Welcome back.
Today, we start with a quote from anthropologist Ralph Linton, taken from his text The Study of Man. I’ll reproduce the quote first and provide analysis after:
This tendency toward the unnecessary and in some cases even injurious elaboration of culture is one of the most significant phenomena of human life. It proves that the development of culture has become an end in itself. Man may be a rational being, but he is certainly not a utilitarian one. The constant revision and expansion of his social heredity is a result of some inner drive, not of necessity. …it seems possible that the human capacity for being bored, rather than man’s social or cultural needs lies at the root of man’s cultural advance. (p.184-5, Ralph Linton, The Study of Man)
Read the first sentence again: this tendency toward the unnecessary and in some cases even injurious elaboration of culture is one of the most significant phenomena of human life.
“Injurious elaboration of culture.”
Let me paraphrase: the same way that a moth is hardwired to use a light source to orient itself in flight, and cannot distinguish between the moon and a candle, and thus cannot avoid burning itself…
…it seems possible that humans are hardwired to revise and expand upon their inherited social systems, and cannot distinguish between what works just fine and what could be better. Thus, we can’t quite steer clear from “injurious elaborations of culture.
To paraphrase again: boredom leads people to do things that are unwise, on both a personal and societal scale.
What is wisdom? The capacity to differentiate between what is truly beneficial and what is merely tempting. What is necessary and edifying and what is unnecessary and injurious.
Philosophy (the love of wisdom) is the enterprise of installing better software in our malleable minds – updates that can tell the moon from a candle, an opportunity from a trap, selfishness from self respect.
And this is why I focus as much as I do on the Tao Te Ching: it seems dead set on communicating the necessity of knowing when to stop. How to become someone who instinctively knows where the limits are before they are exceeded.
It immerses you in the attitude of a wise person, and, if you stay in it long enough, internalizing and practicing it diligently, you become wise too. Doing less of what is unnecessary, the requisite attention, energy, and will to do what is necessary is available more often and in greater supply.
Today, I want to dissect chapter 3. You’ll see why in a moment. It contains some truly puzzling phrases that demand interpretation but yield correspondingly deep insights.
Chapter 3
Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling.
Not collecting treasures prevents stealing.
Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion of the heart.
The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies,
By weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
If people lack knowledge and desire,
Then intellectuals will not try to interfere.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.
When I was engaged in the work of memorizing the text, I began to take a special liking to the stanzas that seemed almost intentionally objectionable in the way they were worded.
People should lack knowledge? That is a good thing? We should do nothing? We should ignore the problems of the world? We should give up on our hopes and dreams and just eat to our hearts’ content?
It sure sounds like that’s what’s being said.
I can assure you, however, that Lao Tzu went to the appropriate lengths to divert shallow, reactive minds. These seemingly ridiculous statements that occasionally surface in the text are here, I believe, to attract those who are sincerely curious and willing to do the necessary heavy lifting, so to speak, to get at the truth, while putting off those unwilling to exercise their minds.
So, let’s begin. Let’s actually think, and grow from the labor of doing so, rather than simply consume the same trite drivel in new verbiage over and over again, atrophying from the lack of effort.
Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling.
Let’s make sense of this by going back to the absolute basics. What do we want a society to be? Harmoniously integrated. We grant without question that there is a distribution of virtue: some are obviously better than others. Some are taller, stronger, faster, healthier, smarter, and even nobler than others: only the worst people deny this. What, then, is the best thing to do with the best of us?
If the goal is cohesion, integration, a society functioning as one organism, assigning the appropriate duties and resources to each component part, then exaltation does nothing to achieve this goal.
Exaltation actually separates the gifted from the rest, and puts a spotlight not on their achievements but on them. To exalt means to lift above the others. Why? So it can be seen and admired by all. Does that sound healthy and appropriate to you? To encourage people to think of some as above them, and themselves as necessarily inferior?
Is it socially responsible to encourage some people to feel superior and others inferior? Is it socially responsible to turn attention and praise into a currency with value, to be sought, traded, and expended for personal benefit?
Obviously not. We’re invited to consider how this path leads to division (quarreling), rather than cohesion.
What do I think we should do instead? Fair question, and I will answer it later, but not now. Now, we get clear about what does not and cannot possibly work. That’s always step 1.
Not collecting treasures prevents stealing.
It might not be obvious that exalting the gifted causes quarreling, but it should be obvious that stockpiling resources attracts desperate and unscrupulous people seeking resources.
What’s less obvious, though? That having to have (collecting treasures) isn’t that different from having to praise (exalting the gifted). If the best thing to do with the gifted is not to exalt them, then the best thing to do with treasures is not to collect them, and for the same reason.
Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion of the heart.
One more negation before we get into solutions, prescriptions made in the affirmative.
Where does confusion of the heart come from? From gazing upon something lovely and longing for it. Imagining you need it, feeling pained by your lack of it. Feeling that whatever you do have must not be good enough, if you feel this desire and longing in the face of what you do not possess.
This is confusion: not knowing where to go, being unsure of where you are, unsure of what you perceive. Possessed by fantasy, imagining yourself enhanced by the acquisition of more, and being increasingly lured into an imagined world. It should go without saying that living in imagination, in longing, in fantasy, does not make for coherent and sensible actions in the real world.
The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies,
By weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
Paraphrase: the wise rule by putting energy into what is real, and ignoring what is not real.
What is wise is to invest your energy in what you have (stuffing bellies and strengthening bones), rather than chasing after and longing for what you don’t.
Before you entertain ideas of what’s missing in your life, experience what it feels like to be truly well nourished and strong. Learn to combine a rigorous exercise regimen with an appropriately robust diet. Learn how to sleep properly. How to drink water diligently and consistently, how to maintain mobility and flexibility and balance.
Instead of becoming enamored with the value in others and in objects, see value in yourself. Not in an egotistical way, which is actually seeking the approval of others and therefore valuing their opinions over your own, but in a responsible way. Extract all the gold from your own mine before envying another’s.
Said as directly as possible: draw all the strength, stability, health, capacity, confidence, and even beauty out of the resource that is your own body before you give a single thought to what you would demand of the world.
If people lack knowledge and desire,
Then intellectuals will not try to interfere.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.
People always have a hard time with these three lines, and it’s not hard to see why.
As is always the case with Lao Tzu, use the part that does make sense to decide the part that doesn’t: this never fails.
Let’s agree that interference is bad. In this context, it almost certainly means misguided, unhelpful, and possibly harmful and exploitative input from people who don’t really understand the subtleties of how to promote human flourishing.
And who are these people who are interfering? Intellectuals. People who understand things at the level of theory, policy, scripture, or even research, but by definition lack the grit that comes with a lifetime of practical application.
People animated by intellectual arrogance are inserting themselves into the affairs of others, both because they think they know better and because they wish to interfere, resulting in negative outcomes.
How are the people making themselves targets for meddling know-it-alls? With their own lack of self sufficiency, their own deluded ideas of utopia. A whole and healthy person has a purpose, a duty. A broken or halfway-there person has desires.
Grow sufficiently solid and strong, and you will simply see the unfolding of events before your eyes and respond to them as necessary: you have both the capacity and the availability to act, because your own needs have been fulfilled.
If you are incomplete, and unable to complete yourself, however, you will invariably be seeking the missing pieces outside of yourself. You know something’s missing, and you want it. This is what is meant by knowledge and desire.
Now, we can make sense of the last lines:
When people lack knowledge and desire,
Then intellectuals won’t try to interfere.
We can now paraphrase this, confidently:
If you properly care for yourself, you will not become a target for parasitic con artists who live off a society’s resources but only contribute theories that lead people in circles and ultimately to ruin.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.
If you’re walking up a staircase, with the landing at the top clearly in view, you know where you are going, and your body automatically responds to the command “climb the stairs.” If I were to ask you, what are you doing, you would probably answer in terms of why you were going where you appear to be going. What I doubt is that you would answer in terms of your knees, ankles, calves, quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteal muscles. I would assume you are consumed with ideas of purpose, rather than mechanics.
I’m not being pedantic: this is the meaning of non action, of saying “if nothing is done, all will be well.” If you are at a state where, once you understand what must be done, you simply do it, with the how relegated below the threshold of conscious awareness, too unremarkable to notice, then you yourself are well: you are a capable person. Nothing is done, but all is well. Actions are automatic, and only purpose is under consideration.
This level is only available to the person who has total command over the instruments of action, and this is why the wise rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
Without this bedrock of self sufficiency, we exalt the gifted, we collect treasures, and we see whatever we don’t possess as desirable.
When we are strong, we leave the gifted to their work. We appreciate art and all forms of finery, but do not feel the need to possess or stockpile it, because nothing in us is seeking enhancement by proxy. We don’t imagine another’s life to be better, or alternative circumstances to be more conducive to our happiness.
With a full belly and strong bones, we know that happiness comes from the knowledge and sensation of one’s ability to stand up to life, not from luxuriously hiding from it.
For this reason, those who have nothing to offer the world but false promises of utopia know that we are simply not in the market, and they keep moving.
This is how one steers clear of unnecessary and even injurious elaborations of culture: life honors the perfectly sane limits of the body, rather than the inexhaustible caprices of the mind.
Said another way, a person who truly works hard every day never encounters boredom, but only well deserved repose.
Thank you for reading. Talk to you soon.
-Jas
Make Beautiful Choices 