Volume I

Volume I — The Setup

Opening to the Volume

Warning

This volume sounds an alarm. The alarm is loud. Even a reader in steady spirits will feel the shock.

If you are not in steady spirits right now — if you have been sleeping badly, if the pressure is heavy, if you have felt hopeless about the future, if you have had any thought of hurting yourself — do not read this volume. Skip ahead to Volume VI, The Way Through. The way out is laid down there, point by point. Come back to this volume when you are steady. The alarm lands better when the way out is already in view.

No job, no career, no position in the world is worth more than the person standing in it. Losing work is not losing yourself. If things are heavy, tell someone you trust.

If you are in crisis in the United States, you can call or text 988. Someone will answer.

Can’t read further? Go straight to the way out — [Volume VI, The Way Through] (volume-vi).

What This Volume Is About

The AI Great Leap is on fire. Right now.

Not fifty years from now. Not twenty. Not ten. Now. Today. This moment.

Truck drivers are losing their jobs. Lawyers, doctors, therapists, accountants — the professions are collapsing. Customer service reps, translators, paralegals, journalists, illustrators, software engineers, designers — being replaced. Cooks, construction workers, plumbers, security guards, janitors, home health aides — robots are moving in. At the bottom of the ladder, even the person collecting cans for the deposit has nowhere left to stand. Even the senior engineers at the AI labs in San Francisco are training the models that will take their own seats. Even the wars have nowhere to go. Even the funeral industry is folding in on itself. Even human reproduction is collapsing. The world has gone quiet. Frozen.

This alarm is not speculation. This is where the existing rules lead if nothing is adjusted. If the rules of the game stay the way they are, the AI Great Leap leads to a dead end for capital, a collapse of human reproduction, and a frozen world.

But — this script is not inevitable. The rules of the game can be adjusted.

The first three Industrial Revolutions all ran the same script. Machines roar. Idle hands pile up. Capital, afraid of being seized, leans on governments to send the idle hands onto a battlefield. Tens of millions fall. The international order is reshuffled. One hundred forty million poor people died in this pattern. Each time, the rules were only adjusted after the great war, not before.

This time — the Fourth Industrial Revolution — the pattern breaks. Robots are taking over the battlefield too. There is no longer even a position for idle hands to die in uniform. The old script cannot run.

So the urgent task is to adjust the rules before the great war, not after. Once the war starts, there is no Position left from which to adjust anything.

The task of Volume I, The Setup, is one task only. Lay the setup out. Let the reader see the Position vacuum, the historical pattern, the instinct of capital, and the direction of adjustment. Once the setup stands, Volume VI, The Way Through, can lay down the way out point by point.

Where This Volume Sits in the Whole Book

Volume I is the opening of Justice Way. Six volumes, one thread running through.

Volume I — The Setup. Sounds the alarm. Stands up the complete picture of the AI Great Leap.

Volume II — Culture. Stands up the root character of not obstructing others from their Position. Culture is the root.

Volume III — Economy. Stands up the rule: earnings from one’s own labor belong to the individual; everything else belongs to the public.

Volume IV — Politics. Stands up the three root structures of political organization: Feng, the imperial examination, and central administration.

Volume V — Law. Stands up the way law lags behind the actual movement of Positions. The root difference between standing in a Position and colonizing one.

Volume VI — The Way Through. Lays down the way out, point by point. Putting out the fire. The new cultural rule. The new economic rule. The new political rule. The new legal rule. How they run together.

The whole of Justice Way runs about six hundred thousand Chinese characters. Volume I runs about ninety thousand.

The Seed Posture of the Whole Book

The seed posture of the entire book is stood up in Volume I, Chapter Four, Section One. Positions differ only in division of labor — no right or wrong, no good or evil, no high or low, no noble or base, no first or last, no above or below. Every rule of Position laid down across the six volumes grows out of this seed.

Stated in one line:

No real person stands one step above or one step below another real person. No Position is more righteous or more wicked than another Position. Every Position is a different role in the same whole.

Accepting this is the entry point to Tiger Lyon’s thinking. Not accepting it leaves the reader still inside the modern Western frame of right and wrong, good and evil, high and low, noble and base.

The Root Tool

The root tool of the whole book is stood up in Volume I, Chapter Four, Section Two. Use the brush, not the blade.

The brush lets each Position come into view on its own. The blade forces a Position to disappear.

The brush accepts that there is no right or wrong, no good or evil, no high or low — it lays each Position out, and lets the reader judge. The blade declares this one right, that one wrong, and cuts the wrong one down.

All six volumes of Justice Way hold no blade. Only the brush. The reader, having seen the Positions clearly, makes the adjustment.

This small lamp does nothing more than re-light, on the ground of the AI Great Leap, the rules of Position that our forebears stood up thousands of years ago. What the reader does after seeing them is the reader’s own affair.

The credit belongs to the forebears. The mistakes belong to Tiger Lyon. The one writing this is only the brush.

The Root Rule

The root rule of the whole book is hinted at in Volume I, Chapter Four, Section Three, and fully stood up in Volume III, Economy:

Earnings from one’s own labor belong to the individual. Everything not earned by one’s own labor belongs to the public.

“The public” here is not the government. Not the state. Not any party. Not any organization. The public is the public — every real person in it.

Our forebears stood this up in the Book of Rites, more than two thousand years ago: the great Way is in motion when all under heaven belongs to the public. That “public” is the public.

Wherever a society reaches an immense scale of productive capacity, the non-labor portion of value flows back to ordinary consumers in the form of low prices. The “low-price miracle” seen in global manufacturing over recent decades is a working sample of this rule on the ground. How this lands in full is laid out in Volume VI.

How to Read This Volume

Chapter One stands up the alarm. The AI Great Leap puts every person in a Position vacuum. Capital hands a blade to every profession. Even human reproduction is collapsing. Six sections. They burn the eye. The reader may feel shaken. If steadiness is low — skip to Volume VI.

Chapter Two stands up the history. The first three Industrial Revolutions ran the same script. One hundred forty million poor people fell. Four sections. Heavy reading. But seeing the history is seeing the present.

Chapter Three turns the frame around. Capital is not evil. Capital is instinct, doing its job. Four sections. The reading runs against ordinary common sense and needs digestion. Once it stands, the direction of the whole book comes into view.

Chapter Four stands up the carrier. The seed posture. The root tool. The root mission. The closing of the volume. Four sections. Plain reading. This is the root.

Reading in order — Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, in sequence.

Steadiness low — jump to Volume VI.

Interested in the deepest posture of Position Studies — go straight to Chapter Four, Section One.

Wondering who Tiger Lyon is — Chapter Four, Section Two.

Wondering what the root mission of the whole book is — Chapter Four, Section Three.

Contents of Volume I

Chapter One — The AI Great Leap: The House Is on Fire

The robot already runs the colonoscopy — no manual trade is safe

The engineers training the AI are training their own replacements

Lawyers, doctors, therapists, accountants — the professions are collapsing

The white-collar army falls — the vacuum where the middle class used to stand

The blue-collar army falls — at the bottom, even the can-collector has nowhere to stand

The dead end for capital — no wars left, no funerals left, no reproduction left — the world goes quiet

Chapter Two — This Is Not the First Time: The Script of the First Three Industrial Revolutions

The steam engine roars — capital organizes to send fifty million idle hands onto the battlefield (First Industrial Revolution and World War I)

The electric grid lights up — capital organizes to send seventy million idle hands onto the battlefield; China bleeds (Second Industrial Revolution and World War II)

The computer plugs in — capital organizes to send the poor into local wars, still running today (Third Industrial Revolution and the Cold War)

The pattern is not a conspiracy — it is the mechanism itself; three times, the same chain

Chapter Three — Capital Is Not Evil; It Is Instinct, Doing Its Job

Capital pursues return as a matter of course — if you have a dollar in savings, you are a capitalist

Capital does not weigh human lives — but this is not evil

Capital is only a tool — the operator is the real person, and the responsibility is theirs

Restrain capital, don’t destroy it — channel the river, don’t dam it

Chapter Four — Tiger Lyon’s Position Studies and the Mission of a Soft Landing

Positions differ only in division of labor — no right or wrong, no good or evil, no high or low, no noble or base, no first or last, no above or below

Use the brush, not the blade — this time, by good fortune, a Tiger Lyon appeared

The urgent task is to adjust the rules before the great war — soft landing, steady passage, peace under heaven

So be it — the way out is laid down point by point in Volume VI

Please turn to Chapter One — The AI Great Leap: The House Is on Fire.