VOLUME V, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 3
Choosing with Clear Eyes, Defending Neither Power Nor Crime
Part Three, by here, has walked from the direction of proof all the way to the hero who vanished into the crowd. This section caps the part. It first gathers the positions of this whole road into one web, then fixes a clear-eyed stance, and then crosses over to the next part. Having walked this road, the reader will find that the seemingly technical little matter of which way the proof runs is tied to the whole posture of how the law treats an ordinary person.
First, connect the several layers of this part into one web. The first, the direction of proof, the most basic dividing line in how the law treats an ordinary person, presumed innocent or presumed guilty, two different worlds. The second, going deeper, guilt itself is a position, not an objective fact, and a good judge is only a person able to trade places. The third, deeper still, the law is dead and a person is alive, and the root of that friction is not in the law but in output falling short. The fourth, we the people is forever only a position, never equal to all the people. The fifth, the hero who changes the world is not the one who speaks but the one who, having heard, quietly goes and does. These are not five separate topics. They are one web. Which way the proof runs draws out that guilt is itself a position. Guilt being a position forces up the truth of whom the law is made for. The root of that truth is in output. When output falls short, even the two words the people get compressed into a small handful. And under that compression, the ordinary person still has a road to change a thing without blood. One layer clasps the next, and looking at the whole web at once, the law is no longer the cold characters on a statute page but the real contest of living people each standing in his own position.
Seeing this web clearly, a person is prone to slide toward one of two extremes. One extreme is to be carried along by the talk of power, taking harsh law and heavy punishment for justice itself, taking it as only right that the load be pressed onto the weak, taking it that whoever broke the law should be dealt with heavily. The other extreme is to be wrapped up in the pathos of resistance, taking it that any lawbreaking at all is forgivable, that the pressure of survival washes clean anything, however harmful, and romanticizing every transgression into resistance. The two extremes look opposite and are in fact the same, both a refusal to use one's own head, both handing the judgment over to a ready-made emotion. What this section fixes is exactly the clear-eyed stance that falls into neither.
Do not defend power. The tilt at power's end the earlier sections already set out. It leans toward presuming guilt, pressing the burden of self-proof onto the ordinary person first. It leans toward making law to punish heavily the weak who struggle merely to live. It leans toward quietly compressing we the people down to the range of the elite, and then covering it over with the handsome talk of law. Everything of this kind, that presses the load onto the weak and gathers the resources toward those with more than enough, is to be seen through, to be named, and not defended.
But do not defend crime either. Having seen that the weak who break the law are mostly driven by the need to survive, it is very easy to slide to the position that then all lawbreaking may be forgiven, and that step slid is a wrong step. The pressure of survival can explain why a person came to that step, and it cannot wash clean the innocent person he harmed. A person who has been shortchanged, turning around to shortchange another still weaker, borrows the same line, I too had no choice, and yet the knife in his hand cuts one more innocent. So toward crime as well, no romanticizing and no defending. To call all lawbreaking resistance is to issue a pass to real harm, and the ones who suffer in the end are still the ordinary people with even less strength. Stand at neither end. Only set out the positions, and let the reader see for himself.
To stand at neither end is not to smooth things over. To smooth things over is to have no stance, offending no one. To set out the positions is precisely to hold the clearest stance of all, only that the stance does not land on who is right and who is wrong, it lands on seeing clearly where each position came from and whom it serves. The stance of this whole arrangement, from first to last, is one thing only. Whatever takes from what has not enough to offer up to what has more than enough is to be seen through and named. Power pressing the load onto the weak is taking from what has not enough, name it. Harming another innocent person under the name of survival is taking from what has not enough too, name it just the same. So defend neither power nor crime is not fence-sitting. It is one ruler held to both ends. And that ruler is the line this whole volume uses again and again, do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.
So this section sets a twenty-fifth layer, and Part Three seals here. Choose your own position with clear eyes, defending neither power nor crime. Clear eyes means that after seeing through all the layers of this part, you make up your own mind, neither led by the talk of power nor wrapped in the pathos of resistance, but looking at both sides and standing firm yourself. That standing firm yourself is what clarity is. No one can do it for you, and this arrangement too only hands the positions into the reader's hands. Which end to stand at is the reader's own affair.
Put the ancestors' lines together and they are the whole of this part. Confucius said do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. Laozi said the way of man takes from what has not enough to offer up to what has more than enough. Mencius said the people are the most precious. Xunzi said what human effort makes is wei. The Book of Documents said better to let a guilty man go than to kill an innocent one. Each line sets up one vein, and together they are the Chinese world's plainest whole set of observations on the law across more than two thousand years. What the reader should truly carry out of this part is not any one conclusion but an eye for seeing the law, so that the next time he meets a law, an act of enforcement, a verdict, he can ask a few things for himself. Onto whom did it press the load. In whose position does the guilt it names actually stand. Whom does its endless we actually include. Carry those questions, and a person is not easily fooled by the handsome talk of law.
The next part is law and scarcity. It has been said again and again that the real position of the law is rooted in output falling short. The next part digs down along that root, to see concretely how the strong use the law to fence the scarce resources, land, opportunity, learning, one by one into their own hands. Let the reader carry the ruler forged in this part into the part that follows.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.