makes her one of the larger obstacles in our daily work. She is not wrong in how she spontaneously expresses herself, and she is (usually) not naughty; no, she is different, she resists, and this is the source of our headaches.

This, of course, is the result of our values and policies as a school. I understand - the school must consider parents, as they are the sole source of our income, our livelihood. The parents are not in the classroom and hope to see only joy and excellence out of their children. Yet, the issue of values rears its wretched head once more: why do parents value expression of skill, demonstrated by rehearsed performances and completed worksheets? Do they fear their child will not live up to their expectations? Do they desire to appear the best among parents, driven by fear-based status posturing? It is a fool’s game; what ultimately drives education is not learning, nor is it development, nor some greater notion of fulfilling the humanity of students, but is rather subjugated to shallow, performative interests.

I recently read an excellent post by Gurwinder’s The Prism, in which he briefly touches on the McNamara fallacy, a condition in which, in attempting to measure value, we end up valuing measurement. Though it may not be perfectly analogous, we can see echoes of such psychology in our approach to students today. So often are they reduced to test scores or development benchmarks, measurements which can be useful in gauging student ability, but are fallible and limited in scope. Testing gives a relatively accurate snapshot of any given student’s ability, which can be further clarified by extra testing.

As any of us know, however, the same test is seldom given twice, let alone enough times to form a statistically consistent data set, and the factors that impact testing are too numerous to expound upon. Development benchmarks may be more dependable, as there is a period of time that certain qualities must be met, but elements such as learning disability, diagnosed or not, trauma, social isolation, among others, can significantly hamper development, but are not immediately apparent by looking at the numbers. Why it is that data is our primary focus with well-being coming second (or third or fourth or fifth), is indicative of an incredibly unhealthy relationship with education and learning in general. There is a distinct lack of humanity in education.

Share

Mahoney, Means, and Garrison explore the anti-egalitarian, oppressive systematic nature of our educational issues through the lens of personalized learning technology (PLT). They find that developments in PLT often display two major tonal qualities: education serves to train workers and education is customizable. US Department of Education reports overwhelmingly posit that,

…students must be able to ‘compete’ in a global economy, and if they do not develop the necessary ‘twenty-first century skills,’ they will invariably lose the competition and become a drag on economic growth. There is thus no mention of the role of knowledge in supporting human development and/or the intrinsic value of dialog and the negotiation of meaning as foundational to liberal, progressive, critical, and democratic conceptions of education.

Customizable education is based in the idea of “learning as a service or customizable product,” reinforcing education’s fate as an increasingly privatized, undermined, and commodified good. In this futuristic PLT vision, teachers’ expertise is no longer necessary, as students will be provided algorithm-driven content to make up for what they are lacking. Teachers’ expertise will no longer be needed, as students could not only have more direct access to experts through outreach programs. Machine learning programs are becoming more proficient at detecting emotional states, thus the socio-emotional guidance teachers provide will no longer be necessary. Teachers will rather be demoted to paraprofessional or auxiliary guides and coaches, or be tasked as data collectors. In the discussion section of their paper, they state:

The role of the teacher – as public employee and citizen – is minimized. Her autonomy is dramatically reduced, as her experience, expertise and deliberations are deemed less relevant, less accurate, and less efficient than algorithmic learning software.

While reading this, thinking back on all the times my Computer Science, Business, or even Engineering peers chatted on about efficiency, raising it to a state of near-religious conviction, John Warner’s words reverberate through my head:

Real-time feedback is a tool of efficiency, but in what world is learning necessarily efficient?

Education has, and continues to be, systematically shredded by values and actions taken by those with little stake in the education system beyond reaping value from its results. It is precisely these ignorant, short-sighted, and anti-scientific agendas that eat away at the roots of educational practice. Combined with traditional anti-intellectualism and demonization of teachers, there is not only minimal pushback, but more crucially, little opportunity to come to these realizations organically through free media channels (if such a thing existed). It is a problem of which the root causes are its proposed solutions; it is a cyclical, self-reinforcing blight.

Education is unfortunately an imperfect institution when it comes to changing society. It has the capacity to inspire students to change their world, but seems to seldom succeed in achieving such an outcome. Rather, it tends to become subjected to the overarching political drives of the society. Education was modified to suit the needs of the industrial economy, and before that it was directly aimed at developing the social elite. Today, we are seeing the continuation of education reforms, most notably in endeavors such as No Child Left Behind, the increased interest in online learning, and now increasing chatter about AI tutorship. None of these serve to direct the student towards their humanity; all of them are based on poor educational principles, driven by larger social values.

In an abstract sense, none of these values are able to connect students with their authentic human selves. No, what is important are test numbers, concrete knowledge, and transferable skills, all in service of the true lord of our society. The simple fact that a college degree is often (reasonably) reduced to a type of financial investment is a devastating sign on its own, but is only the most explicit example of how capital dominates education and our world.

What to do?

What ought we do, then? Do what we can, where we can. Simply because education is based in a particular set of values doesn’t mean we are unable to do what we can to undermine and overcome them. Though imperfect, it can be used to push for social change, even if it’s more difficult than other means. If we want to see a more humanized education system, we need to become humanizing forces ourselves. Have compassion, develop yourself, and become an inspiration for others. Help them in the ways they need help. Take the time to understand yourself, and thus gain the capacity to better understand others. Employ your heart in all affairs. We can be the difference if we want, even if it be for only one student. For a fool such as me, that would be enough.

Beyond that, well, there are always other means of having one’s voice heard.

Wind whistles in through a crevice      
    so thoroughly crafted 
to be a portal to the outside,       
    a broad window 
of what is and can be. 

I’m not sure what to call this one. I seldom give them names, as I find names to be limiting in most cases. An proper idea can never be sufficiently reduced to succinct title, and not bestowing a name allows for greater berth of interpretation. This one plays with the concept of perspective and searching, as well as the limitations of senses.

Art is an important thing, something I would have difficulty living without. The next poem discusses some related thoughts, with a short explanation at the end.

he told me that art
is a good,
and when enjoyed by enough,
becomes good - 

it is this that separates pollock and
the preschooler; 
it is in technique, intent, passion,
in something tangilized
to make sense of nonsensical
to attribute precious objectivity
     (a curious creature contained by the human mind)
to something which avoids it

and that in all human doings
one which remains so ridiculous
is art
in its conclusionless ponderances
and when determined, easily penetrated 

and oddly
in this journey to bring art
to become a good to be known
and monitored and priced and critiqued
and reviewed and deciphered and enjoyed
has itself become art
in full vigorous motion

This one was triggered by an old roommate of mine explaining how he never understood why or how art was “good,” and how his girlfriend was finally able to reveal some aspect of it that appealed to reason. I don’t seek to ridicule his view, though I find much more value in art than he may, but instead to integrate it into the broader scheme of art in general.

The next one is a bit longer and a bit more obtuse at first glance:

万象汇 (shopping mall)

Cannot it be seen,   
with obviousness so vile,
which things are for who,
and with what in mind?

For me (more you)
and us (more you)
and even them -
and, maybe, you.

Yet we are attached;
your left is my right,
and mine yours,
and i am stuck. 

But this is me,
and i always am stuck;
once unstuck,
it creeps back in.

is it my mind,
have i forgotten?
is it the world,
asserting authority?

cannot you see,
how what is
made for you
is made for me?

can we escape,
where i suffer
and i gain
and you yet gain?

can you leave your station,
join me in this world,
remove all excess,
and join as one?

i desire this,
though the power is yours...
yes, you -
but also us.

softly can it fall,
in thunderous demolition,
and we return
to us for us. 

This one was a reflection on the state of a mall across the street at my previous residence. I was writing my thesis at the time, which had my mind in a Marx-adjacent headspace, which seems to be evident from the words themselves. Elements of dialectic and mutual liberation underpin the poem, a monologue aimed at those who control the means of production.

Next, another named one:

                 Catastrophe
i awoke a fly,
and fly off did he,
into some sunset
in some town
the hero of our story.

i watched him buzz along,
humming onto swift air,
his puny frame
quickly devoured by the sun.

aflame, did his wings blast,
and his grey carapace
tumbled towards humbling earth.

it slammed into soft sand,
forming a crater for ants to traverse.

a terrible tragedy among arthropods. 

his corpse abustling,
was a market for gnats,

clean merchants trading meat,
and shady rogues in its crevices,
tending to crooked deals; 

the insects, industrious as can be,
made short work of our hero,
whose crowded bazaar stalls
were reduced to mere husk.

in returning on the eve of the morrow,
i found my friend a fugitive!
Nary a trace of his bizarre fate
was left in the thin turf,
apart from the wound of his craterous impact. 

For this one, I wanted to test out a different kind of format. I hadn’t seen it anywhere before and thought it could be whimsical. Thus, I chose a silly premise and added a dash of childhood imagination. On the whole, I enjoy this one, as it breaks away from my more typical abstractions and other nonsense, and rather speaks in relatively plain language.

Let’s add in one more to finish this off. This one is a bit shorter.

                                    if only
indeed, i would, if i could,
would it be so, i may even should,
for all i see
is how it'd be,
but that's not how it is. 

This one is pretty self evident in terms of theme. It can be read cynically or disappointingly, even gleefully, depending on the reader’s mood. Like most of my poems, I intend to leave most of the interpretation to the reader; my hope is to stir something in someone, enough so that they insert themselves into the piece as it reflects their self within.

Share

That’s it for poetry today; I have notebooks full of them that I can share. If you enjoyed any of the poems, please share them around! It would be a joy to have poetry lovers all together in one place. See you next time.

I was a Chinese language major - maybe not the most astute of choices, but it was the only major which mustered any interest out of my resigned mind. It was the only class I enjoyed in the final two years of high school, and since I had no choice but to go on a great College Adventure, it was a natural conclusion. On one of the early days of said adventure, walking through the campus bookstore, I futzed around the notably lacking Chinese section, when it caught my eye. A simple, matte-golden cover with the words Dao De Jing. Off the shelf and into my hand, I cracked it open to the first chapter.

The way that can be walked is not the eternal way.

What is this, I thought.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

What the hell is this guy going on about?

Flustered, I snapped the book shut and had a second look at the cover. Dao De Jing - Laozi. Just who is this, and what is he yapping about? I reached to put it back on the shelf, yet it was so magnetic. It wanted me to peek. Its words needed to touch my brain. A sadly obedient boy, I did just as it beckoned. Locked into the whites of my eyes, I watched as my hands ripped the book open once more, plucking out each and every word, every letter, consuming with great voracity and gusto, shredding through to the final line.

Mystery of mysteries, the gate of all wonders.

With that line, my fate was sealed. I continued to drift around the shop, book in hand, trying to act cool. But its cover toasted my skin, its pages goaded me to return. I tried to ignore the sensation, but nothing fruitful came; a browse here, a skim there… How has this thin, light book I picked up just a bit ago become such a hefty tome? It was then decided: my sweet greeny and shiny things, it is time for you to vacate your leather prison. The book was mine.

I spent the next two months obsessively pouring over the poetry within. It was like nothing I had ever experienced before; he never spoke directly, and when he did, it was never clear. There were hidden meanings to obvious phrases and obvious phrases that hid meaning. Each theme that jumps off the page is woven into the structure of the words themselves. The mystical becomes mundane, and the world transforms before one’s eyes, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Petty annoyances became merely petty; flaws of others and the cruel judgments we subject them to in our minds (at least, in my angry mind) became endearing, sweet songs of individuality. To simplify his words, Laozi states that our thoughts modify our reality, a concept which opened in me a bustling laboratory of sensory and philosophical meddling. I could decide how to see things. I could decide how to react. I could finally find a way to care for myself. Everything I had ever known, been taught to value, or thought to be immutable was systematically softened, deconstructed, and muddled. I had been utterly destroyed.

On the first day, I could only read the first chapter before my brain began to cough out smoke. I attempted to decipher every word, over and over and over again; a simple verse of nine lines took me an hour to read. On the second day, I knocked it down to half an hour. By the third day, I was feeling brave enough to try out the second verse. Two verses in one day nearly killed me. After a week, I could make it through quite a few in one day as the concepts began to reveal themselves and interweave. By the end of the month, I had read through the whole thing. I then re-read it. It lived in my backpack, which was never out of arm’s reach - at any given moment, struck by curiosity or some odd feeling, I would fish it out and study its wonders and their mysteries, ponder upon the fact that it is the “gate to all wonders” that he speaks of, and that the wonders perhaps lay beyond the gate. I would see its teachings reflected in everyday things, in mundanity, and I would construct its various layers, corners, and twists in my head. It became my everything.

It has remained by my side, going on twelve years later. The Dao De Jing has shaped my life far more than any other piece of literature has, more than any other media has. Though I am no sage, I know its words and have internalized its message; I have read it in its original Chinese, written it out, squeezed dry my pitiful brains conceptualizing and re-conceptualizing its mysteries. Even with so much time dedicated to study, there are new discoveries that surface, attitudes that change. The Dao De Jing is life, and as such, it is change. It teaches one to become the change, but not in the sense we typically use such phrasing; rather, it teaches one to see things as they are, take them as they may, but seek to penetrate into their essence. It teaches active inaction, the key to mastering change. It has transformed my life for the better, yet it would not dare claim that honor. It is the undertone to my splendid, boring existence.

I don’t need any more - thank you, Laozi.