VOLUME V, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 3

VOLUME V, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 3

Choosing with Clear Eyes, Defending Neither Power Nor Crime

The last two sections unmasked the people as a position and fixed the hero as the one who does. This section seals Part Three. It draws the several layers of this part into one web, and fixes the stance a person should stand in once he has seen all this clearly. That stance has a plain shape. Defend neither power nor crime. Hold one measure to both ends alike.

Gather first what this part has laid down. The direction of proof decides which world an ordinary person lives in. Guilt is not a fact but a position, and a good judge trades places. The friction of the dead law on the live person roots in output falling short. The people is a position with a moving edge. And the truest hero does the thing and vanishes. Set these side by side and one temptation rises off them, the temptation to pick a side and defend it whole. Having seen the structure tilt toward the strong, a person may swing to defending the weak in everything, excusing any act done by anyone without power, calling every breach resistance. Or, having seen the chaos that lawbreaking can bring, a person may swing the other way, defending power and order in everything, calling every enforcement justice. Both swings are the same error. Both pick a position and defend the position instead of holding a measure.

Here is the stance this section fixes. Defend neither power nor crime. Do not become the person who defends power in all things, who sees every act of enforcement as just because it wore the badge, who takes the side of the strong reflexively because the strong look like order. And do not become the person who defends crime in all things, who excuses every wrong because the one who did it was weak, who dresses every breach as resistance because the breaker had less. Both are the surrender of judgment. The first surrenders it to power, the second to a sentimental picture of the underdog. Neither actually looks at the act in front of it. Each has decided in advance which side it is on and reads every case to fit.

The alternative to picking a side is holding a measure, and the measure is the one the whole book carries, do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. This measure is held to both ends alike. Held toward power, it asks, is this enforcement something the enforcer would accept if it were turned on him, in the position of the one it lands on. Held toward the weak, it asks, is this act one the doer would accept if it were done to him, if he stood where his victim stands. The same measure, both directions. It does not ask which side you are on. It asks, of any act by anyone, would the one who did it accept it done to himself. Applied to power, it convicts the enforcement that no enforcer would accept turned on him. Applied to crime, it convicts the act that no doer would accept done to him. And it acquits, at both ends, what passes the test. This is what it means to hold one measure to both ends alike. You are on the side of the measure, not on the side of power or of the weak.

See how this measure cuts across the two lazy swings. A powerful man does a thing that harms the weak, and calls it lawful, order, necessity. The measure asks him, would you accept this done to you, standing where the weak one stands. If not, the lawful name does not save it. A weak man does a thing that harms another, and calls it resistance, hardship, no choice. The measure asks him, would you accept this done to you, standing where your victim stands. If not, the resistance name does not save it. The measure does not read the badge or the ragged coat. It reads only the act, and asks the one question, from both directions. This is why it defends neither power nor crime. It has no side but the act itself, seen from the position of the one it falls on.

But the part's earlier layers must be held in the same hand, or the measure turns cruel. Chapter Seven said the friction of the dead law on the live person roots in output falling short, that a person cornered by scarcity may break the law not from rot but from the plain need to live. So holding the measure toward the weak does not mean judging the cornered person as if he had the choices a comfortable person has. To trade places with him is to stand in his corner, to feel the scarcity that drove him, and to judge from there, which is exactly the trading of places the good judge does. The measure held with clear eyes does not become a cold rule that convicts the starving man for taking bread. It sees the corner, weighs the scarcity, and still asks the honest question, and often the honest answer is that the act, done in that corner, is not what it would be done from comfort. Clear eyes means holding both, the measure and the circumstance, at once. Neither excusing everything by circumstance, nor judging everything as if circumstance did not exist.

This is the hardest stance to hold, and that is why it is the one worth fixing. It would be easier to pick a side. Defending power in all things is easy, it flatters order and asks nothing hard. Defending the weak in all things is easy too, it flatters one's own compassion and asks nothing hard either. What is hard is to hold no side but the measure, to judge each act by whether the one who did it would accept it done to himself, and to keep holding the circumstance in the other hand so the measure stays human. This is choosing with clear eyes. It costs more than either swing, because it means a person cannot rest in a settled team, cannot say I am for this side and be done. He must look at each act freshly, from both directions, every time. But it is the only stance that does not, in the end, defend some injustice for the sake of the side it belongs to.

Turn the lens to the West once, lightly. The same stance is there in the oldest images of justice, the figure holding a balance and wearing a blindfold, meant to weigh the act without seeing which side is strong and which is weak, which is robed and which is ragged. The blindfold is exactly the refusal to pick a side by its appearance, and the balance is exactly the one measure held to both ends. That the image is old and shared says the stance is not one civilization's alone. East and West both reached for a justice that reads the act and not the face, and what they reach for is the thing itself.

So this section sets a twenty-fifth layer, and Part Three seals here. The clear-eyed stance is to defend neither power nor crime, but to hold one measure to both ends alike, the measure of do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself, asked of every act from both directions, while holding the act's circumstance in the other hand so the measure stays human. This is harder than picking a side, and it is the only stance that does not end by defending some injustice for its team. Laozi and Confucius fixed the deed above the word, the ancestors fixed the measure that asks what you would not want done to yourself, and the old blindfolded figure with her balance fixes the same, a justice that weighs the act and not the face.

Now set Part Three together. It came down from the reasoning of the first two parts to one living, ordinary person, and walked the most basic things there, the direction of proof, the naming of guilt, the friction of dead law on live person rooted in output, the people as a moving position, the hero who does and vanishes, and last this, the clear-eyed stance. It has a heavy side, the ordinary person with no road under scarcity, and a warm side, the road in his own hands to change a thing without spilling blood, and to stand, at the end, holding one measure to all. From the twentieth layer to the twenty-fifth. Walk out of this part and what a person carries is not one conclusion but a way of seeing, so that the next time he meets a law, an enforcement, a verdict, he can ask a few things for himself. Onto whom did it push the load. In whose position does the guilt it names actually stand. Whom does its endless we actually include. And of the act before me, would the one who did it accept it done to himself.

The next part follows the root this part kept striking, output falling short, all the way down, and asks the most fundamental question of the whole volume, why does law exist at all. Let the reader carry this clear-eyed stance into Part Four.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.