VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6
Settling the Person in the Human World
The last chapter turned from the bones of the institutions to their spirit, and came back down to the human world: the real humans come back to the human world are kind to one another, help one another, respect one another. But the human world always has some seats, some matters, that must be borne by those who hold the real human's place. And once the tool is back in its place, some seats are always left empty too. Come back to the human world, which seat does a person land in? Where do the people who are freed go? How do those who sit in the seats keep from slackening and growing idle in the years? These few things, this chapter makes plain one by one. The chapter's three sections settle, one by one, the people come back to the human world. First, it lays down who holds the real human's place: those who serve the public, teachers, high-skill people, the various licensed practitioners, the soldier and the officer of the peace, five great kinds, each of which, because its seat cannot be done right without the five, must be held by a real human. Then it lays down how seats come and go: the seats of pure yield vanish of themselves as the tool comes into its place. This is no disaster. It is the ordinary course of each to its place, and it needs a settling. Last, it lays down how the five are kept: everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year, a living labor that keeps the five.
Section One first says what the real human's place is. The seats of this world fall, coarsely, into two kinds: the seat of yield puts out force, is about efficiency, can be counted, and is given to the tool. The real human's place cannot be done right without the five, and must be held by a real human. The five great kinds name the great ones, the plain ones, and give the reader a measure to take to the other seats. Those who serve the public hold that common instrument. Looking up files and reckoning can all be given to the tool, but that last thought, "is it right to treat this citizen this way," nothing but a real human can make. The common instrument reaches widest, so this kind is set first. Teachers hand the five down, one generation after another. A teacher with the five gone out harms a whole generation to come. A student can learn knowledge from the tool, but only from a real human can he learn how to be a real human. High-skill people keep the bound of where the tool must stop, and the various licensed practitioners, the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, the accountant and their like, decide over lives and affairs. The soldier and the officer of the peace hold the force that guards people and land, and this section names the so-called autonomous weapon: letting the tool decide on its own the life or death of a living person is the most dangerous kind of giving way this world knows.
Section Two turns to the other side. Hauling, repeated motions on an assembly line, plain data entry and reckoning, plain retrieval and filing, seats of pure yield of this kind will thin out and vanish as the tool comes into its place. This section first nails down one telling-apart: what vanishes is the seat and the trade, not the person. The seat is gone, the person is still there, and the person's worth is not lessened by a hair. Standing at the seat's end and looking, it seems a loss. Standing at the person's end and looking, a person has got out of the drudgery of pure force, got back his own hands, his own heart, his own life, and this is a loosening of bonds, not a robbing of a road. The people who are freed go to the real human's place, go to the human world. But if the vanishing of seats comes fast and hard, and people find nowhere to go for a time, they will still fall into straits, so it needs a settling: the economy lays that floor where no one goes hungry, culture teaches people the skills a real human should have, politics props up, guides, and catches from below in the turning. With a settling, the vanishing is a loosening of bonds. Without a settling, it is throwing people into straits.
Section Three answers how a person, back in the real human's place, keeps the five. That keep, guard, love, mercy, heart is alive: grown, it thrives, not grown, it withers. The license is the threshold for entering the seat, and what it proves is not only ability and skill but, more, the five. Though the five are hidden within, they show without, proven by a person's words and deeds all along, the real matters that have passed through his hands, the common judgment of those who work with him. It is a living license, not a dead license where one test settles a whole life. Study year on year is growing oneself, its weight on growing the five, asking again, "do I still treat every person who comes before me as a living, real human." Ability gone to waste can still be made up, but the five, once gone out, are hard to light again. Review year on year is being looked at by others. It is not tormenting, it is guarding, like an elder asking a younger one once a year whether that heart is still there. The one who carries out the review must himself above all have the five whole. A review that loses its way falls back again onto the old road of harming people lawfully from the last volume. The three follow on one from another: the license holds the gate at the start, study grows them all along, review watches and keeps them to the end.
What this chapter sets steady is the settling of the person in the human world: real humans come back to the human world, hold the real human's place, are kind to one another, help one another, respect one another, and keep the five with the license, the study, and the review. The living mechanism of the earlier volumes is the bones of the five, this way is the blood of the five, and with bones and blood both whole, only then can the five grow long and never go out. But this human world the person comes back to, what kind of place is it, in the end, and why is it worth guarding so, keeping so? The next chapter makes it plain head on: this human world is Earth, the one and only paradise in this universe.
Chapter contents:
Section One. Those Who Hold the Real Human's Place: the Five Great Kinds.
Section Two. Some Seats, Some Trades, Will Vanish of Themselves.
Section Three. Hold a License, Study Year on Year, Be Reviewed Year on Year: a Way to Keep the Five.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. Those Who Hold the Real Human's Place: the Five Great Kinds.