VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 2
Some Seats, Some Trades, Will Vanish of Themselves
The last section made plain the five kinds that must be held by real humans, and left the other side of the question. Which seats and trades will vanish as the tool comes into its place? This section lays it down. As the tool takes the pure yield onto itself, the seats and trades of pure force and pure speed, needing none of the five, vanish of themselves. This is no disaster, no robbing of a living. It is the ordinary course once each thing is in its place, and it asks for a settling.
What vanishes is the seat of pure yield, the trade of pure force and speed that needs none of the five. A task that is only force, only speed, repeated and mechanical, needing not the heart that lifts to the living person nor any one of keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, is a matter of yield, the tool's field. Once the tool is in its place, these are done by the tool, fast and much and tireless, and the seat where a person once labored empties of itself. Hauling, the repeated motion on a line, plain entry and reckoning, plain retrieval and filing, these pure-yield seats thin out as the tool comes home. This is not the tool snatching someone's rice bowl. It is that kind of work, which was always the tool's, given back to the tool. Whatever is force, speed, countable, needing none of the five, is of this list. It was always the tool's own portion, borne by people before only because there was no tool to use. People need no longer sit those seats racing the tool at the tool's own traits, spending a life there.
Say it plainly: what vanishes is the seat and the trade, not the person. Hauling is given to the tool, and the person who hauled is still there, a real human with the five, only no longer trapped in the pure-force work. The seat gone, the person stands. The trade changed, the person's worth undimmed by a hair. This telling-apart is vital, for at the words this trade will vanish people take fright, thinking those in it are to be cast off. They are not. What is given back to the tool is the work that was always the tool's. What is sent back to the real human's place, back to the human world, are the people long trapped in that work. See that what vanishes is the seat, not the person, and you will not mistake this settling for an abandoning of anyone.
This vanishing looks like disaster, work lost, living cut off. Think a layer deeper and it is a good thing. A task of pure force, pure speed, is a person using himself as a tool, one day after another, the same motion, a life spent racing the tool at who is faster, cheaper, more tireless. That is one of the ways of making oneself into a tool that the last volume laid down. The tool comes, takes that kind of work, and the person is loosed from using himself as a tool. This is a loosing, not a robbing. The one who spent himself in that seat gains back his hands, his heart, his life, to do what needs the five, the faithful, the truly human. So the vanishing of these seats is not a shoving of people to the edge. It is the loosing of people from a tool-like drudgery. Seen from the seat, one seat is gone, a loss. Seen from the person, a person is loosed from drudgery and gains back his own hands, his own heart, his own life, a gain. As the last volume put it: you are not out of work, you have been let out.
Yet if the vanishing comes fast and hard, and those in the seats find nowhere to go at once, they still fall into straits. So this asks for a settling, not drift. That settling is what the earlier volumes' institutions tend. Economy makes the yield large, returns it to the public, lays the floor that none go hungry: though a seat is gone for a time, no one is cut off at once from a living. Culture grows the five, raises character, teaches the skills a real human should have: in the turning of seats, a person has something to learn, to grow, and can move toward the real human's place. Politics, the instrument turned to service, should in this turning prop, guide, and floor, so that no one falls through for a seat gone. These together let this vanishing, this moving of people, happen smoothly, with settling, not left to drift and drop. Here the four-part mechanism shows its use: it makes the tool's homecoming an orderly loosing, not a disordered upheaval.
See these layers and you know the vanishing of seats and trades is the ordinary course once each is in its place, neither to be feared nor left loose. The tool to the tool's place, taking the pure yield. Those pure-yield seats and trades vanish of themselves. The real human to the real human's place, to the human world, to do what needs the five. This vanishing and this homecoming are two faces of one settling: the pure-yield seat gone, the real human seat filled. Down the ages, every advance of the tool saw some old seats and trades vanish and some new ones rise, common enough, no wonder in it. What differs now is that the tool is strong enough to take nearly all the pure yield, so the seats that vanish are many and fast. Just for that, the settling institution matters the more. With settling, the vanishing is a loosing, an each-to-its-place. Without, it is upheaval, people cast into straits. The same vanishing, with settling or without, ends worlds apart: one the joy of a person led home to the human world, one the calamity of a person dropped. Laying that living mechanism is to make this homecoming go within settling, and be a joy, not a calamity. The next section lays down: come back to the real human's place, how does a person keep the five, not slacken in the years, not slide back toward the tool? By one way: everyone holds a license, studies year on year, is reviewed year on year.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.