VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 41
Four Things Living at Once in One Person’s Day
Six in the morning, a pot of gruel, a grid of medicine set out, a mother propped up to be fed spoon by spoon. That is where this chapter starts. Last chapter stood outside the shop and watched a day, and saw four rules measure one account at once. But a shop, an account, leaves a little distance in the heart; that is another man’s business. This chapter pushes the lens onto one person, for the line of four running at once, landing only on a society, is still far. It walks a day with one man, then counts the ropes on another, and at the last says clear the weightiest line, so that the four are met not on a page but on oneself.
The first section walks a day with a thirty-eight-year-old. Before light he is at his mother’s bed, boiling gruel, setting out medicine, keeping no account, asking no return, and that is the rule of need, in a bedroom, on no document, the lowest layer and the purest. Half past eight he clocks in, clock and appraisal over his head, one word from the manager able to change his number, and that is the rule of labor, and the taking-constraint end where he stands as the one who takes. Half past ten he hands three subordinates their work and writes their appraisal, the pen heavy in his hand, and he has sat up in the master’s seat, the two ends of one rope pulling on him at once. The tenth of each month a mortgage is deducted on time, pinning him to this job, afraid to speak his last word, and that is the shadow of the wall on a plain man, a lock he can see and owned clear-eyed. And the housing fund he pays, the little he saves, is in the market doing the work capital should do, and he mostly does not know it. Four things, one person, one day, hung from light to dark, and not one missing.
The second section goes to look at the man who looks the freest, the boss of that chair shop, and counts the ropes on him one at a time. Upstream the timber goes up thirty in the hundred and he cannot hold it back, for scarcity is the board and a tree on the hill takes decades. Downstream a big client with one word splits half the orders away and he cannot talk them back, for he holds not one of the thousands of buyers. The bank’s sum is due by the month, and whether interest is high or low he cannot even ask. The old cutting hand of nineteen years says a word about going home, and for a fortnight the boss is the one begging. Over his crown the tax, the environment check, the fire safety, not one his to set, and one new rule stops the work eleven days with wages still going out. Five ropes, five hands, holding him at once. The first semester’s line takes force a second time: the slave-master is a slave too, the higher the position the more the constraint. And these five ropes no one designed; they grew out of the position itself, want one thing and take one constraint. This is the check and balance in its smallest, most first-hand shape, and knowing it here the eye will not blur at a trade or a country.
The third section sets the weightiest line straight: position is not identity. Identity is a label pasted on, walking with the person, off it comes nowhere. Position is where he stands at this moment; change the relation and the position changes. Read position as identity and two ills come. One is hating men, curse one down and put another up and those five ropes are still five, not one fewer. One is bowing to fate, taking a position that can be changed for a fate that cannot, and cutting off even the thought of saving the stake to say no. The section borrows the Book of Changes and its lines, one and the same line set at a different place and the fortune differs, the line itself no good or bad. And it borrows Laozi, to know others is wisdom, to know oneself is clarity, to set the way out firm. The way out is not in climbing higher, for the higher the more the ropes; the way out is in seeing clearer.
Here is the method, and here is what is carried out. The method is to set the position and not the identity, so that the four institutions too get no grade of noble and base, advanced and backward, for grade them and that queue lined wrong walks back in. What is carried out is the ground of this whole picture. The four are not on four people; they hang at once on one and the same person, changing by the hour. A person has no identity, only position, and an institution is the same, no high and low, only each in its place. Yet position is not identity does not mean what a person does has no good and bad. The good and bad of a person is there, only it does not grow on the position, it grows on the heart, on character, and that is the soil chapter fifty hands over at the last. The next chapter changes the scale again, not a day but a life, from the day a person comes in to the day he goes, to see the four take turns holding him from the first stretch to the last.
SECTIONS
One, From Light to Dark: Four Positions on One Person
Two, The Five Ropes: On One Person Too, No One Thing Can Stand Alone to the End
Three, Position Is Not Identity: The Man Who Changes Position Four Times in a Day
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.