VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 11

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 11

Culture Must Not Be Handed Down Blindly: The Other Leg of Raising People Is Science

The sections at the head of this chapter set up culture, set up handing down, set up that leg called character education. This section adds another leg to the raising of people. Without this leg, all those words before leave one hole that clenches the heart. Where is the hole? It is that in speaking of handing down, we took it for granted that what gets passed down is all good. But the act of handing down does not, in itself, sort the good from the bad. It is like water flowing down. Clear water, muddy water, both flow down the same. If there is something in the last generation's things that will harm a person, it passes that down too, right along with the rest. So this section adds a sluice-gate to handing down. Culture must not be handed down blindly. And that gate is called science. This section first uses one true thing to let you see that even the deepest love can harm, and then sets up science as the other leg. Character gives science its direction. Science gives character its eyes. Missing either one, a person cannot stand steady.

At the head of this chapter I set up, over and over, one thing. Culture is handing down. Handing down is as it should be, a real person of character soaking what he has lived and gathered, the good of it, down into the next generation, one after another. That is right. But today I have to add a gate to it. Without this gate, that saying leaves a hole that clenches the heart.

The hole is in those three words, the good of it. In speaking of handing down before, we took it for granted that what gets passed down is all good. But sit still and think a moment. The act of handing down, in itself, does not sort the good from the bad. All it does is pass the last generation's things down. If the last generation's things are good, it passes the good down. If there is, hidden among the last generation's things, something that will harm a person, it passes the harmful thing down too, right along with the rest. Handing down is water flowing down. Clear water, muddy water, it flows both down the same.

Let me tell you a true thing, and you will see how much this gate matters. There is, in this world, a certain sickness, a very deadly one, and those who catch it mostly cannot pull through, and it passes from person to person very fast. In some of the places troubled by this sickness, there is a very old, very deep custom of the funeral. When a loved one has passed, the family with their own hands wash the body for him, wipe him clean, set him in order, and then gently hold him, and make their last farewell. And what is held inside this custom? Love. Filial love. Reverence. The deepest reluctance to let go of the one who has just departed. This heart is as good as good can be. A person willing to wash with his own hands the loved one who is gone, to wipe him clean, to hold him once, to make a last farewell, this reluctance, this filial love, is the cleanest feeling under heaven.

But this sickness is at its most deadly at exactly the moment a person has just died, when that unseen danger still lingers on the body. And so that washing, so full of love, that one last embrace, quietly passes the sickness on, to one living relative after another who came to see him off, to do their filial duty, to say a word of their reluctance to part. And so a farewell full of the deepest feeling becomes one parting after another. One loved one is gone, and the family who came to send him on, one after another, are taken by the sickness too. This custom of sending a loved one off with one's own hands, handed down without any telling apart of the danger, one generation to the next, let so many who came to do their filial duty go, one by one, along with him.

Do you see now how much this gate matters? That custom of washing and sending off, is it bad culture? It is not. What it holds inside it is the most precious thing in all the human world, love, filial love, reverence. And yet this very custom, brimming with love, for the lack of one thing, sent off the ones who came to do their filial duty as well. Lacking what? Lacking one plainest piece of common sense, that the body of this loved one who has just gone still holds that sickness, that unseen danger, and cannot be embraced and sent off with bare hands.

Do not think this a distant story with nothing to do with you. There is no end of such things in this world. In some places an old folk remedy is handed down, said to cure an illness, and generation after generation it is used by the recipe, and the thing is in fact poisonous, and swallowing it does harm instead. In some places an old rule is handed down, that a woman in the month of rest after giving birth must not bathe, must not open a window, must wrap herself up tight, and generation after generation it is followed, and in the heat of summer, wrapping up like that has cost lives. The ones who first set these rules down, not a single one had a bad heart. They truly meant to protect their families, to hand down to those who came after the good things they had lived and tried and believed in. But they lacked that science, lacked that clear pair of eyes, and so the deepest good heart turned into a disaster handed down one generation to the next. That is the most heart-clenching thing about blind handing down. The one who does the harm is exactly that deepest love, the love that least wanted to harm.

So the gate is this one line. Culture must not be handed down blindly. However old, however deep, however pure in its motive, a culture, before it is handed down, has to pass through a sieve first. What is good, what will not harm, hand it down. What will harm, what has already been clearly seen to harm, that culture, however deep the feeling in it, has to be held back and changed. Love must not be blind. The deepest feeling must not, turned around, come to harm a person. A filial custom that takes the ones who came to do their filial duty too, however deep it runs, has to be swapped for a way of doing filial duty that does not harm, and once it is swapped, this love and this filial love are kept, and the ones who came to send the loved one off stay safe and whole. Not swapped, this deepest feeling will, again and again, lead the ones who come after away along with it.

That gate is called science. The sections before set up one leg of the raising of people, character education. And it was said before that character education is the one and only medicine for the sickness of torment in this world. That is right. But a person with only this one leg, character, is that enough? It is not.

You may ask, did you not just now hold character up so high, call it the one medicine that cures a hundred sicknesses, and now you say character alone is not enough? Let me make it plain. These two sayings do not contradict each other in the slightest. For curing the sickness of torment, character is indeed the only medicine, and not a word of that changes. But a person living in this world has to face more than torment alone. He also has to get things done, has to protect people, has to be able, in this tangled world, to tell what is good for people from what does them harm. These, a good heart alone cannot do. They also take common sense, take the understanding of how things actually work. So character cures the side of whether a person is willing to do good, and cures it through and through. But the side of whether he is able to do it right takes another leg. Two legs, each minding its own, and neither can stand in for the other.

Look back at the ones washing the body for their loved one. Were they short on character? They were not. Their character ran very high, they had love, filial love, reverence, and it was to show the deepest feeling for the one who had died that they did the washing at all. They lacked nothing but one thing, that piece of science, that the body still holds an unseen danger. And for the lack of that one piece of science, all their good character turned around and did a thing that killed people. You see, that is the end of character with no science. Love kills.

So the raising of people has to stand on two legs. One leg is character education, and what it minds is the direction of the heart, so that a person has love, has filial love, torments no one, is willing to think of others. This leg settles whether a person is willing to do good. The other leg is science education, and what it minds is the understanding in the head, so that a person has common sense, knows how this world runs, knows what will harm and what will not. This leg settles whether a person is able to do it right. Two legs, and missing one, a person cannot stand, and will fall, and trouble will come.

Think of a person walking. With only one leg, however thick and strong that leg is, he cannot stand steady, cannot walk far, and topples the moment he takes a step. Raising people is the same. Set only character in a child and not science, and he grows into a person all full of love but muddle-headed, doing bad by good intentions. Set only science in a child and not character, and he grows into a person shrewd in skill but with no one else in his heart, using his skill to harm. Neither will do. You have to get both legs standing steady in him, and then he can stand up straight, and walk far, and walk right. This is why the raising of people was never only teaching knowledge, and never only preaching morality. It is both together, and not one may be missing.

Character with no science is those people washing the body, a whole heart of love that, for not knowing, turned love into the harming of people. A person full of love but with no common sense, his love is a dangerous thing. And science with no character? That is more frightening still. Look back at what this chapter said earlier, at the one who used algorithms to lock people into a new slavery, the one who designed a net of debt to squeeze people dry, the one who wants to use AI to replace real people and push them all out. Were they short on science? They were not, they were very scientific, very sharp in their technique. What they lacked was character. They had no one else in their hearts, only themselves. A person whose head is full of science but who has no character, his science becomes a tool for locking people down, squeezing people dry, pushing people out.

You see, then, how these two legs stand to each other. Character gives science its direction, so that all that skill gets used on not harming, on loving people. Science gives character its eyes, so that all that love sees clearly, is not blind, does not, out of ignorance, come to harm. Character with no science is a blind man with a direction but no eyes, a whole heart of love crashing about, crashing into someone and killing him. Science with no character is a madman with eyes but no direction, a whole body of skill doing evil, harming people, killing people. With both legs at once, a person stands steady, walks right, is both willing to do good and able to do it right, a whole heart of love with a clear pair of eyes to see by.

Set these two legs into today's world of AI, and it comes clearer still. The thing today's world is least short of is science. The technology grows sharper by the day, AI grows abler by the day. But look at the ones pushing this world toward the fire pit, and what they lack was never science. It is character, hearts that cannot hold another person inside them. A person at the top of his technique but with no character, the stronger his science, the bigger the disaster he brings, because all that skill of his goes into scheming against people, locking people down, pushing people out. And the other way, a person with only a good heart but no science cannot protect even the ones he wants to protect, like those relatives washing and sending off their dead, their love, however deep, could not save even themselves. So these two legs are more important today than at any time before. The leg of science lets a person have the ability to get a good thing done. The leg of character lets all that ability do good things, and not bad. A real person needs both legs standing steady, so as both to get things done and to do good things.

This is why, in speaking of the new order for culture, in speaking of raising people, having set up the leg of character education, we must set up right behind it the other leg, science education. A school, that prison that settles people and raises character, raises people on both legs at once, raising character and raising science together. Only then are the people it raises people who both have love and are not muddle-headed, people who stand steady. Hold this one thing. The raising of people needs two legs. Character education minds whether a person is willing to do good, and gives science its direction. Science education minds whether a person is able to do it right, and gives character its eyes. Lacking character, science becomes a tool for harming people. Lacking science, love becomes a blindness that harms people. With both legs at once, a person stands steady. The next section takes one most sensitive thing, a thing no one dared touch for thousands of years, and shows you how these two legs are used together. Religion.

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