VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2
Governing a Great State Like Cooking a Small Fish
Last section covered the four problems of faith taking up power, and with so many problems laid out, a real question presses down. A person sitting in a position, knowing he is ringed by the four problems, what can he actually do? More than two thousand years ago, in the sixtieth chapter of the Dao De Jing, Laozi gave the answer in nine words. This section is about those nine words, and about why they are the deepest response there is to the cycle of enfeoffment.
If a leader sits in a position of power, knowing he is ringed by the four problems, that his ability wears down with the body, that his private wants are magnified by power, that a web of interests forms of itself, that information is cut off layer by layer, what can he do? This question is not abstract philosophy. It is the real question every person in a position faces every day.
More than two thousand years ago, Laozi wrote nine words. Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, he taught, in the sixtieth chapter of the Dao De Jing. Nine words, and the deepest counsel there is for everyone in a position. To cook a small fish is to fry a little fish. Governing a great state is like cooking a small fish means governing a great state should be like frying a little fish. Try it in the kitchen sometime. A small fish is tender, flip it once and it breaks, flip it again and it crumbles, flip it a few times and the whole fish is a pile of bits. The knack of frying a small fish is to flip it little, keep the heat steady, let the fish slowly cook through on its own, and turn it gently only when you must, and then the fish stays whole and takes the flavor. Governing a great state, Laozi taught, is the same, stir little, disturb little, let the group run itself, and let the person in the position move only lightly, only when he must.
Read the line and your first reaction may be that the person in a position is there to do things, so how can stirring little be right, is that not doing nothing? Laozi's wisdom is not on the surface, it is underneath, and we look at it slowly, laying it against the four problems of the last chapter one at a time. The first problem, ability is limited, each generation less than the last. The more he stirs, the more the shortfall of ability shows, a leader of poor ability who stirs more frequently making more wrong decisions and stacking the errors faster. Stir little, and the shortfall of ability is covered, the stacking of errors slowed, and the dynasty can hold a few generations more. The second problem, private wants magnified by power. The more he stirs, the more the person in the position, to show that he is doing something, makes decisions that harm the group, great building works, frequent wars, endless disturbance. Stir little, and the wants are held in check, the group's resources not squandered.
The third problem, a web of interests necessarily forms. The more he stirs, the more chances the web of interests has to work, every change turned by the bureaucracy into an enlargement of its own interest, the surface stirring becoming a cover for corruption. Stir little, and the room for the web to work is squeezed. The fourth problem, information cut off layer by layer. The more he stirs, the less the person in the position hears real feedback, because every stir demands that those below report results, and those below, to please those above, tell the results better and better, so the person and the real grow further apart. Stir little, and those below need not fabricate results day after day, and the real situation has a chance to surface. So stirring little is not doing nothing, it is knowing clearly that the person in a position can do less than he imagines, and letting stir little shrink the harm of all four problems. This is the real thing in governing a great state is like cooking a small fish.
The most complete positive sample is the rule through doing little in the early Han. When Liu Bang unified the realm, after the wars of the late Qin and the Chu-Han contention, the population had fallen sharply, the economy was in ruins, the people hard-pressed. Liu Bang, and Emperors Wen and Jing after him, did one thing: almost nothing. Light labor duties and low taxes, cutting down the heavy taxation of the Qin to give the people room to breathe. Rest for the people, no great building works, no great campaigns, no constant disturbance, letting the people slowly recover on their own. Simplified law, not managing everything to the last as the Qin had. And no rash use of arms, mainly defensive toward the outside. And the result? Sixty or seventy years later came the good rule of Wen and Jing, the population greatly grown, the treasury full. By the time Emperor Wu took the throne, the Han had gone from the ruin of its early days to wealth and strength, and Emperor Wu had the capital for great expansion, capital accumulated over decades of stirring little by Wen and Jing. The key to the good rule of Wen and Jing was not what they did, it was what they did not do, no great building works, no great campaigns, no stirring the bureaucracy into an uproar, only stirring little, letting the group run itself, and in a few decades astonishing vitality grew. This is the real sample of Laozi's wisdom.
Turn it around, and the end of a dynasty is often marked by excessive stirring. The Second Emperor of Qin went on with great building works and harsh law, and it collapsed in a few short years. Emperor Yang of Sui cut the Grand Canal, campaigned three times against Goguryeo, and greatly rebuilt the eastern capital, and the Sui went from its height to collapse in only thirty-seven years. At the end of the Ming, across the seventeen years of Chongzhen, more than fifty chief grand secretaries were replaced, commanders frequently changed, the policies of predecessors constantly overturned, and the whole court had nothing steady to follow. Note that these over-stirring emperors were not necessarily bad. Emperor Yang of Sui had great talent, Chongzhen was very diligent, the Second Emperor had a wish to do things too, and yet all made the same mistake, they stirred too much. A fish stirred too much crumbles, a dynasty stirred too much collapses. History shows this regularity again and again. In the decades to a century after founding, often a time of stirring little, the dynasty long-breathed. After the middle, often an emperor appears wanting great achievement, launching great rectifications and great campaigns, and the dynasty begins its slide. At the end, often an anxious stirring sets in, the emperor trying to save the dynasty and instead speeding its collapse. Laozi's nine words are almost a golden rule, and very few emperors could keep them, because the temptation of power makes it hard for the person in the position to stir little.
Read this far and you may worry that stirring little will become doing nothing. It will not. Laozi's wisdom is not to teach a person to be lazy, it is to teach a person to be clear-eyed. The clear-eyed person in a position knows several things. That his ability is limited, so he should not pretend to know everything and put his hand into everything. That his time is limited, one person in a position for at most a few decades, so he should not try to finish everything within his term. That the group has its own rhythms of running, the farmer at his fields, the merchant at his trade, the scholar at his studies, each with its own pace, not to be broken by the will of an official. And that many problems need no solving, only waiting, many seemingly serious problems adjusting and receding on their own given a generation or two. The clear-eyed person in a position also knows what to do. Necessary things must be done, the upkeep of infrastructure, the defense against outside invasion, the relief of disaster, the keeping of public order, these the necessary stirs that must be made. Long-term things must be done, investment in education, protection of culture, stability of the rules, this slow careful work that seeks no short-term result, done too. But the things that show he exists are not done, the great works to have the histories remember him, the frequent personnel changes to show his authority, the needless disturbance to show his brilliance, not done. This is clear-sightedness, knowing which to do, which not to do, which to wait on. Behind Laozi's nine words is this clear sight.
Return to the two kinds of enfeoffment set at the start of this chapter. The enfeoffment of power must run a cycle of centuries. The enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years but cannot take up worldly power. Both need one wisdom, governing a great state is like cooking a small fish. In the enfeoffment of power, the person in the position stirs little, and the dynasty can hold a few generations more. In the enfeoffment of faith and culture, the one who carries the classic alters the classic little, and the classic can last thousands of years. In the mixed enfeoffment, breaking the boundary between the two sides little, both sides can be steadier. Look at any longer-lasting tradition. Catholicism has lasted two thousand years, and in history many large-scale rectifications instead brought division and crisis, while it was the return after the twentieth century to stirring little, to the plain work of faith, charity, and education, that made these two centuries steadier than many times of violent change. Confucianism has lasted twenty-five hundred years, resting not on those few violent scholarly renewals but on the underlying foundation of family teaching, village-school instruction, and the transmission among scholars, the layer of stirring little. The Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing all had their own early rule through doing little, and all had their end-time anxious disturbance, the early stirring little giving the dynasty its long breath, the end-time over-stirring speeding its collapse. Laozi's nine words cross the enfeoffment of power and the enfeoffment of faith and culture alike, a counsel common to everyone in a position.
So here is the position this section lays down. We brought out Laozi's nine words, governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, and made clear that they are the deepest response there is to the four problems: stir little, so the shortfall of ability shows less, so private wants are magnified less, so the web of interests works less, so the real situation has a chance to surface. The rule through doing little in the early Han is the positive sample, the over-stirring at the end of dynasties the negative one, and both kinds of enfeoffment need this one wisdom.
These nine words are, in fact, the key to the paradox from the last Part, that even an emperor is a slave. The emperor is a slave, sealed not only by the ancestral teaching and by his ministers, but by the limits of the position itself. The clear-eyed person in a position admits that his ability is limited, his time is limited, his grasp of the whole is limited, admits that he is only a passer-through whom the group enfeoffed here, the position having existed before him and going on after him. His duty is to do well the necessary things of this stretch of time, not to remake the whole of history by his own will. This is the greatest liberation for the person in a position, and the greatest care for the group. The next section closes the whole half of the book on enfeoffment, and looks at what the person in a position can do.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. The close of enfeoffment, what a person in a position can do