VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 31, SECTION 3
The true condition of flow is not the flow itself, it is the chance
The last section pried one crack with the examination, but that crack was narrow. This section digs open the last layer: what truly lets labor flow free, in the end. Is it that once the lock of standing is smashed, labor is free. What this section means to say is that smashing the lock is only the first step, and the truly hard, truly needful thing is whether, after the lock is smashed, there is a road behind that door. That road is called the chance.
One, smashing the lock is not the same as having a road
First a thing easily thought crooked. We readily hold that as long as the lock of standing is smashed, all men declared equal, all free to choose their work, labor flows free. But the matter is not so simple.
Take a likeness. A room, a lock on the door, you smash the lock. The door is open. But you push the door and look out, and outside the door there is no road, it is a stretch of marsh, or it is a wall. Then how much is your open door apart from a shut one. You still cannot walk out. Smashing the lock only takes away the bar on the open face. Whether you can truly walk out, walk to the place you wish to go, hangs still on whether outside the door there is a road you can walk.
The flow of labor is so too. The law declares you free, you may freely go do any work, and this is the lock smashed. But can you truly flow from tilling the field to running the numerical machine. You must first have the money, the hours to learn that skill, must have a place to teach you, must have someone willing to take you as a raw hand. These things not gathered, and that free door stands open, and you still cannot flow across. The lock smashed is one matter, whether there is a road behind the door is another.
Two, that road is called the chance
The true road behind the door, give it a name, the chance. Whether labor can truly flow looks not at whether you are free in name, it looks at whether there is a solid, real chance in your hand.
What is the chance. It is that when you wish to learn a new skill, there is a place to learn, hours to learn, a stake to learn with. It is that when you wish to change a work, the door of that work is truly open to a man like you, not open on the face and kept in secret for some few. It is that even if this once you fall, err, take a loss, you have room to come again, and are not undone forever by one missed step. These added together are the chance.
With the chance, labor is truly in flow. A poor house’s child, with a free schooling to attend, with a scholarship to keep him reading upward, with a road he can walk by skill alone, his one share of labor can truly flow from the bottom to the high. Without the chance, with only a paper of freedom, that flow is talk on the lip. In name he can do anything, in the real he can bring off nothing, because that road was never truly laid for a man like him. Hold this layer dead: the true condition of flow is never the two words flow itself, it is the chance.
Three, walk near two children of one same brightness
Walk near two children, look down under them, and you grasp how heavy these two words the chance are.
Two children, of one brightness, of one willingness to learn. The first, born to a house that can bear his reading. He has a quiet desk, a teacher to teach him, books stacked high, and if he sits an exam badly once, the house can still bear his sitting it again. This one share of his brightness, step by step, flowed to the high place it ought to reach. The second child, of one same brightness, but born to a house that cannot meet its three meals. From small he must go to the fields, must go to work, helping the family scrape a living. It is not that he would not read, it is that the moment he lowers his head, there are the younger brothers and sisters who need to eat. This one same precious share of his brightness has no desk, no teacher, not that little bit of leisure that could be turned to reading.
These two children, in law of one same freedom, of one same leave to go and sit, to go and strive. But the chance in their hands stands apart as heaven from earth. The first child’s one share of labor flowed open. The second child’s one same share of labor was blocked dead in place. What blocked it was not the open lock of standing, it was the lack of the chance. This lock is a dark one, one you cannot smash even swinging at it, because it is written on no paper at all. It hides in whether there is a desk, whether there is that little leisure, whether one can climb up again after a fall. This is the truest, and the most aching, layer of the flow of labor.
Four, this layer joins straight onto the position set before
Join the reasoning of this section onto the chapters before, and you will see they were always one line.
The last chapter spoke of the assessment rule, and said it can speak to feeling, can see to the man for a while down on his luck yet counting still. Why see to him. This section gives the answer: because the rule of the pure market, of the pure freedom, will let that bright child with no chance slip whole, weigh him thin. You must have a thing to reach out a hand and make up the chance for him, before his one share of labor can flow. Chapter twenty nine, Xunzi spoke of making the divide clear to form the group, and said the divide is to let a crowd of men gather into a body. But if a great batch of men’s one share of labor, for want of the chance, cannot flow, is blocked dead, then this group has not truly put every man’s labor to use, it has not gathered to its tightest.
So this matter of giving men the chance is no doing of a kindness, no dealing out of charity. It is to let the whole group’s labor flow to the place it ought to go, to let every share of brightness, every body of skill, not rot in place. To make up the chance is to make up the whole group’s strength. This layer quietly leads us on to the back half of this term: those things given out for free, those things that make up another’s chance, why every society cannot do without them. That is a matter for later, here we first lay down a line.
Five, not roused, do not open, not straining, do not free
Before closing this chapter, call Confucius. Confucius taught, and has a line that tells these two words the chance the best. Not roused, I do not open. Not straining at the word, I do not free it. So runs the line in the Analects.
Put it plain. Roused is the pent force in the heart, wishing to make a thing clear yet not yet through. Straining at the word is the look of a thing come to the lip, wished to be said yet not come out. Open and free are both the light touch, the opening. Confucius says: till the student is at that pent point of wishing to be through, I do not touch him. Till he is at that point of a word on the lip that will not come out, I do not free it for him. Confucius here speaks of the way of teaching, but what he speaks is exactly how the chance should be given.
See it, Confucius does not pour the answer hard into the student. He waits for the student himself to pent up that force, to reach that sill, and then reaches out and touches lightly. This touch is the giving of the chance. The student’s one share of force wishing to be through is the student’s own labor. Confucius’s one reaching touch pries that door open one crack for him, and lets him walk through himself. The best chance is just so: it does not walk the road in your place, it moves aside, at the moment you have pent your force and are just about to walk, that little thing barring the front. Give that bright poor child a desk, a scholarship, and you touch him once. His one share of labor will flow across itself.
Six, what this chapter set, crossing to the next
Good. Chapter thirty one walks to here, and this layer can be said firm.
This chapter spoke of the flow of labor. Section one, the earliest society labor flowed whole, but it followed the simple and the small, its heaven and earth sorely narrow. Section two, the things once complex, the lock of standing nailed labor down, letting men rise by birth and not by skill, and the examination pried one crack, but that crack was narrow. Section three dug to the very bottom: what truly lets labor flow is not freedom in name, it is the chance. Smashing the lock is only the first step, whether there is a road behind the door is the true thing. Without the chance, that bright poor child’s one share of labor is blocked dead in place all the same, and what blocks it is a dark lock you cannot smash even swinging at it.
What this chapter set firm is: the flow of labor truly leans not on the two words flow, it leans on the chance. To make up the chance is to make up the whole group’s strength.
So this half term has all along spoken of labor that can be weighed, and can flow. The labor on the pay slip, the labor on the report card, the labor on the field. But in this world there is still a great stretch of labor that the six rules before all cannot weigh, and for which flowing or not flowing has no meaning. The share in a mother’s hand, the share in an old man’s hand, those labors with no price and nowhere to be cried for sale. Are they then not labor at all. The next chapter walks into this stretch, to look at the labor that cannot be weighed out.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.