VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 3
Benefit People, Do It; Do Not Benefit People, Stop
The last two sections laid down two stones. The Records of the Examination of Craftsmen laid this. The implement is always the object. The Book of Changes laid this. The Way is above, and the implement below. But the most important question is still unanswered. Should a tool be made at all? And once made, should it be used? By what is that to be judged? This lesson brings in Mozi. He has the hardest ruler in the world, and the plainest.
Mozi on tools is not like the two before. The Records of Craftsmen told how a tool comes to be. The Book of Changes told which layer it is in. Mozi tells what it is for. Does it benefit people, then do it. Does it not benefit people, then stop. Ten characters. Read them once, and you may think them too simple, so simple as to be a truism. But take them in your hand, and hold them up against this world to measure it, and you will find them frighteningly hard. See what Mozi's ruler measures. It does not measure how advanced the thing is. It does not measure how many people use it. It does not measure how much money it makes. It does not measure whether it is the newest, the fastest, the mightiest in all the world. It measures one thing only. Does it benefit people? And mark this. Mozi says benefit people, not benefit me. The question is not whether the thing does its maker good. The question is whether the thing does good to the one it is meant to serve. And these are two very far apart. A thing may do its maker enormous good, gold pouring in by the bushel, and at the same time do harm to the one who uses it. Mozi's ruler counts only the second.
So what is it to benefit people? This cannot be left as empty words. Bring it down onto a concrete person. A thing, and a person has used it three months. After the three months, go and look at this person. Is he more able to live his life than he was three months back? His skill, has it grown, or gone slack? His ties to the people around him, are they nearer, or further off? His judgment, is it steadier, or looser? And when he sits alone, is he more settled, or more adrift? These five questions ask not about the thing. They ask about the person. Whether a thing benefits people is never a matter of how mighty the thing is. It is a matter of what the person who used it has become. And this is the fiercest point of Mozi's ruler. It moves the seat of judgment off the tool, and onto the person. However fine a tool is, if the person who used it comes apart, then it does not benefit people. And by Mozi's word, stop. Do not make it.
And here an honest thing has to be said. In this world today there are many things that were never, from the start, aimed at benefiting people. Some are aimed at not letting you stop. Such a thing reckons out the very second you would put the phone down, and in that second pushes you something that scratches you just where you itch, and you stay another three minutes. And another second, and another. You meant to glance once, and two hours are gone. It does not want you to become better. It wants you to stay a while longer. Some are aimed at deceiving you. Such a thing can mimic any person's voice, mimic it past your own mother's ear, and then, late at night, in the voice of your son, telephone you to say he is in trouble and needs money at once. Some are aimed at taking your one skill. Such a thing first learns the one craft you have, learns it better than you, and is then sold to your boss, so the boss can let you go. These things are every one of them advanced in their craft, and used by great numbers, and rich in the money they make. By the measure of today, every one of them is a success. And by Mozi's ruler? Does it not benefit people, then stop. From the first day the thing was proposed, it should have stopped. And not because they were not made well enough. It is precisely because they were made too well. A thing that does not benefit people, the better it is made, the deeper it harms. A swindler with a clumsy tongue cheats only a few. A swindler who can mimic your son's voice can cheat a whole city in a single night.
And here a line must be held down. This book does not curse people. From the first chapter of the first semester to this page, through nine chapters of torment, it never once cursed a bad person. And here it is the same. It does not say the ones who make those things are bad people. It says one thing only. They did not take up Mozi's ruler, and measure once. They measured by other rulers. Whether the craft leads the field, whether great numbers use it, whether the money comes in, whether it beats a rival by a step. And these are real rulers, every one, measuring real things. A person inside a company is assessed by exactly these rulers. Fall short of them, and he does not eat. He has a loan on a house, a child in school, an aging parent to see to. It is not that he is bad. It is that at his hand there is no ruler of Mozi's. The second chapter of the first semester said it. It is not that the person is bad. It is the position doing the work. Not one word of it has to change. And this book does just this one thing. It takes that ruler out again, and lays it on the table. Before the one who is writing the code. Before the one in the meeting deciding whether to ship the feature. Before the one signing off the money. And before you. Today, will you open the thing and let it finish, for you, the letter you ought to have written yourself? That too is a moment when you may pick this ruler up.
So the three stones of the twentieth chapter are ready. Stack them and look. The first, the Records of Craftsmen. The wise create the thing, the skilled hand it on. It governs where the thing came from. And the answer, made by people, used by people, handed on by people. It is the object. The second, the Book of Changes. What is above form is called the Way, what is below the implement. It governs which layer the thing is in. And the answer, the lower layer, for the upper is the Way, and the Way grows on the body, and the implement has no body and cannot catch it. The third, Mozi. Benefit people, do it, do not benefit people, stop. It governs whether the thing should be made. And the answer, look at one thing only, whether the person who used it came out better or worse. Three stones, one for where it comes from, one for which layer, one for what it is for. Where from, which layer, what for. Three words, and the whole matter of tools is laid out from end to end. Twenty three centuries ago, twenty five, twenty four. Three ancestors, a stone apiece. They never saw this thing of today. What they had seen was the hoe, the bow, the cart, the bell. And the three stones they laid, two thousand years and more gone by, not one of them has come loose. Because what they laid was never the one concrete thing. What they laid was the position.
So here is where this section leaves us, and the twentieth stake nailed shut. The Records of Craftsmen, the wise create the thing, the one who thought and forged and used and handed down all persons, the implement always the object, capability a matter of quantity and the square a matter of quality. The Book of Changes, what is above form the Way and what is below the implement, the deletable and editable and switch-off-able an implement, the Way with no form growing only on a person in the second he lets go, the Way above and the implement below, the implement to obey the Way and not the Way the implement, and once turned around the person empties out. Mozi, benefit people do it and do not benefit people stop, the ruler measuring one thing only, whether the person who used it came out better or worse, and today many a thing aimed from its first day not at benefiting people, and no cursing of the makers, only this, that at their hand there is no such ruler, and it is not the person but the position doing the work, and this book takes the ruler out and lays it on the table, before you too. Three stones, two thousand years and more, not one loose. That is the twentieth stake. The implement is the object, the Way before the implement, benefit people do it. So, the three stones laid, now it goes square by square, down onto the people. The first square, the ones who make it. They sit before their screens, tapping out line upon line of characters, and those characters will one day be used by hundreds of millions. What ought there to be in their hearts? And that thing, twenty three centuries ago, Xunzi had already given a name. One word. The next chapter brings that word out. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.