Jefferson put it that men by their constitution were naturally divided into two parts - those who fear and distrust the people versus those who identify with the people and have confidence in them. Our civilization has increasingly put those who fear and distrust in power over us. Those who have confidence have always argued that consciousness is the key to improvements in the human condition. But power structures have always treated consciousness in the citizenry as a danger which must first be lulled, then channelled towards the inoffensive through the mechanisms of language, mythology and structure.
Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within. That was the meaning of the great Athenian pause, when Solon was brought forward and encouraged "to shake off the burdens." They believed, as he wrote, that "the public evil enters the house of everyman, the gates of his courtyard cannot keep it out."
But the void in our society has been produced by the absence of values. And values are not established by asserting values. Victory over one issue or another is wonderfully orgasmic and quickly slips away. The constant base needed to supply values is the result of methodical participation. The individual gains his powers and responsibilities by being there. But we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way. Participation produces, but is also the product of, practical values and common sense, not expertise and reason.
The secret, then, is that we must alter our civilization from one of answers to one which feels satisfaction, not anxiety, when doubt is established. To be comfortable with panic when it is appropriate. If ours is the advanced civilization we pretend it is, there should be no need to act as if all decisions were designed to establish certainties. Grandiose issues should not need to be reduced to the simplistic state of for or against and then decided in a set period. This invariably means structuiring public debate as a conflict between the rational and the irrational, in which common sense is reduced to a sort of Menshevik annoyance to be crushed between the two hard rocks of abstraction.
A civilization of answers cannot help but be a civilization of swirling fads and facile emotions. What is to be done? What is to be done? For so long now so many people have been answering. Some with the power of life and death. Some with the desire to use that power. Some jocular salesmen of ideas. Some populist, elitist, sincere, income driven. So many answers. So many truths. What a disease this desire to answer has become, rushing through our veins like rats scurrying for truth in the endless corridors of expertise.
Voltaire pointed out that for the Romans, sensus communis meant common sense but also humanity and sensibility. It has been reduced to only good sense, "a state half-way between stupidity and intelligence." We have since reduced it farther, as if appropriate only for manual labour and the education of small children. That is the narrowing effect of a civilization which seeks automatically to divide through answers when our desperate need is to unify the individual through questions.
God: There is nothing like a naturalistic orientation to dispel all these morbid thoughts of "sin" and "free will" and "moral responsibility." At one stage of history, such notions were actually useful. I refer to the day when tyrants had unlimited power and nothing short of fears of hell could possibly restrain them. But mankind has grown up since then, and this gruesome way of thinking is no longer necessary.
It might be helpful to recall what I once said through the writings of the great Zen poet Seng-Ts'an
If you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.
I can see by your expression that you are simultaneously soothed and terrified by these words! What are you afraid of? That if in your mind you abolish the distinction between right and wrong you are more likely to commit acts which are wrong? What makes you so sure that self-consciousness about right and wrong does not in fact lead to more wrong acts than right ones? Do you honestly believe that so-called amoral people, when it comes to action rather than theory, behave less ethically than moralists? Of course not! Even most moralists acknowledge the ethical superiority of the behavior of most of those who theoretically take an amoral position. They seem to be surprised that without ethical principles these people behave so nicely! It never seems to occur to them that it is by virtue of the very lack of moral principles that their good behavior flows so freely! Do the words "The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the human mind" express an idea so different fro the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man due to Adam's eating of the fruit of knowledge? This knowledge, mind you, was of ethical principles, not ethical feelings - these Adam already had. There is much truth in this story, though I never commanded Adam not to eat the apple, I merely advised him not to. I told him it would not be good for him. If the damn fool had only listened to me, so much trouble could have been avoided! But no, he thought he knew everything! But I wish the theologians would finally learn that I am not punishing Adam and his descendants for the act, but rather the fruit is poisonous in its own right and its effects, unfortunately, last countless generations.
And now I really must take leave. I do hope that our discussion will dispel some of your ethical morbidity and replace it by a more naturalistic orientation. Remember also the marvelous words I once utterred through the mouth of Lao-tse when I chided Confucius for his moralizing:
All this talk of goodness and duty, these perpetual pin-pricks unnerve and irritate the hearer - You had best study how it is that heaven and Earth maintain their eternal course, that the sun and moon maintain their light, the stars their serried ranks, the birds and beasts their flocks, the trees and shrubs their station. This you too should learn to guide your steps by Inward Power, to follow the course that the Way of Nature sets; and soon you will no longer need to go round laboriously advertising goodness and duty...The swan does not need a daily bath in order to remain white.
Mortal: You certainly seem partial to Eastern philosophy!
God: Oh, not at all! Some of my finest thoughts have bloomed in your native American soil. For example, I never expressed my notion of "duty" more eloquently than through the thoughts of Walt Whitman:
I give nothing as duties
What others give as duties, I give as living impulses.
What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable.
For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Hsi-shih, things ribald and shady or things grotesque and stange, the Way makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. No thing is either complete or impaired, but all are made into one again. Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories], but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He relies upon this alone, relies upon it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the Way.
But to wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing that they are all the same - this is called "three in the morning"? When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, "You get three in the morning and four at night." This made all the monkeys furious. "Well, then," he said, "you get four in the morning and three at night." The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to. So the sage harmonizes with both right and wrong and rests in Heaven the Equalizer. This is called walking two roads.
...Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don't know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can know the answer. Shall we wait for still another person?
But waiting for one shifting voice [to pass judgement on] another is the same as waiting for none of them. Harmonize them all with the Heavenly Equality, leave them to their endless changes, and so live out your years. What do I mean by harmonizing them with the Heavenly Equality? Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right, it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument. Forget the years; forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!
...The torch of chaos and doubt - this is what the sage steers by. So he does not use things but relegates all to the constant. This is what it means to use clarity.
Last changed, May 12th.