VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2
The Cold Shoulder, and Hoarding Information
The last section named the first two forms, picking at details and the runaround, and both worked with the same tool, the rule. This section takes the third and fourth, the cold shoulder with its sting, and the hoarding of information with its after the fact sneer. These two cut deeper than the first two. But the tool is no longer the rule. It is a face, a tone, that little edge of I understand and you do not. And precisely because not one word of it is written down, these are the hardest of all to complain about, the hardest to put into words. Today, look at both of them square.
The third form is the most wounding of the five, and the one that leaves the least behind. Set it out. The person walks up to the window, and the one behind it does not look up. The person says, hello, I would like to. The one behind still does not look up. The person says it a second time, and only then does the head come up, no expression on the face, the eyes not on the person, and out comes one word. What. The materials go across, the clerk turns two pages, frowns, tosses out this will not do, and pushes the materials back. Where will it not do? Look for yourself. I do not understand it. Do not understand it, go back and ask.
Listen to the whole of that. Is there one word in it that breaks a rule? No. Is there one word in it you could take to a complaint desk? No. And yet, walking away from that window, the person will remember the humiliation for the rest of his life. That feeling, that I seem not to be a person at all, only a nuisance, cuts worse than the errand going undone. The errand can be run again tomorrow. But that sting, once it is in the heart, is there for good.
Where is the law of the position in this one? The clerk's tool is no longer the rule. It is the face, the tone, that one deliberate pause, that gaze that will not land on you. Nothing in any rulebook covers a bit of it, and there is nothing to take anywhere, and that is exactly why it does the most damage. Because humiliation strikes straight at the person's own sense of position. Its whole aim is to make him feel, I do not even rate being treated like anyone else.
Here an ancestor lights the thing from another side. Mencius wrote that a person who has things he will not do is then able to do the things that matter. What he meant was a certain sense of position in a decent man, a set of low things he will not stoop to, out of something in himself. Turn that line over onto this move and it comes clear. Why would a person, behind a counter, use coldness and humiliation on someone doing business? Precisely because everywhere else in his life he has almost no room left to do anything that matters. The one place left where he can make something happen is this counter. So he has to make something happen here. And the cheapest, surest thing he can make happen is to put on a cold face and a hard word and humiliate the person in front of him. Lowest cost, strongest sense of position. And there, once more, is the satisfaction with nowhere to go from the second chapter, come back around.
The fourth form is the hoarding of information, with an after the fact sneer on top. Here is how it runs. From the very start, the clerk will not tell you the full set of requirements. The person does what he knows to do, finishes, finds one more thing missing, comes back to fix it, and finds one more thing after that. The person cannot help asking, is there anything else you have not told me? The clerk says, you should know that yourself. The person says, I really do not. The clerk says, that is on you for not looking into it beforehand.
And there is a deeper turn. The person, having worked hard in the wrong direction, comes back to the counter, and the clerk says slowly, my, you did not even know that? Everyone who works here knows that. First time doing this, is it? And in that tone there is a whole draft of I know and you do not, so I stand a notch above you. In that second the person has not only failed to get the errand done, he has been labeled, ignorant. Where is the law of the position? The clerk has made information into the capital of his seat. The information in his hand, the position is there. Let the information go public, open, where anyone can look it up, and the position is gone. So the one behind the counter has a natural pull to clutch the information tight and keep you in the dark. In the dark, you have to come and ask him. You come and ask, and his sense of position gets its confirmation, round after round.
This one, too, an ancestor saw through, fourteen hundred years ago. Yan Zhitui, in the Family Instructions of the Yan Clan, wrote that what is precious in a person making his way through the world is that he can rein himself in and keep to what is right, help the world and settle the people, and not that he shows off what he can do or flaunts what he knows. Fourteen hundred years ago Yan Zhitui had seen it. A person who wears I know and you do not on his face all day long is showing, in that very act, that his sense of position is low, not high. And yet at the counter the law often turns the other way around. The lower a person's sense of position, the more he has to wear I know and you do not on his face. Because it is only by putting you down that he gets to feel he has come up, even a little.
Set these two beside the first two and look. The last section, picking at details and the runaround, worked by the rule. This section, the cold shoulder and the hoarding of information, works by attitude and by information. The tool shifts, from rule to attitude to information, but the law of the position behind it never moves. It is always a person poor in position, at the one place he gets to use any power, clutching whatever is in his hand, be it a rule, a face, or a piece of information, in order to confirm, I am still here, I still carry some weight. And notice one thing more. The further down the list you go, the fewer marks the move leaves. Picking at details, at least you can point to a detail. The runaround, at least you can count the wasted trips. But the cold shoulder, the hoarded information, and you cannot catch hold of one word to take anywhere. The deeper they hide, the harder they are to see, and so the more they need, first of all, a name.
So here is where this section leaves us. Two more forms, named. The third, the cold shoulder and its sting. The tool is the face, the tone, the pause, the gaze that will not land, the most wounding and the hardest to report. Mencius, a person who will not stoop can do what matters, read the other way around, shows it. The less room a person has to do anything that matters anywhere else, the more he has to make his mark by humiliating someone at this one counter. The fourth, the hoarding of information and the after the fact sneer. He makes information the capital of his seat, clutches it, and then sneers at your ignorance. Yan Zhitui, fourteen hundred years ago, not showing off what you can do or flaunting what you know, named it. The man who wears I know and you do not has a low seat, not a high one. That leaves one form of the five, and it is the deepest. Selective enforcement. The same set of rules, to a person you know, is thin air, and to a stranger, a wall. This one strikes straight at equal treatment under the rules, one of the foundation stones of a modern society. The next section takes this last one, and then brings Mencius back to gather all five together. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.