On Leadership and Doing Time
Over the last few days, I’ve been reading Ken Liu’s new translation of Laozi’s Dao De Jing. (Liu translated the first and third books in The Three-Body Problem trilogy.) Today, on a dark day for America, I thought that we could all use some of his wisdom.
Favor takes power from you. When you don’t have it, you crave it. When you do have it, you dread losing it.
…
Thus, only those who can value the body politic as their own body should be entrusted with power; only those who love the body politic as they love themselves deserve authority.
On leaders:
The best sort? The people don’t even know they’re there. The next-best sort? The people love them and praise them. A rank below that? The people fear them. The worst? The people are contemptuous of them.
…
A country teetering on the edge of collapse is filled with patriots.
…
Why does a lord of ten thousand chariots treat the fate of the world so lightly?
…
Delight not in victory, for to delight in victory is to delight also in killing. Pleasure in killing will never win over the world.
…
Lords stride about in glorious clothes, carry sharp swords, eat so much good food that they’re sick of it, and hoard wealth beyond measure. They’re bandits and robbers, having wandered far from Dao.
…
The more people arm themselves, the more chaotic the country.
…
The people go hungry when those above eat too much. The people are hard to govern when those above crave great deeds. The people care little for lives when those above care too much about good living.
…
The soft and yielding overcome the strong and powerful.
Today I am also reminded of the words of another philosopher, The Wire’s drug kingpin Avon Barksdale, who had this to say about spending years in jail:
This ain’t no thing, man, you know what I mean? You come in here, man, and get your mind right — get in here and you do two days: that’s the day you come in this motherfucker and the day you get out this motherfucker.
Minds right, everyone. I’ll see you tomorrow, no matter what.
Stay Connected