VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 3
The Lifespan of Enfeoffment, Part One
The last two chapters set out all six kinds of enfeoffment and said the word itself through. Starting here we ask a deeper question. Does enfeoffment have a lifespan? Why does one enfeoffment collapse in a few centuries and another last thousands of years? The same position, lifted up by the group, and yet a dynasty turns over every two or three centuries while the words of Confucius are still read every day after two thousand years. Three sections dig all the way down. The first splits enfeoffment into two kinds, the enfeoffment of power and the enfeoffment of faith and culture, and sets up two paradoxes: every enfeoffment turns in a cycle, only on different scales. The second explains why the enfeoffment of power decays every few centuries, through four problems it cannot escape, that ability cannot pass down a bloodline, that power magnifies private wants, that a web of interests always forms, and that the one in the position drifts ever further from the group. The third crosses to the other side and explains why the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years, through four advantages of the classics, plus the three carriers that hand it down, the classics, the rites, and the community. One word runs through this chapter: the cycle. The cycle of enfeoffment is not a tragedy, it is a law, and what a person in a position can do is not to escape the cycle but to make it turn more steadily, run longer, and cost the group less.
Chapter contents
Section One. Two kinds of enfeoffment, two paradoxes
Section Two. Why the enfeoffment of power runs a cycle of centuries
Section Three. Why the classics can last thousands of years
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.