VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 1

VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 1

Those Who Hold the Real Human's Place: the Five Great Kinds

The last chapter made plain that real humans back in the human world are kind, help, and respect, and left a question: some seats must be held by those who hold the real human's place, and who are they? This section lays it plain. Coming home, most of the yield is given to the tool, but some seats nothing but a real human can hold, because to sit them and do them right takes the five. These holders of the real human's place fall, coarsely, into five great kinds: those who serve the public, teachers, high-skill people, the various licensed practitioners, and the soldier and the officer of the peace.

What is a real human's place? A seat where, without keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, the work is done wrong, done ill, even done to harm. It asks not for speed, not for thrift, not for high yield, but for the heart that lifts its eyes to the living person, the self-keeping that holds the line, the charge that guards people and what is handed down, the mercy that cannot bear another's pain, the good heart that asks itself in the night. Every seat of this nature is a real human's place, none of which a tool can replace. The five kinds below are each one kind of it. These five are not the whole list of real human seats, but the great and plain ones. Real human seats are scattered everywhere. Whatever seat turns, right or wrong, on whether the five are present in the heart, is one. These five are the most vital, the least to be given to the tool: some hold the common instrument, some hand on the heart, some keep the tool's bound, some decide over lives and affairs, some hold the force that guards people and land. Naming them, the reader gains a measure for the rest: whatever seat is like these in nature, keep it in real human hands.

First, those who serve the public, who hold the common instrument. The instrument is turned to service, as the earlier volumes laid, but the instrument is dead and the one who holds it is a living person. Each decision he makes falls on living people: to grant this household's request, to approve that one's relief, how to treat a citizen come to his window. These need the five. Without the heart that guards the people, he takes the citizen for a nuisance, a number. Without mercy, he is blind to suffering. Without the self-keeping of the rules, he turns the power to private gain. The instrument may take a tool's help, filing, reckoning, retrieving. But the last, deciding thought, whether this treatment of this citizen is right, nothing but a real human can make. This kind stands first because the common instrument reaches widest and weighs heaviest. One official's turn of thought bears not on one person but on a whole countryside. Let the tool sort his files and reckon his sums, that is the tool's good. But the weighing of whether this stroke of the pen brings a household joy or grief, whether he can answer to the people and to his conscience, the tool can never make.

Second, teachers, who hand the five from one generation to the next. The root of teaching is not pouring knowledge into a head, which the tool does fast and wide. The root is handing keep, guard, love, mercy, heart down the generations, growing whole real humans. This nothing but a real human can do. A teacher before a student hands not only words but himself: how he treats people, the student watches. How he keeps to what is right, the student learns. His care for this student's whole life, the student feels. This teaching by living example, person growing person, the tool cannot do. Give the seat of raising the young to the tool and you grow a crop that can answer questions and has none of the five. This kind is the graver, for it bears not on the moment but on the next generation of real humans. An official with the five gone out harms the citizens of today. A teacher with the five gone out harms a whole generation to come. Let the tool help in the classroom, drilling and marking, that is its good use. But the seat of handing down the way, the seat where the teacher standing there is himself the shape of a real human shown to the student, must always be stood by a real human. A student can learn knowledge from the tool. Only from a real human can he learn how to be a real human.

Third and fourth, high-skill people and the various licensed practitioners, who hold a special skill bearing straight on lives and affairs. High-skill people make the tool, use it, steer it. The tool is made, tuned, set by them, and the bound of where the tool must stop, which seats may not be given to it, is in their hands. This bound needs the five to keep: without the heart that guards people, they push the tool onto the person's place for name and gain. With it, they hold the line again and again, keeping the tool in the tool's place, not to cross and harm. The various licensed practitioners, the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, the accountant and their like, hold a special skill and decide straight over lives and affairs. A doctor weighs a patient's life and death. A lawyer carries a client's whole household. An engineer's stroke bears on a bridge, a building, the lives of thousands within. These seats need the five: the heart that sees who this person is, the care of one at the edge of a chasm, the good heart that asks itself in the night, none to be spared. Give these seats to the tool and you hand lives and affairs to an engine with none of the five that can answer for nothing. Seen together, one keeps the tool's bound, one keeps the measure of lives and affairs, and these are the joints where the tool and the person meet closest, and go wrong most easily. The tool can help greatly here, trial-reckoning for the one, checking for the other. But the thought that keeps the bound, the thought that keeps the measure, the last weighing over thousands of lives and fortunes, is forever the real human's part.

Fifth, the soldier and the officer of the peace, who hold the force that guards people and land. This force, used right, is the shield of the people and the country. Used awry, it is an edge that wounds them. How this force is used, when, on whom, the thought that decides needs the five to be right. A soldier, an officer, facing a particular person, a particular case, the judgment of whether to move this force and how far, hangs on the heart that guards people, the mercy, the self-keeping of the rules. That thought must never be given to a tool. The earlier sections spoke of a so-called autonomous weapon, one that would, on its own, mark, judge, and decide the life or death of a living person. That is the giving of this real human's seat to an engine with none of the five, the most dangerous handing-over this world knows. The force that guards people and land, in its last thought, must be held in real human hands. These five kinds, those who serve the public, teachers, high-skill people, the various licensed practitioners, the soldier and the officer of the peace, each holds a seat nothing but the five can do right, and so each must be a real human. The next section asks the other side: with these seats that must be kept, which seats and which trades will vanish of themselves as the tool comes into its place?

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.