VOLUME V, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3
What the Weak Are to Do. The Several Ways Ordinary People Rescue Themselves
The last section said the vested party is the law's largest customer, the law tilting of itself toward those with more than enough, and the weak can hardly shield themselves by the law. So what are the weak to do. The weak have no resources enough to use the law, and yet the weak have other ways. In history the weak walked five roads, to flee, to band together, to give up the law, to strike back with force, to cultivate the self. Read this section not asking which road is best, for none is best for all times and places, only asking one thing, for me, in my position, in my age, which road fits best.
The first road, to flee. Bo Yi and Shu Qi are the earliest sample. Around 1000 BC, at the end of Shang and the start of Zhou, there were two worthies, Bo Yi and Shu Qi. When King Wu of Zhou raised troops to topple Shang, they opposed it, holding that to topple a ruler, however just the cause, broke the duty of a subject. Once King Wu prevailed, they refused office, hid on Shouyang mountain, would not eat the grain of Zhou, lived on wild fruit, and starved to death in the hills at last. This road of Bo Yi and Shu Qi is called to flee. When the weak cannot change the system, one choice is to leave, to go where the law cannot reach, and famine flight, exile, migration, reclusion are all of this kind. The recluses of Chinese history who would not take office mostly walked this road, refusing to work with a regime they held unjust, willing to set down name and rank to keep a principle. The gain of fleeing is to keep one's own principle and dignity. The cost is to give up the shelter and convenience of society, and Bo Yi and Shu Qi even starved for it. The cost is not small, and to some it is the only life they can accept. Confucius, twenty-five hundred years ago, showed respect to these two, though he did not choose this road himself. Flight is often taken for cowardice, and yet to a person who cannot change the great tide, to withdraw whole and not flow with the foul is a kind of hardness in itself. It does not solve the system, but it keeps one person.
The second road, to band together, Confucius named in one line. Around 500 BC, Confucius said a line. Virtue is not left alone, it is sure to have neighbors. A person of virtue is never solitary, and those of like mind will always draw near. Confucius speaks of banding together. When one weak person cannot bear the system alone, one choice is to find those of the same mind and organize, so the weak is no longer one isolated person but a group, and the force of a group is often much greater than a single weak person's. In Chinese history the people spontaneously formed many such bodies, clans, guilds, hometown associations, on down to the modern unions, associations, societies, all of this kind. A single worker is weak. An organized union can bargain with the employer. A single farmer is weak. A village banded together can coordinate irrigation, guard against disaster, help one another. The art of banding together is that it changes not the system but the weak person's own position within it. An organized group, to the vested party, is no longer a weak thing to be waved off. Its cost is that one has to melt into the collective, hand over a part of personal freedom, and do everything by the group's rules. But to most of the weak this is a very solid road, because personal freedom, when there is no security, seldom ranks first.
The third road, to give up the law, Zhuangzi put through most clearly. Around 300 BC, Zhuangzi said a line. The use of the useless, this is what is called the great use. The thing that looks useless, that very uselessness may be the greatest use. Zhuangzi's road is to give up the law. If the law is not for the people, then the people do not count on the law, and the people have the people's own way, using tradition, using custom, using human ties and morality to order one another, and the law is moved only when there is no other choice at all. This road is in fact the ordinary state in a society where law is undeveloped, where people bind conduct by custom and morality, and the weak are not tangled in the law's complexity. Its cost is likewise large. Without the law to make good the bottom, the weak lean wholly on human ties and morality, and once someone forsakes morality the weak have nowhere to plead. So this road turns only in a society where human ties and morality are thick enough and wide enough, and as the morality thins it works less and less. But it reminds a person of one thing, the law was never the only cord binding people to people, and when this cord breaks, a person still has other cords to hold.
The fourth road, to strike back with force, is Chen Sheng's eight words. Around 200 BC, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rose at Dazexiang, the line quoted before. Since both are death, may we die for the state. Either way is death, why not die for a great cause. This is striking back with force. When the weak's circumstance has grown past bearing, one choice is armed rising, to overturn the unjust system. History's uprisings great and small are past counting. The gain of striking back with force is that it may truly change the system, and Chen Sheng and Wu Guang failed in the end and yet stirred the people's will to resist. But this road's cost is the heaviest too. The riser is mostly put down, and to fail is to die, and even winning by luck, the new system is not surely better than the old, and Chen Sheng toppled Qin, and when Han rose the set it used was not fundamentally different from Qin's. So striking back with force is a throw of everything, and few truly choose it short of the very last road. This section only sets it out as one of history's roads, says its cost plainly, does not judge it and still less urge it. When that step is reached, whether it is worth it, only the one inside it can weigh.
The fifth road, self-discipline, is Laozi's the highest good is like water. Around 500 BC, Laozi said a line. The highest good is like water. The highest good is like water, water without edge, contending with none, and yet able to bore through all. Laozi's road is self-discipline. When the weak cannot change the outer system, one choice is to change himself, by discipline, character, and cultivation to raise his own quality and ability, so that even set inside an unjust system he can live with dignity. This is a road turned inward, not to change the system but, in the seams of the system, to live out his own worth. A person of cultivation can hold his principle even amid injustice. A person of true skill can find a road even when resources are tight. Some teach themselves to mastery, some stand in business on honesty, some win others' respect by cultivation, all fruits of self-discipline. Laozi's the highest good is like water is not to have a person meet hardness with hardness, but to have him, like water, stay soft and yet not give up, keep bettering himself, and grind the position open at last. Its gain is that it leans not at all on whether the system changes. Its cost is that it takes a will strong enough to conquer one's own sloth and appetite, and to hold principle in an unjust setting is at times harder than changing the system. But once done, a person gains an inner freedom, and the recluses and worthies of old who could still stand straight under tyranny leaned exactly on this freedom that came from within and not from the system.
Beyond these five there are many variants. Some burrow the law's loopholes, using lawful means to skirt an unjust law. Some rise by study, using education to lift their position. Some rise by business, using trade to change their wealth. Some rise by art, using work to voice the injustice in the heart. Some rise by faith, settling the spirit in religion. The forms are many, and they share one thing, all are, after judging the system cannot be changed for now, a road found to go on living. These roads have no high and low. A pair of parents putting a child through college, and a recluse who would starve rather than bow, are both, in their own positions, living out a human shape as best they can.
But here hides the deepest, and most chilling, layer. These choices look like the weak rescuing themselves, and seen another way they are exactly what the vested party is glad to see. What does the vested party most hope the weak will do. Most hope the weak will flee, for leaving means no longer troubling him. Or that the weak cultivate himself, changing himself and not the system. Or that the weak strike back with force, for then he may put them down in good name. Or that the weak pin his hope on a faith in the afterlife and not move the present. Or that the weak band together, and so long as the banding does not shake his root of power, he is glad to tolerate it. So these seeming self-rescues in fact also keep the present for him. The more unjust a system, the more inventive the weak's self-rescues grow, because it forces the weak to strain for a way to live, rather than to overturn it. The worse the system, the more ideas the weak have, and the system itself does not stir a hair. From the vested party's position this is nearly the perfect state. The weak have choices, and look free. The weak can live, and look to have dignity. And the weak forever circle inside the system and never touch the root of the vested interest. This is the most hidden place of structural injustice, that it has arranged even the exits of your resistance in advance. See through this layer, and it is not to have a person stop rescuing himself, for a person must first live. It is to have a person, while rescuing himself, keep one more question in his heart, is this road one I chose myself, or one the structure quietly chose for me and let me believe I chose.
So this section sets a sixteenth layer. Facing injustice the weak have several choices, to flee, to band together, to give up the law, to strike back with force, to cultivate the self, and their variants, each with its cost and its gain, none the best for all, only the one that best fits my position, my age, my group. What matters most in this layer is not to pick a road for the reader, but to remind the reader that in choosing he should know clean and clear what he is choosing and what the cost is. Not to drift with the crowd, and not to be quietly steered by the vested party. See through the layer that even self-rescue may be working for the present, and a person turns clear-eyed instead. He will neither naively think any road at all makes him free, nor lose heart to where he does nothing. He will choose with open eyes, and having chosen, own the cost of the road, and answer for himself. Whether the weak can not only circle inside the system but truly change position, that leans on a road higher than self-rescue, exactly the next section, and the capstone of this chapter.
The next section is self-discipline, why the highest law is self-discipline. After seeing through the positions layer by layer, does the weak have a way to rise above position. Not by changing the system, and not only by passive adjusting, but by actively standing himself up. The answer is self-discipline, the highest single law a person can give himself, leaning on no outer system, on no other's fairness, only on his own will. Let the reader carry these several roads of the weak into the section that follows.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.