VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 1
The Pride, the Pack, the Vampire Bat, They Divide Without Reasoning
The first six chapters set the ancestors’ root steady. From this chapter on, the volume turns its body and walks back, back to the age before that line, it is only right, had been spoken. The second chapter of this semester crouched once at the edge of the grassland, and that time it looked at the reason. This time it looks at the way of dividing. The same crowd of animals, and this time the question is, by what exactly do they divide.
First, a thing said up front
This section is not out to say the animal is better than the human.
The animal world has its fights over food, its bites and clashes, its shoving of the weak out to starve. All of this is true, and not one bit of it is hidden.
What this section is out to do is another thing. To see clearly the way the animals divide. And once it is seen clearly, you run into a surprise, a surprise many a scholar has never looked full in the face. And it is this. Before wei had appeared, before the human had opened his mouth to give taking more a reason, two of the four institutions were already turning on the grassland.
The first way, no asking of merit, only of need
A pride brings down a buffalo. The cub eats along with the rest.
Now ask, what strength did that cub put in. Not a bit. It is too small, it cannot so much as chase its own shadow. In the whole hunt the one thing it did was lie in the grass nest and sleep.
By distribution according to labor, it should not get one mouthful. But it gets to eat. And while it eats, no lion blocks it to say, what did you do today.
Look at the wolf again. A wolf goes out and hunts, comes back to the den, and heaves up the half digested meat in its stomach to feed the cubs. It heaves it up too for the grown packmates who did not go out and stayed to keep the den.
Look at the vampire bat again. It feeds blood back to a starving companion, even one it shares not a drop of kinship with. Why. Because if that one has no blood tonight, tomorrow there is no tomorrow for it.
Put these three together. What is the ground of the dividing. Not merit. Need. Whoever needs it most gets it first.
This is distribution according to need. It is not an ideal some person thought up in a study. It grows in life itself, older than the human.
The second way, it keeps accounts too
But the same vampire bat has another move, and this one is stranger still.
It remembers who helped it.
Next time, when it is the one who fed well and the neighbor is going hungry, it will give back first to the one who once helped it. The people who study this thing call it reciprocal altruism.
See this move clearly. There is already an account book in here. Who gave to me, I keep it in mind. When my turn comes with something to spare, I first return it to him.
This is not by need anymore. This is by labor. It is a giving and a giving back, the rough beginning of a measure of putting in for a measure of return.
And so the strange thing comes. In the one same den, on the one same bat, two ways of dividing turn at once. Toward a companion near dead of hunger, it goes by need. Toward the one who helped it, it goes by labor.
Set this layer against that whole map from the first chapter of this semester. The four institutions are not four stages standing in line, they are elements in play at once. Look, they are in play at once already here, before the human, before writing, before institutions.
None of this has one rule
Now the most important thing to say.
This whole set has no institution holding it up.
No lion ever called a meeting to settle how the meat should be split. No wolf ever signed an agreement laying down who owes a regurgitation. No bat ever spoke a word of reasoning, no bat ever said a single ought. They cannot read, they have no law, they have not one character of teaching.
These behaviors are down at the level of instinct, of the nerve circuit, of what evolution has built. Evolutionary biology gives several accounts. Kin selection, where the help goes to relatives who carry the same genes. Reciprocal altruism, you help me and I help you. Group selection, where a group that knows how to share outlives a group that only knows how to swallow alone.
Mark that not one of these mechanisms needs goodness as its premise. They only tell you one thing. In a harsh nature, sharing pays better than swallowing alone. Dividing things up needs no reasoning at all. It turns of itself.
Laozi said this position into the way of heaven
The ancestors saw the same thing. Laozi says, the way of heaven takes down from what has too much and fills up what has too little.
Take it a phrase at a time in plain speech. The road heaven runs is to take the too-much end down and add to the too-little end.
Set that line back in the wolf den. The wolf that went out to hunt has a full stomach, this is the too much. The one that kept the den has an empty one, this is the too little. The one with too much heaves the meat up and fills the one with too little. Take down from what has too much and fill up what has too little. Those seven characters of Laozi’s write exactly this scene.
And Laozi says the second half at once. The way of man is not so, it takes from what has too little to serve what has too much. The road man walks runs just the reverse, scrapes one more layer off the too-little end to feed the too-much end.
Read the two lines side by side. This is how heaven divides. That is how man divides. Then at which step did man begin to walk it backward. The answer is in the second chapter of this semester. From the moment that line, it is only right that I take more, was spoken.
So the human’s starting point is not a selfish wilderness
The position this section is out to set is now clear.
There is a widely current saying. Man was a selfish beast to begin with, and it was civilization, morals, law, that taught him to share.
Set that line back on the grassland and see if it stands. It does not. Because the sharing is older than the human. The wolf divides, the lion divides, the bat divides, the chimpanzee sees fruit and calls the others to eat. None of this was learned.
Mankind did not set out from a selfish wilderness. Mankind set out from a floor of sharing. And this floor, has mankind forgotten it. No. Mankind wrote it down, put it in the books, handed it on generation to generation.
The ancestors drew the look of that age, stroke by stroke.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section crouched at the edge of the grassland and watched one buffalo divided to the end, watched the wolf bring meat up for its own, watched the bat remember who once helped it.
Out of these, three things stand up.
The first. The animal divides by need, not by merit. Distribution by need is not an ideal some person thought up, it grows in life itself, older than the human.
The second. On the one same bat, by need and by labor turn at once. The position that the four institutions run alongside one another was already so before the human appeared.
The third. This whole set needs no institution, no morals, no line of reasoning. It turns of itself. Sharing pays better than swallowing alone, an account nature worked out on its own.
So the human’s starting point is not selfishness, it is sharing. Laozi called this position the way of heaven, to take down from what has too much and fill what has too little. And the road man later walked runs the reverse.
Then does mankind remember where it set out from. It does. Confucius wrote the look of that age into a passage of only a hundred-odd characters. And in those hundred-odd characters is buried the most important law of this whole volume. What is not earned by labor belongs to the public.
The next section is about, the great Way in its walking, all under heaven was held in common.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 2. The Great Way in Its Walking, All Under Heaven Held in Common