VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 17, SECTION 3
The Hired Emperor, Scarce Enough, the Position Turns Over
The first two sections looked at a cook and a carpenter, one who struck a ruler dumb, one who kept a ruler waiting seven days at the door. There is a line held in the chest: those are matters of two thousand years ago. This section carries it into today, into the office tower, into the workshop. Today’s Cook Ding, today’s Zi Qing, are they still here? They are. And people today have given them a most ringing name.
One. That most ringing name
This name is the hired emperor. Chew these three characters first. Hired, what is it? It is the position of the employed, and the contract writes it clear: he is staff, he is not the boss, the company is not his, he puts in no capital, he does not bear the company’s debt, and the company falls, he walks away. Emperor, what is it? It is the highest position.
Buckle these characters together and they should not parse: a hired person, how could he be an emperor? Yet these characters, people today hear them and understand at once, not one character needing explaining. A word that should not parse, and everyone understands it, this says there is a real thing beneath it, a thing everyone has seen.
Two. That real thing, what it looks like
Set that real thing out. A company wants to hire a person, a person who can lead a team and make a thing others cannot make, and such people cannot be found, a handful in all the world. So the company does these several things.
The salary, set past what most in the company can imagine, shares, a piece cut off for him, whatever terms he wants, heard out first, the kind of team he says he wants, the company assembles to match, the direction he says not to take, the company does not take. He wants to leave, and the company’s board sits through the night. Look clear at this scene: on the contract, he is staff, and in that meeting room, who is waiting on whom?
Three. Cook Ding, Zi Qing, the hired emperor, one and the same position
Set the three side by side. Cook Ding, Lord Wenhui sits on the dais waiting for him to lay hand. Zi Qing, the Marquis of Lu stands outside the door waiting for him to fast seven days. That person, the board sits inside waiting for one word from him. Look for the thing these three scenes hold in common.
It is not money, Cook Ding held no shares, Zi Qing drew no annual salary. It is not standing, all three stand low, a cook, a carpenter, an employee. The thing they hold in common is two characters only: they cannot find a second. Scarce.
Four. Where scarcity comes from
Then this scarcity, where does it come from? Go back to that line of Cook Ding’s.
What your servant loves is the Way, and it is a step beyond craft, runs the line in the Zhuangzi, in the Nurturing of Life. What I want is the Way, a step beyond craft. Look clear: this scarcity did not fall from the sky, was not conferred by anyone, nor is it his good luck, it is that one step he walked out himself. The practiced are many, the ones who reach the Way are few: cooks who can take apart an ox fill the streets, the one who has not changed his edge in nineteen years is only one, carpenters who can make a stand are everywhere in Lu, the one who makes it so that people take it for a ghost or a spirit’s work is only one. Hold this firm: scarcity is a thing that grows out on its own after one walks to that step, not begged for, but grown.
Five. Then, the other face
Having spoken of scarcity, we must at once turn to its back, for on the back stands the great majority. The two characters on the back are: replaceable. Go back to that line from chapter fourteen, section one: the many position can be replaced, the few position cannot. If the work in a position can be picked up by another in three days, then this position is replaceable, and a replaceable position speaks light. This is not cruelty, this is a fact of the structure of positions itself. This volume never curses and never coaxes, it only sets it out: whether you hold a card in your hand is not read from whether you are kind, not from whether you toil, it reads one thing only, on the road you walk, how many others are left.
Six. Then, how to walk to that step
Someone will surely ask: then what to do? How to walk to Cook Ding’s step? In the Zhuangzi the ancestors in fact point out three roads, and here we only point, we do not unfold. The first, Cook Ding’s road: see the seam, do not hack and do not cut, go along the thing’s own grain, and the one who walks this road does the same work with less strain than others, and longer too.
The second, Zi Qing’s road: empty yourself, forget reward, forget what others say, forget this body of yours, the heart once emptied, and only then do the eyes see the born nature of that tree. The third, the road the two of them share: time. Cook Ding took three years before he no longer saw the whole ox, nineteen years before he had that unrolling edge, Zi Qing took seven days before he dared lay hand. Not one of these three roads is a shortcut, and not one of them is begged from anyone. This layer is the very thing this whole chapter means to hand over.
Seven. What this section set, crossing to the next chapter
The three sections of this chapter did one thing: they laid the worker’s card out on the table. That card is called scarcity. Cook Ding held it, and the ruler watched him lay hand. Zi Qing held it, and the ruler waited seven days at the door. The person called the hired emperor today holds it, and the board sits through the night. And the back of scarcity is replaceable, and a replaceable position speaks light, and this is not cruelty, it is the real state of the position. The meaning this chapter sets is this line: the worker does not have only the one cell he is apportioned, scarce enough, the position turns over.
Now, turn the eyes to the other side. Having read three sections, one surely feels the capitalist position is quite firm: he has money, he slaps the table, he decides who goes and who stays. But the next chapter goes to turn over his family holdings. Open them and you find at once: that sum of money in his hand is not one thing at all, it splits into three layers, and the lives of the upper two layers are held, every one, in the hand of the lowest.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.