VOLUME V, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 2
The Three Roads Before the Weak, Accept, Resist, Step Outside
The sections before this stood, all along, in the position of the strong legislating to hold scarcity alone. This section changes position, standing on the side of the weak to ask, law is made by the strong, the strong take the larger share and the weak the smaller, must the weak simply accept their fate. Not only that road. Three roads have stood before the weak throughout history, acceptance, resistance, and stepping outside, each with its ancestral samples and its version today. Lay them all out, and let the reader see for himself which one he stands on.
One. The First Road, Acceptance, Finding a Place to Live Inside the System
Most people walk this road. Not out of cowardice, but because living is not easy, a whole family needs feeding, medical care, a loan to pay off, and most of a person's strength goes, day after day, to simply surviving, leaving no leverage to fight a law already standing firm, only the chance to trade for a bowl of rice, a measure of stability, inside the system as it stands. Confucius had already seen through this layer.
When the state has the Way, to be poor and lowly is a disgrace. When the state lacks the Way, to be rich and honored is a disgrace. Confucius, The Analects, Tai Bo.
To be poor when the realm has the Way is your own disgrace. To be rich and honored when the realm lacks the Way shows you are deeply entangled with that injustice, and that too is a disgrace. Confucius does not simply say accepting is good or resisting is good, he speaks of discernment, see clearly the state of the system first, and only then fix your own position. Mencius put it even more plainly.
Achieving one's ambitions, benefit the whole realm together. Failing to achieve them, cultivate oneself alone. Mencius, Mencius, Devoting the Heart, Part One.
Succeed, and do much for the realm. Fail, and manage yourself well. This left scholars a spiritual road out, no need to rise up or become a great official, simply hold your own position, do no wrong, do not fall in with the current, and that is enough.
Two. But Cultivating Oneself Alone Also Takes Capital
Most scholars across the ages walked this road. Tao Yuanming would not bow for five bushels of rice, held office as magistrate for just over eighty days, then hung up his seal and went home to farm beans, living hard, and his poems have carried for sixteen hundred years. Su Dongpo, exiled to Huangzhou, cleared wasteland on the city's east slope and called himself the Recluse of the Eastern Slope, and still wrote lines that echo through the ages. Wang Wei wrote, walk to where the water ends, sit and watch the clouds rise, when the road runs out, simply sit and watch the clouds, neither fighting nor complaining. All of this is living oneself out inside the cracks of the system.
But one thing must be seen clearly. Those able to cultivate themselves alone were, for the most part, scholars with some foundation already, Tao Yuanming had ancestral land, Su Dongpo had a stipend, Wang Wei had an estate left by his mother. A truly destitute farmer did not even have the capital to cultivate himself alone, and his acceptance was forced on him, not chosen. Today this road wears a different shape, but not a different root, squeezing onto the subway in the morning, home at nine at night, working weekends, paying off a loan every month. Young people speak of lying flat, and elsewhere people speak of low desire and quietly quitting, different names, the same root, both a step back, holding onto the last bit of strength one has left. This is the weakest form of acceptance inside the system, and it is also the position of most people.
Three. The Second Road, Resistance, Seizing by Force Outside the Law
When the road runs out entirely, pushed into a corner, only one road is left, seizing. Most peasant uprisings across history walked this road. The earlier section on the weak's self-rescue already touched on Chen Sheng's line, are kings, lords, generals, and ministers born to their bloodline, and there is no need to retell it here, only to look at one colder fact, of the great uprisings across two thousand years, almost every one of them failed.
Why. Not because the peasants lacked strength, a million people gathered together can shake any regime. It is because whatever rose up still legislated the very same way once in power. The new dynasty carried on concentrating land, carried on the law of a single family. Li Zicheng called out, welcome the roaming king, pay no grain tax, took Beijing, and was driven out again after forty-two days, because if no grain tax was collected, there was nothing to feed an army, and in the end he had to return to the old road of taxing, legislating, and dividing. Hong Xiuquan called for equal land on one hand while building his own Heavenly King's palace and his own hierarchy in Nanjing on the other, the ideal was equal land, the reality another set of the strong holding it alone, only the holders had changed. One after another, none of them ever stepped outside the cycle of insufficient output, scarcity, and the strong legislating to hold it alone.
Modern seizing outside the law is smaller and more scattered, but the root is the same, theft at the bottom, fraud in the middle, insider dealing at the top, all of them taking a bit more than the legal distribution allows. But law is harshest on the bottom, steal an electric scooter and you are detained and fined, and softest on the top, true insider dealing and grand corruption are rarely ever prosecuted through. This is not a flaw in the wording of the law, it is that the ones enforcing it stand, themselves, in the position of the strong, and naturally judge their own kind lightly and outsiders heavily. The Rites of Zhou spoke of punishment not extending up to the great officers, and ritual not extending down to the common people, which was an open rule then, and has only become an unwritten one today. The root has not changed.
Four. The Third Road, Stepping Outside, Setting Up a New Furnace Beyond the System
Only a few can walk this road, neither accepting the system nor seizing outside the law, but finding new ground entirely outside the contest for scarcity the strong have framed. The earliest sample is Xu You. When Yao wished to hand the realm to him, he felt the offer had dirtied his ears, and went to the riverbank to wash them, holding the scarcity of position in no regard at all. Zhuangzi put it more thoroughly still.
The utmost person has no self. The spirit-like person has no achievement. The sage has no name. Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi, Free and Easy Wandering.
To step entirely outside the logic of the contest for scarcity, not to be inside that game at all, so that neither resisting nor accepting is any longer necessary. But stepping outside is often pulled back in by the system just the same. Ji Kang, of the Wei and Jin period, withdrew into the Bamboo Grove, and was still put to death on a charge of unfiliality, and before his execution, he played the melody Guangling San one last time, sighing that from now on this melody would be lost. The Tang dynasty's two poet-monks, Hanshan and Shide, held to just one way of living, and left behind that exchange, if someone in this world slanders me, insults me, mocks me, how should I deal with it, and the answer was only, endure him, yield to him, let him be, avoid him, and in a few more years, just watch what becomes of him, most of the poems left unsigned, scattered across cliff faces and old temples, a true instance of the sage with no name. Wang Yangming, exiled to Longchang in Guizhou, awakened in that wild mountain and set down knowing and doing are one, and though he later held high office, the learning he established ran straight through the system, and scholars of the Ming and Qing, for centuries after, found their way inside it.
Five. This Road Has More Travelers Today, and Is Also the Easiest to Misjudge
A technology startup is one form of it, building new resources outside the old distribution of scarcity through new technology. But be careful, most startups are only squeezing into the very same contest for scarcity in a different posture, and true stepping outside means creating new output, not seizing old scarcity. Art, thought, and writing are another road, Cao Xueqin, who wrote Dream of the Red Chamber, held no high position inside the system, and yet what he built has outlasted the influence of any official who ever held office.
The author of this book is himself a small sample of this too, having set down the pen in his early years and picked it up again decades later to write this work, Justice Way, relying on no position inside any system, no certification from any academy, no scarce resource of any kind, only the root the ancestors left, his own decades of living, and today's plain speech, writing it and posting it online, for whoever wishes to read it to read, and whoever does not to pass by. But this is not meant to encourage everyone to walk this road. It is the hardest road of all, most people cannot walk it, and need not try, and those who can are, for the most part, people with some special accumulation, some special turn of fortune. One more thing must be seen clearly too, outside the system means the root of one's position is not planted inside it, a person still has to live in the world, Xu You, wanting no part of the realm, still needed water to drink, Hanshan, writing his poems, still lived inside a temple. Truly stepping fully outside the system is very rare, and most people, in the end, return to the first road, and the first road is not wrong, while output still falls short today, it is the most stable way to live.
Six. String the Three Roads Together and Look
Acceptance, resistance, and stepping outside are three responses to the strong legislating to hold scarcity alone. The three roads carry no rank, only different positions. A person on the first road need not look down on the second, that person may not have his room to choose. A person on the second need not look down on the first, that person carries ties of his own. And a person on the third least of all should look down on the first two, being able to walk it comes from a fortune others do not have, not from greater ability. And the three roads can shift, a person may walk the first when young, try the third in middle age, and be pushed to the edge of the second at some moment, they are not three fixed identities, they are three positions.
But the three roads share one common boundary, each is a choice made inside the same larger frame of insufficient output and scarcity under contest. The first accepts the frame, the second resists the frame, the third steps around the frame, but not one of them moves the frame itself. The frame remains, scarcity remains, and legislating to hold it alone remains. The only thing that can shake it is output, output catching up with need, scarcity disappearing, and the frame naturally coming apart, a layer left for later.
Seven. The Position Set by This Section
This section sets the thirtieth layer. Three roads stand before the weak, acceptance, resistance, and stepping outside, three positions, carrying no rank, able to shift from one to another, and yet all living inside the very same frame. See these three roads clearly, and a reader looking back at his own choices, struggles, and troubles across a lifetime will find they were already framed by these three positions, and seeing that a position exists at all is the first step toward stepping out of it.
But not one of these three roads of the weak can move the frame itself. So is there anyone who tries, from inside the frame, to change the law from within. There is, the reformer. The next section looks at this group, Shang Yang, Wang Anshi, Zhang Juzheng, three of the greatest reformers, three positions, three fates, and not one of them ever stepped outside the root of the strong legislating to hold it alone. Carry this layer, that none of the three roads moves the frame, and walk into the next section.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.