VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 22, SECTION 2
Every Liberation Has Its Cost
At the end of the last section a line was left: every liberation has its cost. This section spreads this line open and speaks it. A person was loosed from that craft that locked him a whole life, this is real. Yet in the moment of loosing, one more thing loosed along with it. This section walks close to a person and looks down into what is under him, and that person is the weaver who wove a whole life.
One. That day, where did he stand
Follow and walk close to him. He is forty, he has sat before the loom since eight, his father was a weaver, his grandfather too. His hand is steadier than any in the village, the cloth he weaves has an even edge and an even grain, and there are those who carry his cloth to sell three villages off. This one craft is his life, and his decency too.
Then that machine came. In one day the cloth it wove was more than he wove in a year, at a price only a small half of his. See one thing clear: he did nothing wrong. His hand did not turn clumsy, his cloth did not turn worse, he did not idle one day. Yet from that day on, no one bought his cloth anymore.
Two. He was loosed, yet he stands in mid-air
Say the machine liberated him out of that craft. Think what this word, set on him, tastes like. He was loosed. Yet in the moment he was loosed, the ground under his feet went empty too.
That craft was a lock to begin with, it locked him before the loom a whole life. Yet that craft was at the same time a floor, and standing on it he knew what he would do tomorrow, knew there was food next month, knew his son too would have a craft in time. The lock is gone, and the floor is gone. He is forty, and outside the weaving of cloth, he can do nothing.
Three. That most crucial line
Speaking to here, the most crucial line of this whole chapter comes out, copy it down: the machine takes charge only of taking away the old position, it does not take charge of sending a person onto a new position. Read this line slow.
It took away his loom, did it arrange the next piece of work for him? No. Did it teach him a new craft? No. Did it, in this his fortieth year, owe him one word of apology? It does not even know what an apology is. The last chapter spoke of it: this force has no eyes, no heart, no notion of its own, it knows only the differential. When it took him off the old position, it too was without feeling, it does not hate him, nor does it cherish his good.
Four. So who takes up that gap
Here is a position, then, set there, empty. From the old position to the new, in between there is a stretch of gap, and this stretch, who takes it up? Set the answer out first: the one who takes it up is not the machine, and not that force. The one who takes it up is people: it is the school, it is the relearning of a craft, it is the help of fellow townsmen, it is the mouthful of food the family saved, it is a whole set of arrangements that let a person stand up again.
See clear: this stretch of gap is the most painful place in this whole bind. In those two hundred years, many people were not taken up, and they fell. Last semester spoke a whole chapter of it, sixteen hours a day, the five-year-old child down the shaft, and those people are the ones who fell through this stretch of gap. This section does not curse the machine, cursing the machine is of no use, it cannot hear, it only points out this position standing empty.
Five. This layer, set it onto yourself
This layer must be moved from two hundred years ago to today. Do not think this is history. What that weaver met in that year is happening today, round after round: a craft drilled ten years, and suddenly there is a thing that matches your year in a day. Such matters the fathers’ generation saw, and this generation will see more of.
Then what to do? Go back to chapter seventeen: Cook Ding, Zi Qing, the person called the hired emperor. That chapter said: scarce enough, the position turns over. Today add the other half to that line: what the machine takes away is the work that can be written into a rule, that can be repeated round after round, and what it cannot take away is that seam Cook Ding saw, that stand floating up before Zi Qing’s eyes after seven days of fasting. That layer is called the Way, not craft. As Cook Ding said himself: what I love is the Way, and it is a step beyond craft.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section walked close to that weaver. He did nothing wrong, his hand did not turn clumsy, his cloth did not turn worse, yet after that day no one bought his cloth anymore. He was loosed, yet the ground under his feet went empty, that craft a lock, and a floor too. The most crucial line of this chapter, remember it: the machine takes charge only of taking away the old position, it does not take charge of sending a person onto a new position. That stretch of gap, the one who takes it up is not the machine, it is people, and in those two hundred years many were not taken up.
This is the truest face of this force: it made that heap of numbers of the last chapter, and at the same time, it left that forty-year-old weaver with the ground gone from under his feet. One hand, two faces, one and the same force. Speaking to here, a question must be asked out: since this force knows no good and evil, only the differential, then where the differential is built becomes a matter as great as heaven. And in these two hundred years, humankind made two of its largest attempts: one said, let it loose, loose it to the freest, let it find that differential itself, the other said, no, there must be someone to set it a direction. The next section looks at the first.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.