Memoirs of a fallen Sith - Chicken or the Egg
You told Bobby to listen to Jimmy Witchard? He was in my gun club. People say he fried his brain one day staring at the sun. 'Course, he couldn't have been to smart to do that in the first place. Kind of a chicken-egg thing.
Image Credit: http://kingofthehill.wikia.com/wiki/Jimmy_Wichard
Han, Reign of Gaozu year 1, Luoyang, Imperial Palace
“How then, can Han avoid the fate of Qin and Chu?”
“By accepting the fundamental reality of human nature, your Majesty.”
“That men tend naturally towards the good? That compassion unites all men?”
“ . . . Aha ha! Your Majesty just demonstrated the danger of studying philosophy without an appropriate tutor.”
“Are your suggesting the supposed goal of rectification of names is but a sham? Am I to interpret the Analects as a spoof?”
“No, your Majesty. Zhengming is the true stated purpose of Confucianism, but establishing “truth” is not the ultimate aim of our philosophy.”
“I receive an impression that you don’t truly believe in your own philosophy.”
“Are men naturally inclined towards virtue and goodness, your Majesty? Are men truly united by a sense of compassion for each other?”
“This is that of which your sages speak!”
“If such tendencies are truly natural, then why the need for our philosophy? Why the ludicrous waste in oceans of ink committing every remark and syllable of Confucius and Mencius instructing men of their natural tendencies? It would be as farcical as composing a compendium on eating, drinking, or sleeping.”
“. . . then men are naturally evil.”
“No, your Majesty. Men are trainable, much like one can tame horses, dogs, or cattle. We, or rather, I do not deceive myself with the delusion of men’s inherent virtue, or their inherent depravity. Our philosophy is not the naiveté of Fa jia or Mohism. I am not such a hopeless idealist, in the vein of Han Feizi to ignore practicality and reality.”
“Explain.”
“Mozi believed in inherent virtuousness of man. Thus, he perceived the reality of suffering and misery as resulting from lack of resources. His philosophy, if one could term it, is essentially acquisition of increasing resources to satiate man’s needs, in order that man may live as his nature dictates. An utterly ludicrous drivel, but convincing enough that the barbaric Xiongnu built their confederation on Mozi’s methods. Mozi’s insanity induced him to provide advanced defensive technology and tactics to all combatants, during the Spring and Autumn period, resulting in the exponential misery of the Warring States. If he weren’t such a pure ideologue, one may mistake his actions as being mercenary or self-serving. He believed that by changing the environment, and progressing technical knowledge, man would inevitably produce all his necessities and recognize the futility of war.”
“Why has he failed?”
“Mozi failed to acknowledge one of the fundamental aspect of human experience. Man experiences the world in relation, not in some absolute, abstract fashion. Self-reflection and authenticity seem convincing, but how does a man define himself? How is authenticity construed? Man derives his character in relation to and in conflict with the external world and each other. The term necessity is meaningless in the absence of a reference framework. What is luxury today will become a necessity tomorrow. It is somewhat surprising that for all of Mozi’s technical innovations and disregard for social convention, he failed to recognize that man’s conception of himself will also shift, should the reference matrix become displaced.”
“Hmm . . . as he advanced defensive technology, the frame of war shifts, resulting in even deadlier siege weapons, requiring even more advanced defensive work . . .”
“Precisely, your Majesty. But Mozi’s failure is not only limited to the intensification of war. A society whose foundation lies in providing material wealth for its members’ desires, necessitates increases in acquisition of exponentially greater quantities of resources to infuse into its system to maintain stability. Such a society is not ruled by government, but rather driven by ravenous hunger. To satiate this societal force, the state must engage in perpetual warfare, as a means of political survival. Such a state will consume all the resources under Heaven in its mad expansion, before eventually turning inward and consuming itself. There is no future in Mozi’s philosophy other than an empty, desolate earth.”
“What of Han Feizi? His philosophy is a derivative of Mozi’s.”
“Han Feizi became disillusioned in the idea of man’s inherent virtuousness. Thus, he added a second aspect to Fa jia, enforcement. He recognized that men are not naturally virtuous, and thus, required external incentives to adhere to the rational standards of his philosophy. Sadly, his error was attributing inherent rationality to man’s nature. His philosophy lacks any training aspect regarding the use of reason, but focuses entirely on enforcement of rules and more rules. Han Feizi’s vision is much like his master’s, concentrating the state apparatus in maintaining an external, material means of control. That Han Feizi primarily used inflicting of pain to actualize his society, compared with Mozi’s provision of gratuity, is but a superficial contrast to their unified, underlying assumption of man’s natural tendency towards virtue.”
“How would a government, whose philosophy assumed men were naturally evil, manifest itself?”
“Do men govern tigers, your Majesty? If men are irredeemable, then there is no purpose to politics. Such men can be hunted, but can not be governed. That we have politics and social organization suggest that man is not inherently evil.”
“Then how do we train men? The limits of legal enforcement, we’ve already discussed.”
“In my travels, I’ve encountered many fantastic aspects of life. There is a village, where some people keep monkeys as pets. Oddly, the monkeys are not kept in a box, as one would expect given their proficiency at climbing, but rather kept in a pen, much like one would corral a dog. Intrigued, I inquired into their methods and discovered a unique training method for the monkeys. Initially, the villagers captured five or so monkeys from the nearby forest. They placed these monkeys in a pen, but left an obvious escape path out of the pen that can be easily climbed by the monkeys. Then, the villagers installed a giant bell near the end of the escape pole. As each monkey climbed the pole towards freedom, a village, hidden out of sight, would ring the bell, surprising the monkey, and the monkey would fall. The villager would repeat the process a few times, until the monkeys, having cowed into submission, no longer attempted to flee from their pens. Fascinatingly, by the time I visited the village, the villagers had removed the bell. Apparently, the five or so original monkeys, when new captured monkeys were brought into the pen, actively pulled-down the new additions whenever they attempted to escape. Even more amazing, none of the monkeys that I viewed were the original monkeys, those having been already sold. The monkeys in the pen never experienced the training method, but were actively enforcing the lessons of their predecessors faithfully, without any understanding of their belief system.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“What are traditions and rituals but behaviors inherited from our forebears, for good or ill, that circumscribe men’s actions and thoughts? From whence do these traditions originate? For what purpose are these rituals performed? Such questions are seldom asked by those who blindly ape their forebears. Like the monkeys, with enough training, any man can be held in thrall with proper rituals and constrained with appropriate traditions.”
“Are you suggesting that the ten-thousand rituals and traditions in your Analects are but sham?!”
“What matters if they are, your Majesty? Did Confucius truly learn all these rituals, traditions, and history of the Zhou dynasty, or was he merely a convincing fraud? I do not know. As a purveyor of Confucianism, it is my job not to care about such trivialities. The intent of our philosophy is to establish a stable, social order, within which men can have the luxury of debating concepts as rights of man, nature of divinity, quality of afterlife, and other such futile mental exercises. When discussing human origins and societal foundation, truth can be . . .”
“Inconvenient?”
“Irrelevant. Confucius linked the basis of his philosophy to the Zhou dynasty and Duke of Zhou. But we both know that prior to the Zhou was the Shang; and prior to Shang, Xia. Prior to Xia, who knows, and does it matter? Did Zhou inherit these traditions and rituals from Shang and Xia uncorrupted and perpetuated their practice in pure form? Unlikely. The only relevant aspect regarding the origins of these rituals and traditions is that those being trained in their observation believe in their legitimacy and purity.”
“Your philosophy is supported by nothing more than credulity!”
“What within that of the human sphere is not based solely upon credulity, your Majesty? By what reason does your Accountant of Revenue measure the treasury ledgers in ban liang? By what argument do your subjects still segregate themselves in relation to the arbitrary regnal divisions concocted during the Warring States era? Much of societal edifice stands purely on the foundation of belief and gullibility.”
“Are we to build our civilization on nothing but myths? You propose we perpetuate and encourage the dissemination of potential falsehood. Are we to deny the people the truth they deserve?”
“Truth, your Majesty? Do your subjects desire for truth? Do they not blindly support your land-grants, crop subsidies, and relief from military conscription? Where did the Han acquire additional land for the land-grants your peasants so appreciate? From whence did the Accountant of Revenue procure the resources for the much needed crop subsidies? How would the Han prevent Xiongnu raids into the heart of Han with depletion in military personnel from their celebrated reduction in conscription? Such critical questions are seldom considered by the untrained mind of your deserving subjects, provided that their myopic, self-interests are not threatened. Typically, the peasants are content to rationalize their circumstances with whatever belief, regardless of factuality, that concords with their preferences. Truth does not motivate the ignorant, your Majesty, nor does truth bind a society together.”
“Your philosophy is not what is appears to be. Perhaps, it can prove to be of use in the matters of state.”
“Qin Shi Huang lived the 15 years of his reign in fear and trepidation from assassination and rebellion. He attempted to frustrate potential assassins with his constant peregrination, while intimidating future rebels with the accompanying imperial guard in constant battle readiness. Does your majesty wish to rule the Han in similar fashion, as a nomadic Xiongnu? We offer methods to bind the ignorant and the untrained, within a social matrix, from which even the fleeting impulse to disobedience could not translate into action.”
“How then, does your philosophy concord with the ignorant to be able to train them?”
—to be continued—
That seems more to be the thrust of what the wily Confucian seeks to effect.
While many people may be sheeple, I am not.
Regardless of what the monkeys around me insist on, I will test my bonds.
Your good emperor would find it profitable to kill me, as I upset his power. This is why there must be no emperors, so that free men might revel in the truth, which does exist.
Surely, it is inconvenient for them who would enshrine their own power, and relegate others to the lie of serving the powerful as righteousness.
The truth is that we are free.
The summary regarding the intent of the wily Confucian is very well formulated! Yes, living within a stable, social order requires certain compromises and acceptance. If we allow men to be "free," as you desire, then who will keep the Xiongnu at bay? In the libertarian paradise of self-enclosed, isolated entities, who will grant crop subsidies? In the voluntarism of libertarian pseudo-state, to whom will the people turn in order to legitimize property rights? The basis of libertarian freedom predicates property rights and guarantee of individual sanctity, which does not exist in the natural, or the supernatural, sphere. These are arbitrary concepts forged via the use of force and maintained by the will of the ruler/state.
A measure of a competent king would not be a boy throwing tantrums at his subjects for perceived offense. A measure of a ruler would be he who having mastered himself, his passions, and his appetites, serve as an example for his subjects to emulate. There is no benefit to killing one's subjects for disobedience, when methods for correction of error and incorporation within the social matrix are readily available. Men are trainable, some require more assistance, but no man is irredeemable; it only requires patience and proper organization of resources to help those who misperceive the benefits as hazard.
Rules are not rulers. Free men can choose to agree to follow rules of their mutual voluntary accord, without necessity of governmental monopoly. That nature itself shows this is possible in every nutrient pathway is demonstrable.
Social species organize themselves variously, according to their needs. Very simple organisms, such as colonial bacteria, leave no room for individual variation. More complex species, such as wasps, are considerably more lenient. Highly complex species, such as apes, dolphins, and people, required extraordinary variability in order to function well, and that even the most enlightened monopoly on power has ever failed to persist in the long run establishes that such monopoly as government entails is nonfunctional.
While I concur that killing me out of childish pique would ill serve monopolists, doing so because I promulgate freedom and create means of securing to myself and my community the power such rulers demand for themselves would be wise.
Except that it would be in order to preserve that power, which is unwise.
Freedom is wise, as it enables optimal quality of life for society's members - rather than just the few in power. As an autodidact I submit that it is unnecessary to train men, who can demonstrably train themselves, after their parents have done their job of providing the foundation for self actualization.
I will always know that stealing from me is not a benefit to me. Every form of arbitrary power over my free will will always be hazard, rather than boon.
Throughout human history, no society that has organized itself, centered on the concept of freedom has survived for long. The vaunted American rebellion that gave rise to the independent colonies failed miserably within a year, requiring the very freedom lovers to jettison their cherished Articles of Confederation for formation of a more centralized government. Rules need to be enforced by someone with monopoly on force, otherwise, the existence of unenforced rules become mere suggestions. That most enduring forms of social organization tend to be autocratic seem to suggest that man require organization, direction, and obedience.
The primary purpose of social and government organization is to provide a stable environment for their subjects to be able to develop their talents, within certain boundaries. Causal liquidation of subjects would be utter failure of purpose for such entities; far better be it that their erroneous subjects can be taught to recognize their errors and return to the community, renouncing their previous misguided thoughts and becoming advocates of their current social matrix.
As parents teach their children, so too the rulers and government lead their society in helping their subjects become civilized humans. We must give credit of social stability to Caesar and render unto Him His due when payment is demanded. Without social stability and legitimacy, what good would freedom accord a man? He would be as free as a wild tiger of the jungle, eking out subsistence in his short, brutish life.
I submit instead that vulgar power overwhelms the fragile flower of freedom far too often.
I reckon that history is woefully bereft of depth, even where it's deepest. We have been around for 100's of thousands of years, and I believe that for most of that time, we have primarily been as free as birds.
We will again, once we gain a base of technology that enables people not focused on overpowering others to flourish, as they did before, for millenia.
I suppose, if men value freedom over security, comforts, luxuries, and amenities of civilization, then they can live free as the beasts of the wild. But, in order to provide for stable, orderly society, in which men can have baubles of civilization, men are required to kneel before their benefactor be He God or Caesar.
I have lived in the forest, and may best approximate beasts of the field of folks you engage with.
I recently did so, yet was online. I paid money for the service, but kneeled for no one.
As technology increasingly empowers individuals such that they can obviate institutions and organizations, such as media corporations, and enforcers of traffic laws, for example, having any access to them at all, as I did, freedom will burgeon, and oppressors will gnash their teeth in futility.
There is a leading edge of revolutionary tech that is available to the well-heeled and financially encumbered alone, but that soon is so inexpensive that it is trivial for commoners to acquire.
Tech is making oppression obsolete, even though it now appears to be inescapable.
Good!
It is remarkable that you have become less dependent on services of organized, social institutions. For many, the so-called "99%," such self-discipline, responsibility, and command over their lives belongs in fantasy, next to Tolkien's Hobbit. While I do not doubt your success in subduing your passions and appetites to be aligned with your life purpose and responsibilities, the ignorant peasants either have little apptitude or desire to achieve self-actualization. Take away institutional social, legal, and religious control, these free men will be eating each other within a week. For many, slavery is a step up from what they would have done to themselves, if allowed to be free.
Yup, hit it on the head. I often react the same to people who try to teach self-love, I say it's like teaching a dog to scratch when it itches.
I do believe though humans are highly plastic, and what we're seeing might just be a result of their surroundings. In my own lifetime I'm already seeing huge differences between people of Soviet Russia and young people now. People now are like Dostoevsky describes in Crime and Punishment, literally there are young people murdering old people, sometimes relatives, to get their apartments. People used to believe in each other, in the system, in love, in honesty, and a host of other similar traditional values. Now it's like ... well, a recent very accurate description of the current state of affairs is the movie Leviathan, though it's so much better-appreciated when you speak the language: very rarely does each individual character have such a unique voice that reflects itself in their vocabulary, expressions, mannerisms.
I almost always comment as a read, and I see you move on to characterize people as trainable. Which is the equivalent of plastic. This is very much the more correct way of seeing people: neither innately good nor innately depraved, but rather whatever they are brought up to be.
Which is one of the many reasons talk about "freedom" is usually bull. Freedom to be who? To be what? To be what the TV brainwashes you to be? Real freedom is the hardest thing to achieve, it requires tons or reading, reflecting...it's work, like anything else. To know thyself, like the ancients instructed, should be our goal, but more often it's to please whatever desires you circumstantially happen to have.
An overall very good post, with spot-on examples and metaphors, sharp observations, even quotable sayings. I very much enjoyed it.
Indeed, man has certain natural tendencies, but can be trained to use his passions and appetites towards something meaningful and constructive. It is not surprising to learn of the Russian societal degeneration, as the Soviet state, having thoroughly destroyed all traditional and cultural avenues of human development - religion, academia, traditional rituals, cultural taboo - utilized external enforcement of fear and compulsion of force to bind its society and people together. Quite like Han Feizi's Qin, the Soviet state relied only on inflicting of pain to achieve their communal utopia. Once that external control mechanism is removed, then the people have no restraints, becoming slaves to their passions and appetites.
Same phenomenon can be observed in Maoist China, where having dismantled the Confucian cultural control, which had worked well for 6000-years, the Maoist had to rely increasingly on external force as a means of social cohesion. The Chinese willful ignorance in raping and polluting their own homes in acquisition of baubles is an inevitable consequence of a people freed from their cultural matrix blindly accepting modern Western capitalism as their sole ideology. The CCP is not a government entity, but a corporation on a massive scale, driven by their hunger for evermore acquisition of resources.
Man is not born as such, but forged by struggles against himself and his environment. Much like learning a language, man is not born with all the vocabulary and grammatical rules innately written in his genetic code to begin speaking immediately after the umbilical is cut. Man must train himself in the rules and memorize vocabulary to be able to freely speak a language, to the point that speaking and writing becomes a second nature. This is an example of freedom. But rather than freedom, in this degenerate world, it may be better to use the term mastery.
Men must be taught mastery of values and virtues that hare beneficial to the communal existence, within which men resolve conflicts without degenerating into beasts. The Jesuits of the old rigorously trained their acolytes to achieve members to whom religious doctrine had become a second nature. Diogenes the Cynic so mastered his philosophy that he lived it without a second thought. Like Siegfried, who killed the dragon but incorporated its blood into himself, the rules and laws of a society, a religion, or a philosophy, when mastered becomes incorporated into the man, as he freely lives his life from his being, not discarding tradition and laws, but using them.
Wow! Such a well scripted work you have here. Your narrative style is worth emulating. Kudos!
Thank you for the compliment.
Have you encountered Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty novels? Epic fantasy set in a Chinese, rather than European, analogue. You might get a kick out of them.
I have never heard of Dandelion Dynasty. It shall be on the top of my list of books to find at the library.
This is another level for me.
Learning from you (;
Good post
Glad that you like it. Stay tuned for the next installment.