I’ve got no lead (lede?) whatsoever for this one, except that “It should be obvious by now to my theoretical readership that there is something going on consistently in this blog, and sometimes it just has to be spelled out.” Maybe better to say “…it just has to spill out”—does that flow better?
In the perfect society, as envisioned by the Taoist sages, people would not need to ask themselves why they live the way they do. They would be fully committed to the life they live and would find their motivation from the intrinsic value of what they did. This notion is very close to the artistic ideal, though I would admit that my description of it overemphasizes the product and does not give full value to the process.
Human life is not perfect, though, and a philosophy of living must help people deal with inevitable dislocations from their perfect path: sickness, death, conflict with others, failure. What we need in our difficult moments is the wisdom gained from others’ experiences and their hard learning, with the hope that it may either prevent or ameliorate our problems.
I see this as the genesis of the Tao te ching by Lao-tse. The traditional story of its provenance is that of a middle-aged, middle-level official of the ancient Chinese empire, named Li Erh, who was leaving the empire’s boundaries for parts unknown. A border guard sought his wisdom for the benefit of civilized society, and “The Book of The Way and Its Power” was the result.
It was only the dislocation—before, we can hypothesize, he was content in his job and place in society, but now he clearly was not--and the sage’s pity for us Left Behind which caused us to receive those deep, cryptic notes. In the Tao te ching, though there are hints about ultimate realities, the guidance for “the Prince”—the many would-be practitioners who would receive these words—has to do with getting it right the first time, about making one’s way through life as it is, not fixing things. If one can not be directly the agent for Tao, at least one can proceed from second principles: how It works in the real world.
Unlike the ancient Chinese Old Master, the Greek philosophers—at least the ones of the Socratic school—saw the practice and study of philosophy itself as an ideal vocation for life. The ideal philosopher’s role, as portrayed through the example of Socrates’ death and Plato’s “cave analogy”, was to bring light unto mankind (more accurately, to help us to find it for ourselves), so that we would move toward it in our lives. For them, as for the second great Taoist philosopher Chuang-tse, and for the later Romantics and Marxists, the principal motivation was somehow dealing with this gap between the real and ideal; the art of the project was in the beauty of the objective: attempting to redeem humanity.
What was not artistic, as it turned out, was the product of their struggles. Their actions produce the drama of history, and sometimes even changes in our lives, in the form of the progress that makes our lives more complex, less pure. Hence, the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times!” In today’s world, as in all eras of civilization so far, we must keep our heads down if we don’t want them to be lopped off by the wild swings of those who prescribe for others. This is the source of our reverence for classic conservatism.
Most people, most of the time, have had neither the luxury nor the distancing required to look around and examine their place in the scheme of things. They learn, as part of their native culture, their “parochial” view of these far-off First Movers—the gods. The stories that thrived and survived—our great religions—even gave us comfort with our place within it. At least they helped make it bearable.
In our time, we—many of us, anyway—have more space for maneuver. We are not as bound by the accidents of our birth, our race, gender, nor even the locally-accepted view of cosmology. We can accept that the design has its intelligence within its manifestations (the Darwinist view); we can insist that the intelligence is inherent in the design; or we can make our own design, if we have the time, the intelligence, and the discipline.
It can hardly be wrong for us to live our lives in the way we think best, but that design needs somehow to take into account the harm from the dislocations that others face, since we recognize that we must face them ourselves someday (my version of The Golden Rule, which all long-term successful philosophies and religions acknowledge). We can decry as folly the designs of those who live in this world without care for others or who deny their own vulnerability. Hence, we accept this central tenet, if not the practice, of our latter-day “liberals”.
In our lives, we have seen how dangerous it can be to come forward, to speak plainly, to try to rise above. We have seen that, while the ways in which one can express one’s ideas unmediated have flourished, most people absorb their information pre-chewed and artificially flavored. Our role model for exerting one’s influence positively while living artfully is Thomas Pynchon—as we imagine him—who moves the Monster with many small cuts, at a safe distance.
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