VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 4
The Lifespan of Enfeoffment, Part Two
This is the last chapter of Part One, and the close of the half of the book on enfeoffment. Last chapter we split enfeoffment into two kinds, and made clear why the enfeoffment of power decays every few centuries and why the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years. This chapter walks on into the deepest ground, covers three things, and closes the whole subject of enfeoffment. The first section opens the sharpest paradox of all: what happens once faith and culture turn around and take up worldly power. The four problems arrive at once, the Papal State and the Caliphate, two samples, are both pulled back into the cycle, and the separation of church and state instead lets both live longer. The second section brings out the nine words Laozi left more than two thousand years ago, governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, the deepest counsel there is for everyone in a position: stir little, stay clear-eyed, admit your own limits. The third section closes the half of the book on enfeoffment by answering the plainest question: what can a person sitting in a position actually do? The answer is three things: know that you are only passing through, hold the will of the people, stir little.
Section One first sets one thing firm. The enfeoffment of faith and culture standing alone and taking up power are two different things. Once it takes up power, it must manage finance, move armies, appoint officials, judge criminal cases, and these decisions the classic cannot supply. The classic teaches love your neighbor as yourself, but how to set this year's taxes it does not say. The concrete decision still has to be made on the spot by a living person, the four problems take over at once, and he carries the halo of I speak for the divine besides. A theocratic state is not the exception to the enfeoffment of power, it is a special form of it, and the form that is harder to self-correct. The Papal State ran from the eighth century to eighteen seventy. The Church sold indulgences, until in fifteen seventeen Martin Luther openly challenged it. In eighteen seventy the pope withdrew to Vatican City, and Catholicism instead recovered its spiritual vitality. The early Caliphate is the same. In nineteen twenty-four the caliphate was abolished, and Islam as a faith still endures. Turn it around. The American constitution forbids an established religion, and the separation of church and state lets both live longer.
Section Two brings out the nine words from the sixtieth chapter of Laozi's Dao De Jing: "Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish." To cook a small fish is to fry a little fish, and the knack is to flip it little, turning it gently only once, when you must. Lay it against the four problems one by one. The more he stirs, the more the shortfall of ability shows. The more he stirs, the more the person in the position must show that he is doing something. The more he stirs, the more chances the web of interests has to work. The more he stirs, the more those below must fabricate results. So stirring little is not doing nothing. The positive sample is the rule through doing little in the early Han, light labor duties and low taxes, rest for the people, and sixty or seventy years later came the good rule of Wen and Jing. The negative samples are the ends of dynasties. Emperor Yang of Sui campaigned three times against Goguryeo, and the Sui went from its height to collapse in only thirty-seven years. Across Chongzhen's seventeen years more than fifty chief grand secretaries were replaced. These emperors were not necessarily bad emperors, but all made the same mistake: they stirred too much.
Section Three adds no new material. It first gathers the road we have walked into one line, then answers what a person sitting in a position can do. The first thing: know that you are only passing through. The position existed before you, and the position will exist after you. You are the keeper of this position, keeping it a while and handing it to the next. The second thing: hold the will of the people. Guanzi said it through twenty-seven centuries ago. The true root of life in the hand of the person in a position is the share of acceptance the group gives him, every day, every second, and every decision is a deposit into or a withdrawal from the account of the will of the people. The third thing: stir little, so the cycle runs more steadily and longer. Last, the cycle is not a tragedy. In a forest, old trees fall and new trees grow, and this is the way the forest lives. The cycle guarantees that no one can press forever over the heads of others.
In this chapter you will see one underlying color clearly: enfeoffment cannot escape the cycle, but the cycle is not a tragedy, it is the way life itself is. With this, from the first chapter to the fourth, the whole of enfeoffment is done. But we have spoken entirely of the position, and not yet of who fills the position. The next chapter enters Part Two and takes up the examination system. It starts from the moment a child first sits down in a classroom, to see how evaluation, selecting the best, streaming, and rising run through almost the whole of a person's working life.
Chapter contents
Section One. The four hard problems when faith becomes power
Section Two. Governing a great state like cooking a small fish
Section Three. The close of enfeoffment, what a person in a position can do
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The four hard problems when faith becomes power