VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 31
Labor is a thing that flows
Start with two children of one same brightness, one same willingness to learn. One has a quiet desk, a teacher, books stacked high, and the room to sit an exam badly and try again. The other, from small, must go to the fields, because the moment he lowers his head there are younger brothers and sisters who need to eat. In law they are of one same freedom, both free to go and sit, to go and strive. Yet the first child’s brightness flows to the high place it ought to reach, and the second child’s one same brightness is blocked dead where it stands. Hold these two children in mind, because the whole chapter is aimed at the dark lock that blocked the second one. The chapters before weighed labor clear, but weighed clear is not enough, since one share of labor nailed onto one man and forbidden to stir, and one free to shift, are two different worlds. This chapter speaks of the flow of labor, and it turns out to be a thing more at the root than the weighing.
Section one goes back to the earliest society and finds, against what we expect, that labor there flowed whole. In a small band living by the hunt, the gathering of fruit, the tending of fire, who does what is not nailed down, and labor flows to wherever it is needed, today the strong man hunting and tomorrow, his ankle turned, tending the fire while another goes. Why is the earliest the most flowing. Because the things were simple, no skill of ten years, and any sound man could fill any position, so labor could shift at any time, an age with no threshold and no lock, labor like water flowing to wherever is low. The Book of Rites keeps this age in mind and rates it the highest, when the great Way walked, all under heaven held in common, the worthy and the able chosen, a man reaching a position by whether he is worthy and able and not by who his father was, which is the free flow of labor and on one line with Mozi. But the section does not leave the picture too fair. That flow was free and its heaven and earth were sorely small, a few tens of men and a few simple works, a drop of water that can shake free in a small bowl but cannot shake out of the bowl. The free flow is bound to the simple and the small, and the road man walked after was to make the things ever more complex and large, and right in that widening the earliest whole flow was, bit by bit, locked up.
Section two shows the locking. Once the things grew complex the positions parted into high and low, and the man in the high place bound his position fast to the bloodline to keep it for his sons, and standing was the lock. It turns choose the worthy and the able exactly the other way round, a man rising by birth and not by skill, and it nails thousands upon thousands of precious shares of labor in place to rust. The guide walks near a smith’s son whose head is sharp enough to plan for a whole countryside, yet who by the artisan roll must beat iron generation on generation, his one able head rusting on the anvil beside his hands, not for want of striving but because the lock was set at his birth. Man was not resigned, and thought out the examination, one paper that asks not your birth, and pried the bloodline lock one crack, so that a smith’s son who could take to the books truly had a road from the bottom up. But the book tells the good without telling it past its measure. The crack is only a crack, not a door flung wide. It opens onto the one road of the books alone, so that skill in war or farming or craft it cannot weigh, and reading takes a stake of idle hours and books and a teacher that a house which cannot meet three meals has not. Emperor Taizong watching the passed men file in caught both faces in one line, the heroes of all under heaven have come into my bowshot: the open face, that the able of all under heaven are invited in regardless of birth, and the drawn in face, that they are gathered into a frame set by the top and given one only road toward office. It truly opened, but with a limit, and its way was arranged beforehand.
Section three digs to the bottom. We readily think that once the lock of standing is smashed and all are declared free, labor flows. But smash a lock on a door and push it open, and if outside is a marsh or a wall you still cannot walk out. The lock smashed only takes away the bar on the open face, and whether you can truly cross hangs on whether there is a road behind the door. That road has a name, the chance: a place and the hours and the stake to learn a new skill, a door truly open to a man like you and not kept in secret for some few, and room to come again after a fall rather than being undone by one missed step. With the chance the poor child’s labor flows from the bottom to the high, and without it a paper of freedom is talk on the lip, since the road was never laid for a man like him. The two bright children make it plain, and what blocked the second is not the open lock of standing but the lack of the chance, a dark lock written on no paper, hiding in whether there is a desk and that little leisure and the room to rise after a fall. And the guide joins this straight to the chapters before. The assessment rule that speaks to feeling and sees to the one down on his luck is doing exactly this, reaching a hand to make up the chance so a share of labor can flow, and Xunzi’s making the divide clear to form the group is not gathered to its tightest if a great batch of men’s labor is blocked for want of the chance. So to make up the chance is no kindness dealt out, it is to make up the whole group’s strength, and it leads quietly toward the back half of the term. Confucius closes the chapter on how the chance should be given, not roused I do not open, not straining at the word I do not free it, the best chance not walking the road in your place but moving aside the little thing that bars the front at the moment you have pent your force and are about to walk.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is to refuse the easy word and dig one layer under it, to find that freedom on paper is not the same as a road under the feet, and that the true condition of flow is a solid thing you can point to, the chance, not the slogan flow. What you carry out is two things. First, a truer eye on your own life and on the lives around you: when a person of real ability goes nowhere, the question is not whether they are free but whether the chance was ever there, the desk, the hours, the room to fall and rise, and that lock is dark and smashes at no paper. Second, a reason of the group and not only of the heart: making up another’s chance is not charity, it is putting the group’s own labor to use so that no share of brightness rots in place, which is why the next several turns of the book will speak of things given out for free. The chapter leaves standing a stretch of labor that flowing cannot even touch, the share in a mother’s hand and an old man’s hand, labor with no price and nowhere to be cried for sale, and hands you to the next chapter to look at the labor that cannot be weighed out.
SECTIONS
Section 1, The earliest society, labor flowed whole
Section 2, Standing nailed labor down, the examination pried one crack
Section 3, The true condition of flow is not the flow itself, it is the chance
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.