VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 12
There Are Plenty of Good People to Step In, and the Honest Can Rise
The sections before invited the corrupt, the benefit-takers, all out of the door of holding power, that iron of barred for life, and set up the rules for choosing officials going forward, resting on that heart, hold a license, be reviewed yearly, be reforged. This section undoes your last, most solid worry, invite the corrupt, the benefit-takers, one by one, all out of the door of holding power, and choose officials going forward guarding that heart, guarding so strictly, and then the government's so many positions, who fills them? Left empty? This, there is not the least need to fret over. There are plenty of good people, lined up, waiting to step in.
This worry of yours is, invite the corrupt, the benefit-takers, one by one, all out of the door of holding power, and choose officials going forward guarding that heart, guarding so strictly, and then the government's so many positions, who fills them? Left empty? And besides, it was said before, the honest have all along been pressed down, unable to rise, so where are there ready honest people to take over these positions? This, there is not the least need to fret over. There are plenty of good people, lined up, waiting to step in. And it is precisely because there is this great batch of good people lined up that those hardest rules of the sections before can be welded dead, can stand. These good people, where from?
Look back at that fire of the first volume, this great AI turning, how many people it culled off their former posts. In the first volume, all along it fretted over these culled people, thought over how to settle them. Now, come to this chapter, let me tell you, among these people culled by AI, there hides how great a force.
Among them there are plenty of good people. People of character, of ability, solid in their work, clean in their hearts, batch upon batch, culled off their former posts by that fire. It is not that they are of no use, it is that the work they used to do was taken over by AI. They, the person, their character, their ability, that solid clean heart of theirs, are not the least diminished. Then this great batch of good people, of character, of ability, and for a time without a post, just so, serve as the reserve.
Think what a great batch of people this is. This great AI turning culls not one or two, but tens of thousands, in every trade, people who used to work plain and solid. Among them there are teachers, engineers, accountants, salespeople, writers, ability of every kind. These people, a whole life plain and proper, eating by their ability, clean in heart, solid in work. They lost their former posts, not because they are no good, but because that work the machine does faster. So great a batch of able, character-having, and for a time idle good people, set there, is in itself a mountain of gold. You fret that the government has no one to fill positions? In this mountain of gold, there are plenty of fitting people. Pick the ones with that heart for the people, invite them out, patch their character, get them a license, and they step exactly into those positions freed up.
Those positions freed up in the government, the ones the corrupt, the benefit-takers vacated, and the important positions going forward, exactly, from this great batch of good people culled by AI, pick the ones with that heart for the people, get them a license, patch their character, and step them in.
You see, with this, the difficulties on both ends are undone together. That fire of the first volume culled a great batch of good people, fretting over how to settle them. This chapter invites out a batch of the corrupt, frees up a batch of important positions, fretting over who fills them. Join the two ends, and the culled good people exactly fill the freed-up positions. The difficulty on one end exactly undoes the difficulty on the other. This is exactly what this book has told all along, four strengths, the chapters and sections lending one another a hand, the people culled by the fire of the first volume becoming, at the fourth chapter, the reserve army for undoing this lock of politics.
Savor how wondrous this joining is. One hard problem, called people with no posts, nowhere to settle. Another hard problem, called positions with no people, nowhere to fill. These two hard problems, each looked at alone, are fretful deadknots. But join them, and the two deadknots undo each other of themselves. The person with no post goes to fill the position with no people. The position with no people catches the person with no post. One and one is not two fretful loads added, it is the two fretful loads canceling each other, gone. The things of this world are often just so, fix your eyes on one end alone, and it is a deadknot, set the several related ends together, and that deadknot undoes itself. This book, from beginning to end, sets the matters of the chapters, of the volumes, together, and lets the difficulty on this end go undo the difficulty on that.
And it is precisely because there is this great batch of good people lined up, because talent is more than can be used, that those hard rules of the sections before can be set up. Think, if there were no one to replace them, if talent were tight, then that iron of the corrupt and benefit-takers barred for life could not be set hard. Invite the people all out, and there is no one to do the work, and what then? Only to invite the corrupt back again.
But now, there are plenty of good people lined up, and you may as well invite the corrupt, the benefit-takers, all out of the door of holding power, and there is not the least fear of no one to take over, for behind them that great batch of good people culled by AI, of character, of ability, with that heart, are lined up waiting to go up. Talent enough, more than can be used, and that iron of barred for life can be welded dead, can stand. You see, that fire of the first volume, at the start was a fret, a difficulty, having culled so many people, nowhere to settle them, but come to this chapter, it becomes instead the backing, and precisely because the fire culled down so many good people, talent so much it cannot be used, this chapter's hardest iron dares be welded dead. The difficulty of that day becomes the backing of today.
More important still, with this, that force of the honest being unable to rise from the front is bent, wholly, around. Look back at that section before, when that lock was coiled, it was if you want to rise you have to skim, and the ones who skim, the bad money, rose, and the ones who hold to honesty, the good money, were pressed at the bottom, unable to rise. Now, that lock is undone, oversight, barred for life, choosing officials by that heart, and the positions of holding power rest no longer on skimming, but on that heart for the people. Then who can go up? The honest ones with that heart, solid and clean, can go up. Those honest ones pressed at the bottom in their day, unable to rise, those good people culled by AI, of character, of ability, they can rise.
This is a thing that both eases the breath and warms the heart. Think how many honest people, good people, in this world, a whole life held to their calling, held to their conscience, would not join the muddy flow, and the result? Pressed at the bottom, unable to lift their heads, watching the ones who know how to scheme, to take sides, willing to skim, one by one climb over their heads. How many people of real learning and real skill, of a heart of pure devotion, were buried this way a whole life. This is the most chilling thing about this world, it does not reward good people, it punishes good people instead. But once that lock is undone, this chilling thing is turned, wholly, over. The ones who hold to their calling, with conscience, with real learning and real skill, can at last, by that heart, that body of ability, rise up aboveboard, and sit into the positions they ought to sit in. Good people no longer have to eat, a whole life, the loss of their goodness.
Corrupt-and-you-can-rise is bent into for-the-people-and-you-can-rise. The honest cannot rise is bent into the honest can rise. This one bending, and that machine, at the root, is changed. The ones it chooses up, uses, are no longer the ones who skim along that lock, they are the ones carrying that heart for the people. The people sitting in the machine are changed, a crop of them, and that machine, then, truly, is bent back to its proper place of managing matters for the public, protecting the people.
Savor how great this one bending is. The former machine was a machine that forced good people into corrupt officials, crowded honest men out, the more used the worse, the more sat in, the more bad money. This machine now is a machine that chooses the heart-having up, holds the honest up onto their positions, the more used the better, the more sat in, the more good money. The same machine, that lock coiled, and it is bad money driving out good, that lock undone, and it is good money taking over bad. The difference is all in that lock, whether it is undone or not. The lock undone, and the road up, from skimming, is bent into for-the-people, and the whole machine comes alive, comes straight.
By here, how to save, how to undo that lock, from oversight to this section, is set up in full. That set of four strengths set up above, cannot, do not want to, need not, dare not, is turned into one solid method after another. Oversight, putting that hand under the sunlight, so he dares not, and so he cannot hide either. Saving him, saving him from going on committing crimes, swapping him down to be reforged, letting him stop committing crimes, pulling him out of the lock. The corrupt and benefit-takers barred for life, in the benevolence an iron, saving the person but the door of holding power welded shut, no muddying at all. Choosing officials not on high pay but on that heart, hold a license, be reviewed yearly, be reforged, keeping that heart at the root. The good people culled by AI as reserve, the honest able to rise, talent enough, that iron standing, corrupt-and-you-rise bent into for-the-people-and-you-rise.
This set of methods used through, and that lock twisted of power, money, rules, the human heart, loosens, strand by strand, and the people inside the political system caught in the lock are, one by one, undone from the lock, saved out. The corrupt, the benefit-takers, invited out of the door of holding power, reforged and becoming people. The good people carrying that heart, stepped in, able to rise. And that machine, bent back to its proper place of protecting the people.
This is the first time in thousands of years, resting not on striking people, but on undoing the lock and saving people, going to undo that lock no one in thousands of years undid. Look back over this road, from saving first the people inside the political system, to the four strengths brought at once, to oversight, saving him from going on committing crimes, barred for life, resting on that heart, the good people stepping in, from beginning to end, not one person was brought down, not one villain was set up. What was done, from first to last, is one thing, undoing the lock and saving people, one lock after another undone, one locked person after another let out, together with all the people bitten by that lock under their hands, saved out together.
For thousands of years, how many, facing corruption, raised the knife and hacked a crop after crop of people, and that lock did not stir, and that circle never stopped. This book, for the first time, sets down the knife, takes up the pen, does not go hacking those people, one by one, caught in the lock, goes to undo that lock no one in thousands of years undid. The lock undone, and those people caught in it loosen of themselves, turn back of themselves. That machine, of itself, comes straight. This, this is the way to truly make that circle stop.
Look back over this whole road, and you understand why, all along, you were held back, held from your fire, held from striking. It is not soft-heartedness, not letting anyone off. It is that striking, thousands of years have tried it, and it is a dead road, and undoing the lock and saving people is the living road no one in thousands of years has walked. Strike people, and a moment's satisfaction, but that lock is still there, and in a while another crop of corrupt officials. Undo the lock, and it looks slow, looks ungratifying, but the lock undone, and that machine truly comes clean, comes straight, and going forward, crop after crop that come up are good people with that heart. One is curing the branch and not the root, hacking people yearly and them growing yearly, one is, at the root, cutting off that lock, letting the world truly get better. What is wanted here is the latter. The next section takes you to see the machine after it is bent back to its proper place, and this road through politics, steadily, walks to its end.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.