Staying alive is a pretty basic thing to want to do, and it seems that most of us want to do it.
In order to stay alive, I need to avoid moving in a direction that leads to death. That’s pretty basic, too, but in practice it can be quite difficult. A lot of things that lead in the direction of death are fun to do in the short term. And maybe in the mid term. Heck, even in the long term.
If smoking gives you pleasure, you might end up smoking for decades. Same for drinking. Same for a lot of other activities. I like various forms of pleasure. Dwelling on their possibly negative consequences isn’t pleasant, and so I tend not to dwell on those consequences.
Instead, I follow my desire, go with the flow wherever it leads, and hope that it’s not down the drain.
Alternatives exist. I could stop choosing the line of least resistance to maximum pleasure. But instant gratification is instantly gratifying, and so often I don’t.
Regret isn’t pleasant, either. I don’t like the moment when it occurs to me that I’ve walked the wrong way a long way.
Right now, I’m stopping and thinking. I’m wondering if anyone is actually interested in walking along a path that I’ve been pursuing for quite some time.
I can see where that path leads. It’s a future in which every devoted member of every community, of every size and type, understands what keeps a community going and acts on that knowledge in order to keep the community going.
That community might be a local tennis club. It might be a political party. It might be a company that makes orange juice. It might be a village. It might be a religious sect. The ability of each community to keep going depends on the ability of its devoted members to keep that community going.
If the devoted members of a community wish to keep that community going, it is in their interests to think not only about their own needs but also about the needs of others in that community. It is in the interests of every devoted member of the community to take action that will increase the likelihood that the community will keep going.
This sort of thinking requires me to put myself in the shoes of anyone else who is a member of the community to which I am devoted, and to think not just from my perspective but also from theirs about what should be done in order to support the continuation of the community to which we are devoted.
Let me give you a specific example of a community to which I am devoted: the human race. What can I do to contribute to the continuation of that community?
Well, I have to admit that it’s a big community. Action by one devoted member is typically not going to make any impact on the future prospects of the entire community. But spreading an idea, which is a very human form of action, is one way an individual can influence the human race, even if success is very unlikely.
The human race encompasses a kaleidoscopic array of other communities large and small. I’m sure that some of those communities have many devoted members. The likelihood that those communities will be around for some time is good. I’m also sure that some communities no longer have many devoted members. Those communities will tend to fade away. Only communities with a solid proportion of devoted members can hope to keep going.
To be a devoted member of a community entails embracing the culture of the community. In any community, there are things that are OK to do, and things that are not OK to do. If you repeatedly do things that are regarded in that community as not OK to do, you will risk forfeiting membership in that community.
Because the human race is such a big community, it’s hard to generalize about what is OK and not OK to do. I base my judgments on the OK-ness of actions that I have learned in various smaller communities in which I have been or still am a member, with varying degrees of devotion: my family (strong devotion), my school (weak), etc.
One thing I know for certain that other members of the human race will do is do things. Because that’s what we human beings do. We can’t stop doing things. This may even have shaped the thinking of whoever wrote Dao De Jing.
This “wuwei” thing that I translated pretentiously as “is-not action” . What is it? Well, in Chinese the “wu” bit (無) is “not” and the “wei” bit (為) is “do”. What does 為 show us? Originally, it was a hand interacting in some way with an elephant.
Why an elephant? That’s not an easy question to answer. But 象, the Canjeez for elephant, is also used for phenomena ranging from “phenomenon” itself(現象: appear-elephant) to “meteorology” (気象: flow-elephant). An elephant makes a big sensory impact. Maybe in early China a shared understanding of impact in the form of an elephant was appropriated to convey an idea of impact in the world around us.
To do something is to engage with the elephant of reality. And because “we know what we’re doing” (see 005_Correspondence course), the intention of that engagement is some form of change. We know that doing something results in change.
I may not think beyond the pleasure I’ll get from eating chocolate cake or drinking a cup of coffee. But even if I am barely conscious of that anticipation of pleasure, somewhere in my mind I do know what I want to get out of the experience.
I imagine chocolate cake. I imagine eating it. I imagine feeling pleasure when I do that. In my feeble human way, I am conjuring impact into existence. I picture my own little elephant, and think about it. This is not the grand celestial elephant of meteorological circumstances. It’s a flawed human take, processed by a flawed human mind.
“Imagination” is written in Japanese (and Chinese, too, I think) using two Canjeez. First, 想 (think about): a Canjeez that has appeared many times in these posts. And second, 像: an elephant on whose left flank is a human (亻), which may serve to indicate that this kind of elephant is not the real deal. It’s an impact elephant appropriated to serve human ends. A pseudo-elephant or elephantasy, sullied by mundane intention or purpose. This 像 Canjeez suggests to me that people in early China were keenly aware of the strictly limited capacity of the human mind.
Together the two characters form 想像 (souzou in Japanese). After we picture a better future in this way, we then take steps to realize it. We reach out to grasp the elephant. We take action: 為.
The elephant that I have been thinking about in particular is 相手, the “other” (see 017_Is that you?). “A mind for the other” or 相手を想う (aite wo omou) seems to be at the heart of every successful community, and in my experience this way of thinking is especially well represented in Japan.
Ironically, toxic forms of “aite wo omou” are currently contributing to the decline of communities across Japan. It is doubly ironic that Tokyo, one of Japan’s few successful communities in terms of membership numbers, is accelerating this process of decline.
But if you are interested in perpetuating the human race or your local tennis club, I think you should consider actively exploring healthy forms of “a mind for the other”, and the best place to do that is Japan. Rural Japan.
I would like you to consider living there for a time. If possible, for free.
Should I keep going on this path?