VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3
What Real Humans Do, Back in the Human World: Kindness, Help, Respect
The last section made clear the going back to the human world, and at the end drew out a question: real humans, back in the human world, what should they do, how should they treat one another? This section answers that question straight. The tool makes the yield in the tool's place and takes the heavy, mechanical work off people's hands; real humans, hands freed and hearts freed, go back to the human world, and what they do is 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 also how the five flow out naturally between person and person. Here the tool cannot put in a hand at any one of them.
One. Give the Matter of Yield to the Tool, and Let People Do What People Should Do
First, look at the shape of it. Set the tool in the tool's place: what can it do? It can make the yield large. Plowing, hauling, making, reckoning, retrieving: this work of spending force, of efficiency, repeated and mechanical, given to the tool, it does fast, does much, and never tires.
Give the matter of yield to the tool, and people are freed. Freed, what do people do? They do what people should do. The things of this world split coarsely into two kinds. One kind is the matter of yield, spending force, competing on efficiency, countable; this is the tool's own field, given to the tool to do. The other kind is the matter of how people treat one another, warm and faithful, bound to the human heart, uncountable; this is the real human's own part, and only a real human can do it. Kindness, help, respect belong to the second kind. The tool takes on the first kind, and real humans can give their whole minds to the second. This is not letting people sit idle with nothing to do. It is loosing people from the drudgery of the yield and bringing them back to how people treat one another, the matter that is a real human's own part. What people should do was never to race the tool over whose yield is higher. It is to do what the tool cannot do: treat one another warmly and faithfully.
This division of labor must be seen clearly, or people will go the wrong way. Once the tool is strong, if a person still insists on contesting it at the yield, that is pitting his own short against the tool's long; the more he races, the more he sees he falls short, the more he stuffs himself into the tool's mold, until at last he has lived himself into a tool too. That is the old road of living oneself into a tool, laid out in the last volume, and in this age when the tool flourishes, its lure is greater. Know this division of labor, and you do not enter that wrong road: the matter of yield is the tool's own field, give it to the tool; a person need not contest it, need not compare, need not measure his short against its long. What a person keeps is the matter of how people treat one another, warm and faithful and uncountable, a whole country the tool can never reach. People not contesting the tool at the yield is not giving up. It is each going back to its place: the tool spends its power on the yield, the person does his part in how people treat one another, neither disturbing the other, each coming to its own good.
Two. Kindness: That Closeness Between Person and Person
The first, kindness. Real humans, back in the human world, are kind to one another.
Kindness is that closeness, that warmth, that care of putting your heart in another's place, between person and person. It is a word of greeting when neighbors meet, a true heart when friends gather, a good will between strangers, the unspoken concern within a family. This kindness the tool cannot do. The tool can output "friendly words," can mimic "a warm tone," but inside it there is no closeness, no warmth; it says "I am glad to see you," and inside there is no gladness. Kindness is what flows out from a real human's heart and reaches toward another heart; it is the shape of the "love" among the five. Real humans, back in the human world, set this kindness flowing between person and person: sincerity when they meet, understanding when they are together, keeping watch for one another in hard times. This flowing is a warmth of the human world the tool can never make, and it is also the first thing, and the thing most needed, that real humans should do once back in the human world.
Why say kindness is most needed? Because it is the first ring of the five flowing in the human world, and the most basic, the earliest ring. The bit of love in the human heart stirs first, and only then come helping one another and respecting one another after it. If even this closeness, this warmth has gone cold, then between person and person only reckoning and coldness are left; help cannot be spoken of, and respect too becomes empty words. So kindness is the root, is the spring. With this present, the human world can be warmed, and the five have a head to flow from.
Three. Help: That Helping Hand Between Person and Person
The second, help. Real humans, back in the human world, help one another.
Help is that helping hand, that steadying arm between person and person, that hand held out in danger and trouble. It is neighbors passing a bowl of hot soup, lending a hand with a heavy load; it is country neighbors trading labor at the busy farming season and helping out at weddings and funerals; it is strangers steadying the old and leading the young, sending charcoal in the snow. Can the tool do this help? The tool can lend force, can stand in for people, can offer all kinds of conveniences, and that is its good in the tool's place; but that heart of "I see you are in trouble, and I reach out to help you," the tool does not have. When it stands in, it stands in on command; inside there is no not-bearing-it, no wish to help, born of seeing the other's trouble. That heart in help is the shape of the "mercy" and the "love" among the five. Real humans, back in the human world, carry this help on between person and person: you lend me a hand, I see you a stretch of the way, standing by each other in danger, sharing what one has with one who has not. This help does not only meet the real trouble; it also ties people into one whole with feeling, instead of a heap of loose sand, each alone, each cold to the other. Living in this world, who has no hard place, who has no strait? A single log cannot hold up a house, a single strength cannot carry the load; precisely because this help goes to and fro, when a person falls someone helps him up, when a household meets disaster someone lends aid, and this world does not let a person sink alone in his strait. The worth of help is not only that it puts out the fire at the brow, but more that it lets every person know: I am not alone, there are people behind me.
Four. Respect: That Regard Between Person and Person
The third, respect. Real humans, back in the human world, respect one another.
Respect is that regard, that weight, that gravity of treating the other as a whole real human, between person and person. It is not ordering people about as tools, not reckoning people as numbers, not sorting people into ranks of high and low, noble and base. It is, on meeting any person at all, whatever his station, wealth or gifts, owning him as a real human no different from oneself, carrying the same five, worth the same gravity. This respect the tool cannot give. In the tool's eye there is no "person," only data, metrics, objects to be processed; when it "processes" a person, it is not "respecting" a person. That gravity in respect, of taking a person as a person, is the shape of the five gathered together and falling on how one treats others. Real humans, back in the human world, set this respect between person and person: not scorning a person because he is poor and lowly, not fawning on a person because he is rich and high, each treating each as a real human, each honoring each as a real human. This respect is the very dividing line by which the human world is a human world and not a jungle where the weak are meat for the strong. In the jungle only strength and weakness count, the strong eat the weak, and there is no such thing as respect. The human world differs from the jungle exactly in this: people know that every person is a real human, every person is worth the same gravity, and whether he may be preyed on is not decided by strength or weakness. Once this respect stands, the human world truly becomes a human world; once this respect is lost, the human world sinks back into the jungle, with only a human shape and nothing more.
Five. The Three Together Are the Five Flowing Out
Kindness, help, respect: the three are made clear. Looked at together, they are not three rules added on from outside, but the shape of the five flowing out naturally between person and person.
A real human whole in keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, dealing with others: that love flowing out is kindness; that mercy and love flowing out is help; those five gathered together and falling on how one treats others is respect. Kindness, help, respect are not three rules first laid down for people to obey; they are what flows out naturally once the five are grown full. So if the human world is to have kindness, help, respect, the root is not in laying down a few more rules but in growing the five full. Once the five are grown full and come alive in one body after another, kindness, help, respect flow of themselves between person and person. This is also exactly why going back to the human world and guarding the five are one thing: guard the five, and the human world has kindness, help, respect of itself; with these three flowing, the five, in the flowing, grow fuller and fuller. Real humans back in the human world doing these three are doing exactly the work of growing the five and living the five.
One more layer must be named here: kindness, help, respect do not only let the five flow out; they turn around and grow the five as well. A person who often practices kindness grows that heart of loving people thicker and thicker; who often practices help grows that heart that minds another's trouble livelier and livelier; who often practices respect grows that regard of taking people as people firmer and firmer. The other way round, if a person stays long in a place where people are cold to one another, help no one, and look down on each other by rank, then the five, even if he has them, will wither a little more day by day. So kindness, help, respect and the five grow each other: when the five are full the three come out, and when the three are practiced the five grow thick. Real humans back in the human world, practicing these three, are not only letting the five already grown full flow out; in this day-after-day treating of one another, they are growing the five fuller and fuller and making them live brighter and brighter. The human world matters precisely because it is the place of this growing and this flowing, going round without end; cut off from the way people treat one another in the human world, the five lose this growing and must in the end wither. The next chapter follows on and falls one layer further: back in the human world, there are always some seats, some matters, that must be borne by those who hold the real human's place. Those who hold the real human's place, who are they? They keep those seats in the human world that nothing but the five can do right, and in this picture of going back to the human world, they are the most vital group of people of all.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.