WU AND YOU

"The only sin is to limit the IS"
     - Richard Bach

"Our body is a machine for living. It is organized for that, it is its
nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it
will do more than if you paralyse it by encumbering it with remedies."
     - Leo Tolstoy

"If, with firm resolve, I had the knowledge to travel on the
great Dao [Way], I need only fear that I might try to meddle
with it."
     - section 53 of the Laozi ['Tao-te ching' or 'Daode jing']




    On Meddling

     When you are confronted by any complex social system, such
as an urban center or a hamster, with things about it that
you're dissatistied with and anxious to fix, you cannot just
step in and set about fixing with much hope of helping. This
realization is one of the sore discouragements of our century.
Jay Forrester has demonstrated it mathematically, with his
computer models of cities in which he makes clear that whatever
you propose to do, based on common sense, will almost
inevitably make matters worse rather than better. You cannot
meddle with one part of a complex system from the outside
without the almost certain risk of setting off disastrous
events that you hadn't counted on in other, remote parts. If
you want to fix something you are first obliged to understand,
in detail, the whole system, and for very large systems you
can't do this without a very large computer. Even then, the
safest course seems to be to stand by and wring hands, but
not to touch.
     Intervening is a way of causing trouble.
     If this is true, it suggests a new approach to the
problems of cities, from the point of view of experimental
pathology: maybe some of the things that have gone wrong
are the result of someone's efforts to be helpful.
     It makes a much simpler kind of puzzle. Instead of trying
to move in and change things around, try to reach in gingerly
and simple extract the intervener.
     The identification and extraction of isolated meddlers is
the business of modern medicine, at least for the fixing of
diseases caused by identifiable microorganisms. The analogy
between a city undergoing disintegration and a diseased
organism does not stretch the imagination too far. Take
syphilis, for instance. In the old days of medicine, before
the recognition of microbial disease mechanisms, a patient
with advanced syphilis was a complex system gone wrong
without any single, isolatable cause, and medicine's approach
was, essentially, to meddle. The analogy becomes more
spectacular if you begin imagining what would happen if we
knew everything else about modern medicine with the single
exception of microbial infection and the spirochete. We would
be doing all sorts of things to intervene: new modifications
of group psychotherapy to correct the flawed thinking of
general paresis, transplanting hearts with aortas attached
for cardiovascular lues, administering immunosuppressant
drugs to reverse the autoimmune reactions to tabes,
enucleating gummas from the liver, that sort of effort. We
might even be wondering about the role of stress in this
peculiar, "multifactorial," chronic disease, and there would
be all kinds of suggestions for "holistic" approaches,
ranging from changes in the home environment to White House
commisions on the role of air pollution. At an earlier time
we would have been busy with bleeding, cupping, and purging,
as indeed we once were. Or incantations, or shamanic fits of
public ecstasy. Anything, in the hope of bringing about a
change for the better in the whole body.
     These were the classical examples of medical intervention
in the prescientific days, and there can be no doubt that
most of them did more harm than good, excepting perhaps the
incantaions.
     With syphilis, of course, the problem now turns out to
be simple. All you have to do, armed with the sure knowledge
that the spirochete is the intervener, is to reach in
carefully and eliminate this microorganism. If you do this
quickly enough, before the whole system has been shaken to
pieces, it will put itself right and the problem solves
itself.
     Things are undoubtedly more complicated in pathological
social systems. There may be more than one meddler involved,
maybe a whole host of them, maybe even a 'system' of meddlers
infiltrating all parts of the system you're trying to fix.
If this is so, then the problem is that much harder, but it
is still approachable, and soluble, once you've identified
the fact of intervention.
     It will be protested that I am setting up a new sort of
straw demonology, postulating external causes for
pathological events that are intrinsic. Is it not in the
nature of complex social systems to go wrong, all by
themselves, without external causes? Look at overpopulation.
Look at Calhoun's famous model, those crowded colonies of
rats and their malignant social pathology, all due to their
own skewed behavior. Not at all, is my answer. All you have
to do is find the meddler, in this case Professor Calhoun
himself, and the system will put itself right. The trouble
with those rats is not the innate tendency of crowded rats
to go wrong, but scientists who took them out of the world
at large and put them into too small a box.
     I do not know who the Calhouns of New York City may be,
but it seems to me a modest enough proposal that they be
looked for, identified, and then neatly lifted out. Without
them and their intervening, the system will work nicely.
Not perfectly, perhaps, but livably enough.
     We have a roster of diseases which medicine calls
"idiopathic," meaning that we do not know what causes them.
The list is much shorter that it used to be; a century ago,
common infections like typhus fever and tuberculous
meningitis were classed as idiopathic illnesses. Originally,
when it first came into the language of medicine, the term
had a different, highly theoretical meaning. It was assumed
that most human diseases were intrinsic, due to inbuilt
failures of one sort or another, things gone wrong with
various internal humors. The word "idiopathic" was intended
to mean, literally, a disease having its own origin, a
primary disease without any external cause. The list of
such disorders has become progressively shorter as medical
science has advanced, especially within this century, and
the meaning of the term has lost its doctrinal flavor; we
use "idiopathic" now to indicate simply that the cause of
a paricular disease is unknown. Very likely, before we are
finished with medical science, and with luck, we will have
found all varietes of disease are the result of one or
another sort of meddling, and there will be no more
idiopathic illness.
     With time, and a lot of luck, things could turn out this
way for the social sciences as well.
     - Lewis Thomas, "The Medusa and the Snail"




     As a book, the 'Laozi' can almost be covered completely
with a single phrase: Ah! It does nothing more than
encourage growth at the branch tips by enhancing the roots.
[in other words,] observe where things come from, and
follow them to where they inevitably return. In what one
says, do not put the progenitor [the Dao] at a distance,
and, in what one undertakes, do not neglect the sovereign
[the Dao]. Although its text consists of five thousand
words, there is a single unity that runs through all of
them. Although the ideas [yi] in it range across a vast
perspective, together they are all of the same kind. If one
understands how the above single phrase covers it, nothing
hidden in it will fail to yield to recognition. But if each
matter is taken to involve a separate concept [yi], no
matter how much argument there is about them, more and more
confusion will result. Let us try to discuss this in these
terms: How can the occurrence of depravity ever be
attributed to what the depraved do? How can the occasion of
licentiousness ever be attributed to what the licentious
invent? Thus it is that the prevention of depravity depends
on the preservation of sincerity and not on the perfection
of scrutiny, and the cessation of licentiousness depends on
eliminating superficial frivolity [hua] and not on the
proliferation of laws and regulations. The eradication of
banditry depends on the elimination of desire and not on
making punishment more severe, and the cessation of
litigation depends on the avoidance of exaltation and not
on the perfection of adjudication. Therefore do not try to
govern what the people do but encourage their disinclination
to do anything depraved. Do not try to forbid their desires
but encourge their disinclination to desire anything. Plan
for things while they are still in a premanifested state
[weizhao] and act on them before they begin. This is all
one has to do. Therefore, instead of drying up one's
sagehood and intelligence in the attempt to keep cleverness
and treachery under control, it would be better to display
one's pristine simplicity and thereby still desire among
the common folk. Instead of promoting benevolence and
righteousness to bring solidity to flimsy social customs,
it would be better to embrace the uncarved block and thereby
bring the practice of sincerity and honesty to all. Instead
of incresing cleverness and sharpness in order to promote
the availability of goods and services, it would be better
to minimise one's own personal desires and thereby bring an
end to wrangling over the objects of frivolous appeal.
Therefore repudiate scrutiny, keep [the ruler's]
perspicaciousness and intelligence hidden, eliminate
recommendations and promotions, prune away decorative
praise, cast aside clever contraptions [that make life
easier], and denigrate precious goods. Everything depends
on arranging things so covetousness and desire will not
arise among the common folk; it does not depend on keeping
their practice of depravity under control. Thus it is that
the ruler repudiates sagehood and intelligence by the
display of pristine simplicity and gets rid of cleverness
and sharpness by minimizing his own personal desires. All
this is what is meant by encouraging growth at the branch
tips by enhancing the roots.
     However, if the Dao of pristine simplicity does not
prevail and an endorsement for liking and desire is not
suppressed, although one might exhaust one's sagely
brightness in scrutiny of it and dry up one's intelligence
and power of inference [lü] in how to control it, ever
more refined will be the thought behind cleverness and
ever more varied the shapes treachery will take. The more
severe the attempts to control it, the more assiduous
attempts at evasion will be. Then the intelligent and the
stupid will try to hoodwink one another, and those involved
in the six human relations will treat each other with
suspicion. Once the uncarved block fragments and
authenticity is lost, all human affairs become permeated
by villainy.
     If one neglects the roots and attacks the branch tips,
although one might have the ultimate degree of sagehood
and intelligence, the more he attacks them, the more he
will invite such disaster to arrive. And how much more
likely this will be if it is a ruler of merely inferior
skills and devices! If one presses down on the people
with pristine simplicity, they will regulate themselves
without any conscious action taken against them, but if
one attacks them with sagehood and intelligence, the common
folk will grow rich in cleverness as they become ever more
impoverished. Therefore pristine simplicity may be
embraced, but sagehood and intelligence may be discarded.
As scrutiny is curtailed, attempts to evade it will also
be curtailed, but as the brightness of one's intelligence
dries up, ways to evade it will become ever more perceptive.
Curtailment here results in minimizing harm to the uncarved
block, but intensifying it results in ever more serious
cleverness and treachery. Well, those who employ skills
and devices that extend discernment and discover secrets,
they can only be the sage and the wise, can they not? Yet
the harm that they have done, can one ever account for all
of it?
     - Wang Bi, "Outline Introduction to the Laozi"

"Nothing" or "nothingness" ('wu', sometimes given as a
compound word, 'wuwu' or 'wuyou', meaning "that which has
no physical or specific existence, no 'somethingness'"), is
a key concept in the thought of Wang Bi. By it, he seems to
mean the perfect absence of conscious design, deliberate
effort, prejudice, or predilection. The presence, on the
other hand, of conscious design, deliberate effort, prejudice,
or predilection is signified by 'you', which literally means
"something" but also can mean "being," in the abstact use of
the word, as well as the phenomenal existence of creatures,
including humankind, everything in the plant world, physical
phenomena in general, and events both natural and human.
Wang identifies nothingness with the action or function
(yong) of the Dao or the Natural (ziran). The Dao always
"acts out of nothing" (wu yi wei) and thus never functions
deliberately or with conscious design; that is, it never
"acts out of something" (you yi wei). As the true sage
embodies nothingness and is one with the Dao, he never
makes a false or wrong move. In the thought of Wang Bi,
'wuwei' never means "no action" or the "absence of action"
- inertia, quietude, and the like - but always "no
conscious/deliberate action." Wang reads all the sections
of the 'Laozi' in terms of this basic truth: Nothingness
is the principle attribute of all that is natural. To act
out of nothing and thus in accord with the Dao inevitably
results in success, safety, contentment, and happiness.
Somethingness always involves differentiation (fen). In
nature, the differentiation of all the myriad phenomena
occurs spontaneously and without conscious design. "Being"
is an appropriate translation of 'you' in this context.
However, somethingness is also the principle attribute of
all that is artificial. When creatures, including humans,
act out of something and thus in violation of the Dao,
failure, danger, dissatisfaction, and misery inevitably
result.
     - Richard John Lynn

Above Taoist quotes and quotes about Taoism and Taoists
are from the book, "The Classic of the Way and Virtue:
A New Translation of the Tao-te ching of Laozi as
interpreted by Wang Bi and translated by Richard John Lynn."