dao de ching: lxv

Of old, those who excelled in the pursuit of the way did not use it to enlighten the people but to hoodwink them.  The reason why the people are difficult to govern is that they are too clever.

Hence to rule a state by cleverness will be to the detriment of the state.

Not to rule a state by cleverness will be a boon to the state.

These two are models.

Always to know the models is known as mysterious virtue.

Mysterious virtue is profound and far-reaching

But when things turn back it turns back with them.

Only then is complete conformity realized.

The western mind, once it discovers knowledge, has to apply it; this pragmatic application, this quest for analytical certitude, this need for formulae as the superior truth, that which sucks other forms into it, is frequently called intelligence.  But Dao, unlike the forms that wish to negate or subvert this mind, this knowledge, this application, to assert another in its place, acknowledges its truth but doesn’t feel compelled to pursue or follow.  It is this knowing-but-not-doing that so circumscribes it.

Cleverness proves nothing but cleverness, beauty nothing but beauty.  Dao doesn’t particularly believe in enlightenment other than, perhaps, as a feeling that contains as much legitimacy as other feelings.  How does the sage, then, hoodwink the people, and is this not a despicable act?  The sage does not hoodwink the people, the Dao does; it hoodwinks them by being itself:  muddy, tentative, hesitant, vacant, formal, disintegrating, thick.  The people—wanting thinness, limpidity, certitude, solidity—hoodwink themselves; the sage is the sage because he lets them or, rather, allows the Dao to let them ... for why would she use the methods of the people for what is not of the people? What kind of knowledge could make her so certain?  Fear, fragmentation, denial:  these could make her so certain.  But then she would not be a sage.

The people are hoodwinked, yet a state is governed by being straightforward.  Dao bears a different relationship to truth than modernity’s rather christian bent:  never final, no solidification of identity, no conformity through law, argument, cleverness, rigidity:  shade and winking and the vision that sees, the eye that doesn’t.  The modern recoils by the presumed deception here, but rather see it as that which gracefully mirrors nature in the human labyrinth of society.

It doesn’t attempt to be individually willful and in this lack of attempt is its flexibility:  moving with the wind, reaching when reaching’s required, turning back when things turn back.  And neither one is better and both can be done.