Mencius: Filial Piety and the Rise of Neo-Fascism

In Chapter VII of David Hinton's translation of Mencius, the sage is quoted as saying

Imagine all beneath Heaven turning to you with great delight. Now imagine seeing that happen and knowing it means nothing more than a wisp of straw: only Shun was capable of that.
He knew that if you don't realize [sic] your parents you aren't a person, and that if you don't lead your parents to share your wisdom you aren't a child. He fulfilled the Way of serving parents completely until Blind Purblind, his depraved father, finally rejoiced in virtue. Once his father rejoiced in virtue, all beneath Heaven was transformed. One his father rejoiced in virtue, the model for fathers and sons was set for all beneath Heaven. Such is the greatness of honoring parents.

Mencius, Chapter VII, section 28, David Hinton trans. 

There are two elements to this quote, and I find it hard to connect them. The first is indifference to fame, which I understand can be enormously hard. I certainly find it very hard to be personally uninterested in it---even though I have tried mightily my whole life to live that way. I've always worked at menial jobs, and routinely tried to "do the right thing", even if that means sabotaging whatever sort of career I might have been able to garner. And without some sort of fame, most careers are impossible (think about how much more popular this blog would be if I was a famous person.)

For example, I was once organizing a slate of candidates for local Council elections and I had a fairly good shot at getting elected in Ward One. But two other people who also had a good shot at winning a seat were running in Ward Two. Since there was only one slot open for their "flavour" of politics, the odds were that if they both ran they would split the vote and neither would get elected. Since neither one of them were willing to back out, I approached one and told her to run in my ward and I'd not run. Both of them ran and won, and the woman ended up becoming a very successful Mayor of my city. It was the right thing to do, but it meant that I never got elected to public office and instead have supported myself moving furniture and being treated like a moron by management. Objectively, I can see that this is irrelevant, but emotionally, it annoys me. I am not like Shun---fame is still far more than a "wisp of straw" to me.

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The next bit deals with what is routinely called "filial piety", or, "xiào".  People might find it weird that I would write a post about filial piety for a blog about Daoism. Most Westerners who have been exposed to Daoism tend to have this idea that it's followers have nothing but contempt for stuffy Confucian nonsense. Actually, this is a profound misunderstanding. The Temple that I was initiated into (part of the Dragon Gate Sect of Quanzhen Daoism) has three core texts that they suggest people should study. They consist of the Daoist Jade Emperor Mind Seal Classic, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, and, the Confucian Classic of Filial Piety.  (More about these in future blog posts.)

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Filial Piety is a very complex subject to understand, and I don't want to overwhelm readers with their first introduction to the concept, so I'll just raise a few aspects that most people probably haven't thought about just so they can start getting prepared to think about it in depth. 

Most people think of filial piety exclusively with regard to family: "Honour your father and mother". But it is important to understand that Confucianism bases its morality not exclusively on reason, but rather emotion. So to understand filial piety you don't suggest an argument in favour of pursuing this as an ethical standard, you put forward an example that illustrates the innate human tendency that it is based upon. And this is the point that Mencius refers to when he says "if you don't realize [sic] your parents you aren't a person". That is to say, if you don't feel some sort of emotional connection to your parents, your lack of emotions disqualifies you as a member of the human race.

Perhaps a psychopath has no feelings one way or the other about family, which would mean that they aren't a "person" according to Mencius. But the feelings that arise around family are not always positive. Indeed, the language associated with filial devotion always sounds really strange to me---(and I suspect a lot of other people too.) It also sounds odd to me when Christians recite the Lord's Prayer and say "Our Father who art in Heaven---". It's even worse when union leaders talk about members as being "brothers" and "sisters". That is because my father died when I was a child after a long, horrible illness; I also spent a very important part of my childhood being beaten by my older brother; and, my mother had an out-of-control, crazily emotional streak that terrorized me as a child. "Family" has a very strong emotional connection for me---but it is negative, not positive. So I am a "person" according to Mencius, but not one that is terribly "filial".

But it is important to remember that for Confucians like Mencius filial devotion is not just one directional. Parents have an obligation towards their children that is just as important as the child's obligation to their parents. And if the parent fails in that obligation, the child has as much of a duty to instruct the parent as the parent has to instruct the child:

"if you don't lead your parents to share your wisdom you aren't a child. He fulfilled the Way of serving parents completely until Blind Purblind, his depraved father, finally rejoiced in virtue"

Think about this passage. Mencius is putting forward Shun as a paragon of filial piety because he patiently taught one of his parents the difference between right and wrong.

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So what exactly is xiào? It doesn't seem to be the stereotypical ideal of children "shutting up and doing what they are told". Right now I'm reading a new translation of the Xiaojing by Henry Rosemount, jr, and Roger T. Ames that translates it as "family reverence" because the scholars believed that the English word "piety" carries too many resonances with self-righteous, unfeeling, religious fanaticism. Instead, they believe xiào refers more about the feelings of someone who is in a genuinely warm, reciprocal relationship based on real emotion. It's unfortunate that so many people---like me---have had such bad experiences with our families that the emotions we feel are negative, but to my way of thinking that means that we still long for that connection, not that it doesn't (or shouldn't) exist. I see this as evidence for the basic value of Confucian family reverence, not evidence against it.

This longing for a sense of "family reverence" might begin in the family, but for Confucians it is not supposed to end there. The entire culture of a nation is supposed to function like a family for Confucians. The leader of any grouping---such as the Emperor---is supposed to exist in a dynamic with his subjects much like that of a family. Leaders are supposed to actually care about what happens to their followers, and the followers are supposed to not only be able to engage with leaders when they are acting improperly, they are actually obligated to do so in some circumstances.  Shun was expected to gently reprimand his father, "Blind Purblind". In the same way, the court officials of the Emperor were expected to disagree with the Emperor and try to change his opinion when they believed he was acting improperly.

In ancient China this could often be a very dangerous thing to do, as many Emperors were half-mad with power and were quite willing to torture and kill any scholar who had the courage to criticize an imperial policy. But that was the role that a scholar was supposed to play. Indeed, during the reign of the second Qin emperor there was an incident where a stag was brought before the Emperor. The
Prime Minister (who was the real power behind the throne) declared it to be a horse and then asked the court scholars what they thought it was. The ones who were afraid of him, agreed that it was a horse. The others, who had a greater commitment to the truth, said it was a stag. The latter group paid a heavy price for their statements, as not only they themselves, but their families too were punished for their independence.

Is this a horse? If you say it isn't, you and your family will die.
But if you say it is, your entire society may collapse.  Pressure?
1902 drawing by Frank E. Beddard, c/o Wiki Commons

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I've been watching a modern Chinese drama titled "The Legend of Chu and Han", but which on Netflix Canada is called "The King's War". It is based on the collapse of the Qin dynasty and the founding of the Han.

I'm fascinated by the character Liu Bang, who became the first Han Emperor, Gaozu. This is because the show is playing around with different conceptions of what it means to be a great man. Gaozu's ability isn't so much his brilliance as a general, but rather his ren, or benevolence. He is able to attract and inspire people to want to serve him, because it is obvious that he really does want the best for everyone around him.

One scene where the director really pointed this out was where Liu was on the march with his army and he fell sick with the flu. His mistress had rolled him up in a quilt and was plying him with hot water to keep him hydrated. A Confucian scholar insisted on seeing him, even though the guards said he was too sick to see anyone. Eventually, he sneaked in to see Liu, who heard him out. After introducing himself, he started talking about how he was going to get Liu's army into some key city without a fight. Liu was not interested (because he felt awful and had heard it all before), so he showed his contempt by taking a pee in the scholar's special, groovy hat. He then make the guy leave and take his hat with him.

This peeved the scholar, but after throwing his hat away, he ran back in and then told Liu that he was really an expert at drinking wine. Instead of having the guy dragged off (which really isn't Liu Bang's style), he asks his girl friend to bring in two pitchers of wine. (Liu is a bit of a drinker.) The scholar downs one without a pause, and then suggests that Liu drink the other. Liu refuses, saying he's too sick to be drinking wine. But he says he'll hear out the scholar.

The scholar says he's friend with the Qin prefect who rules the town and can get him to surrender rather than force a fight. Liu asks why he is interested in helping him. The scholar says that he noticed that on the line of march Liu's soldiers are very careful to not trample the peasant's crops, and, that in general they are careful not to abuse ordinary people. (Not to mention that Liu has put up with some pretty strange behaviour by the scholar himself---even though he's not feeling well.) The scholar is saying that he's spent his whole life trying to find a benevolent ruler to serve, and as near as he can tell, Liu Bang is it.

In the show, "King's War", this is Liu Bang's "secret weapon"---he is able to attract people of real talent, inspire them with tremendous loyalty, and, get them to perform amazing things for him. This contrasts with his main rival, Xiang Yu, who is portrayed in what Westerners would recognize as the "heroic" model of someone like Alexander the Great. He has the strength of a Hercules, is absolutely fearless in battle, and, has the martial arts skill of Bruce Lee. But he lacks ren.

The director of the show actually underlines this point through a scene where Yu orders the execution of 5,000 captured Qin soldiers because they didn't surrender as fast as he said they needed to in order to be spared. Yu places a great emphasis on keeping his word---something that Confucianism says should always be tempered by benevolence. When Yu's uncle find out about this act he is so angry that he slashes Yu across the face with a whip and punishes him with house arrest. He informs Yu that this is a catastrophic mistake to make, because it means that he has no ren---and that there is no way he can become Emperor without it. A leader who cannot build a sense of trust in both his followers and the people that he will act benevolently towards ordinary folk is doomed to fail. It is this lack of trust that has doomed the Qin dynasty, and Yu's actions show why he failed in his competition with Liu. That is why Liu became the first Emperor of the Han dynasty and Yu ends up killing himself after losing.

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So what has this got to do with modern life?

I recently read a post on FaceBook about a story in the Guardian about a movement called "the New Optimists". In a nutshell, their argument is if you use objective measurements of things like life expectancy, global poverty rates, death by violent crime, warfare, etc, people around the world have never had it so good. But at the same time, lots of people really feel awful about their lives and the future. How come?

Well, there are lots of good suggestions as potential reasons. For example, just because people on the other side of planet are doing better than ever before that doesn't mean you are. Moreover, just because things have been getting better over the past 200 years doesn't mean that it couldn't all go to Hell in a few years because of something like climate change, nuclear war, or, an economic catastrophe caused by something like a computer virus.

All of these are legitimate concerns, but I wonder if maybe part of the problem is that human beings are suffering the effects of a catastrophic decline in our generalized sense of "family reverence" as defined by Confucianism.

No, I don't mean that we all need to embrace some sort of fundamentalist nonsense like that spewed by groups like "Focus on the Family". Instead, I'm talking about the more generalized sense of emotional connection that Confucians found mostly within the family. The key point of "family reverence" isn't the family, it's the emotional sense of connection and belonging that most often found within families. (Please don't confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself!) People who cannot find this emotional connection within a family seek it in other aspects of life---for many people it is absolutely essential to their well-being and all leaders ignore it at their peril.

What is this sense of "emotional connection"? Well, like Mencius, I can't really define what it is, I can just suggest examples and ask the reader to think about whether or not I am right when I say that these seem to be indicative of an intrinsic human quality. People during war time often develop very strong interpersonal connections that they hold onto for the rest of their lives. It's also why some people have such a strong emotional connection to the university that they studied at while young. I know that in my case I had very strong emotional connection to the school and Temple where I learned Taijiquan and was initiated into Daoism. I also had a similar attachment to the Green Party where I learned the "nuts and bolts" of political activism. They were both like "families" for me. I also have very strong friendships and a significant other that also provide that sense of emotional connection for me.

I might suggest, however, that for many (if not most) people our modern society undermines and attacks this sense of emotional connection. For one thing, families and friendships are shredded when people are expected to travel all over the world in order to pursue their career paths. Even worse, the temporary nature of jobs means that people routinely get picked up and tossed into a task for a short period of time then discarded like a used wrench---which makes it impossible to develop anything like an emotional connection with co-workers. Increasingly, even that shrinking pool of people who do have permanent jobs are denied the stability of even having their own personal work-space. Instead, they are expected to just grab whatever computer is free at any given moment, or, park their laptop at whatever desk is free. These are called "back pack" offices.  (My job just transitioned from one where I had a office to being one of these "migrants", and I can attest to how much it makes me feel like I'm no longer a valued part of the workplace!)

I believe that the alt-right has been very good at manipulating the vague, inarticulate sense of emotional loss that comes from this lack of emotional connection in work, community, and, family by playing up people's sense of emotional connection to patriotism. There are lots of videos to choose from on line, but here's one that illustrates my point.

Just a few things to explain about this video. There were two times in European history where the continent faced invasion by a determined empire of the East and a heroic battle by an out-numbered force managed to save the day. The first is battle of Thermopylae where a small force of Greeks led by the Spartan king managed to hold off a huge Persian army long enough to allow an Athenian fleet to decisively defeat the Persians at Salamis. This is the battle that was popularized by Frank Miller's comic series and the movie "300". The second was the battle of Vienna.  In that battle after a long, heroic siege, the city was about to fall to the forces of the Turkish Sultan but at the last minute an attack by the Polish Winged Hussars destroyed the Turkish army and permanently removed it's threat to Western Europe. 

Please note in this video the clever way the Sabaton song has been merged with movie clips about these two battles with other clips of refugees, and the "heroes" and "villains" of the alt-right (the former are Putin, Trump, Le Pen, and, Farage), whereas the latter is Angela Merkel (who has opened the doors of Germany to refugees.) These stirring appeals to ancient glories and emotional connection to "race consciousness" is a classic type of Fascist propaganda. The rise of new Fascist parties in the Western democracies, IMHO, is because our leadership has turned its back on the Confucian ideal of ren and has instead decided that the free market will deal with all problems. This has worked to undermine and destroy the sense of emotional connection that people have with both their community and where they work. This has created an inarticulate and deep sense of longing for re-connection in the greater community among the citizens, and the neo-Fascists in the alt-right has learned how to exploit it to their gain. That is how Britain voted for the Brexit and how Donald Trump got elected President of the USA. 

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Oh, one last point. I started off this crazy post with a quote from Mencius where he mentions a guy named Shun and says that he was indifferent to public acclaim because of his devotion to filial piety. I found it hard understand this point. But now I do. If you have a vague need to feel the support of a real emotional community, you will have a real hunger for acclaim. But if that need is being met by a real understanding of ren and have manifested a Sage's feeling towards the people around you, you no longer have that hunger. Not because you have transcended this human desire, but rather because you have satiated it. 

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Confucius and the John Birch Society: Rectification of Names and Modern America

Recently I did an experiment where I used two social media sites---FaceBook and Quora---to ask why so many Americans say that they don't live in a "democracy", but instead a "republic". That is to say, why do many Americans believe that there is a contradiction between the two words---that a country can be a "democracy" or a "republic"---but not both at the same time. 

I ask this because if you look up the Google definition of both terms, you will find the following:

de·moc·ra·cy
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives
re·pub·lic
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch

If anyone knows much about systems of government, it is obvious that these two terms are orthogonal. That is to say, they refer to fundamentally different issues---which means that they aren't the sort of concepts that can contradict each other. An example of two orthogonal concepts are the class of an vehicle and the company that made it. So two classes of vehicles are "car" and "pickup truck", and, two companies that make them can be "Datsun" or "Ford". That is, a car can be either a Datsun or a Ford, and, either one of these companies can produce both cars and pickups. It simply isn't a case of "either it is a Datsun or it is a pickup", or "either it is a Ford or it is a car". So, China is a republic, but not a democracy. Canada is a democracy, but it is not a republic. And, the USA is both a democracy and a republic.

If you try to explain this in an American context, you get a bunch of responses. One of the more common ones is to suggest that the only real meaning of "democracy" is "a government without any form of elected representation". That is the word "democracy" for them means "a system where every single issue is decided directly through popular referendums". Another popular statement that they make is that in a "republic" there are constitutional laws that protect the rights of individuals against the capricious will of the majority.

When I try to work through the implications of these idiosyncratic definitions of both terms, I find that there are lots of strange results. For example, what is a "representative democracy" if you simply define "democracy" as only being exercised through referendum? Does that mean that all the nations of the world that have elected representatives aren't really "democracies"? Wouldn't arguing this case be committing tremendous violence to the common understanding of the concept?

In addition, the idea that only a "republic" has legal protections for minorities against the fickle decisions of the majority is also a bizarre reading of the term. Nations that specifically say that they are not republics---such as Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, etc---do have things like constitutions, Supreme Courts and so on that protect individuals from bad legislation.  In contrast both the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China---both of which call themselves republics and fit the dictionary definition---have terrible reputations when it comes to protecting the rights of individuals when they annoy the powerful. Moreover, what exactly is it about the difference between popular referendums and elected legislators (if we accept that this is the distinction between a republic and a democracy) that ensures protection of minorities? Surely it is just as possible for elected legislators to deny individual rights as the general public in a referendum? The Jim Crow laws in the Southern US that kept blacks under the thumb of the white majority were not passed by popular referendum, but rather by elected representatives in a state legislature governed by a constitution based on recognized law.

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Most of the responses I got from my question were of the sort mentioned above. I found this interesting, but the real issue I was trying to deal with was "why do so many Americans believe this?", not "how do they justify this way of thinking?". As far as I know, no one outside of the US uses the words "democracy" and "republic" in these ways. They use the standard dictionary definitions that I gave in the beginning of this essay.

When I asked one person why his definition was so different from a standard dictionary one, he replied that the new dictionaries are wrong, and it is necessary to check older ones. When I went on to ask him where specifically he got this idea from, he said that he got the info directly from the "Founding Fathers", although he didn't suggest a specific document. Another woman simply said that America has a different "culture" than other nations, and she likes it that way---. Several others just agreed that it is an idiosyncratic definition, but it helped people understand the limitations of extreme democracy, so it is a good way of understanding the terms.

One person who understood what I was trying to learn from the question said that these odd definitions come from the Republican party because it wants to justify ignoring the opinions of the majority of voters. Another said that this is a distinction dreamed up to encourage people to think the names of the two major parties represent really different ideas about how the country should be run: Republicans support the rule of law, and, Democrats support mob rule.

Finally one fellow suggested that "point zero" for all of this can be traced to a video tape put out by the John Birch society. He provided me with a link that ended in a pay wall, but a little more effort and I found this which seems to get to the heart of the issue. (I'm going to be discussing a lot of what goes on in this video, so take a good look at it. What follows isn't going to make much sense without having seen it.)

Let me start by stating that the above is a piece of very effective propaganda. And like all very good propaganda, it doesn't work by telling the viewer absolute falsehoods, instead, what it does is manipulate the way people think about issues by leaving out crucial issues while at the same time suggesting that they have completely explained the state of affairs.  Propaganda is often most effective by what it doesn't say, instead of what it does. To understand this point, consider one of the first ideas introduced in the video.

At about the 0:45 point, the narrator discusses what people routinely call "the political spectrum"---communism on the left, fascism on the right---and suggests that it is all wrong. He suggests at about 1:15 that people who call NAZIS and fascists right wing "never define their terms", and instead argues that the key issue in left versus right is the amount of power that a government has over an individual.

The video is correct to a limited extent. It is true that some people often throw around the words "left", "right", and, "fascist" without really clearly defining what they are talking about. But the John Birch solution is no answer either. The idea of "left" versus "right" comes from a specific moment in the French revolution where the representatives of various political factions were seated either to the left or right of the President of the Assembly. As such, it has continued as a very rough way of articulating where a specific individual or party sits in relation to others. The problem that arises, of course, is that politics is so complicated that it is impossible to accurately map any particular political system on one single axis. Indeed, I'd suggest that it is probably impossible to accurately map all human political tendencies in any specific sort of two-dimensional map.

The left/right spectrum that is introduced in the video suggests that communism should be on the left and fascism on the right. But it is important to understand that this only deals with one or two variables: nationalism and corporate ownership. The major Axis powers of WW2 gave great power to the major corporations in their countries:  for example, Krupp, Fiat, and, Mitsubishi. In addition, all three were tremendously involved in an extreme nationalist agenda: Lebensraum for the Germans, recreating the Roman Empire for the Italians, and, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere for the Japanese. In contrast, communism believes in state ownership of the means of production, which means elimination of all privately-own corporations. It is also internationalist in orientation, which means that it doesn't support the creation of empires specifically for the benefit of one particular nationality.

The spectrum that video introduces is based on a totally different set of criteria: relative power of the state versus the individual. This is a perfectly legitimate move---but only if you understand that you are switching what is being measured. What makes this video propaganda is the subtle move to suggest that the first spectrum is wrong and the second one right, instead of saying that they each measure something totally different. Political scientists are quite aware of the problems of the left/right way of measuring different tendencies, which is why they have attempted to come up with various other ways of encapsulating differences in easily understood graphics.

Another way of mapping political tendencies
Image by Liftarn, c/o Wiki Commons

This map separates out the role of ownership in differentiating Marxism from Fascism on one axis, but on another one it brings them together on how each deals with personal freedom. Please note, that this particular graphic doesn't deal with the relative role that nationalism plays in various political tendencies. That's the problem with these sorts of things---no matter how hard someone tries, they end up leaving something really important out. The problem with the video's depiction of this spectrum isn't that it says anything particularly wrong, it just leaves out an enormous amount of complexity and implies that what has been said pretty much exhausts the issue.

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The video goes on to make an argument in favour of the radical split between democracy and republicanism that brings in several similarly wildly over-simplified descriptions of reality. But I hope that I've already shown how the John Birch society is manipulating the naive into believing something false in order to promote their agenda.

I've put forward this modern example to illustrate a point from Confucius' Analects that has direct bearing on modern society. In Chapter XIII, part three, of David Hinton's translation we read:

Adept Lu said: "If the Lord of Wei wanted you to govern his country, what would you put first in importance?"

"The rectification of names," replied the Master. "Without a doubt."

"That's crazy!" countered Lu. "What does rectification have to do with anything?"

"You're such an uncivil slob," said the Master. "When the noble-minded can't understand something, they remain silent.

"Listen. If names aren't rectified, speech doesn't follow from reality. If speech doesn't follow from reality, endeavors never come to fruition. If endeavors never come to fruition, then Ritual and music cannot flourish. If Ritual and music cannot flourish, punishments don't fit the crime. If punishments don't fit the crime, people can't put their hands and feet anywhere without fear of losing them.

"Naming enables the noble-minded to speak, and speech enables the noble-minded to act. Therefore, the noble-minded are anything but careless in speech."

Chapter XIII, part three, Analects, David Hinton trans.

To a certain extent, I've tried to do a little "rectification of names" on this post with regard to the terms "democracy" and "republic". I'm concerned about the confusion that surrounds these words, because how ordinary people understand these two concepts has tremendous impact on what they expect from their society. If people associate "democracy" with mob rule, they are not going to be as upset if the influence of ordinary people declines in society. And if they believe that the existing legal structure trumps the aspirations and needs of common folk, they will be easier to convince that they shouldn't expect help from society-at-large for their problems. The John Birch Society definitions ultimately support an elitist vision of society where the legal right of the wealthy to own property effectively trumps every other value that people support. If they can control the definition of words that people use to understand politics, they will have already won half the battle to convert the USA into a Plutocracy.

Confucius wouldn't be a fan of the John Birch Society!
Engraving c/o Wiki Commons

What is a Hermit?

KMO from C-Realm Podcast

I've been thinking a lot about politics and society lately. I did an interview with a Vermont radio station as part of my feeble attempts to promote my recent book, and in the conversation the idea of success came up. In terms of radio shows and podcasts, as well as blogging and book publishing, the important issue is how many "subscribers" or "readers" you have. By that metric, both my interviewer (KMO fromthe C-Realm Podcast) and myself are abject failures. He has spent long periods of his life interviewing people for his podcasts and only has a relatively small number of subscribers (including myself.)  And I have spent many years writing---first for newspapers, then blogs, and, now books and have a very small number of followers too.

Bodhidharma, by Yoshitoshi, 1887.
c/o Wiki Commons

I answered this question by suggesting that this obscurity is why I call myself a "hermit". People often get hung up on the idea that I am a hermit by pointing out that I have a job, friends, a wife, live in the city, etc. To their way of thinking, to be a hermit exclusively means living in a cave on some remote mountain top. Well, most people only see the surface of things and not the core, so I generally ignore this opinion when it gets raised.

What a word, phrase, or, idea "means" is a very slippery thing---especially if it has any sort of depth to it. The famous book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones gets it's title from a story told about Bodhidharma (the supposed first "patriarch" who "brought" Zen from India to China.) According to the story, after nine years of teaching, he wanted to go home. So he tested his disciples to find out about their understanding of the "Void".

Dofuku said :  "In my opinion, truth is beyond affirmation or negation, for this is the way it moves."
Bodhidharma replied:  "You have my skin."
The nun Soji said:  "In my view, it is like Ananda's sight of the Buddha-land---seen once and for ever."
Bodhidharma answered:  "You have my flesh."
Doiku said:  "The four elements of light, airiness, fluidity, and solidity are empty [i.e. inclusive] and the five skandhas are no-things. In my opinion, no-thing [i.e., spirit] is reality."
Bodhidharma commented:  "You have my bones."
Finally, Eka bowed before the master---and remained silent.
Bodhidharma said:  "You have my marrow". 

I'm not directly interested in what the "Void" is in this post. Instead, I'm concerned about what it society makes of someone who is interested in it in the first place. This is important to Daoists, because the things that make Zen Buddhism "Zen" are elements that it has borrowed from Daoism.

The "skin" of the Void is the idea that there are truths that step outside of conventional dichotomies such as "Left" and "Right", or, "Moral" and "Immoral". The "flesh" of the Void is the idea that once you get a glimpse of this different way of looking at the world, it changes how you see everything. The "bones" is the idea that once you understand that the unconventional truths exist, and, having seen them use them to reassess how you view everything, your evaluation of what is or is not important changes. And the "marrow" suggests that when this re-evaluation takes place, your behaviour changes profoundly---especially how you interact with the rest of society.

Understanding this point, a hermit isn't just someone who lives in remote physical locations. It can also mean someone who lives in a remote ethical, spiritual, or, metaphysical space. If someone lives in the middle of a bustling city, there is still the question of how much she is engaged with the world that surrounds her. Doe she see it as being inherently valueless? Irrelevant to her life project? Does she think that there is any future to it? If not, then I would say that she is a hermit.

Confucius has a saying that has a one-dimensional take on this issue. But since that one dimension was crucial to him, I think it is apropos of the same point that Bodhidharma and I are making.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

Confucius, Anonymous, 1770,
c/o Wiki Commons

So I would suggest that being "not successful" is not something to be ashamed about. It may be caused by many things, but in some cases it is simply the result of having a deeper insight into how our society---if not the very universe---operates. In those cases I would suggest that it means that someone has a "hermit's soul".

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Having said the above. I still have bills to pay and a family to support. I've added a Patreon button and a tip jar. Both of which remain very empty. OK. If that is too much to ask, there is another thing that would help. Turn off your "ad-blocker" for my site and click on the adverts---even if you instantly close the window. This has a significant impact on how much money I make from my "Ad Sense" account, which helps me support my family---even while it costs you nothing at all.

Tolstoy, Kutuzov, Sanders, and the Dao

I've been reading Tolstoy's War and Peace again. I've done this so many times that I've lost track. It must be something like a dozen times by now. I do this because it is something like a sacred text to me---every time I read it I find something new to think about. And, I find more depth to the wisdom of Tolstoy.

This time around I have been struck by Tolstoy's description of the Russian army and it's leader Kutuzov.   What I have finally become aware of is the contrast between the Marshall and the staff officers that surround him. Bye-and-large, these staff officers are of two types. Some are idealists who have grand theories about how the war should be fought. The others are careerists who are

General Kutuzov

moving heaven-and-earth to gain wealth and influence through politics. Kutuzov understands that most of these people mean well, but ultimately their value is pretty much zero. They are like flies that buzz around him and cannot be avoided.

The point that Tolstoy makes is that our understanding of warfare is fatally flawed. We tend to think of it like a game of chess that is played by "master strategists". But if it is like chess, it is a strange game where each piece has a mind of its own, there are severe time constraints, and, you cannot see the entire board. The only real power that even the most intelligent Field Marshall has is to not make catastrophically stupid mistakes. Beyond that, they are totally victims of circumstance. Any "genius" that they may manifest only appears so after a victory. The same decisions could also have resulted in defeat---and in that case would have been seen as mere folly.

What mattered far more was the will of ordinary soldiers to fight to their last drop of blood to destroy the invaders. Even more, the same could be said for all the members of Russian society. Greedy store owners gave away their stock to retreating Russian soldiers and told them to burn what was left rather than sell it to the French invaders. Wealthy aristocrats gave enormously of their personal wealth to raise new regiments of soldiers for the army and militia. Instead of selling fodder and food to French soldiers, the peasants hunted them down and killed them every chance they could. The Czar said he would retreat to Siberia and grow his own potatoes rather than sign any sort of peace treaty with Napoleon. Once a society decides that it will not capitulate, any invader is doomed.

Napoleon's soldiers, on their part, were horrified by this way of fighting a war. They were used to fighting a hard battle, doing a bit of looting, then settling down to a comfortable occupation after the peace had been signed---like had happened everywhere else in Europe (except, of course, Spain and Portugal.) When they realized the tar baby that they were stuck to, they ran as fast as they could back to Europe. Indeed, Tolstoy says that contrary to the popular opinion that winter killed off the Grand Army of Napoleon, most of the soldiers died of exhaustion because their officers couldn't get them to slow down their rate of retreat. Instead, they ran so fast that they couldn't properly forage for supplies, worked their horses to death, left hordes of stragglers, and destroyed the health of all but the strongest individual soldiers.

What is important for Tolstoy is to remember that we are all part of a grand historical process, one that manifests itself in spite of all our pet theories and careful schemes. IMHO, Tolstoy's vision of history is Daoist. The Dao manifests itself and there is nothing any individual can do other than agree to its dictates.

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I see a parallel between Napoleon's invasion of Russia and our present political situation. Looking at the current American election I am struck by the huge number of "experts" who are offering many different opinions. They are like the staff officers buzzing around Kutuzov. They are either idealists with some grand idea about how the election can be won and the country revitalized. Or, they are opportunists who are trying to make money through consulting fees charged to either a candidate or a major news outlet.

The thing that they don't understand is that politics is also like that strange chess board that Tolstoy describes. Each individual in a political party has a mind of his own.  A low level worker can write something dumb in a leaflet. A candidate can get caught having sex with someone they shouldn't have. Some event in world news can overshadow a well-calibrated media event. All a political leader can do, ultimately, is try to avoid making a catastrophically stupid mistake.

I was involved in politics for years And I was often frustrated by two things.

First, I could never impress upon people that getting elected to office is primarily an issue of luck. Instead, people invariably believed that if they just worked a little harder and were a little more careful and "smart" that they would be able to get the job done. As a result, every election campaign routinely "burnt out" hordes of idealistic people who were told that if they totally killed themselves working that they would win. Of course, they lost and at that point they decided that it was too much work to be in politics and drifted away. If the party had told them the truth, they might have paced themselves a bit more, had some fun, and decided that politics was something that they should make a regular part of their life.

The second point I want to make is that people who feel that they have control over the world around them tend to become obsessed with avoiding mistakes. The problem with this was that it meant that party volunteers had all their freedom to be creative and expressive taken away.  Door knockers were told to not answer questions but stick to talking points. Politicians were schooled to avoid getting caught in a "gotcha", so they tend to become "mush mouths" incapable of answering simple questions. Any printed material became numbingly conventional advertising copy.

Both of these problems are unnecessary---because getting elected has a great deal to do with luck. They are also counter-productive because they push politicians and political parties into a mushy orthodoxy that is usually incapable of dealing with substantive problems or exciting voters.

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Having written the above, I would also argue that once in a while a problem becomes so large that society "rears up" and collectively finds a solution. In the case of Napoleon, it was the sort of people's war that occurred in Russia. This isn't to say that it was inevitable that the Grand Army of Europe would be destroyed. The Czar could have signed a treaty. But probably if that had happened, there

An American Kutuzov?

would have still been popular uprisings and guerrilla warfare like that which was happening in Spain at the same time. Germany was also ripe for uprisings.

In Canada the neo-Liberal consensus under the Conservatives was overturned by the Liberals under Justin Trudeau. In England, the "new-Labour" created by Tony Blair was crushed by Jeremy Corbyn.  In the USA, it might just be that the political equivalent of General Kutuzov is Bernie Saunders.

This isn't to say that I believe Saunders is going to win the nomination---but he just might. It also isn't to say that I believe that he is some sort of political genius. What I do think, however, is that he is "genuine" or "real" in a way that most politicians do not allow themselves to be. This is an important point. It isn't that this is a quality that makes one successful in politics. But sometimes it is essential. And this is one of those times.

Tolstoy describes Kutuzov's behaviour at the battle of Borodino

By long years of military experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander-in-chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power. (Chapter  35)

I think that Bernie understands politics in the same way that General Kutuzov understood warfare. It isn't something that involves clever tactics or brilliant strategy. Instead, it is about understanding the times we live in and the spirit of an entire people. I don't believe he decided to run for the presidency because he thought he would "win", but rather because he felt it was the right thing to do. He doesn't calculate what the consequences of a specific word or action will be and as a result he acts in a genuine way that inspires people. He is who he is and he doesn't really care if people know it. He has shown that time and again in the primaries.

Is this because he is an especially brilliant or good man? No. I think he is both good and smart. But more importantly, I think that he is old and wise. I think some things are just invisible to people when they are still filled with youthful vitality. When you get old, however, and you start being thankful for the odd day when you really feel energetic, you begin to observe life a little more objectively and see settled patterns to the way things operate. Tolstoy mentions this in his novel by showing how old and tired Kutuzov is.

I mentioned that I have read War and Peace many times and each time I do so I see something new. When I was young and vigorous I would never have noticed Tolstoy's point about the way cleverness and activity can be overcome by authenticity and patience---the way Napoleon was beaten by Kutuzov. But when I am tired and can do nothing more than observe the world around me, I can look back on my past political activities. This gives me the distance to integrate my lifetime of experience and see things that I believe are invisible to others. This doesn't mean that I don't believe that young people should still be clever and hard-working. That is what we all should do when young. (Kutuzov was very energetic in his youth.) But our leaders need to be more than that. America needs a wise, authentic person right now.  It might have finally found one.