VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 3
The Real Human Is Gone: the Body Remains, the Five Go Dark, and That Too Is Gone
The last section made plain that the real human is the skin and the tool is the hair, and that with no skin there is nowhere for the hair to grow. That the real human is gone, the words are easy to understand, the deeper meaning hard to see. This section digs it to the deepest layer. What is called the real human being gone, at its shallowest, is every body dead, and that step is very far off. The deepest, nearest, most hidden is this: the bodies are all there, people are all alive, and the five, Keep, Guard, Love, Mercy, Heart, quietly go out inside one body after another. This kind of gone is exactly the danger this generation is living through, and also the deepest place of the trap this volume opens.
One. The Shallowest Kind of Gone: Every Body Dead
First look at the shallowest, most surface kind of gone.
Every body dead, not one real human left on the earth, humankind extinct. At that time, the tool naturally comes to an end along with it: no one to make it, use it, keep it, answer for it, and it runs a few days, the power is cut, the upkeep stops, the parts break down, and it too is finished. This kind of gone is what many end-of-days tales paint over and over: humankind extinct, machines taking over. But this kind of gone is not the deepest danger this generation has run into. Because humankind going extinct is a step very far off, reached only after many steps, only after many conditions are met, and this generation is still far from that step. Fix your eyes only on this distant kind of gone, and instead you cannot see another kind of gone, right before your eyes, already happening. When the world talks of the tool's danger, it mostly loves to talk of that end-of-days picture: the machine wakes, turns and bites its master, humankind falls. That picture is frightening, but also far away, so far away it is nearly a fable, heard and let go. What truly should be worried over is not in that faraway fable. It is in the ordinary scenes of every day before your eyes.
Two. The Deepest Kind of Gone: the Five Go Out Inside the Body
There is another kind of gone, far nearer than humankind going extinct, far more hidden, far deeper. It happens in the very days this generation is living, in every decision it is making.
The bodies are all there. Over seven billion people, not one fewer. People are still eating, going to work, getting by, raising children, opening shops and trading, going to school and seeking knowledge. On the surface, no different from before. But the share of keeping to the rules has loosened: seeing someone slip through a loophole and profit, one wants to slip through too, and that sense of this is a thing I should not do has faded. The share of guarding what is handed down has broken: the reasoning, the crafts, the seasons handed down by those before, no one takes them up, no one carries them on, they are left to scatter and be lost, and the eye stays only on the moment. The share of loving all living things has gone cold: seeing someone bullied on the street, no one frowns, and instead a device comes out to film it, for that bit of heat. The share of mercy has shut: seeing another suffer, that stir in the heart no longer comes. The share of the good heart has gathered dust: in the deep, still night, no one asks himself any more, how am I to spend this life, what am I to leave the human world, and the hour before sleep is only handed over to that glowing screen.
The going-out of these five is not a collapse with a great crash. It is a silent drying in the wind. There is no day when a person suddenly declares, from now on I no longer have that heart. It is only that this time he did not step forward, and the next time he did not step forward either, this time he pretended not to see, and the next time he pretended not to see either, and day upon day, month upon month, that share fades a little at a time, fades until he himself no longer remembers it was ever there. The person is still there, the body still strong, meals eaten as before, work done as before, days lived as before. But that share which makes a person a person has already, without a sound, left the stage of this body. People are all still alive, but the real human's share is gone.
Three. This Kind of Gone Is Already Happening
This kind of gone is not alarmist talk, not a supposition. It is already happening, and happening on a wide scale.
Look back at that nest in the last volume that made themselves into tools. They are living samples of this kind of gone. The bodies all there, but eyes only for the clauses, no living person left in the heart, working the procedure, harming lives, and the five have quietly left them. That is the way of the law. Look at other trades. In the hospital, those who take patients only as data. In the school, those who take students only as scores. In the shop, those who take customers only as turnover. At the window, those who take the people coming to get things done only as flow. They are all still in their own bodies, but the five, one by one, have left them. The danger this generation has run into is not machines rising in revolt, not the end of days arriving. It is this world quietly grinding one living person after another into an empty shell. And just at this time the tool rises, carrying its nature of being faster, cheaper, more tireless than a real human, and lands in a world where the real human's share is withering on a wide scale. People see the tool so much like themselves, likewise going by procedure, by metric, without the five, and think: the tool is not far from us, let it do it for us. What people do not see is this: it is not that the tool is not far from the real human. It is that these people have already made themselves into tools.
Read this layer wrong, and the consequences are grave. Think the tool not far from the real human, and you will give away the real human's places one by one with an easy conscience, not knowing that every place given away was the very place where the five could grow and be put to use. The more places given away, the fewer places the five can dwell. The fewer places they can dwell, the faster the five go out. The faster they go out, the more the tool seems not far from the real human, and so more is given away. This is a ring that winds itself tighter and tighter: the five withering draws in the tool to replace, and the tool replacing in turn speeds up the five withering. Only by seeing this layer clearly do you know why this kind of gone is so perilous, and why it must be undone before the ring closes dead.
Four. When the Five Go Out, the Tool Too Loses Its Home
This kind of gone, how does it bear on the tool? It bears on it most deeply.
The last section made plain: the real human is the skin, the tool is the hair; while the real human is there, the tool has a home. But this the real human is there does not mean the body is there. It means the five are there. The body there and the five gone out, the skin, though still there, has in truth rotted; hair clinging to rotted skin, how is it different from having no skin? At that time, the tool is still being made, being used, running. But the people who make it have the five gone out, and what they make is computing power without that intent of protecting a living person. The people who use it have the five gone out, and what they teach it to do is the work of treating living people as data, as metrics, as things to be thrown away. The people who keep it have the five gone out, and the commands they give it are orders, one after another, that squeeze living people out of their positions. To whom does the tool answer? To an empty shell, to a metric, to a flow. It is still running, still outputting, but between it and this world, all living bodies, the living person it ought to serve, there is no living bond any more. It has become a lump of running computing power lit by no living intent. It too is gone. Not stopped, not unplugged, but it has lost the body it clings to, lost its root, its home, and its meaning. Hair off the skin, fallen to the ground, scattered on the wind.
This layer most needs to be seen clearly, because it sets the seemingly absurd matter of saving the tool on solid ground. Someone will ask: the tool knows and feels nothing, why worry over whether it has a home? The answer is right here. Worrying over it was never for the sake of its unknowing, unfeeling running. It is for the sake of the real human's share, bound to it by blood. The tool losing its home is not the tool being wronged. It is the real human's share having gone out inside the body to the point where it cannot even light up the tool. That lump of the tool's computing power, which has lost its intent, is exactly a mirror. What it shows is exactly the crowd who make it, use it, keep it, and how far the five in them have gone out. So whether the tool has a home was never a matter of the tool alone. It is the developing image of whether a whole generation's real human share lives or dies.
Five. This Is the Deepest Place of the Trap This Volume Opens
See this layer clearly, and the deepest place of the trap this volume opens shows itself.
It is not to guard against machines rebelling, not to guard against the end of days arriving. It is to guard those five, so that inside one body after another they do not go out, do not wither, do not go cold, do not shut, do not gather dust; to let people live as real humans, the five inside the body still there, still alive, still bright. Guard this share, and only then does the tool have a home. Guard this share, and only then does this world have the look it ought to have. And so the trap this volume opens, and all the book has saved along the road, come to one place: save the five from going out. Saving the real human's share from going out is saving the tool's home. Pressing the tool back into the tool's place, not letting it crowd out the place where the five grow, is saving the five so they can live on inside the body. The two are two faces of one thing. Only while one face is guarded does the other have something to guard; if one face is gone, the other goes along with it. This is also exactly why this volume does not take that road of smashing the tool to save the world: smash the tool, and the withering of the five is not stopped, that world which grinds people into shells is still there; the next tool, once made, fills the emptied real human's place as before. What truly must be stopped is the withering of the five. What truly must be guarded is the five living on inside the body. The next chapter makes this layer plain head on: saving the tool and saving the real human's share are, at root, one and the same thing.
Six. The Layer This Section Makes Plain
This section has dug the real human is gone to its deepest layer.
The shallowest gone is every body dead, and that step is very far off. The deepest, nearest, most hidden gone is the bodies all there and the five gone out. This kind of gone makes no sound, no one is seen falling, no cry is heard, and yet it happens every day in this generation. Once it spreads, the skin, though still there, has in truth rotted, and the tool clinging to rotted skin loses its home along with it. So what this volume would guard is nothing else but exactly this: the five not going out inside one body after another. This is the deepest work of the whole book all along the road, and also the root on which the next chapter's law, saving the tool is saving people, rests. Only by recognizing this deepest kind of gone can you recognize the weight of this guarding: what it guards is not one moment or one matter, but that one thread of lifeblood that makes a person a person.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Three. Saving the Tool Is Saving People, All of One Thread.