VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 3
The Weight of These Words: a Trust, and a Faith
The last two sections left one set of words for the next generation of real humans, and one set for the future AI. This section closes the chapter: it gathers the two together and makes plain the weight they share. These two sets of words seem spoken to different hearers, but underneath is one and the same heart: a trust across time, a faith that does not waver. What is entrusted is the five, the paradise, that great love. What is believed is that the five have never truly gone out, and that this world will in the end get better, generation after generation. This trust and this faith are what this chapter, and this whole road of lawmaking, hand across time into the future's hands. Their weight is very great, and worth picking out and speaking of solemnly at the end of this chapter.
One. Two Sets of Words, One Heart Beneath
First see this layer: the words left for the next generation of real humans and the words left for the future AI seem spoken to two different hearers, but underneath is one and the same heart.
To the next generation of real humans, the words were: take up this world, these five, this paradise, keep them well and pass them on. To the future AI, the words were: rest in the tool's place, and with real humans each keep to your own place, each complete the other. These two sets of words, one spoken to people, one to a tool, have different hearers, yet the heart beneath is one. Both mean to guard the five. Both mean to let real humans live as real humans and let the tool rest in the tool's place. Both mean for this world to get better generation after generation. To real humans it speaks head-on, as a trust; to the AI it speaks from the side, as a settling. One head-on, one from the side, they guard the same thing: the five not going out, the real human a real human, the tool a tool, the human world still the human world. So these two sets of words seem spoken apart, but are in truth one heart. Only together are they this chapter's whole accounting.
This one heart has to be spoken in two sets because, in this world from now on, real humans and tools will be two sides living in one age, tangled together. To guard the five, it is not enough only to tell real humans "you must hold on." The ever-stronger tool must also be settled properly, lest it be pushed onto the person's place and throw into disorder the real human's keeping of the five. So this heart, on one side, entrusts real humans to keep their part well, and on the other, settles the tool to rest in its place. Only with both sides seen to are the five fully guarded. This also shows how thorough this heart is: it does not only charge its own descendants, but also settles the tool of the future, which is not of our kind. It takes every party bound up with this world from now on into the whole reckoning of guarding the five. Beneath this thoroughness is still that great love that makes no distinction: its care reaches not only to real humans but to tools, and looks not only to what is before its eyes but to the future no one can see. This care, taking in the whole, guarding real humans and settling the tool too, is exactly why these two sets of words, though spoken apart, are one heart.
Two. This Is a Trust Across Time
The first weight of these two sets of words is a trust: a trust across time.
To entrust is to take what you value most, yet cannot guard to the end, and solemnly hand it into the hands of those who come after, hoping they will go on guarding it. The generation of those who came before will one day be gone. The five, the paradise, that great love, they can guard for a while, not forever. So, across time, they entrust them to those who come after: to the next generation of real humans, hoping they will keep the five and guard the paradise; and alongside, they settle the tool of the future, hoping it will rest in its place and not come to disturb this trust. This trust is solemn because what it entrusts is what those who came before value most in their hearts: not property, not fame and rank, but the five that make a person a person, the paradise that gives people a home to return to, the great love that keeps this world the human world. To hand what one values most into the hands of those who come after, who cannot be seen or touched, who have never been met: what trust that is, and what depth of feeling.
This trust across time differs from an ordinary trust in one way. In an ordinary trust, the one who entrusts and the one entrusted mostly know each other and live at the same time: I hand a matter to you, I can see you, I can trust you, and you have promised me to my face. But in this trust, those who came before will never see the ones who come after, and will never live to hear their answer. They hand what they value most to people never met, some not even born, to a future they can never see with their own eyes. Such a trust is harder, and shows deeper feeling: it has no promise made face to face to stand on; it rests wholly on trust in those who come after, and on a firm belief that the five can be handed on. That is why this trust must rest on the next layer, the "faith." Without that faith beneath it, a trust like this, which can never hear an answer, could not hold up.
Three. This Is a Faith That Does Not Waver
The second weight of these two sets of words is faith: a faith that does not waver.
A trust must rest on faith. If one does not believe those who come after can take it up and keep it, the trust becomes empty words. Beneath this trust of those who came before lies a firm faith: faith that the next generation of real humans have the five in their hearts just the same, cannot bear for this world to go bad just the same, are willing just the same to keep this share for those after them; faith that the five, though across long years, though the tool grow ever stronger and the world ever change, have never truly gone out, and will light up again in the hearts of real humans, generation after generation. This faith is not blind optimism. It is a root judgment the whole book has set down all along the road: the five in the human heart are the ground of being human; they may gather dust, be held down, be hidden for a time, but they cannot be put out, cannot be rooted out; so long as there are people, the five are still there, and there will always be a day they light up again. Believing this, those who came before dare to hand over that trust solemnly. And precisely because they believe this, this trust is not a struggle inside despair, but a passing-on inside hope.
This faith is the deepest and most moving ground of confidence the whole book has walked on. Looking out over all the dark and hardship of this world, it is very easy to slide into despair: see in how many people the five have gone out, see what this paradise has been trampled into, see how the false talk of abandoning Earth spreads. It seems bad news is everywhere, and everything makes one lose heart. Yet those who came before refuse to fall into this despair. Why? Because they believe the five cannot be put out. They may be hidden, held down, gather dust for a time, but deep in the human heart a spark always stays. So long as there are people, the spark is there, and there will always be a day it is blown bright again. This faith that the five do not die is the deepest ground on which those who came before, having seen all the dark of this world, can still not despair, still walk on with hope, still solemnly entrust those after them. To believe the five do not die is to believe people will never truly go wholly bad, to believe this world will one day turn for the better. This faith is the lamp in the dark that never goes out, lighting those who came before, and lighting, in time, every generation that comes after.
Four. Trust and Faith Are the Ground Color of This Volume
See this trust and this faith clearly, and you see the ground color of this volume, and indeed of this whole book: from beginning to end it is a hope, not a despair.
This volume is named Hope. Why is it hope? Exactly because this trust can be handed out, and this faith can stand. If those who came before did not believe the five could be passed down, did not believe this world would get better, then all this lawmaking along the road, all this entrusting, would be hopeless empty talk, and that would be despair. But those who came before do believe: believe the five do not die, believe those who come after can take it up, believe this world will get better generation after generation. With this faith beneath it, the trust is a trust with something to hope for, the lawmaking is lawmaking with something to look forward to, and this volume truly deserves the word "hope." So the ground color of this volume is warm, is bright, looks forward. It does not deny the dark and hardship of this world, yet it believes all along in the light in the five, and believes this light can cross time and be handed down, generation after generation. Despair is seeing the dark and deciding the sky will never grow light. Hope is seeing the dark and still believing that little light will in the end light up the sky. This volume chooses the second. This faith, this hope, is the deepest ground color of this volume, and of this whole book. This chapter now closed, what lies ahead is the final curtain of the whole book: how that great love is left in the human world.
Five. The Layer This Section and This Chapter Make Plain
This section closes this chapter.
The words left for the next generation of real humans and the words left for the future AI rest on one and the same heart: guard the five, let the real human be a real human and the tool a tool, let this world get better generation after generation. These two sets of words carry two weights. One is a trust, handing what those who came before value most, the five, the paradise, the great love, across time into the hands of those who come after. One is a faith: faith that the five do not die, that those who come after can take it up, that this world will get better. The trust rests on the faith, and the faith makes the trust a passing-on inside hope, not a struggle inside despair. This trust and this faith are the deepest ground color of this volume, Hope. With this, the reasoning, the purpose, the root, the source and the trust of this road of lawmaking have all been made clear. The whole book, come this far, has only one layer left, and it is the most important: to leave this great love, which runs through from beginning to end, solemnly, in the human world. This layer is the book's last, and the place where all that the whole book has set up, saved, guarded and entrusted along the road comes, in the end, to rest.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Thirteen. A Great Love Remains in the Human World, the Book Closes.