VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 7

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 7

That Lock Bites Its Way into the Ranks, and Calls What It Took a Gift

The sections before had that lock bite your money, your home, torment you at the window, use coercion to persecute you and work a private coffer, and all of it was biting the common people outside the machine. This section takes you to see how that lock bites its way into the machine, assimilating, one by one, the people who sat into positions meaning to do good work. Then it shows you its deepest, and hardest to notice, move, taking what it bit, what it took, and turning it around into a gift. See this section through, and you have seen the whole shape of how that lock bites people in the human world.

Let me tell first how a person gets into this machine. In many places, to become a civil servant, to enter the government to handle matters, you have to sit an examination. And what does it examine? Go and turn over those examination questions, and what is examined is serving the public and keeping the law, serving the people with all one's heart, being upright and clean, set after set, aboveboard.

By rights, this gate is guarded quite well. At the entrance, first you are examined on whether you are for the people, whether you are clean, and only when you pass are you let in. Then the ones who get in, should they not all be good people? But look one layer down, and you see where that lock is hidden. That gate at the entrance examines the mouth. It examines whether you can say, whether you can answer, those few words, serving the people with all one's heart. On paper, everyone answers full marks, and everyone, entering the gate, is a body of fine words for the people. This gate is a show, a formality, it examines the mouth, not the heart.

The truly deadly part is after the gate. A new person, carrying a whole breast of a true heart for the people, gets in. He sits into a position, lifts his eyes and looks, and he sees that that lock, that chain of the collusion of officials and business from the last section, has long since been coiled inside this machine. He sees what kind of people are the ones who rise fast, who sit high, they are the ones who know how to take a side, who are willing to skim along, who understand sending the benefit upward. He sees that road, of if you want to rise you have to go along with this chain, laid out plainly there.

Then what does he do? He wants to rise, wants to go up, and this is human nature, and no shame. But that road up is held by that lock, and if you do not go along and skim, do not take a side, do not join the muddy flow, you cannot rise, you are pressed at the bottom, a whole life. If you want to go up, you have to join the great army of corruption, and only then is there a position for you.

And so that good person who, at the entrance, was a whole breast of a heart for the people is, by this machine, slowly, assimilated. Either he grits his teeth and goes along with that chain, becomes one in the army of corruption, and only then can he rise. Or he holds to that honesty and will not skim. And then? The honest man can never rise. He holds to his conscience, will not take a side, will not skim, will not join the muddy flow, and that road up held by the lock has no share for him. He is pressed at the bottom, watching the ones who skim, one by one, rise past him, sit above his head. His heart grows cold, and either he endures on, or he leaves. This machine leaves the positions to the ones willing to skim, and crowds the honest man out, presses him down at the bottom.

Think how many good people are worn away, just this way. A young person, carrying a breast of hot blood and a clean heart, tests in, wanting to do some real thing, to do the common people some good. But the moment he sits in, he runs into that lock, sees that road clearly. Go along that road, and he betrays that heart he had entering the gate. Do not go, and he is pressed at the bottom a whole life, unable to lift his head. How many people, in this two-way bind, wear that clean heart flat, wear it away, a little at a time, and in the end become the very kind of person they most looked down on in their younger days. It is not that these people, one by one, are born bad, it is that lock, forcing a crop after crop of good seedlings, alive, into this shape. You look at that machine full of corruption, and the one you should hate is not those people, one by one, whose hearts were worn away, it is that lock which forces good people into this shape.

Let me give this thing its plainest name, bad money drives out good. The ones who skim, the bad money, are lifted up by this machine, one by one. The ones who hold to honesty, the good money, are crowded down by this machine, one by one, pressed down. Over time, the ones who rise, who sit into the important positions, are for the most part bad money. The honest good money is either assimilated into bad money, or pressed at the bottom and out of the game.

You see, this is the shape of that lock biting its way into the ranks. It does not only bite the common people outside, it also, inside, assimilates a crop after crop of good people who entered the gate with a true heart into the army of corruption, and crowds the honest men, one by one, out. And the place where you see most clearly that the problem is in the lock, not in the people, is exactly here.

Look at that person who entered the gate with a whole breast for the people, and later went along and skimmed. Was he born a bad person? He was not. Entering the gate, his heart for the people was true. It is that lock, that chain of if you do not skim you cannot rise, that forced him, drew him, assimilated him, a little at a time. He was bitten in by that lock. So look back at that machine full of corruption, and do you suppose a batch of bad people was recruited in? It was not. It is that a batch of good people was recruited in, examined at the gate on being for the people, and by that lock, batch by batch, assimilated into the army of corruption. The problem was never in those people being bad, it is in that lock of if you do not join the muddy flow you cannot rise. Drag out this batch of the corrupt and swap in a batch of new good people, and so long as that lock is still there, the new good people go in and are assimilated into the army of corruption again, and the honest are crowded out again. For thousands of years, how many batches of people were swapped, and that lock was not undone, and so every batch of good people that went in was assimilated, and every batch of honest men could never rise. What is to be undone is still that lock.

Those bitings before, the tormenting, the fining, the seizing of homes, the assimilating, at least bite with a pain you can see, can feel. At the last of this section, let me take you to see its deepest, and hardest to notice, move. This move is, it takes what it bit, what it took, and turns it around into a gift.

Let me take a thing you have probably seen and never thought much on, and make you an example. Nowadays, in the beacon country, in many public places, libraries, universities, museums, when an event is held, at the opening, a passage is often read out. This passage has a common shape, it is called a land acknowledgment. The person on the platform, solemnly, sincerely, reads it out, and the sense of it is, this land under our feet was originally the place where such-and-such an indigenous people lived, generation upon generation. We are grateful to them, grateful to the original caretakers of this land.

You hear this passage, and what do you feel? Sincerity. Heart. The person on the platform is most likely sincere, willing, at the opening, solemnly, to mention once the old owners of this land, to give them a word of gratitude. In so many places that long ago forgot this thing clean, she still remembers, still is willing to say it, and this is a rare, not-yet-extinguished conscience. And yet, hearing this passage, tears fall.

Why do tears fall? Because you have heard, under this sincere passage, the thing that one word lightly covered over. That word is gave, or, the sense of grateful to them for giving us this land, and the like. Let me ask you, this land, the indigenous people, did they give it? Was it something they, of their own willing hearts, cupped in both hands and sent over? It was not. This land, the indigenous people did not give. It was taken away. Some hundreds of years ago, people from outside reached this land, and in the hundreds of years after, the indigenous people, counted in the tens of millions, had their homelands seized by force, were driven off the land they had lived on generation upon generation, walked that road that had no end in sight, and, one by one, were taken away by that great calamity. A whole stretch, a whole people, were all but wiped off this land. This is how this land came to be emptied. And the ones who came after built, on this emptied land, their cities, built that library.

But now, that sincere passage on the platform, how does it say it? Grateful to them, for giving us this land. Look at what that word gave has done. It takes we took from you, and lightly turns it, into you gave us. It takes hundreds of years of the taking, the tens of millions taken away, and with one warm word, gave, one word of gratitude, covers it over. It even invites the wronged side into this sentence, and has them play the role of a generous giver, has the ones whose thing was taken be, in this sentence, the one who gave.

The tears fall on this word gave. They fall on this, that so great a wretchedness, tens of millions of people, hundreds of years of the taking, is covered by so light a word, so polite a phrase, covered over tight, so that not one of the people sitting below listening feels there is anything wrong, and all are moved by the sincerity of it. And the tears fall on the other side too, they fall on the person on the platform, on that little scrap of not-yet-extinguished conscience. That she is willing to remember, willing at the opening to mention it solemnly, in the face of a wretchedness so great, forgotten clean by almost everyone, this little scrap of still-remembering is already rare enough to make a person who can see the wretchedness underneath let tears fall.

I will not curse this passage as hypocrisy. To curse it as hypocrisy is to stand on the side of justice, and then you can no longer see the person on the platform, that little scrap of true heart, and this book, from beginning to end, does not stand on justice, does not judge people. Nor will I make excuses for this passage. Only, I have seen. Seen, under that word gave, the wretchedness covered over. And seen too, in the one who speaks this passage, that scrap of not-yet-extinguished conscience. Seen it, let tears fall, and let out a sigh.

Speaking to here, let me draw this move in to that eye, the one set up in the first section, read the intent, not the letter. This is that lock's deepest, hardest to notice move. Those bitings before bite with a pain, you can see them. But this move is different, it takes what was taken and, with a warm, sincere, high-sounding phrase, covers it into a gift, into gratitude, covers it so that you not only cannot see the taking, you are moved by the sincerity. Cast that eye on it and you see through it, you cannot read only the letter of the sentence, gratitude, giving, sincerity, you have to read its intent, this land, in the end, was it given, or taken? The letter is grateful to them for giving us, and under the intent, is we took from them. Only the one who reads the intent sees through this layer.

Look back over this whole section, this whole chapter, at that lock. It bites your money, calling it a tax for everyone's good. It bites your home, calling it an auction by procedure. It torments you, sitting behind a window that serves you. It works a private coffer, flying the flag of law enforcement. It assimilates good people, examining at the gate for being for the people. And here, that word gave is the warmest, hardest to notice piece in this skin. Do you notice, every mouthful it takes is wrapped in a layer of pleasing, proper, sincere skin, for your good, by procedure, to serve you, according to law, for the people, gratitude. So this whole section, from beginning to end, teaches you one thing, take that eye that reads the intent, and cast it through every layer of pleasing skin, and see clearly, underneath, what that lock is biting, what it is taking. The more pleasing, the more sincere, the more high-sounding the skin, the more the thing covered underneath is, very often, to be watched. The next section, for the first time, takes you to do the thing no one has done in thousands of years, not to strike the people the lock is biting and drawing in, but to undo that lock, to save those who are locked, the people inside the political system.

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