VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, AFTERWORD
That Position, All Along
A semester of the course is finished here. These last few pages teach nothing new. They are a standing at the door, a look back down the road walked, and a pointing toward where the next road lies.
What kind of road was walked
This semester began with a breakfast. A master opens his eyes, and the meal is already made. He cannot cook, and in his whole life he has not cooked one meal. And the one who cooks for him holds his three meals, holds his stomach, holds his life. A pinch of something scattered into that pot, and he is finished.
From this one scene, thirteen chapters were walked. We called out the word wei, and saw clear that it is the layer made by man, and neutral: it made the culture of ritual and righteousness, and it made that lock too, and both were made by the one same pair of hands. We called out Guanzi, when the granaries are full they know propriety, and Mencius, with no steady holding there is no steady heart, and Sima Qian, all the world comes crowding and all of it for gain, and value is passed forward through four positions, one handing to the next. We sat down in that court of the year 81 before the common era, and heard the two sides argue, argue to the end with neither wholly winning, and that was exactly the best result. We walked back to the age before people had opened their mouths to add a reason for taking more, and saw how the lion pride, the wolf pack, the vampire bat divide their food, by need, older even than mankind. Then we watched that position walk down, layer by layer: the oracle bone of the Shang, the register of the Zhou, the market price of the Han, the property right of Rome, the rent of the estate, the clock-hours of the factory, the monthly payment of today. And at the last we came back to ourselves, and counted over those eight nets.
Where this semester closes
Carry this line away. Enslavement will never pass away. Because the home slave, the car slave, the cat slave, the dog slave, the child slave, the wealth slave, the wealth-guarding slave, the obedience slave, the algorithm slave, this crowd, living and breathing, will go on forever. It was not abolished. It only changed its skin, changed until you cannot know it again.
Mark the weight of this line. It is not a word of despair, it is a word to open the eyes. A person who believes enslavement was done away with a few hundred years back will not go and look at those eight nets on his own body. He feels himself free, and then hands over ninety one days in a year, hands over a whole middle age across thirty years, and when he has handed it over, says thank you. A person who knows that position never walked far off will at least stop, and ask himself three lines. What am I handing over. What am I getting back. This account, do I own it.
The thing not to carry away
This semester laid out much that was hard to look at. Human offering, the buried-in, a five year old under the mine, a debt of forty nine years never cleared. There is one thing, do not carry it away. Do not carry away hatred.
In these thirteen chapters, not one person was cursed. Not the master who could not cook, not Aristotle, not the landlord taking his rent, not the factory owner, not the bank. Because cursing is of no use. Pull that landlord down, put another up, and sitting in the one same position he does the one same thing, and he does not feel he is doing a bad thing. He feels the thing was always meant to be so. What is to be looked at is the position, not the person.
And to look at a person, there is one way only. Walk in close, look down into what is under him. Stand far off, and everyone is a flat shadow, and you stick on a label, stupid, greedy, wicked, and stuck on it is done. But walk in close, look down under him, and often you find, under that shadow, a living person of blood and flesh, with his own bitterness, his own bind, his own grief he cannot speak out loud. That old woman guarding her money to her death, walked up to, was not guarding money. She was guarding the one who is gone. The verdict is never handed down by this brush.
The three things to carry away
A pair of eyes. Look at the position, not the person. In each relation, which way the constraint runs, how heavy it is, whether it is lopsided. Do not ask who is the good man and who the bad. Ask who is constraining whom.
A rod. The clear-eyed ceding, and the unwitting ceding, are two different things. Ceding in itself is neither good nor bad. A mother cedes sleep for her child, and that is an account she has owned. A person hands over ninety one days in a year and does not know it, and that is a thing felt out of his pocket.
One line. Wei the more refined is the harder to recognize. Bare, it is ugly, but it is honest. Grown decent, it is orderly, it speaks of procedure, it is two willing sides, it is handsomely printed. And it does the one same thing.
Where the next semester goes
This semester walked the first of the four institutions, enslavement. Next semester walks the second, capital. Set this line first, so the road does not fork wrong. Capital is not evil. That capital chases gain is right by heaven and earth, like water running to the low place. Capital is only a tool, and the responsibility lies in the hands that work it.
Next semester takes apart a very large mirror. On that mirror is written a famous equation. The worker makes the product, so the value of the product belongs to the worker. Look once more at Sima Qian’s sixteen characters. It waits on the farmer to be eaten, on the ranger to be brought out, on the craftsman to be made, on the trader to be moved along. Value is not brought forth by one position, it is passed forward through four positions, one handing to the next, and that equation steps across, in one stride, right at this seam. Next semester, stroke by stroke, the account in that seam will be worked out. Worked out, and then dug on further, down to scarcity, down to the three tricks by which scarcity is made, down to where, at the last, one finds a thing. The root is not in the economy.
The last words
This semester’s course began with a breakfast no one had made. Now, go home once. Look at the meal on the table, and who grew the rice, who forged the pot, who was driving on the road that brought it here. Look at that number on the phone, this month’s bill, how much is due. Look at how many hours went, today, into that screen. Look once more at the cat by your foot.
That position is there, all along. It never walked far off. It only changed one layer of skin after another, changed until you no longer knew it. Now you know it.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.