VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 3
The Clear-Eyed Ceding, and the Unwitting Ceding
At the end of the last section the question stood there. Since those eight nets are everywhere, should they be cut off one at a time. This section lays down a judgment deeper than every line before. This judgment laid down, this whole chapter stands, for otherwise the two sections before would read a person into someone who dares touch nothing.
First, block that tempting conclusion
Read to here, a notion rises in the heart. Since ceding is everywhere, then I will have none of it.
No marriage, no child, no cat, no house, no work, no phone.
Clean and clear, a body free.
See clear where this notion leads.
It leads to a person who enters into no relation with anyone.
And a person who enters into no relation with anyone is not a free person. He is only an empty person.
Think back to the first chapter of this semester. The economy is how a crowd of people settle one another well.
To settle is, from the first, to hand a part of yourself over.
The judgment that matters most in this section
So the volume lays down a judgment here. Hold it fast.
The ceding relation itself is neither good nor bad.
Mark this, this is not taking back the eleven chapters before.
The human offering of the Shang was cruel. The five year old at the bottom of the mine was cruel. The debt of forty nine years never cleared was cruel. These, not one character is taken back.
What the volume says is another thing. The mechanism of ceding, in itself, is neutral.
A mother, for her child, cedes sleep, time, body, career. Is this ceding. It is. Is this enslavement. She herself would not say so. She would say, this I do of my whole willing heart.
A person, for a craft, does not leave his door for ten years, cedes all his amusement, all his company. Is this ceding. It is. And he wakes each day in gladness.
A married pair, over twenty years, cede to each other time, strength, feeling, private room. Is this ceding. It is. And in those cedings, they grew a thing of another kind.
See this layer through. Ceding is the way people enter into relation with people. With no ceding, there is no relation.
A person unwilling to hand over one single thing, gets one single thing in return, which is nothing.
Then where is the dividing line
Since ceding is neither good nor bad, then why do the things the eleven chapters spoke of make a person uneasy.
The dividing line is not in the ceding itself. The dividing line is here.
Do you know that you are ceding.
The clear-eyed ceding, and the unwitting ceding, are two different things.
A mother knows she is ceding for her child. She knows what she gave up, and she knows what she got back. She has reckoned this account, and she owns this account.
A person who scrolls short video six hours a day does not know.
He thinks he is relaxing. He does not know he handed over ninety one days in a year. He has not reckoned this account, because he does not so much as know there is such an account.
Set these two people side by side.
The first is one clear-eyed placing a part of herself where she means to place it.
The second is one being felt out of his pocket, a little at a time.
Three lines, measure each net on you
This volume writes no prescription. This volume hands out only a rod.
From here, each time a net goes on you, ask yourself three lines.
The first. Do I know what I am ceding.
Is it time, is it money, is it attention, is it health, is it another road I might have walked. Say it out, say it concrete.
The second. What am I getting back.
Be honest. The mortgage got a home, this is real. Six hours of scrolling got what, be honest about that too.
The third. This account, do I own it.
Own it, and walk it well. The mother who sat up through the night for her child owned that account, and that night of hers had weight.
Own it not, and find a way to turn it round. Cannot turn it, and at the least know where you are standing.
A person who knows which position he stands on, and one who does not, are two wholly different people.
That old woman who guarded her money to her death
Call to the front the last person of this section. The fifth chapter of this semester met her once, here she is to be looked at, in earnest, again.
An old woman, illness on illness. The knees ache, the back aches, the nights sleepless, the digestion bad, the cataract clouding until she cannot see clear even the faces of her children and grandchildren.
These illnesses, most of them can be treated. Money, she has.
But she does not treat them. She cannot bear to spend that money.
She sits over a houseful of money and aches, flatly, and is carried off by an illness that could have been cured.
Stand far off and you give her three words. Slave to money, miser, fool. Stuck on, and it is done.
But walk in close, look into the bottom of her heart.
That money was not hers by her own earning. It was saved, over a whole hard life, by her love who died long ago, and left to her.
She was not guarding money. She was guarding the man.
To spend it is to scatter what her love left behind, to let go of the last thread strung between her and the one who is gone. She would rather ache to death than let go of this love.
Ask, is this a clear-eyed ceding, or an unwitting one.
This volume does not answer this question. This volume does one thing only. It lets a person see the person under her.
Look at a person, and do not look from far off. Walk in close, look down into what is under him. From far off everyone is a flat shadow, and you stick on a label, fool, 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.
The verdict is never handed down by this brush.
So what this chapter is out to set up is a pair of eyes
This chapter spoke of many uneasy things. The mortgage, the algorithm, the eight nets.
But the aim of this chapter is not to make a person uneasy.
Uneasy is of no use. The uneasiness over, tomorrow morning the alarm still rings at six thirty.
The aim of this chapter is to hand a pair of eyes into the hand.
From today, what is seen is no longer one title after another. Owner, employee, parent, shoveler, user.
What is seen is the position. Who is constraining whom, which way the constraint runs, and this constraint, do you own it.
A lock that can be seen is a lock that can be bargained over.
And a lock you do not so much as know is there, is the stoutest lock of all.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the twelfth meaning stands steady.
The first section, the thirty year mortgage. What is pledged out is not the body, it is thirty years. And no one presses him, he signed himself, and was glad when he finished. The second section, eight nets. The receiving side need not appear at all, it can be a legal person, a trademark, a cat, a stretch of code. The one who is ceded will do the whole work of the argument himself. The third section, the rod. Ceding is neither good nor bad. The dividing line is whether you know. The clear-eyed ceding, and the unwitting ceding, are two different things.
The line this layer sets up is this. A lock that can be seen is a lock that can be bargained over. The one you cannot see is the stoutest.
By here, twelve chapters are walked through. From that master who could not cook, to today’s person scrolling his phone, four thousand years, that position changed seven or eight layers of skin.
Then it is time to set down, in due form, the most important stroke of this whole semester.
The slave and the master, what exactly are they.
They are not two kinds of people. They are two positions.
And the deepest line is still to come. The slaveholder is a slave too.
The next chapter, the one who takes the constraint is the slave, the one who lays the constraint is the master.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.