The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are
barely aware.
Next comes one whom they love and praise.
Next comes one whom they fear.
Next comes one whom they despise and defy.
When you are lacking in faith,
Others will be unfaithful to you.
The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,
All the people say, “We ourselves have achieved it!”
Of course we would imagine that the ruler who is well-loved
would be the most desirable ruler to have.
But if he is loved by the people he must be doing things that the people
all approve of, and because the Tao Te
Ching doesn’t even pretend to be a democratic treatise, we are reminded
that what the people approve of isn’t the same as what is best for them. People often love the leader who wages wars,
wins territories and covers the nation in glory. But these Napoleons and Hitlers always find
themselves disowned by the next generation.
The most intelligent decision maker is able to see
consequences very early on, with only the slightest of hints. What is going awry is subtly corrected long
before the more crude-minded have even noticed that something is amiss. Only the ruler who has already left things
too late is forced to make grand and sweeping corrections that attract the
attention of everyone.
This is why the highest type of ruler is often an obscure
figure, ruling without the people realising they are being ruled.
If the ruler is not capable of this subtle pre-emptive
style, of course he must be loved and endorsed by his population. This bond of love will make people follow the
leader even when the times are hard and uncertain.
If the social contract is not based on love, then the bond
must be forged by law and coercion. The unloving
people must be placed in a situation where the consequences of insubordination
are worse for them than the conditions of everyday life. This is of course the state of tyranny, and
it is very typical of the rise and fall of things that the tyrant is often the
leader who at one time was devotedly loved.
When there is neither love nor fear there is the leader who
is despised by his people and defied in all he tries to achieve. Such leaders never last long.
As I’ve made clear in previous posts, chapters such as this
are not only for the eyes of the politicians and captains of industry. We are all figures of influence in the lives
of those who know us. So long as we are
living, our words and actions will be leaving their mark, for good or for
bad. We are capable of intelligent
forethought, and it is not necessary that we always publicise the wonderful
things we are doing for people. This
chapter is a reminder to us that the wisest are ever humble and retiring, but
still capable of truly caring behaviour.
When you are lacking in faith,
Others will be unfaithful to you.
This follows on from the lines above on leadership. If you do not trust in the goodness of the
people; if you are not able to see that in the most essential sense all people
are already redeemed, and that their errors and mishaps will only serve to
teach them the truth of their redemption; if you do not trust in the impunity
of the universe itself, and the moral justifiability of all that happens within
it, then you are a person lacking in faith.
And when you lack faith, you will seek to control people
according to your own ideas. Some
behaviours you want to encourage, others you seek to stamp out at all costs.
The person lacking in faith is always the third of our four
leaders: the tyrant.
But what the tyrant does not understand is that the people
will not be controlled. What you try to
eradicate is ineradicable. The people
continue as they did, only now, thanks to your vulgar legislation, what was
allowed to occur in the open must now occur in secret in an atmosphere of guilt
and shame.
Ask them the truth and they will lie to your face. You lack faith in them; and so they lack
faith in you. By lacking faith, you have
forfeited the right to have the truth spoken to you. Your people see that you cannot cope with the
earthy realities of humanity; that your control of natural tendencies and
behaviours is at heart timidity and fear.
The moment you lose faith in the people is the moment they despise you
back; and they despise you so much that they won’t even say it to your face.
The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.
When his task is accomplished and things have been completed,
All the people say, “We ourselves have achieved it!”
The sage understands that when he acts it ‘is not me, but
the Tao through me’. He has no desire to
take the credit for what is not his doing.
He is merely a channel through which actions based on wisdom and
judgement ensue. But the people, who
believe thoroughly in their own individual agency, assume that their actions
are the reason for all this good order.
In fact that only one who does not partake of the credit is the strange meditative
one in the corner. He’s in his own
world, that one. He never says or does
anything!
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