VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 12
Politics Cuts Off the Hand That Props It Up, and Law Sets the Rules Straight
The last section set up that total position, that one lock takes four institutions to undo together, and told the first of them, culture, which warms the person's heart from the inside so that he does not want to wring. This section goes on to the other two. Politics, from the outside, cuts off the hand that props the lock up, so that he does not dare to wring. And law sets straight the run of rules that were laid down following the lock, so that he cannot wring, and so that it also guides everyone toward keeping himself in check. Culture brings its strength from the inside, politics and law from the outside, one inside and two outside, and together they loosen the person. And when these two are told, the strengths of the four strands undoing the lock are all but complete, and only the most important strand is left, held for the next section.
I. Politics Goes to Cut Off the Hand That Props It Up
The last section had culture go and warm the person's heart, so that he of himself would be willing to let go. But let me say a plain thing to you. To warm the heart alone is not enough. Why is it not enough? Because that lock does not only force him from inside his heart, behind it there is a hand still, propping it up. And that hand is called power.
Think of one thing. A person clutching a mountain of gold, why can he wring people so unafraid? Why does his sweatshop go unchecked? Why does the net of debt he laid go unmanaged? Why, when he uses the algorithm to lock people into new slaves, is there no one to block him? Because he has bought off, has colluded with, the very power that ought to come and check him, manage him, block him. This is one of the most poisonous knots in this world, the collusion of officials and business.
Business holds money, officials hold power. By rights, that hand of the official is the one that should watch business and manage business for the common people, and not let business wring them. But once officials and business fall into collusion, business feeds the official money, and the official uses his power to shield business, and that hand which ought to protect the common people turns around instead to prop up the business that wrings them. With this collusion, that lock grows fangs. By rights, the person forced by wring-or-be-wiped-out, even if he wanted to wring, has an official over his head managing him, and would not dare go too far. But once officials and business collude, the hand that ought to manage him becomes instead the hand that helps him, and however hard he wrings, there is power to cover him, shield him, smooth it over. And so there is nothing he does not dare to do. How many sweatshops, how many death-driving debts, how many plainly people-harming things are done in the open, propped up by power, with no one able to block them.
Think how terrible this is. A merchant who wrings people, however fierce he is, still has an official over his head, like a ruler hanging above him, and he keeps some fear of it, does not dare to overstep too far. But once that ruler has been bought with his money, the ruler that ought to have struck him now shields him from wind and rain instead, and he loses all fear. The common people are wrung by him, and go to sue, and sue to that very official, and that official is exactly the one who took his money, and how is this suit ever to be won? The common people are driven to the wall, and the merchant fears nothing. This is the most poisonous thing about the collusion of officials and business, it blocks off, it buys off, the common people's last road to reason it out, the last person who could have managed that merchant. The common people lift their eyes and see that the one who ought to have protected them and the one who wrings them are of one gang, and whom, then, can they hope in? Where can they go to reason it out?
So to have culture warm that merchant's heart, alone, is not enough. Even if this one merchant is melted, and lets go, so long as the knot of official-and-business collusion is still there, the investors swap in another who has not been melted, a fiercer one, and he colludes with that power just the same, and wrings people just as unafraid. That hand propping the lock up, uncut, and the lock is forever unafraid. This strand, culture cannot warm, for it is not in the heart, it is in the power. And the economy cannot loosen it, for it is not a matter of money, it is a matter of power. This strand takes politics.
The strand of politics goes to undo this end of the lock, to cut off the collusion of officials and business, to cut off the hand that props the wringing up. How is it cut? That is the thing the fourth chapter, the new order for politics, will tell in detail on its own. Here, let me only point out the position of this strand for you. What the new order for politics means to do is to return that hand of the official to the position it was always meant to hold. What is the official's seat for, in the first place? It is for watching and managing on behalf of the public, it is for protecting people. It is not a thing a merchant should be able to buy with his money, not a thing that should prop up the wringing of people. To bend that hand of the official back, from bought-by-business and propping-up-business, to managing-business-for-the-public and not-letting-business-wring-people, this is to cut off the collusion of officials and business.
Cut that propping hand, and the lock loosens a great stretch at once. Why? Because the merchant who was forced to wring has, over his head again, a hand that manages him, and if he wants to wring, that hand of the official, back in its proper position, blocks him, manages him, will not let him overstep. And he dares not. You see, culture and politics, these two strands, are exactly one inside and one outside, bringing their strength together and propping each other. Culture, from the inside, warms that merchant's heart, so that he does not want to wring. Politics, from the outside, cuts off the power that props him up, so that he does not dare to wring. Not wanting to, and not daring to, and this locked person, from inside and out, is loosened. His heart warmed and melted, he no longer wants to wring. The hand that propped him cut off, even if he still wants to, he does not dare. The two brought together, and that lock loosens a great stretch more.
II. Law Goes to Set Straight the Run of Rules
Culture warmed his heart, politics cut off the hand that propped him. This strand, the last, is law, which goes to set straight the run of rules.
That lock, besides forcing him in the heart and hooking into the power that props it, follows a third thing as well, and that is the rules. Think of one thing. That person clutching the mountain of gold, his wringing of people, his locking of people, his laying of the net of debt, these things, a great deal of the time, are within the rules. He did not steal, did not rob, and every step he took, he trod inside the current rules. The sweatshop has its contracts. That net of debt has its black-and-white agreements. To use the algorithm to wring a person to his limit is written in no ban anywhere. And this is the strange thing, he is plainly harming people, so how can it be within the rules? Because that run of rules was itself laid down following the lock.
The back chapter on law will set up a most important line. The rules of this world, its laws, are, a great deal of the time, a tool the strong use to bind the weak, and the more it wears the skin of fairness, the more you have to watch it. Look back at that yardstick of the standardized test in the second chapter, wearing the skin of fairness, and measuring in fact the rich and the poor, helping the rich. The rules are the same. That run of rules where wringing people is lawful and the wrung have nowhere to reason it out did not fall from the sky. It was laid down, a little at a time, following capital, following the lock, and in the laying of it, it leaned toward that hand clutching the mountain of gold, and did not lean toward the wrung.
Think, who lays the rules? Very often it is exactly those with money, with power, with a say. A person clutching a mountain of gold, and hooked into power besides, has a very great say in the laying of the rules. And when he lays the rules, whom does he lean toward? Toward himself, of course. He lays the rules so that his wringing of people is lawful, is compliant, has no fault to be found in it, and so that the moneyless, powerless people he wrings cannot find so much as a door to reason it out through, to lodge a complaint through. And so what you see is this strange state of things, a thing plainly harming people, and yet clause by clause within the rules, a person plainly harmed, and yet with no reason to be had anywhere. This is not the rules going wrong by some accident. It is that this run of rules, from the womb, was laid down leaning toward the strong and turning its back on the weak. So the strand of rules in that lock, if you do not set this crookedly laid run of rules straight, then warming the heart alone, cutting off the power alone, is of no use.
So the strand of rules in that lock, resting on culture to warm the heart and politics to cut off the power, still cannot be cleanly undone. Because even if the merchant is melted, and the power propping him is cut, so long as that run of rules where wringing is lawful still stands there, the next man to come up can tread the rules and wring just the same, and wring in the open, with a good name, and no one able to do a thing to him. This strand takes law, to set that crooked run of rules straight.
The strand of law has two things to do. The first is to bend the rules back, from protecting that hand to protecting people. What was the law for in the first place? The back chapter on law will set up this line over and over, the law protects people, not tools, not capital, not that hand, and this line is the fixed pole star of the chapter on law. To bend that run of rules that leaned toward capital and made wringing lawful, clause by clause, back toward people, toward protecting the wrung, toward not letting wringing be lawful, this straightens the strand of rules in the lock. Once the rules are straightened, the person who wants to wring, even with his heart not warmed and the power still there, finds that the step he takes out is no longer within the rules, and he has to weigh it carefully.
The second thing, one layer deeper, is to guide everyone toward keeping himself in check. The highest reach of law is not to set up a great pile of rules to punish people, to block people. The second chapter told that reasoning, the cure for torment is character education, and where everyone has character and torments no one, there is next to no need for so many laws at all. The deepest use of the strand of law is, paired with the strand of culture, with character education, to lay the rules down clear and plain, so that everyone, that hand clutching the mountain of gold included, knows where that people-protecting bottom line lies, and then, keeps himself in check. Not by having people watch and punish and block, but by everyone knowing it in his own heart and himself keeping to that bottom line. You see, the strand of law is tied again to culture and to politics. Law sets the rules straight and lays them plain, the bottom line on the outside, and culture warms the heart and patches character on, the conscience within, and the two paired together, and the person keeps himself in check, with a clear bottom line outside him and a conscious character inside him, and of himself he stays inside the line and does not go wringing people.
By here, the four strengths undoing that lock are all but complete. The economy loosens the strand of capital, there is enough, and he need not be driven to earn, which the next section will speak of. Culture warms the heart, character education, so that he does not want to wring. Politics cuts the strand of power, cuts off the collusion of officials and business, so that he does not dare to wring. Law sets straight the strand of rules, bends them back to protecting people and to guiding self-restraint, so that he cannot wring, and no longer wants to. Four strengths, four institutions, brought at once. And that hard lump, twisted of capital, power, rules, and the human heart, comes loose, strand by strand.
And look back, and of these four strengths, not one goes to bring the person down. Culture warms him, politics cuts off the hand behind him that propped him and returns the official to his place, law sets the rules straight and lays them plain and guides self-restraint, all of it undoing locks, and not one of it dragging a man out, beating a man, settling a score. That locked person, together with all the people he wrung, is by these four strengths loosened together, saved together. This is what those words, do not bring him down, undo the lock, look like, done out in the concrete.
Savor these four strengths brought together, how thorough it is, how steady. It does not rest on some life-and-death chaos, does not rest on dragging a man out to be struggled down and disgraced. It is simply four institutions, each minding a patch, bringing their strength together, to undo that strangled lump, gently, strand by strand. Culture warms his heart, politics cuts off his prop, law bars his hands and feet, the economy draws the breath out from under him. Loosen it from four sides at once, and that lock comes open before anyone knows it, and the locked person, together with the great crowd he had locked, is all unbound. No fighting and killing, no rivers of blood, no wrong answered with wrong, and the deadlock, just so, is undone. This is what it is to undo the deadlock, to use four hands, gently, thoroughly, to work a deadknot open, and not to swing up a knife and cut it through. But these four strengths still lack the most important strand, the innermost strand of that lock, why the investors force him to earn to the death, because things are still being grabbed over, and capital still has to roll upward without end. This most important strength, culture, politics, and law cannot bring to bear. It takes the biggest thing of all, the thing the next section speaks of, that there is, for the first time, enough.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.