In this thread, we list all the connections of passages of Tao-te Ching to the issues of liberty in the modern age.
3: “Where there is abstinence from action, good order is universal.”
There is no such thing as normalcy, order, and stability in our lives, unless we simply stop doing everything all together. All the rapid changes and disruptions are what keep us moving and acting; whether it is shortages that lead to price rises and resultant shift to other items not in shortage or the hunger in our bellies that makes us grow food. Therefore, to coerce in the attempt to bring good order only defeats the attempt at order even further, and thus better abstain from acting in coercion and avoid creating further disorder.
4: “We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into the brightness of others.”
We can neither coerce our way into having things the way we want to nor do without what we can’t get by coercion; all we can do is compromise and meet on minds.
5: “Heaven and earth do not act from any wish to be benevolent; they deal with all things as the dogs of grass are dealt with.”
Our society and civilization is not built on the whims of commandments and authoritative pronouncing of how everything is to be done; it is the result of our contracting and arbitration to reach common ground whenever possible.
8: “The highest excellence is like water. The excellence of water appears in it benefitting all things, and in its occupying , without striving, the low place which all men dislike.”
We are free to do something only to the extent that we are not forcibly prevented from doing it by others, but our own incapacity or circumstances which act as such can not count as our lack of liberty. We can do the greatest with the positive assertion of the liberty we have within whatever constraints we have, and we can do the least by acting in coercion to change our incapacity. Therefore, in free society, all men do the best in whatever constraints they have, and accept those constraints with humility, no matter how potentially dislikable it may be.
Await any gems you guys find.