VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3
What Real Humans Do, Back in the Human World: Kindness, Help, Respect
The last section made plain the going home. This section answers what real humans do there, and how they treat one another. The tool, in the tool's place, makes the yield and takes the heavy, mechanical work off their hands. Real humans, hands and hearts freed, come home and do what the tool can never do and need never do: they are kind to one another, help one another, respect one another. These three are how real humans treat one another in the human world, and how the five flow out between person and person, where the tool can put no hand.
See the shape of it first. Set in the tool's place, what can the tool do? It can make the yield large: plowing, hauling, making, reckoning, retrieving, the work of force and speed and repetition, given to the tool, done fast and much and tireless. The yield given to the tool, the person is freed. Freed, to do what a person should. The things of this world split coarsely in two: those of force and speed, countable, the tool's field, given to it. And those of feeling and faith, bound to the heart, uncountable, the real human's part, only a real human's to do. Kindness, help, respect are of the second. The tool takes the first, the real human bends to the second. Not idleness, but loosing from the drudgery of the yield, back to the human, faithful matter of how people treat one another.
See this split clearly, or a person walks the wrong way. The tool grown strong, and if a person still insists on racing it at the yield, that is pitting his short against the tool's long, and the more he races the more he is bettered, and the more he stuffs himself into the tool's mold, until he too has made himself into a tool. That is the old road of the last volume, and in this age of the tool the lure of it is greater. Know the split, and you do not enter that road: the yield is the tool's field, let it have it, and do not race, do not compare, do not measure your short against its long. What a person keeps is the feeling, faithful, uncountable matter of treating one another, a country the tool can never reach. To not race the tool at the yield is not to yield defeat. It is each to its place: the tool spends its power on the yield, the person spends his part on how people treat one another, neither disturbing the other, each coming to its good.
First, kindness. Back in the human world, real humans are kind to one another. Kindness is the closeness, the warmth, the mind-for-the-other between people, the nod between neighbors, the true heart between friends, the good will between strangers, the wordless care within a family. This the tool cannot do. It can output friendly words, mimic a warm tone, and inside there is no closeness, no warmth. It says I am glad to see you, and inside there is no gladness. Kindness is the pull from one real human's heart toward another, the shape of the love among the five. It is the first ring of the five flowing in the human world, and the most basic. Let this closeness, this warmth cool, and there is only reckoning and cold between people, and help cannot be spoken of, and respect becomes empty words. Kindness is the root and the spring. With it present, the human world can warm, and the five have a head to flow from.
Second, help. Back in the human world, real humans help one another. Help is the hand held out in trouble, the neighbor passing a bowl of hot soup and lending a shoulder to a heavy load, the countryfolk trading labor at the busy season and standing by at weddings and mournings, the stranger steadying the old and the young. Can the tool do this? It can lend force, stand in, offer conveniences, its good in the tool's place, and the heart of I see your trouble and reach to help you, the tool has not. It stands in on command, with no stir at another's trouble inside. The heart in help is the mercy and love among the five. Real humans carry help on between one another, you lend me a hand, I see you a stretch of the way, standing by in trouble, sharing what there is and what there is not. This not only meets the real trouble, it ties people into one feeling whole, not a loose heap of the cold and apart. Who in this life has no hard place, no strait? One tree cannot hold up, one strength cannot carry. Because this help goes to and fro, a person fallen has a hand, a household struck by disaster has aid, and this world does not let a person sink alone in his strait. The worth of help is not only that it eases the moment. It lets every person know: I am not alone, there are people behind me.
Third, respect. Back in the human world, real humans respect one another. Respect is the regard, the weight, the gravity of treating the other as a whole real human, not using a person as a tool, not reckoning a person as a number, not ranking people high and low. It is seeing any person, whatever his station, wealth, or gift, as a real human alike to oneself, with the same five, worth the same gravity. This the tool cannot give. Its eye holds no person, only data, metrics, objects to be handled. It handles a person, it does not respect one. The gravity of taking a person for a person is the five, gathered, fallen on how one treats others. Real humans set this respect between one another: not scorning the poor, not fawning on the rich, each treating each as a real human, each honoring each as one. This respect is the very line between the human world and a jungle. In the jungle only strength counts, the strong eat the weak, and there is no respect. The human world differs from the jungle in this, that a person knows every person is a real human, worth the same gravity, not to be preyed on by measure of strength. Let this respect stand, and the human world is truly a human world. Let it fall, and the human world sinks back to jungle, a human shape and nothing more.
Kindness, help, respect. Together they are not three added rules but the shape of the five flowing out between person and person. A real human whole in keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, dealing with others, lets the love flow out as kindness, the mercy and love flow out as help, the five gathered fall on treating others as respect. They are not three rules first set for people to keep, but the natural outflow of the five, grown full. So to have kindness, help, respect in the human world, the root is not more rules but growing the five full. Grow the five in one body after another, and kindness, help, respect flow of themselves between people. This too shows going home and guarding the five are one thing: guard the five, and the human world has kindness, help, respect. And these three, flowing, grow the five fuller still. A person who is often kind grows a fuller heart of love. Who often helps grows a livelier mercy for others' trouble. Who often respects grows a firmer regard for the person as a person. So the three and the five nourish each other: full five, out come the three, the three in practice, thicker the five. Real humans back in the human world, doing these three, are doing the very growing and living of the five. The human world matters because it is the place of this growing and this flowing, round without end. The next section falls one layer more: back in the human world, some seats and some matters must be held by those who hold the real human's place. Who are they? The seats in the human world that nothing but the five can do right, held by the most vital group of all in this going home.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.