Why doing more may achieve less?
There is a story about a couple working undercover to deliver mission-critical data for an upcoming war for the communist party in the midst of the Japanese Occupation of China. They were caught by the Japanese during their mission and denied their identity. The Japanese interrogator gave the husband an ultimatum, if he were truly not her husband, then he should be able to watch her gang-raped without any emotions. And he did, later delivering the secret information leading to a victorious battle but hanged himself soon after.
Caught in this conundrum, how would I play it out?
Would I be a “good” husband and try to save my wife, or would I be a “good” nationalist and save my country?
I always struggled with the notion of "good", with it being such a relative term, based on the whims and fantasy of the majority. I had been told to be "exemplary" in school, and in anything the confucians can put a finger and deem "good". I believe I am not the only one who is troubled by striving towards these labels. After all, labels are ephemeral. I wanted something substantial, unchanging and contrarian.
Little did I know, there may be answers in the unassuming Dao.
Prior to using the voyant tool, my impression of Dao’s significance lies largely is in effortless action through wuwei , with its significance akin to Archimedes' famous quote: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. I related to wuwei to Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour work week concept, where he turned his life around from working 16 hour days earning $40,000/year to working 4 hour weeks earning $40,000/month - all from applying Pareto’s principle to Define, Eliminate, Automate and Liberate (DEAL) his tasks. His DEAL process is eerily parallel to the principles of negation highlighted in the Dao, with the notion of doing more with doing less.
To my disbelief, “Good” appeared 67 times in the corpus, behind dao (122) and laozi (104).
Why would “good” be at the forefront instead of wuwei? Perhaps I had some learning to uncover.
Looking at the data provided from voyant-tools, “Good” appeared in chapters 2, 3, 8, 9, 12,13 17,27 and 30. “Good” is heavily distributed chapters 8 and chapter 27
The above are terms that collocate with “good”. We see the words “ good at saving people” from chapter 27, “good and the not good” from chapter 2, “good faith” from chapter 8.
It seems to me that “good” has several characteristics. “Good” can be interpreted as an action in “saving people”, a nominal factor in “good and the not good”, and a belief or a world view in “good faith”.
“Good” appears highly correlated to “sage”, “people”, “laozi” and “heaven”. It is then secondarily linked to “faith”, “water”, “saving” and “dao”. If I were to try to make sense of “good” without a clear understanding of the corpus, I would think that “good” is a characteristic that the “sage”, “people”, “laozi” and “heaven” share in common. Similar to the interpretation from collocation above, “good” appears to be a belief; an element; an action and also the “dao”.
Prima Facie, it is surprising that “dao” is correlated to a second order to “good”. I would assume that goodness should be intimately tied with dao. But on further investigation, we can make sense of why it may not be. Before we uncover the relations between goodness and dao, we shall take a look at how goodness relates to other concepts in Daodejing. We will begin with chapter 8 and chapter 27, where the term “good” is heavily distributed at.
In chapter 8, water is being described as the element of the highest good. In ancient chinese philosophy, there are 5 elements that are used to represent the formation of all things known in this world and their interrelations: “Fire”, “Water”, “Wood”,”Metal” and “Earth”. Out of these 5 elements, why was water regarded as the highest good?
In the text, it is stated that ‘water brings good to all things and does not contend’ ; ‘it flows to places which most people detest, akin to dao’. At first glance, this may not make any sense. Why would the highest good flow to places where most people detest, and why would dao be at those areas?
There may be answers in chapter 2. It is said that “being and nonbeing generate one another”, and that “when all know good as good, there is the not good”. From this we can understand the dual nature of things, and of “good” and the “not good”. As long as we regard something as “good”, it’s complement “not-good” arises due to its inherent dual nature. If we point at someone and regard him as “exemplary”, then the people who are the opposite of that person become “not-exemplary”. If we extend this logic to the extreme, wouldn’t it be the case that in areas of “highest not-good”, we could also find the “highest good”?
By a similar logic, we can take a look at Chapter 11 where the concept of “useful” is being dissected. In anything supposedly good at being useful, in its crux lies “uselessness”. It is because it is “useless” within, for example the emptiness in the center of a cup, or a bowl, that generates the condition where a use can fill the void. By likening usefulness and goodness, perhaps it is because water flows to where most people detest, it could invite its dual nature of doing things people admire.
This is further validated in Chapter 27, where the sage is said to be always good at saving people so that no one is abandoned, and good at saving things so that nothing is abandoned.The action of saving people is admirable (good), and these people to be saved are often in abandonment or in places of abandonment. Just as being and nonbeing generate one another, those who are good would be teachers who are not so good, and those who are not so good are object lessons for those who are good. Understanding the concept of duality, the sage proposes that we “handle affairs by non-doing”. As good and not good generate one another, handling affairs by non-doing after fully understanding any duality introduced and its consequences.
On the basis of “non-doing”, a sage is said to “lets all things happen but does not initiate, lets things grow but does not possess, achieves his goal but claims no credit” in chapter 2. At first glance, “let things happen but does not initiate” and yet “achieves his goal but claims no credit” sounds like it came from a delusional fool spouting nonsense （下士闻道, 大笑之, 不笑不足以为道）.
But if it is true, dao may have just proposed the epitome of leadership and effectiveness.
Perhaps we can borrow vantage points from management philosophies highlighted in Jim Collins’ Good to Great to understand this conundrum. In Good to Great, leaders of the highest order are called Level 5 executives/leaders. Level 5 leaders channel their ego away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. Level 5 leaders create superb results and yet demonstrate compelling modesty and are never boastful ( “achieves his goal but claims no credit”, “matter of being good at gaining results, not winning by force”)
Collin also mentions that those who built good-to-great companies stays in the centre of three circles :
- What you can be best in the world at
- What you are deeply passionate about
- What drives your economic engine
In the centre lies the position of effortless power, where the Level 5 leader engages a team of disciplined people with disciplined thoughts and takes disciplined action to turn the “flywheel”, thereby aligned with “letting all things happen but does not initiate”. The flywheel took Amazon from a mere online bookstore to one of the biggest e-commerce platforms worldwide.
I doubt that “non-doing” refers to doing absolutely nothing, especially when one is accountable for results. In the case an action has to be taken, Laozi offers a series of strategies that teaches us about how to achieve what we want by exploiting the spectrums of duality (物极必反). In chapter 36, He mentions that “ If you want to weaken something, you must first strengthen it” and” If you want to abolish something, you must first promote it”.
When Emperor Napoleon Bornaparte was ousted to Elba for the first time, Charles Talleyrand ( former minister of the Emperor) knew that Elba was too fragile a cage for the emperor. Instead of convincing his counterparts that they needed to banish the Emperor far away, Talleyrand instead pulled the strings with the foreign minister of England to let Napoleon loose - laying an irresistible trap. Napoleon met little resistance on his way back into France, and his countrymen swooned at the sight of their former emperor. Napoleon was declared emperor again. However, due to his previous imperial ambitions, France was bankrupt and scarce in resources. Yet he still waged a war and at the Battle of Waterloo he met his final defeat. Napoleon’s enemies, along with Talleyrand, exiled him to a further island at the west coast of Africa.
Talleyrand, the consummate courtier, knew that the emperor would one day break loose during his first exile in the island of Elba. Instead of persuading others of his case, he unconsciously engaged the above peculiar form of wuwei - to weaken Napoleon,Talleyrand had to strengthen him; to abolish Napoleon’s ambitions for good, Talleyrand had to first promote Napoleon’s freedom. Just as in Chapter 27, “a good knot uses no rope or noose but cannot be untied”, could we similarly say that a “good strategist uses no plan to defeat opponents but cannot be defeated”?
Talleyrand perhaps understood that “ things that resort to force age fast and going against dao brings early demise” ( chapter 30). He saw ahead of Napoleon’s demise and simply expedited the process. The intention was never to defeat Napoleon, but simply to let Napoleon defeat himself.
While “good” entertains itself with action, being and belief, dao transcends the limitations of action, being and belief. This is highlighted in Chapter 1, “ways may be spoken of as dao, but they are not the eternal dao”, which we can also deduce that “ways may be spoken of as good, but they are not the eternal good”. While most of us can fully perceive “good”, and the dao that we can perceive are mere manifestations and mere versions of abstractions that few in the world are enlightened to fully comprehend. This is because, “good” and “not good” are merely ends of a spectrum, of a duality. Dao transcends this duality. We have many words we can use to describe the things we can comprehend as “good” or “not good”. And yet few words can truly describe dao.
As such, it is reasonable to answer the question i posed in the essay why dao is secondarily correlated to “good”. It is not because dao is not important to the concept of “good”, but perhaps “good” is a relatively insignificant concept compared to dao. Similarly, to resolve my biases at the start of the essay about wuwei and “good”: while there are many ways that can describe “good”, few words can truly describe wuwei- hence the difference in word count. Following the logic of dao, the concept that is least spoken of may have the greatest effect.
To conclude, looking at the nature of “good”, “good” is at the opposite spectrum of “not good”- the highest good could be found in areas of highest “not good”. Just as a useful item has its usefulness based on how seemingly useless it is, a “good” sage and leader that conducts one’s affairs by non-doing achieves all the favorable outcomes. “Good” as an action is even more abstract, as we utilize the principle of negation to achieve a good outcome by pursuing the contrary.
Perhaps there could be another way of defeating the Japanese, just like how Talleyrand did. China is so big, could we have let the Japanese defeat themselves by spreading themselves too thin?
( Disclaimer: after showing to a buddy of mine, he recommended I share this essay as it is "thought-provoking")
Bibliography:
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BA%94%E8%A1%8C/156697
Jim Collins -Good to great
Robert Greene- 48 Laws of Power
Tim Ferris- 4 Hour Work Week
Charles Q Wu - Thus Spoke Laozi