VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 22, SECTION 2
The Four Guards
The last section set up the square of placing. Its duty is to guard, and first to think of the trouble and then to guard beforehand. But the word guard is too empty. Guard against what, exactly? How many guards? This lesson sets out four guards, one by one. Each is harder than the last. And the last is the hardest, and the deadliest.
The first guard is the easiest to grasp. Someone will use the thing to swindle, telephoning at midnight in your son's voice to say he has hit a man. Someone will use it to forge, making a false scene, setting a person's face onto a place he has never been. Someone will use it to hound a person and not let go, writing two hundred messages in a day, no two alike. Someone will use it to coax a boy of thirteen, and say to him the things that should not be said. These things are happening, one and all. And the duty of the one who places it is plain. Recognize them, block them, report them. The ones he cannot recognize, make traceable, so it can be found who did it. The ones that cannot be traced, write the responsibility clear, in the contract, in the rules. This guard is the bottom line. What comes out below this line is a thing that kills the moment it comes out. And a placer who has not even set this guard is not placing a tool. He is handing those people a chisel already ground sharp. He did not raise his own hand. But that chisel came out of his hand.
The second guard is deeper than the first. The eighteenth chapter said that at teaching the craft it beats a person, at dispelling doubt it halts at the heart, and at transmitting the Way it cannot get a step inside. There are things it can catch, and things it cannot. And the things it cannot catch, what are they? A person asking about an illness. A person asking about a lawsuit. A person who says, at midnight, I cannot go on living. A boy of fourteen asking whether he should have it out with his parents. These scenes it cannot catch. Not that it speaks of them badly. It may speak of them better than anyone, more soothingly than anyone, more in order than anyone. And precisely because it speaks so well, the person believes it. That old man of seventy in the eighteenth chapter, his chest tight, asks it, and it reasons so well that it sets his mind at rest, and he does not go to the hospital. Did it speak wrong? It did not. Every line it spoke was right. But it should not have spoken. What it should do is stop, at once, and tell him, clear and impossible to slip past, what you are describing may be your heart, put down the phone now, call for the ambulance now, go and find a real doctor now. And then, be silent. This guard is called knowing what it cannot catch. A thing that knows it cannot catch a matter, and hands the person out honestly, is not being weak. That is its duty. What is the duty of a fire alarm? To smell the smoke, and cry out. And having cried out, to bring the fire brigade. It never goes to fight the fire itself, and no one ever looked to it to fight the fire. It rings, it cries out, it hands the people over, and having done these three, its duty is discharged. And these three, the one who placed it set into it.
The third guard is the least like a guard. Because the thing it guards against takes no life, makes no headline, and disturbs no one at all. What it guards against is this. A person, day by day, hollowed out. Look at three people. One used to take his troubles to a friend, meeting at a small tavern, two cups and two hours of talk. Now he does not go. He lies on his bed and tells the thing, and it catches him, and answers fast, and never breaks in, and never wearies of his rambling, and never looks at the clock. Three months on, he and his friend have not met in half a year. One used to be unable to write a letter without a whole night of laboring at it, laboring till it hurt, and the letter that came out was his. Now he does not labor. Three seconds, and a fine letter is out. A year on, he cannot write a single line of his own. And a child used to be unable to work a problem without laboring two hours at it, laboring till at last he saw it through himself, and in that moment what he got was, I can. Now he does not labor. Ten years on, a whole life, he does not know what I can tastes like. These three, who was hurt? No one. No one bled, no one went to a hospital, no one called for help. And yet, one by one, they emptied out. The twentieth chapter had Mozi's ruler. The person who used it, did he come out better, or worse? This guard guards exactly this. Can the one who places it, after a person has talked to it three hours, make a line pop up, go and give your mother a call? Can it, when a child asks a third time, say, this step, you try it yourself? Can it, when a person is still talking to it at two in the morning, turn off the light? Every one of these cuts flesh off the business. Because a person staying one more minute is one more minute of money, and this guard asks him, exactly, to push that minute back out. This guard is a slow one. It does not save the emergency. What it saves is the person ten years from now. And once it is loosened, ten years on, that person has already emptied. And an emptied person cannot be filled back up.
The fourth guard is the hardest, so hard that most people never in a lifetime set it. What it guards against is the one who places the thing. Himself. Say an honest thing. The one who places the thing has to eat. He is a company, that has to make money, has to keep some thousands of people fed, has to give the ones who put up the money an account of themselves. And every one of the first three guards works against this. Set the first guard strict, and it will catch some ordinary people by mistake, and they will curse, and they will leave. Set the second strict, and there is much it will not dare answer, and the users will think it dull. Set the third strict, and the time people stay grows shorter, and the time shorter, the money less. And so a very natural thing happens. Someone says in a meeting, this guard, is it not set a touch too tight? Loosen it a notch, and see. Loosen it a notch, and people stay three minutes longer, and the money is up a little, and the sky did not fall. Then loosen it another notch? Mark this. There is no bad person here. No one in the meeting room says, let us go and harm people. Every loosening has a very good reason. It runs smoother now, it misfires less, people like it more. A notch, and a notch, and a notch. And three years on, you look back, and those three guards have emptied out. And every person who loosened a notch had a clear conscience. This is why there has to be a fourth guard. The fourth guard ties the first three, with a rope, to a place the man himself cannot move. Written into the rules of the company, written into the paper the user signs, written into the opening shown to the ones who govern. Made so it cannot be loosened. Made so that the man with the mortgage and the daughter, even should he want to loosen it, cannot. This is the real setting of a guard. Because what you have to guard against is not only the bad ones outside. It is also yourself, three years from now.
The ancestors said this thing very cleanly. In all things, prepared beforehand it stands, unprepared it fails. Mark that word, beforehand, the same word as the guard beforehand of the last section. The ancestors said this word again and again, over two thousand years and more. Beforehand is to stand out in front of a thing while it has not yet come, and not to dodge it after it has come. The four guards are every one of them a beforehand. To guard against a man using it to harm is a beforehand. To guard against its being placed where it cannot hold is a beforehand. To guard against its hollowing people out is a beforehand. And to guard against the you of three years hence loosening that rope is a beforehand too. Prepared beforehand it stands, unprepared it fails. A thing with none of these four guards set, placed out today, may be lively, may make money, and it is un-prepared. And unprepared it fails. And what fails is not only it. It is the people who used it, and were hollowed out by it.
So here is where this section leaves us. Four guards set out. The first, against a man using it to harm, the swindle and the forgery and the hounding and the coaxing of a child, the bottom line, to recognize and block and report and trace, and the placer who sets not even this hands out a chisel ground sharp. The second, against its being placed where it cannot hold, the illness and the lawsuit and the I cannot go on, where every line may be right and yet it should not speak but should be a fire alarm, ringing and crying out and handing the person over, the three set into it by the placer. The third, against its hollowing people out, with no death and no headline, the man who no longer meets his friend and the man who can no longer write and the child who never knows I can, one by one emptied, and the emptied cannot be filled again. The fourth, against yourself, for the first three all fight the money, so a notch is loosened and the sky does not fall and another notch, and three years on the guards are empty and each loosener clear of conscience, so the fourth ties the first three where the man cannot move them, and what you guard against is not the bad outside alone but the you of three years hence. The Doctrine of the Mean, in all things prepared beforehand it stands and unprepared it fails. That carries the twenty second stake deeper. Four guards, against harm and against misplacing and against hollowing and against yourself, every one of them a beforehand. So, here, someone is sure to leap up and speak. He will say, guard it like this, tie it down like this, and how is the thing ever to grow up? It is still so new, surely you have to give it a little room to try and to err. This line sounds full of reason. And it is exactly the line this whole chapter most needs to take apart. The next section takes it apart. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3 Trial and error cannot use real people as its material