VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20, SECTION 2
Guanzi’s Rule, First It Measures, Then It Sifts
At the end of the last section a question was left: where does this rule come from, by what is it so exact, and by what so fierce. This section asks Guanzi out, for more than twenty-six hundred years ago, speaking of the market, he used seven characters only. After those seven characters are spoken through, Laozi is asked out to speak of the other half of this rule. That line of Laozi’s will run a chill through the heart, and the chill too must be looked at clear, for only by looking clear does one know where one is standing.
One. The market is the standard of goods
Set Guanzi’s seven characters up here first.
The market is the standard of goods, runs the line in the Guanzi, in the chapter Riding on Horses. The market is the standard of goods. Chew that character standard. A standard is a measure, is a scale, is the thing you take up to gauge things with. Guanzi did not say the market is a place where trade is done, did not say it is some invisible hand, did not say it is the core of the economy, he said: it is a rule. More than twenty-six hundred years ago, a person who governed a state, in one line, fixed the position of this matter dead. This rule, what does it measure? It measures one thing: how much a thing is worth.
Two. How much it is worth is not yours to say
Set this matter of how much it is worth on several positions, and look one at a time. A thing is made, how much is it worth? Not for the one who made it to say, but the number this rule reads out. A craft is drilled thirty years, how much is it worth? Not for the one who drilled it to say, but the number this rule reads out. A company runs a hundred years, how much is it worth? Not for the one who ran it to say, but the number this rule reads out.
The moment this rule reads out a number, all argument ends. That company of the last section, what it read out on this rule in 1975 was an enormous number, and thirty-seven years on, the number the same rule read out was near to zero. See clear what it did wrong in those thirty-seven years. No rival dragged it down with a low price, no great accident befell it, no one targeted it, it was making new things all along, it even itself made the very camera that would weed it out. Nothing at all was done wrong, and that number walked from enormous all the way down to zero.
Three. After the rule reads, the sieve begins to move
This rule is joined to an action besides, see it clear. To read out the degree is the rule’s work, and after the reading, the sieve moves along behind, and this is the sieve’s work. On one and the same thing, two actions are done: first it measures, then it sifts.
The day that company walked into the bankruptcy court, who was weeding it out? Not its rivals of former years, for those rivals were themselves later half weeded out by that same pane of glass. Not the people who buy, for they only used a handier thing. Not any one decree, for no one had reason to save it, and no one could have saved it. Nor did it botch its own affairs, for what it could do, it had all but done. What weeded it out was that rule, no one lifting a hand, the degree sliding to wherever it slid, and the position sifted to wherever the degree went.
Four. Heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs
This force, this weeding that goes on always though no one lifts a hand, Laozi saw clear more than twenty-five hundred years ago.
Heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs, runs the line in Laozi, the fifth chapter of the Daodejing. What is a straw dog? It is a dog bound of straw, used in the sacrifice. See clear the life of this straw dog: before the sacrifice, it is borne out with all solemnity, set at the very center of the altar, and no one dares touch it, and the sacrifice done, it is flung by the roadside at a hand’s turn, and no one looks at it again. Laozi says: heaven and earth, toward the ten thousand things, are just so, no favoring, no hating, using when there is use, flinging away when the use is done.
Notice that not kind. It is not cruel, for cruelty must stir the feelings, and not kind is without feeling, is the even and unslanted, is a treating-all-as-one so impartial it strikes you cold. Set this line back onto that company of a hundred and thirty years. It held up, across a whole century, that matter of humankind keeping its pictures, held up the rice bowls of several hundred thousand families, held up a city. The sacrifice done, that rule flung it away, flung it clean. Not because it hated it, not because it forgot its merit, but because that rule carries no feeling, it only reads the number, and the number reaching zero, the position is sifted down.
Five. This rule is measuring you too
Speaking to here, this rule must be moved off that company and onto oneself. Do not dodge. Every person holds in hand a degree, and that is the real-time reading this rule gives on the position he stands in this moment. That craft you have, how many people today have it? How many still want it? That major you study, five years on, the number this rule reads out, does it walk up, or walk down?
Go back to those two characters from the last chapter: scarce. What this rule measures, said to the bottom, is these two characters: few who can, many who want, and the degree is high, many who can, few who want, and the degree is low. This layer is cold, yet it must be said: to know your own degree is clear seeing, and not to know it, that is the danger. Last semester it was spoken: the way out is not in the rising, it is in the clear seeing.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section asked Guanzi’s rule out. The market is the standard of goods, the market is not a place, it is a rule, what it measures is how much a thing is worth, and that number was never for the one who made the thing to say. The reading done, the sieve moves, the measuring is the rule, the sifting is the sieve, one and the same thing, two actions, no one lifting a hand, the degree sliding to wherever it slid, the position sifted to where the degree went. And Laozi’s line is colder still: heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs, the market carries no feeling, it only reads the number.
Read to here, a chill likely rises in the heart: since this rule is so cold, so exact, so fierce, then everything should be sent onto this rule to be measured, the craft, the prospect, the time, the human bond, one by one, all taken to be read for how much they are worth. Hold there. The next section asks a question, and only when that question is asked does this whole chapter stand firm: in this world, are there some things that ought not be sent onto this rule to be measured?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 3 Which Things Need Not Be Sent to the Market to Be Measured