VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 15

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 15

In Closing: The Four Return to Their Places, Back to the Real World, but the Door Stays Open

From the first section to here, I have led you through everything this chapter set out to see. This section is the chapter's close. Taking the close, let me do three things with you. Look back once over the road we walked. Say clearly what all this looking so high and so deep was for. And point out for you, plainly, the root of all of it.

I. The Four Have Returned to Their Places

Look back, and this chapter, in truth, spoke of four things. Slavery, labor, capital, communism. The first section already told you, do not take these four for four mortal names locked in a fight to the death. Underneath them is the same one thing, settling people. They are four tools for settling people, and were never four flags meant to fight one another to the death. But for a hundred years, people took them for four flags, held up this one to curse that one, believed this one and hated that one, quarreled until they could not be pulled apart, and quarreled away the one common thing under their own feet. What this chapter did, at bottom, is move these four back, from four mortal flags, to four tools for settling people, and let each return to its place.

Look at them now, each returned to its place. Slavery, its changed new skin was recognized, the lock of the sweatshop, the lock of debt, the new lock of the algorithm. Recognized, and then the locked person was let to see the lock, given a place to go, and walked out of it himself. The lock of slavery is undone, and the one locked at the very bottom is freed, and settled. Labor, the word was set straight, that to live by one's effort is the most honorable, the cleanest way of living in this world, and the fairness was set up, that what labor earns goes to the one who labored, not one bit wrung, and then, by there being enough, the old chain welding staying-alive to having-a-job was loosened. Labor is loosened, and can pick the work it is glad to do, and is back in its place. Capital, that frightening hat was taken off, capital is a tool, and everyone is a capitalist, you and me and him, and the two blames capital and the capitalist bore were lifted. Capital is back in its place as a tool, and the proper capitalist is settled. Communism, its good heart was set out straight, that every person should have a way to live, that all under heaven is shared, a good dream, and its old road of grabbing was swapped for the new road, do not grab, make the pie big, and by productivity let every person be satisfied. That dream of communism, by productivity, comes true, and the old road of grabbing is set down.

You see, slavery, labor, capital, communism, four of them, all returned to their places. Not one of them rides on the head of another. Not one of them is brought down, rooted out. Four of them, all set back into the places where they were meant to be, settling people, completing one another, and not one crowding out or grabbing from another. And the main line that moved them back into their places, you saw it clearly, is that lock. This chapter, from the ninth section on, has hung a lock. Culture warmed the heart, politics cut off the power that propped it, law set the rules straight, productivity made the pie big, and four strengths undid that lock. Count them back over, this whole chapter, did it bring one person down? It did not. Did it grab one cent of a proper person's money? It did not. Did it set up one villain, drag out one monster? It did not. From first to last, it did one thing, undo the lock. One lock after another, undone. One locked person after another, let out. Even that hand at the very top, locked the tightest, it was to undo his lock and let him out. The locks all undone, the people all let out, the four all back in their places, and this, this is undoing the deadlock. How was the deadlock undone? Not by bringing anyone down, but by undoing it lock by lock. The locks all undone, the locked all let out, the four tools all set back in their proper places, and this deadlock tangled for a hundred years is, just so, undone. Once it is undone, all under heaven is at peace.

II. Looking So High and So Deep Is for Coming Back Down to the Ground

This road is nearly at its end. Let me take this moment to say a most important line to you. Let me ask you, this chapter, looking so high, so deep, going to see productive power, to see things being enough for the first time, what was it for? It was for coming back down to the ground.

I am afraid that you, having looked high, looked far, might look out a wrong thought, and so this line has to be nailed here early. These years, there are a few people clutching mountains of gold, loud of voice, painting a grand picture, saying that humanity's way out is in the sky, in outer space, on Mars. Saying they will take humanity and migrate it to Mars, to other planets, to open new frontiers. Saying it in words full of flowers, so it sounds as though that were humanity's magnificent future.

Let me pierce this picture for you. To send people to Mars is not saving people, it is murder. What kind of place is Mars? No air, no water, not one inch of soil that will grow grain, cold enough to freeze a person to death. A person there cannot live. To send a person to such a place is, in name, to open the future, and in fact, to send that person into a dead land where he cannot live. This is the same thing as that hand at the front of this chapter, using capital, using machines, to crowd people out one by one and wipe them away, only this time it has put on a more imposing skin, one called the stars and the sea. Do not be fooled by that imposing skin.

Humanity's heaven was never on Mars, not in outer space, not in the sky. Humanity's heaven is this earth under your feet. Think of the earth. It has air, for you to breathe freely. It has water, has soil, that grows the grain you eat. It has the four seasons, the mountains and rivers, the rising and setting of the sun. It has kept humanity for millions of years. There is no second place in all the universe that is, like it, grown to fit a human being. It was always already humanity's heaven, a ready-made, freely given, could-be-no-better heaven. Then what is the thing humanity ought to do? To manage this ready-made heaven well.

Things, this chapter has said, are for the first time enough. The lock, this chapter has said, is undone. Then the thing people ought to do next is not to fly off this heaven and go flail about on Mars, that dead land. It is to stay in this heaven and manage it well, to let the productive power that reached enough go and feed every person, settle every person. To let the undone lock not be locked back on. To let this planet that kept humanity for millions of years be clean, be at peace, and keep humanity for millions of years more. So you understand now the intent of this road. To lead you to look so high, so deep, at productive power, at there being enough, was on no account to have you run off to the sky, go to Mars, leave the earth. It is the very opposite. To lead you to look high, to look deep, is to let you, from a higher and more fundamental place, see this earth clearly, understand it, see clearly that it was always already heaven, understand how, once there is enough and the lock is undone, a person ought to manage this heaven well. Understand it, and you ought to walk back, and be sent, steadily, back onto this ground. Look however high, however far, it is all in order to come back to the ground. The end of this road is not in the sky. It is in the human world.

III. The Root of All This Is Rooted in Culture

This road is nearly at its end, and before I wrap it up, let me say clearly one thing, where, in the end, the root of all this that this chapter set up is rooted.

Look back at the biggest thing this chapter set up, that things are for the first time enough, that productive power makes the pie big, that every person is satisfied and no longer has to grab. At the end of the last section, a line was left, to be said here. I asked you, things being enough can make that source of having-no-choice-but-to-grab gone, so that a person no longer has to grab in order to stay alive. But can it guarantee that from now on no person, plainly having enough, will still want to take more, to hoard? It cannot. Things being enough draws away the source of having no choice but to grab, and a person no longer has to fight, to grab, in order to survive. This is an enormous good, and it is exactly this that this chapter spent such great effort to set up. But that bit of a mind that plainly has enough and still wants to take more, however many things there are, may not be held back by them. Think, that person clutching the mountain of gold, is he short of things? He is not, he has more than several lifetimes could use. And still he wants to clutch more, and this is no longer forced by things not being enough, it is a thing in his heart that he has not set down. Things being enough can cure having-no-choice-but-to-grab. It cannot cure having-enough-and-still-wanting-more.

Then having-enough-and-still-wanting-more, by what is it cured? It is cured by the thing this chapter cannot cure, the thing you have to go back to the last chapter to find. Character. You remember the plainest character of the second chapter, tormenting no one. Inside it, there is already contained one line, that once there is enough, one ought to let go, that one does not, for a little more for oneself, make things hard for another. A person with this character, once things are enough, lets go, and will not, plainly having enough, still clutch to the death, still want more, still hoard.

So you see how this chapter and the last are linked. Productive power, this chapter, is the foundation. It draws away the source of having-no-choice-but-to-grab, and gives that thousands-of-years-old good dream of every person having a way to live, for the first time, a chance to come true. Character, the last chapter, is the person standing on that foundation. It lets a person, once things are enough, truly be willing to let go and take no more, and keeps that chance, steadily, and turns it into the real thing. Productive power gives the chance, and character keeps it. Missing productive power, and that dream is forever an empty dream, the pie cannot be made big, and to rest on character alone to persuade people to divide will move nothing. Missing character, and that dream cannot stand steady either, for things are enough and yet everyone still wants to take more, to hoard, and there is chaos just the same. The two, neither can be missing. And of these two, the deeper, the more fundamental one, is character, is culture.

This is one of the deepest positions in this book, and it comes to ground in this chapter. The economy is not the last thing. The economy is one of the four institutions of a society, culture, the economy, politics, law. And of these four, culture is the bedrock. This new order for the economy that this chapter spoke of, productive power taking the place of grabbing, the non-labor share returning to the public, all under heaven at peace, however high, however well it is set up, the thing holding it up underneath is still the character within culture. Without that character of enough-is-enough-and-let-go, of tormenting no one, of holding others in the heart, however great the productive power, however fair the distribution, it will be hollowed out, a little at a time, by that bit in the human heart that still wants to take more. The economy, politics, law, from first to last, all lean on culture. This chapter looks however high, tells of productive power however fully, and coming to ground at the last, its root is still rooted in the soil of culture from the last chapter.

And here, at the very last of this chapter, let me lightly leave one stroke, a stroke that reaches toward the deepest place in the whole book. Things are enough, the lock is undone, all under heaven is at peace, and a person, when his life comes to its end, what does he truly leave behind? Not how much he clutched, for things are all enough, all more than can be used, and to have clutched them means nothing. It is the things he did, in his life, for others to see, that love which soaked into others and was handed down, generation upon generation. In the beginning there was not a single thing. And at the end, what is truly left in the human world is a great love. This stroke, in this chapter, is only pointed to here. It is the deepest place, which the very last volume of this whole book will tell in full. This chapter, to here, is steadily brought to its close.

But this chapter does not seal the door shut. This road is walked, and the door is left standing, drawn to but not latched. If, later on, from some small piece of news, some piece of common knowledge, a new light is thrown onto the economy, this door can be pushed open, and more people brought in, more added, another section put in. This book is alive, and this chapter is alive too, it is brought to a close, but not sealed dead, and it can go on growing. So this road through the economy, for now, comes to here. The next chapter takes you to see a more fundamental thing, the new order for politics. In this chapter, behind that lock, there was still a propping hand not undone in detail, that hand of the collusion of officials and business, that strand of power. That is the business of the chapter on politics. The next chapter takes you to see that hand clearly, and undo it.

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