VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 24, SECTION 3
That Diamond, and the Machine of the Henan Folk
At the end of the last section it was said there is a most beautiful wall in this world. It shines and glitters, it is held in the palm, it is taken for a token had only once in a life, and it held up a hundred years and more. This section takes it apart to look. Taken apart, it will be found to be a living specimen of those four characters, made scarcity. And the one that saw through it was no great scholar, it was a crowd of people who make machines.
One. Look first at that line everyone can say
Look first at a line, a line all have heard.
A diamond is forever, one stone passed on for all time, runs the line. Stop a moment, think where this line came from. It was not spoken by the ancestors, not from some ancient book, not written by some poet, it is a line of advertising. It is a line a company hired someone to write in the nineteen forties. Written to do what? To sell a thing.
This line is written extremely well. Well to what degree? Well enough that today, of the people the whole world over, a man about to pledge a lifetime’s promise to a woman, the first picture floating up in his head is a stone. A line of advertising, written into the lifetimes of several billion people.
Two. This wall, how it was built up
Take this wall apart, brick by brick, and see it clear. The first brick: gather the ore in. The diamond underground is in truth not so very few, yet to gather the ore that comes out, place by place, into one house, that makes it easy. The second brick: control the output. The ore in hand, how much comes out in a year is not by how much is underground, it is by how much that company would sell, and however much more is underground, I put out only this much in a year.
See clear: this is exactly that wall at the village mouth of the last section, not one drop of water fewer, I open only one door. The third brick, the most crucial: say the scarce into deep feeling. Only to make it few is not enough, and the few things are many, who wants it? So it must be given a source. And so that line came: a diamond is forever, one stone passed on for all time. It became the eternal, became the only, became the one thing a man is willing to spend three months of salary on. See clear how refined this brick is: it is not locking up the water to take money, it is making you believe that drinking the water of this well is what is called love.
Three. That line of last semester, borne out here
Carry back that meaning of last semester: wei the more refined is the harder to recognize. That wall at the village mouth is coarse, you see the brick, see the lock, see the person sitting at the door. This wall, can you see it?
You walk into the shop, the glass counter, the soft light, the clerk in a white shirt, on the counter a paper written with the grade of this one. Did you see the wall? You did not. What you saw is a stone, a heart’s intent, a promise had only once in a life. Last semester spoke of it: the most labor-sparing guard is hope. That wall, what guards it is not a watchman, it is the share in the hearts of several billion, that share of I would give her the best.
Four. Then, the folk of Henan lifted a hand
This wall held up a hundred years and more. The ones who took it apart were no great scholar, no one essay, they were a crowd of people who make machines, and they were in Henan. What they did was very dumb, and very solid: they made clear what, in the end, a diamond is.
It is carbon. It is that thing left after the firewood for cooking is burnt through. It and the lead in a writing pencil are the same element, the difference only that its atoms are ranged neat and orderly. Then, can carbon atoms be ranged neat? They can, it wants high heat, wants high pressure, wants many years of effort to try. They made it. What they made is a true diamond, not an imitation, not glass, not a fake, its hardness, its light, its composition, exactly alike with the one dug from the ground, sent to be tested, and no difference can be tested out. The price? The price is only a fraction of the one from the ground.
Five. That wall, seen through at a stroke
See clear, that machine in truth beat down nothing. It did not quarrel with that company, it did not write an essay to curse anyone, it never shouted one slogan. It did one thing only: it made that thing no longer scarce.
The wall down, that rule at once read out a new degree. Go back to the line of the first section: a thing is dear for being scarce. Take these four characters and say them in reverse: a thing not scarce is not dear. This one stone, all it held up for a hundred years and more, that line of advertising, that three months of salary, that promise had only once in a life, one machine, saw it through.
Six. The meaning this chapter sets, crossing to the next
This whole chapter is walked through, so set the meaning down. The first section saw the board clear: a thing is dear for being scarce, the dearness does not grow on the thing, it grows on the relation between how much there is and how many want it. The second section split scarcity in two: one half fixed by Heaven, one half made by a human hand, and that rule cannot tell the two apart, it reads the number only. This section looked at that diamond: the ore gathered into one house, the output controlled, then the scarce fitted with a moving source, and this wall held up a hundred years, and then a crowd of people who make machines made it no longer scarce.
The meaning this chapter sets is this line: scarcity is the board of this game, born scarcity is dead, made scarcity is someone having built a wall. Then the question comes: that wall, is there only this one way of building it? There is not. Made scarcity has three moves, and that diamond used only the first. Three moves, each more refined than the last, each less visible than the last, and the last move needs not even one brick, it needs only a decree. The next chapter sets out these three moves, one by one.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.