VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 3
The Close of Enfeoffment, What a Person in a Position Can Do
With this section, the half of the book on enfeoffment comes to a close. From a child given a name in the first chapter, to the six kinds of enfeoffment, to the lifespan of enfeoffment, to Laozi's nine words, we have walked a long way. This section adds no new material. It gathers up the road we have walked and answers the plainest question: since enfeoffment cannot escape the cycle, what can a person sitting in a position still do?
Gather the road into one line. We set out from the plainest ground. In the first chapter, what enfeoffment is: a child given a name, a pride lifting up a lion king, the position never one's own to seize but lifted up by the group from below. We set down five laws: a position must exist, a position must be accepted, acceptance is dynamic, when acceptance drains the position vanishes, a new position necessarily arises. In the second chapter, the six kinds: of land, of office, of the electorate, of the army, of the bloodline, of the party, forms so far apart, and yet we walked each one past the five laws and not one escaped, one ruler laid against them all. And we said the word enfeoffment through, mounding earth and planting a tree, marking a boundary and entrusting it, neutral and solemn. In the third and fourth chapters, the lifespan of enfeoffment: we split enfeoffment into two kinds, the enfeoffment of power decaying every few centuries through four unavoidable problems, the enfeoffment of faith and culture lasting thousands of years through four advantages of the classics. But both are inside a cycle, only on different scales. Once faith takes up worldly power, the four problems arrive at once, the Papal State and the Caliphate both pulled back into the cycle, while the separation of church and state lets both live longer. And at the end, Laozi's nine words, governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, the deepest counsel there is for everyone in a position. This is the whole line of the half on enfeoffment.
So the first thing a person in a position can do is to know that he is only passing through. The position existed before you, and the position will exist after you. The lion king's position is not born with a given lion and does not die with it. The position of emperor was there thousands of years before your enthronement and passes on after your death. You are not the master of this position, you are its keeper, keeping it a while and handing it to the next. Think this layer through and much anxiety is set down. You need not carry the whole weight of history on your shoulders, need not finish everything within your term, need not prove you came with great motions. You need only do well the duty of keeping this one stretch, and that is enough. This is not passivity, it is clear sight. An emperor who thinks himself the master will stir with all his might, wanting to remake the realm by his own will, and thereby speed the collapse. An emperor who knows he is passing through will stir little, letting the group run itself, and thereby let the cycle run longer. Knowing this layer, that you are passing through, is the starting point of all clear sight in a person in a position.
The second thing a person in a position can do is to hold the will of the people, the one root of life. The most important of the five laws is that a position must be continuously accepted by the group. Guanzi said it through twenty-seven centuries ago: a politics rises when it moves with the will of the people, and falls when it moves against it. The true root of life in the hand of the person in a position is not the army, not wealth, not the pomp of ceremony, it is the share of acceptance the group gives him, every day, every second. The army will turn, wealth will scatter, and no ceremony however grand can hold up a position that has already lost the will of the people. But so long as the will of the people is there, even in a moment of ruin the position can still hold. Holding the will of the people is not an empty phrase, it is one concrete thing after another. Light labor duties and low taxes hold the will of the people. Disturbing the people little holds the will of the people. Letting the people's pain reach up, not blocked by layers of decoration, holds the will of the people. Truly relieving disaster in a bad year, truly resisting the enemy when he comes, holds the will of the people. Every decision the person in a position makes each day is, in truth, a deposit into or a withdrawal from the account of the will of the people. Deposit much, and the position is steady. Withdraw hard, and the position shakes. This is the most solid real thing in the half of the book on enfeoffment.
The third thing a person in a position can do is Laozi's nine words, governing a great state is like cooking a small fish, stir little. The last section said this through, and here it is only set back into the close. The person in a position has limited ability, limited time, and the information he sees is often false, so what he can do is far less than he imagines. Admit this limit and you will not stir blindly. Do the necessary things, do the long-term things, but the disturbance to show you exist, do not do. Let the group run to its own rhythm, and let the person in the position move only lightly, only when he must. This way the harm of all four problems is shrunk, the cycle runs more steadily and longer, and costs the group less. Know that you are passing through, hold the will of the people, stir little, these three things are the whole answer the half on enfeoffment hands to everyone sitting in a position. It does not promise to let you escape the cycle, because no one can escape the cycle. It only tells you how to let the stretch you keep run more steadily, longer, with less harm.
Some, reading this far, will feel it heavy. Enfeoffment cannot escape the cycle, the dynasty will collapse in the end, a person will age in the end, the position will change hands in the end, is this a pessimistic conclusion? It is not. The cycle is not a tragedy, it is the way a life-level group runs. In a forest, old trees fall and new trees grow, and this is not the forest's failure, it is the way the forest lives. In a group, old positions vanish and new positions arise, and this too is not the group's failure, it is the way the group lives. Precisely because there is a cycle, the one whose ability has run dry gets changed out, the hardened and rotten system gets renewed, and new vitality has a chance to grow. If there truly were a position that could last ten thousand generations and never change hands, that would be the group's disaster, because it would mean that even the worst person could sit forever in the highest seat and no one could remove him. So the cycle is a kind of mercy. It guarantees that no one can press forever over the heads of others, guarantees that every rot has an end, that after every darkness there is a dawn. See this layer, and the person in a position will not fear the cycle, but will hold it in awe and go along with it, doing his best in the stretch he keeps to let the cycle run more gently. This is the last underlying color of the half on enfeoffment, not pessimism, but the ease that comes after clear sight.
So here is the position this section lays down. We closed the half of the book on enfeoffment. What enfeoffment is, the six kinds, the lifespan of enfeoffment, all gathered into three things a person in a position can do: know that you are passing through, hold the will of the people, stir little. The cycle is not a tragedy, it is the way life is, and what a person in a position can do is let the stretch he keeps run more steadily and longer.
With this, from the first chapter to the fourth, the whole of enfeoffment is done. But have you noticed, we have spoken entirely of the position, and not yet of who fills the position. The same governor's seat, filled by an able hand or by a poor one, makes all the difference in the world. Enfeoffment settles the problem of the position existing, not the problem of who fills it. In dynastic enfeoffment the bloodline decides, but a bloodline does not guarantee ability. In the enfeoffment of office the superior appoints, but appointment is often swayed by interest. In voter enfeoffment the ballot decides, but the ballot is often swayed by money and by populism. So is there a mechanism that can make the person who fills the position a relatively fitting one? The ancestors gave the answer more than thirteen hundred years ago, and it is called the examination system. From the next chapter on, we walk into it, a dimension one layer above enfeoffment.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.