Ep. 312: The Dao De Jing on Virtue (Part Two)

0:07 Mark: Hey. This is the Partially Examined Life, episode 312, part 2. Still going on the dao de jing with our friend Theo. Theo, you mentioned number 40. We want to spend more time in the second half of the book in the Dao, section 40. Is a nice short one. Somebody want to read their version?

0:26 Wes: I'll do it. Returning is how waymaking moves and weakening is how it functions. The events of the world arise from the determinate, and the determinant arises from the indeterminate. Pretty straightforward.

0:41 Mark: Well, so the indeterminate is woo again, the not. And then the determinant is. Is you. So I guess this is just revisiting these concepts that we dealt with at some point in the previous whole discussion.

0:55 Wes: The picture here seems to be of a cycle now, right, where determinant and indeterminate are arising from each other. But it. It seems like it would have to be circular. And the concept of return kind of reinforces that interpretation. Waymaking is returning, right? And it's always returning. I think this really sets up yin and yang.

1:14 Theodore: But whenever something is asserted as true in the Confucian sense, the Daoist kind of critique of that language is that, oh well, that language, that particular way, it's going to turn into its opposite. So this idea that everything turns into its opposite, as you say, bringing up the idea of yin and yang. So it could be just talking about that. This is generally how ways work.

1:34 Wes: Like, I think the way Ames wants to talk about it is in terms of natural cycles, maybe, but these are moments. And the moments don't have to be temporal. They can be moments within a structure and mutually complementary. And return becomes a metaphorical way of describing the static relationship between those moments. It's hard not to be reminded of Hegel a little bit, right? Hegel's word is reflection. That's the return.

1:59 Mark: You get the.

2:00 Wes: In itself and for itself.

2:02 Seth: There's also an element of alluding to being and becoming. So what is there arises from what is not there. Essentially potentiality or non being. Right. Becoming is a coming into being from someplace. And it also is reflective of the natural order, which I think we probably don't. Still haven't given enough credence to. But everything in nature is cyclical, right? The sun every day comes out. You have the seasons, you have the cycle of years. Like there's always a return. And everything that lives in essence comes from somewhere and you know, the earth and returns to the earth. Maybe that's too biblical a metaphor, but

2:35 Theodore: I think it's straight on. But there is a way of kind of also reading this where it's not temporal, because a big metaphor is the roots and the tree, the branches. The roots are woo. They're not visible, but they're more fundamental, but they're hidden. You don't see them, but they're there. So you don't have to think of it as a cycle of coming from nothing, but also something that's just not visible, something that's there and maintaining things, and things are arising from it. But it can be all just one object. It can be the tree. It doesn't have to be the tree in seasons.

3:06 Wes: Right.

3:07 Mark: That's why it's the indeterminate. For Ames, it's not the nothing, it's the indeterminate.

3:11 Dylan: Yeah. The Hendrix translation strikes me as really Hegelian in the way that Wes was talking. The things of the world originate in being, and being originates in non being.

3:23 Wes: There you go.

3:25 Theodore: Need to say more.

3:25 Mark: I mean, this term weakening is pretty weird, and it's kind of consistent across translations. So somehow both Hendrix and Ames discover that it's in quotes.

3:35 Dylan: Yep.

3:37 Mark: I don't think that's in the Chinese characters. And some of the other ones talk about gentleness and softness. So, you know, we can understand how it's part of this equilibrium. And yielding that to be spontaneously so is not just to exert your own private nature, but to interact effectively and organically with the cosmos, with your circumstances, with things around you. And so that means being yielding.

4:03 Dylan: I think maybe it's our Western sensibilities that often that word like weakness would have very negative connotations and even yielding. But I think you're right, Mark. The notion is it's getting to the component of action where you're not being the active side. Right.

4:21 Wes: Well, we would think too. Normally, the way we would think of function is in terms of thinking of Aristotle here, but in terms of an entity, very well defined entity that belongs to a natural kind. Right. And has its own internal structure and has its own activity and way of being at work, being itself. And so it's not as relational. In other words, this concept of weakening fits that entity into a larger whole by which it's affected. Weakening points to the sense in which something receives the activity of something else. Right. The affection or the being affected.

4:58 Mark: It sounds like you're arguing, Wes, that it should be. And weakening in quotes is how it functions. Functioning is not the right word either, because that implies some sort of determinacy that is not present here. Certainly the dao is not function. That's not a word that works there.

5:15 Wes: So what is function? Translating operates. Okay. It's kind of counterintuitive that a weakening can be a functioning or that a being affected, which is the way I'm taking this, could be a form of functioning. Which you normally think of as an internal coming from the inside or coming from the structure of the entity.

5:32 Mark: Lau says a weakness is the means. The way is the way employs. So that's not internal at all. It's just a means.

5:39 Wes: I always think of, like judo and tai chi as these moments.

5:43 Dylan: Aikido is what I think of.

5:45 Wes: Yeah, when someone takes a swing at you and then you just duck and they end up rolling over your body and slamming themselves onto the floor. And you're like, I didn't do anything.

5:53 Dylan: In aikido, which is the Japanese martial art form, but you practice together and both movements are involved. And so it's constantly redirecting. There are no punches and kicks in aikido, you're only redirecting. But when you practice, you're supposed to be making one whole movement together. That's what you're thinking of.

6:14 Wes: Well, that's perfect, actually. I think for this, it's a functioning, but it's between two entities.

6:20 Seth: To get back to Theo talking about opposites, what would be the opposite of weakness? What would it mean here? Weakness is the way the dao operates. And it seems fairly consistent that weaknesses across several of the translations. It's definitely the point on word, but what would it mean for the dao to operate?

6:37 Wes: I think it's having power. I mean, my interpretation is a stretch. Admittedly. I'm not sure how it works with the whole. But if it's right, right. Being affected versus affecting being the one being the doer versus being the one that receives the energy.

6:50 Theodore: In the aikido example, there is a little bit of a problem in that. If the way is the one that receives that is the weakness, the one that adjusts and moves with the power. And of course aikido, you're never meant to make the first strike as well. That's kind of a rule. So you in training, you have to make a faux attack. You have to do something that's non aikido. To get the whole thing rolling, you have to show strength. Someone has to do something.

7:16 Dylan: That's a really interesting point. There's a way in which there's one side of the movement that is the aikido piece, and there is your partner is standing in for an aggressor who's doing something decidedly not aikido. They're trying to punch you, and you have an action which is the core piece of your aikido move. You're not learning the punching part. You're learning the part to redirect the punching. But you As a group, you're doing one complete movement.

7:43 Theodore: So is the complete movement equivalent to the dao or is the aikido receiving?

7:49 Dylan: To me at least this is going back a ways from when I studied it is that someone's punching you and you have a way of turning and redirecting. That is you receiving and redirecting. That would be the weakness part. In this analogy, though. I don't know. It seems hard to understand when you redirect and throw someone across the room, effectively, especially displaying weakness.

8:14 Mark: Well, maybe that's you're not exerting, but yet they fly across the room. You're not trying, maybe, maybe. Yet you accomplish spectacularly.

8:23 Theodore: I mean, it also raises the way, if we're thinking of it as it is everything. Well, the Dao jing doesn't really want to say it's everything. It wants to say that there's like categorization. But in a sense it does also want to say that when you say the names, you see the manifestations of the dao. So it seems that, you know, naming, deeming, doing these, which are kind of, I think, active strength based yang stuff that seems to also be part of the dao. But at other points the Dao jing wants to say, but that's not really how the dao functions. That's not really dao. Don't think about that. So I think there's a tension about how to integrate action into this schema.

8:58 Wes: I think 42 might help us. So waymaking gives rise to continuity, continuity gives rise to difference, difference gives rise to plurality, and plurality gives rise to the manifold of everything that is happening to Wanwu. Everything carries yin on its shoulders and Yang in its arms, and blends these vital energies qi together to make them harmonious. There is nothing in the world disliked more than the thought of being friendless, unworthy and inept. And yet kings and dukes use just such terms to refer to themselves. For things, sometimes less is more and sometimes more is less. Thus, as for what other people are teaching, I will think about what they have to say and then teach it to others. For example, those who are coercive and violent do not meet their natural end. I'm going to take this statement as my precept. Let's talk about the first part.

9:53 Mark: Well, how bogus is this translation that this way making gives rise to continuity, which gives rise to difference, which difference gives rise to plurality, Whereas the other translations make it obvious. The way begets 1, 1 begets 2, 2 begets 3, 3 begets the myriad creatures, like I'M sure that is more literally what it says.

10:12 Theodore: Yeah, it has the character for one, the character for two, the character for three.

10:15 Wes: Well, they're honest about what they're doing. They're giving philosophical interpretation and sticking it in.

10:20 Theodore: And I mean, it does require. I mean, what is the one, the two and the three? I mean, in a sense, that's to be brought out.

10:26 Wes: Arguably, we should just have to figure that out for ourselves. And being told that.

10:30 Mark: Or look to the footnotes, just write a footnote. You don't have to say this is what it says.

10:36 Dylan: Literally, in his commentary, they refer to the standard translation.

10:40 Seth: Are these all the vital energies or are there more?

10:43 Wes: The Yin and the Yang.

10:44 Theodore: The Yin and the Yang, a whole system was built on the yin and the Yang in the Han. So they used this language and it got more and more complicated. But, yeah, vitally, there's the Qi and then there's. The Qi is. Has two principles or substances, I'm not entirely sure that are interrelated, but that could be also divided into five. So you have like, strong Yang, weak Yang, pure middleness, strong yin. And so they do divide it. And then once you have the five, it gets more and more complicated. So fundamentally, you could say there's just Qi, or sometimes there is Qi and the ordering that happens on qi. So there might be two things, the qi and the yin Yang or atom, but vital energy is singular, I think.

11:29 Mark: All right, so five of those and then five of us. Which one of us is pure middleness? Which one is the extreme Yang?

11:37 Seth: I have to believe I'm.

11:38 Wes: Which one is the most masculine. I'll take that one.

11:42 Theodore: But then you die soon, you will not breathe a natural death.

11:47 Wes: I'm very yin.

11:49 Seth: So the thread here, the way it produces the 1, the 1 produces 2, 2 produces 3, 3 produces the myriad creatures. The myriad creatures shoulder yin and embrace yang, carry both. So the implication is that their root, the myriad of creatures, the way, is at the root. That the Way would be both yin and Yang, or would somehow Yin and Yang and these vital energies are somehow constitutive of the Way, or are somehow

12:16 Theodore: have myriad creatures and many things. You are in a sense the furthest from. If we're talking about the dao, the experience of dao in wu, Wei and flow and all that, you're the furthest from that experience because you're dealing in the world of creatures and things rather than of processes and without words and such. So in a sense, yes, the myriad creatures have to be part of the way. But Also in the sense that if the way is very fundamental, we might see a kind of progression here from the way to 1 to 2 to 3. So we're seeing how things become not way, or at least move to the periphery of way.

12:51 Mark: Well, I think the lecture that you had sent us, Theo, you know, said that this is a direct response to a different text which just says, one begets two, two begets three, three begets myriad creatures. Like that is quoting that and just saying, hey, that's not the whole story. The way actually is better than all that stuff. It comes first, it's more fundamental. So this is just a statement of the fundamental religious, mystical doctrine or something.

13:14 Theodore: I like a further kind of point to that in that you can take the one produces two, produces three. So you can take that as kind of there's the one, and then the two is yin and yang. So one is like qi, the two is like yin and yang. I don't know what the three is, but you can kind of make a system of materiality.

13:30 Mark: It's not even three in specifically, according to Ames.

13:32 Wes: It's just.

13:32 Mark: It's just plurality.

13:34 Theodore: Yeah, could be. I don't think there's an authority of reading on this, but you could also read it as kind of conceptual that there's the way. And then if you try to grasp the way, you make first grasp it as one. But one is already like a. Even though you're not dividing anything, it is a way that you've cut things up even without cutting it up. So if you have one, you grasp it as one. Well, you already have the idea of many. And then you have the dao, the one and the many. That's three. So it could just be saying that, well, the way can't be one, it has to be before one.

It can either be a schema where you can put one thing in. It must be something before you do any schemes at all, which includes the one. So I think it's more than just saying the way comes before the one, because we're talking about the way and you're talking about the one and where superior. But I think there is a conceptual reason why they want the way to be prior to one and many.

14:23 Mark: Well, and I like this as a solution to a number of sort of medieval difficulties with the conception of God is, oh, God has to be absolutely singular, yet God has all these properties. We'll just say, no, no, God is not singular. God is not one. God is prior to number, like, just like he's prior to space. And Time and all this other stuff. And so that answers most of these other questions, like was God at the beginning of the universe? What was before God? No, no, God is atemporal. God should be a numerical as well.

14:53 Theodore: Absolutely, I think.

14:54 Wes: So this is the only place we get Yin and Yang, right?

14:57 Theodore: It doesn't turn up a lot.

14:58 Wes: I found no other passage. Unless you guys. There are passages that are evocative of it. Like 61, I took as places where the talk of the female and the male in equilibrium I took to be indirect references. Right. So in 61 the female is always able to use her equilibrium to best the male. It is this equilibrium that places her properly underneath. If you look at commentaries, obviously the yin is going to be associated with the masculine principle and a yang with a feminine. But I didn't see any other places in the text where they're explicitly mentioned.

15:30 Mark: Yeah, I see just in searching the Ames, he uses it in his commentary. Several places. But yeah, it's not in the text.

15:38 Seth: I just searched the Ivanhoe, same thing.

15:41 Theodore: I just looked up the characters. This is only the only place where yin turns up. And I've looked up Yang, but they usually come together. So yeah, this is the only I mention.

15:50 Wes: Where do we learn more about that in the the Book of Changes, I think.

15:54 Theodore: Yeah, I think the I Ching may be the oldest text that has the Yin Yang cosmology stuff in it. But again, I mean, you come across a lot of people who read a lot of the Yin Yang cosmology into the Tao Te Ching. And it is true that the Yin Yang cosmology existed in some form before this obviously kind of the Dao Jing obviously knows of it, I think in kind of uses it and is in dialogue with it. But I think the greatest development of that cosmology happened in the Han and there's a whole lot of reading back into the text.

16:26 Seth: So in some respects this can be read as philosophy, can be read as various things, but it's also in a sense kind of cosmology in that you have to have an active element. There has to be something that motivates movement and change and action. Right. So when you think about ancient Greek cosmology and you have the heaven and the earth, what was it that actually made these two static things come together? It's Eros. There has to be some sort of motive element and yin and Yang tension of the bow. So in this cosmology, it's not one thing that somehow creates attraction from one element to another.

It's the fact that the whole structure is underpinned by these two elements that are in dynamic tension, like the string of the bow. And the movement comes from the tension between these two elements. That's the motive force. Otherwise, you know, it's just Parmenides and it's just static with the appearance of movement and change. And I thought last time. And I might be hallucinating because I don't even know who I am anymore.

17:26 Mark: But that's good. You're empty. You're becoming empty.

17:29 Seth: I'm becoming empty. Or something's just getting. All my insides are being sucked out of me. That's the. But I think we talked about. This is much more Heraclitean, or it sounded and felt more Heraclitean than Parmenidean. Sorry, name drop. So that's how I see the Yin and the Yang. It's just a reference to why there would be any change in movement happening at all.

17:50 Wes: But if they're perfectly complimentary. Unless they're getting into a lot of arguments with each other and then that.

17:56 Seth: No, they're not always in balance. That's the thing. Right?

18:00 Theodore: If anything, I think the Dao in the Dao Te Ching. Unless, of course, we take this as a therapeutic text and why it kind of really insists on the yin part or the dark, the low, the whatever. It's just trying to correct your biases that are there for some reason. But if we take it as sincere, the dao has a preference in the Yin Yang. It's not a balanced system yet very much. Things arise, but they're going to fall. There does seem to be a real preference. If we think this text is about balance.

18:31 Wes: Wait, what is preferred?

18:32 Theodore: The deep, The. The mother, the. The full.

18:35 Wes: Should we read 61 in that context or.

18:38 Mark: Go ahead.

18:39 Wes: Sure. Okay. A great state is like the lower reaches of water's downward flow. It is the female of the world. In the intercourse of the world, the female is always able to use her equilibrium to best the male. It is the equilibrium that places her properly underneath. Hence, if the great state is able to get underneath the small state, it can rule the small state. If the small state is able to get underneath the large state, it can get to be ruled by the large state. And some get underneath in order to rule. Tell me about it. And some get underneath in order to be ruled. Now, the great state wants no more than to win over the other state and tend to it, while the small state wants more no more than to offer the other state its services. If they are both getting what they want. In the relationship, then it is fitting for the great state to take the lower position. You hear that, guys?

19:31 Seth: I'm almost terrified to jump into this. Now see, this is where I would expect Mark to make some kind of reference to master and servant by Depeche Mode or something like that. Yeah.

19:45 Wes: Where are the jokes, Mark?

19:46 Dylan: You haven't.

19:47 Seth: Damn.

19:48 Mark: I feel like the sexuality of this speaks for itself. I think you already added the jokes there.

19:55 Seth: What was it, Wes? What's your first sentence?

19:57 Wes: It is a great state is like the lower reaches of water's downward flow. It is the female of the world.

20:04 Seth: Okay. In the Ivanhoe it says a great state is like the delta of a mighty river.

20:11 Wes: Okay?

20:12 Seth: It is where the whole world gathers. It is the female of the whole world.

20:16 Wes: Yeah, I like that.

20:18 Theodore: It does also have a nice note here that the delta or the low flow is used in the Analects. And it's precisely said that the gentleman dislikes the low places like dislikes the deltas where the foul water collects. So it may be another taking the opposite view to the Analects self consciously again, or it could just, you know, be using the same words, right?

20:43 Wes: You know, it's receiving the flow from above, right?

20:46 Seth: It's receiving the flow. But you can also think of it as positioning yourself to have all things come to you. So the female gets the better of the male not because she doesn't pursue, but instead lets the male come to her, finds the place where things come to her. It's essentially again, it's that notion of weakness and non action. If you can get what you want by being still as opposed to actively pursuing, there's a superiority in whatever way in that type of function. So everything flowing into a place, you

21:17 Wes: know, there's something about using the energy and other energies that are outside of you, being able to make use of those rather than simply relying on what's inside oneself.

21:26 Mark: So this sounds like another argument for federalism. Thousand points of light that the great state we can afford to let the individual states and counties and cities determine a lot of stuff, their policing or whatever. Because we ultimately have the. We, meaning the federal government ultimately has the power, but can put itself, maybe even should encourage, you know, identify yourself as Texan or Wisconsinite first. I don't know.

21:54 Theodore: It could be if it was making that argument in the Warring States period, it would be not received very well. I mean, I don't know, because that was perceived at least that that was the problem was that the Zhou state became too feudal, allowed all of its regions to amass too much power, and then they started to kill each other at an alarming rate. So the facts on the ground for China at the time seem to argue very strongly against a kind of federal thing. The whole metaphorical setup ties very closely with the mother as well. You know, she takes the lower position and yet generates all life. So I think this is the kind of, the setting up of a metaphorical system here, that that connection is meant to be made.

22:35 Seth: The political metaphor that I read here is basically, if the great state, instead of trying to dominate the smaller state, makes the smaller state want to be federated with it for security purposes or because of the advantage of economic things, then it will draw the small states into it, as opposed to. I was going to try to think of an example. I don't think the federal versus the states in the United States are. Because I was like, oh, Finland's going to join NATO. See, NATO has made itself low and receptive and Finland is going to flow down into it. But I think, given. I don't think it's what NATO has to offer in its own form that's making Finland run to NATO. So I don't know that there's any analogies.

23:19 Wes: You don't think not being invaded, I

23:22 Seth: mean, maybe, maybe there's a nice. Like I have made myself.

23:25 Wes: That's the only thing that's prevented anyone from getting invaded.

23:28 Seth: But I mean, that could be it. Maybe that's the appropriate. Is that NATO is basically. It's the delta.

23:34 Theodore: If we were to think of federalism, then we might think of the EU and kind of how it's being attractive to other small nations to come and join it. But usually, I mean, people kind of speak up. Yes, the EU grows and it has a strength in attracting lots of small things, but it also lacks a strong identity of itself. Exactly. Who will die to protect the eu? Well, Ukrainians. Oh, dear, let's not get into that. Do you think it's about federalism? I don't know.

24:02 Seth: It's the same thing. It's like you can go to war and you can try to take over a small state. If you're a big state, that's one way to do it. Another way is to make what you have to offer so attractive that the small state comes to you and says, I would like to create economic ties or, you know, and political ties and so forth like that. It's the same as you can go to war or you can find a way to defeat the enemy before you even take the battlefield. Right.

24:28 Theodore: Another tension here in that. That does sound again very Confucian. Confucians also don't want to go to war, but they think by creating a great culture you'll attract others to kind of join you. And it's that kind of culture, wealth, the brilliance of your country that'll draw others to you. But the Taoists can't offer that. They'll eventually look at 80, which is kind of perhaps their vision of what the world should look like. And there's no reason for anyone to be drawn to a Daoist state. It's purposefully minimal. So chapter 80, go for it. Reduce the size of the state, lessen the population.

Make sure that even though there are labor saving tools, they are never used. Make sure that the people look upon death as a weighty matter and never move to distant places. Even though they have ships and carts, they will have no use for them. Even though they have armor and weapons, they will have no reason to deploy them. Make sure that the people return to the use of the knotted cord. Make their food savory, their clothes fine, their houses comfortable, their lives happy. Then, even though neighboring states are within sight of each other, even though they can hear the sound of each other's dogs and chickens, the people will grow old and die without ever having visited one another.

Any problems with the translation there with

25:55 Wes: people labor saving devices is weaponry in the Ames.

26:02 Theodore: I think that could be better.

26:04 Wes: Yeah, that does save some labor, some forms of labor.

26:10 Mark: So what do we think of this? There was an earlier one that quotes the Beatles. Without going out of your door, without

26:17 Theodore: going out to the door, one can know the whole world. Without looking out the window, one can see the way of heaven. The further one goes, the less one knows. This is why sages know without going abroad name without having to see perfect

26:32 Mark: through non action And I mentioned the. Is it the Lao translation here? The Wu translation is the one that the Beatles used for the. The song. I think it's called the inner light. Without going out of your door that you can know the ways of the world without peeping through your window you can see the way of heaven. This doesn't seem exactly what it.

26:51 Theodore: I don't remember that beetle.

26:53 Mark: It's a George. It's a George song.

26:54 Theodore: Is it a B side or.

26:57 Mark: The farther one travels, the less one knows, the less one really knows.

27:01 Wes: The tax Man There are only 200

27:04 Mark: translations to choose from or so it might not exactly be one of these, but it's definitely. This is a pretty weird. You know, it's A mystical interpretation.

27:13 Theodore: Right.

27:13 Mark: It's your local authentic relationship with the world around you. Or this holographic micro. Well, the whole universe is in every atom. So just check out the atoms in front of you. You don't need to go, you know, you're going to just spread yourself thin with travel and communication and sort of that Kierkegaard anti social media episode that we did, you know. Or a Thoreau is just as good.

27:39 Wes: Get too into your head, all that knowledge filling up your brain.

27:43 Theodore: I do find that the people look upon death as a weighty matter and never move to distant places. And whether that's replicated in the sage. So it's. Once you take away all these unnatural desires, you kind of move beyond being trapped by language. The desire to live remains, which is different from the Zhuangzi. But yeah, if people are kind of brought back to a natural state, they take their own personal life very seriously. I just found that interesting. I don't know if that helps us along.

28:12 Wes: You know, in 80 there's this isolation I guess in both 47 and 80. Right.

28:16 Dylan: Yeah.

28:16 Theodore: The sage is in his house inside a village.

28:18 Wes: That's isolationist tendency. You know, stay at home, eat your food and you're not going to get any fights with your neighbors. Just don't go outside and you keep the peace. But minimal population, so keep it small, be well armed and avoid your neighbors. That's a cynical summary of this.

28:44 Mark: Well, just to circle back, that might explain why he said in the one we talked about before that don't put yourself in contention and people will want you to be the leader anyway. That only works in a very small community because that was entirely. The problem is you have to toot your own horn if that's necessary for publicity purposes. But in a small community everybody knows everybody else and so they can see when somebody else is virtuous and praise them and want them to be in a position of power without anybody in particular having to have a campaign on their behalf.

29:11 Theodore: That our society is just far too gone for Daoist principles. You know, the Taoist confronted with our society would go and live on a commune, would kind of try to withdraw as much as possible.

29:24 Dylan: Well, there's a little bit of. It reminds me of the notion that a polity like having to be small. Right. Yet people have to know one another in order to have a community. And if you don't, then other behaviors have to come to bear.

29:37 Wes: What did Aristotle say about this? Did he give specific limits? I think he gave a number.

29:42 Mark: If you've got a small community, then the forces of conformity will work hard enough that you can straighten people out just with a little uncarved block. If it gets big enough, then you need the secret police. That's a question though, whether following one's nature and being interacting with things, if actually that would lead naturally to peaceful conformity, like in a way that maybe we would not, once that's spelled out, we would not be so down with

30:08 Wes: this ethic is like, are you a Rousseauian, are you a Hobbesian? Or whatever, Right. Is it people naturally inclined to be good? And then you can be, you know, if we were anarchists, everything would be okay. Or, and in that case civilization is the corrupting force? Or is civilization the only solution to the unruly, murderous passions of human beings?

30:30 Seth: I don't think there's any place in here, and I'm starting to question my own initial attraction to the text from this one thing, which is very disappointing to me. But there's no suggestion in here that civilization is unnecessary or burdened. There's no complete primitivist thread here, really. I think so.

30:51 Dylan: There's a naturalist thread, savory food, fine

30:54 Theodore: clothes, comfortable houses, and in some sense people are happy. So there seems to be some minimal production.

31:03 Seth: There's no place in here where it says there should be no ruler. It's not anarchistic. There's an acknowledgment that some kind of governmental structure, some kind of social structure is.

31:12 Wes: But there are places where the, you know, the ideal ruler doesn't rule by doing anything. They just set an example as the virtuous one. Right.

31:21 Seth: But there's still. That suggests there's still an order, there's still a social order, there's still a government.

31:26 Wes: But I just see some anarchist tendencies to that. Right. The anarchist doesn't think that there's not going to be any order. How is it all going to work? But so that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying this is anarchism. I'm just saying that it's hard not to read some of those tendencies into. Into some of these.

31:41 Mark: There's not the history of the battle against conformity, I think at this historical period, so that we are scarred by so much conformity and like the breaking away. And so what freedom has to be is diversity, is be your own person. And I think maybe that's. Even though it sure sounds like that's what Daoism's reaction to Confucianism is, maybe it's less drastic in what it's actually recommending, then the anarchist implies, okay, there'll be some hierarchies, but there'll be hierarchies because like we need to get stuff done. You're not going to be an anarchist unless you're a radical egalitarian, unless you're revolting against the classist societies of the past. And I don't think that's actually happening this, this back foreign history.

32:23 Wes: Yeah. I'm not literally saying this is an anarchist text, an anarchist cookbook. I mean the point is if that you're appealing to nature and to the natural propensities of things and to the indeterminate and the nameless and the, the way and all that stuff, to this primordial ineffable thing as a kind of guidance, then there are still apparently rules. Now I'm thinking of Wittgenstein and rules versus practice. Right. They're nameless rules. In a way they're just practice, but it's ordered. Maybe that's the point to be making politically. It could mean something hierarchical or I guess it does.

32:59 Seth: There's also a way to read this which is not necessarily anarchistic, but anti capitalist is definitely isolationist. Chapter 80 is definitely isolationist.

33:10 Theodore: Right.

33:10 Seth: But talk about even there are labor saving tools. They're never used less than the population. It's the idea of what is harmonious with nature is not about the expansion of human population. It's not about exploitation of the land. It's not about the accumulation of surplus goods and things like that. It's not about conquest. It's about maintaining some kind of balance. And the God's honest truth is there's too many humans, I won't say for the planet to sustain, but certainly for individual ecosystems to sustain. So there's a potential reading here where you are prepared if something comes to you, like say the western powers finally land in Japan, right?

They're prepared for invasion. You're prepared for commerce. You're prepared for all these things, but you choose not to engage in them in order to maintain a standard of life that's more imbalanced and less about growth and consumption. Doesn't mean you won't have to have balls and wear nice clothes and eat good food. Right? It just means you'll be satisfied with those things as opposed to desiring more.

34:19 Theodore: I was just because I'm always a little nervous about nature and then making the. How much they are thinking about the environment, ecosystems. But I do imagine this, this town that we're talking about, very much in touch with the wooded lands that surround them with being very kind of close to natural ways that would inform them. So there is a way in which I think nature is direct. Being very close to nature is directly informing way making in this small community. Going back a bit also, I don't think there's nothing about overthrowing princes and putting Daoist princes in their place at the time.

You have, I think later. But you have the legalists, certainly the Confucius. Maybe they're thinking about different forms of government to put into place or at least, you know, get a benevolent person into power or make the state a certain way to combine all of these different warring states. I think that leads to saying everything. All the social structures can kind of remain the same, but we've got to stop the action. I don't think there's a revolutionary period like to overthrow any princes. So maybe, I don't know. And the difference in anarchism is I don't find this an individualistic text.

I think when you get to the core of it, it is about the practices of a community and how natural they are, how flexible they are, how they are organized around certain people.

35:43 Wes: Yeah, I think that's. It sounds like syndicalist, anarcho syndicalism to me.

35:48 Mark: I think you're uncovering a. Perhaps a thing we could do for our part three or nightcap or whatever is talk about how we could modernize this and how we could. We sort of in our last nightcap that we just recorded, talked about this as a self help text. Well, let's move that into, you know, talking more explicitly about the political ramifications and the. Just how. How do we take this? As many practicing Taoists, you know, and people in the west who have no knowledge or connection directly, you know, we have this Ursula K. Le Guin translation here and not Ken Kesey who is the druggie guy that has this translation,

36:27 Theodore: the Tao Te Ching as a how to take drugs. It's a kind of how to how to inform your trip guide. You read this and you go, I know how to navigate my trip now. There was also another person who, who didn't speak Chinese. But luckily a spirit came to him and he was able to be divinely kind of informed about how to translate it.

36:46 Seth: So how it's the Joseph Smith version.

36:50 Theodore: Yes, there's a Joseph Smith version out there. Many ways to take it.

36:54 Mark: So I wanted to wrap up here, just read the first few lines of 41. This is the most defensive chapter in here. I'll read the Lau version here. When the best student hears about the way, he practices it assiduously. When the average student hears about the way, it seems to him one moment there and gone the next. When the worst student hears about the way he laughs out loud, he if he did not laugh, it would be unworthy of being the way. So if you've been listening to this and you're like, ah, read some more, Kripke, read some more. This is all fine and good, but is laughable and not actually applicable. That's just because you don't get it. You're not worthy of the text.

37:32 Seth: You're not worthy of. Not the text. You're not worthy of Pel. If you laugh at Pel. If you don't laugh, wait. If you laugh at Peel, how does that work?

37:41 Wes: The appropriate places.

37:42 Seth: If you laugh at Pl, you're good. If you laugh at us, you're the worst kind of student. If you do what we do, you're the best kind of student.

37:52 Wes: If you pay us.

37:54 Seth: And if you jog while we're.

37:56 Mark: I do like that. Ames translates the first lines to be more modest. When the very best students learn of waymaking, they're just barely able to keep to its center. When mediocre students learn of waymaking, they're sporadically on it and off it, and then the worst ones laugh at it. So, like, I like that that it's really hard even for the best ones. You're gonna fall. It's a. It's like a razor's edge. You're gonna. You're gonna tip off one way or the other. Inevitably. It's a hard road to hoe, but yet you want to travel it very naturally. That's what's so hard about it.

38:26 Wes: We no tracks.

38:28 Mark: If you would like us to cover more in this tradition and, you know, if this makes you excited for us to cover other non Western stuff or you're sick of not Western stuff and you want to recommend something completely different, reach out to us@peltialexaminedlife.com or through the website, through our Facebook group next time. As I said, I think I had said last time, Sushen, who was on our Confucius episode, is going to come back and he wanted to do Mozi or Mo Tzu as it used to be spelled. So everybody knows about the Confucius and the Taoists, but the Mohists were just as big a deal as the Confucians and in fact a bigger deal than the Taoists back in Confucius's time.

So to really understand this history. According to Sushan, you need to read some Mohism. Apparently it will not be as tricky as what we've been going through. And it's not going to be two episodes. Absolutely. But come back for that. Thanks everybody and good night.

39:22 Wes: Good night.

39:23 Seth: Good night.