dao de jing xii

the five colours make a human’s eyes blind

riding and hunting make its mind go wild with excitement

goods hard to come by serve to hinder its progress

the five tastes injure a human’s palate

the five notes make its ears deaf

hence in her rule the sage is for the belly not for the eye

therefore he discards the one and takes the other

dear twelves,

feed the people. don’t let them get hungry or thirsty. give them clean water and sufficient shelter. provide them with entertainment poking fun at remote leaders and providing hope that the human will become something other than itself. show them love as some soft cuddly attainable thing. separate good and evil and let the former vanquish. mute their senses and dull their minds. put them in front of screens from the earliest age and in desks as soon as possible. teach them to behave and to be good citizens and not to question too much and to obey authority and to put actions in one place and words in another, for such compartments are necessary for an orderly life. destroy wildness and incarcerate enthusiasm. blind vision and make values tools of sedation. let education be a process of conformity and the home a fortress of coddled fear. numb all excess and thinking, eradicate the imagination, discard vitality

indulge your appetites, enforce order, and adapt your behaviour, emotions, attitudes and thoughts to the dominant social environment in which you find yourself

work it out that on occasion when a true work of art or an outsider of some sort manages to get past the barriers of acceptability and be heard that their subversive messages and forms will be transformed through money and abstraction such that they will not be heard, that through their success they will be brought into the happiness of the dominant, and the people will laugh at themselves without realizing it or effecting any change