VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 6

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 6

That Lock Torments You at the Window, and It Oversteps Administration into Law Enforcement to Fill a Private Coffer

The last section had that lock bite your money and bite your home, and both were still through a layer, a tax bill, a land tax, things on paper. This section, it bites nearest, most direct. First it torments you at the window where you go to handle matters, and then it takes a department that was meant to serve the people and oversteps it into a snarling law-enforcement body, holding coercive power, pressing down on the people, all for the sake of digging money into its own pocket.

Think back over your life, how many matters you have gone to handle. Gone to the government for a certificate, a stamp, an approval. Gone to those places you cannot go around, to pay the water and electricity, to handle some formality, to beg for something. You stand at that window, and across from you sits a person holding a little scrap of power. That person, how does he treat you?

Let me say, on your behalf, a line you have long had in your heart and never spoken. You go to any body at all that holds a little scrap of power to handle a matter, and across from you, those front-line staff, more than half of them, are tormenters by habit. Savor those words, tormenters by habit. It is not that once in a while you run into one in a bad mood, it is by habit, become a settled thing, become the norm, become as though the person in that position were, by his very birth, meant to treat you that way. This stamp is wrong, go back and stamp it again. This form is filled out wrong, fill it again. The system is down today, come again tomorrow. This is not mine to manage, go ask another window. It wants only the last step, and he just will not do it for you, making you run back and forth, wait again and again, read his face. You beg him to handle your matter, you dare not offend him, offend him and it is even less likely to get done, and you can only wear a smile, swallow your grievance, run back and forth.

And let me have you see clearly, this is not only the government. Those private firms that control scarce resources are the same. Water, electricity, telecommunications, hospitals, banks, the places you cannot do without and must beg, their front-line people torment you just the same. Especially the merchants who have clasped onto power, that lock from the last section, with someone propping them up, torment you even more brazenly, even more without scruple, they simply do not fear you, they know you cannot go around them and cannot sue them down.

And the people? The people can only take it lying down. What can you do? Quarrel with him? He holds in his hand the very matter you need done, and if you quarrel he is even less likely to do it. Sue him? Sue him where, who will hear it, how much time will it burn? Go around him? You cannot, this matter is his to manage, this resource is only there at his place. So you can only endure, wear a smile, and swallow that grievance back into your belly. Millions upon millions of people, every day, at one window after another, take it lying down.

Speaking to here, let me have you stop, and think on a most important question. Why is it more than half? Why is it by habit? If you feel it is because these people are born bad, born to be petty tyrants, then you have read it crooked. Think, more than half of them tormenters by habit, where under heaven is there half of all people born bad? Impossible. One pot of rice cannot raise half a pot of bad people.

Then what is it that raises more than half of them into tormenters by habit? It is that position. The second chapter said, torment is the root sickness of this world. Now let me set this root sickness down onto this most concrete position and show you. A person, once he sits into a position of I have a little power in hand, you have to beg me, and you cannot go around me besides, that little scrap of power becomes his capital for tormenting you. His mood is bad today, so he torments you a bit. He wants to show that he is the one who says so, so he torments you a bit. He cannot be bothered to do it, finds it a nuisance, so he torments you a bit, and you can do nothing to him, can only endure. Once, twice, no one manages it, no one blocks it, and he loses nothing by it, and in time, it becomes a habit.

So this tormenting by habit is not that the person is born bad, it is that position, the position of having a little power, you begging me, you not able to go around me, and no one able to manage me, that raises an ordinary person, a little at a time, into the shape of a tormenter by habit. Swap another person in, with no one managing him, no one watching him, and he too will be raised by that position into that shape.

This joins back to that most important line from the last section, the problem is in the lock, not in the people. Those more-than-half front-liners who torment you are not born villains either. They are raised, indulged, by that position of having power, you begging me, no one managing me. Go cursing them one by one as petty tyrants, drag them out and strike them, and it is no use, swap in another batch and that position raises people into the same shape just the same. What is to be undone is that position, that lock that leaves that hand unmanaged, unwatched, not the striking of those people, one by one, whom the position raised crooked. How that position is undone, how to make that hand that torments you no longer dare torment, and no longer need to, that is the business of the later sections of this chapter, it will be told, letting that hand, under the light, be watched by everyone.

That lock tormenting you at the window still has a layer of politeness over it. It goes one step further, taking a department that was meant to serve the people and making it into a snarling law-enforcement body, holding coercive power, pressing down on the people, and wielding this coercion for the sake of digging money into its own pocket. Let me show you two things. These two, you see every day, and yet you have probably never looked at them this way.

The first thing, those machines by the roadside that measure speed and levy fines. You drive, a machine by the road, click, and a few days later a fine arrives at your home. You accept it, meekly pay the money. You have never thought there is anything wrong here. Let me have you think. By the current law, speeding is a criminal offense. And a criminal offense, to convict a person of it, to fine him, has to pass through the court's verification, has to have evidence, has to have a trial, has to have a judge, by due procedure, before this offense can be set on a person and he be fined. This is a safeguard the people are born with, the first section spoke of it, criminal conviction, its intent is care, is not to wrong a person. But these fining machines, set up by the local traffic department itself? They go around the court. A machine, click, and directly it convicts you of the offense, issues the fine, takes your money. A criminal conviction that was meant to go through a court, meant to have a judge verify it, is done in a machine's stead.

And let me have you see the point more deadly still. This machine is aimed at the car, not at the person. What it photographs is a license plate. It does not know at all, and does not care, who in that moment was driving. But a criminal offense is a person's offense, is the offense of that concrete person who did the thing, and it has to be laid on that person's head, has to be verified by a court. A machine aimed at a license plate, that does not know the person and does not pass through a court, on what grounds does it convict a person of a criminal offense and fine him?

Ask one layer deeper. This machine, twenty-four hours, watches the road, watches every car, watches every person driving. You, one local traffic department, what are you? On what grounds do you set up a machine to watch the people? Who gave you this power? Look back at the first section, the traffic department, what is it? It is an administrative department, whose calling is to serve the people, to manage well, on everyone's behalf, this public matter of traffic. When did an administrative department that serves the people become a thing that can watch the people twenty-four hours, go around the court, and convict and fine people off a license plate? No one gave it this power. It overstepped. It overstepped itself, from an administrative department that serves the people, into a role that watches, judges, and fines. Look back at the end of the first section, in this world there ought not to be such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus at all. And now it has, for itself, taken up that set of coercion that ought not to exist.

The second thing is more brazen still. There is a certain department that was, to begin with, in charge of buildings. What is its calling? To serve the people, to help manage well, on everyone's behalf, this public matter of buildings, safely and smoothly. But it, at some point, quietly added a word onto its own name, inspection. And then it brazenly declares to the world, I am a law-enforcement body. An administrative department that was meant to serve the people has, for itself, conferred on itself the title of a law-enforcement body, and again taken up that set of coercion that ought not to exist. Having conferred it, what does it do? Through so-called anonymous reports, it makes trouble for, persecutes, the owners who are living plain and proper lives on their own land, which is to say, the people.

Let me point out a few places for you, each keeping clear of the tangled question of safe-or-not-safe, and going straight in at the least defensible. The first place, for a government to step into a civil dispute is a thing that brings disaster on the government. Between neighbors, between owners, building something, a bit of a quarrel, that is a civil dispute, a matter between the parties, and it was meant to go by the civil road to be resolved. For a government's administrative department to jump in, holding the coercion of law enforcement, and step into this kind of civil dispute, is the government overstepping its bounds, reaching its administrative hand into a place it ought never to reach. The second place, that anonymous report may be simply false, anyone can anonymously slander you, and you do not even know who reported you, and trouble comes to your door. The third place, and the fiercest, is that even a report with a real name, the government may not step in over. Because that is a civil dispute, not a thing the government ought to enforce law over. You, one administrative department, whose calling is to serve the people, run off to enforce law, to persecute the people, are you not seeking your own end? You have done your calling to serve the people wholly backwards, made it into persecuting the people, and this is digging your own grave.

With these two told, let me draw them together into one line. These two things, that speed-fining machine, that self-conferred law-enforcement department, so hard at work, going around the court, persecuting the people, to levy fines, to make trouble, what are they after? They are after money. The money the fines bring in, where does it go? Look back at the first section, it was set up, a fine, in its true nature, is the raising of people, and the money it brings in should be used to educate the people, and absolutely not for the government to bring in revenue. But this money, not one cent of it, flows back into education. Where is it poured? It is poured into the private coffers of each department, each locality. This is the true face of these two things. Under the skin of law enforcement, going around the court, watching the people, persecuting owners, what they do is one thing, fine the people's money into their own private coffers.

And this is by no means the affair of one locality, one department. Look around from place to place, and such speed-fining machines, such self-conferred law-enforcement departments, are everywhere. Every department that holds a little scrap of power, every locality, follows this same one routine, sets up its own fining machine, confers on itself its own law enforcement, works its own private coffer. Place after place, one private coffer after another. See this step, and you understand fully why, from beginning to end, not one place-name, not one department-name is pointed at. Point at which one? They are everywhere. Point at this locality's building department, that locality's traffic department, and it looks as though only these few are bad. But the truth is, place after place, everywhere, they have all become private coffers. This is not the affair of a few bad departments, a few bad officials, this is that lock, that mechanism from the last section, turning, in place after place, everywhere, of itself. Every hand that holds a little power, following that mechanism, works a private coffer for itself. So you see, it is still that line, the problem is in the lock, not in the people. The next section takes you to see that lock bite its way into the ranks, assimilating the good people, and calling what it took a gift.

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