#75 Beware of These Political Engineering Traps

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 75: Arm yourself with Lao Tzu’s practical advice to protect your life and live with clarity.

Nov 03, 2024

Welcome back to The Wisdom of Lao Tzu.

This week, we delve into Chapter 75 of the Tao Te Ching, where Lao Tzu criticizes taxation policy, directing us to see through the logic of governing methods.

From his perspective, the insatiable desire of the government to impose excessive taxes on people, along with its interventionist policies, is one of the root causes of people’s economic hardships.

Yet, this criticism does not indicate that Lao Tzu would suggest blaming the government, as it would not solve an individual’s problem. Instead, Lao Tzu says that the answer still depends on the individual. Why is it so?

Let’s find out.

**75**

民之饑，以其上食税之多，是以饑。

民之難治，以其上之有為，是以難治。

民之輕死，以其上求生之厚，是以輕死。

夫唯無以生為者，是賢於貴生。

Border-crossing: English translations

#1 Lin Yutang’s version

When people are hungry,

It is because their rulers eat too much tax-grain.

Therefore the unruliness of hungry people

Is due to the interference of their rulers.

That is why they are unruly.

The people are not afraid of death,

Because they are anxious to make a living.

That is why they are not afraid of death.

It is those who interfere not with with living

That are wise in exalting life.

#2 Edmund Ryden’s version

The people’s famine comes from too many courtiers living off their food-tax, for which reason there is famine.

The hundred families’ being ungovernable comes from their superiors having ulterior motives, for which reason they are ungovernable.

The people’s looking on death lightly comes from their superiors seeking to lead a sumptuous life, for which reason they look on death lightly.

One who has no use of life is worthier than one who values life.1

#3 D. C. Lau’s version

The people are hungry:

It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes

That the people are hungry.

The people are difficult to govern:

It is because those in authority are too fond of action

That the people are difficult to govern.

The people treat death lightly:

It is because the people set too much store by life

That they treat death lightly.

It is just because one has no use for life that one is wiser than the man who values life.2

Deeper dive

In this chapter, Lao Tzu elaborates further on his political thinking by targeting taxation.

He directly points out that taxation is forced upon ordinary people by political authority, bringing hardships to their lives. No one likes to pay taxes. Yet, we have been educated to do so as a form of concession in exchange for some tangible benefits, such as infrastructure for public use.

As Lao Tzu sees it, the real problem emerges when taxation becomes excessive and unbearable. When the government misallocates tax dollars into wasteful projects or purposes, society's general welfare is harmed.

In this sense, heavy taxation is essentially part of government regulations that limit and even disrupt people’s life plans by eroding their economic power.

Additionally, once the government can tap into people’s pockets through various tax schemes and ingenious economic means, they will not easily let go of them. Policy design, to a great extent, reflects social and cultural customs, but more importantly, it reveals the inherent tendency and habits derived from human nature.

Economic and political engineering

Obviously, Lao Tzu attributes the economic hardship people are forced to endure to the greed and oppression of political leaders.

“The people’s looking on death lightly comes from their superiors seeking to lead a sumptuous life, for which reason they look on death lightly.”

A simple review of any socialist and communist countries or autocratic regimes can help us understand Lao Tzu’s concern.

In these countries, the governing elites can share the spoils of their rule with their close associates without being accountable to the general public.

They know this. The ruled know this. A general atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness pervades such societies. There is no political balance because it is wishful thinking to negotiate with the side armed with the capabilities of exercising violence, coercion, and control.

To shape the general public into a docile and obedient mass, the political establishment would use propaganda in various ways, be it for national unity, the glory of a nation, strands of “dream,” or any big yet abstract slogan that can easily arouse and mobilize individuals. The goal is to impose on society a kind of hypnosis, to paralyze the spiritual autonomy of a person, and to make you think you are serving the country, while in reality, you are simply contributing to the operation of the state machine.

In concrete terms, the state or the government would boast about national industrial output, growing military power, and the like of which to inject a kind of political dopamine into the collective consciousness.

As a result, numerous individuals would receive a feeling that they have become part of something grander, something powerful, to the extent that they feel the glory of the state can overcome the insufficiency of their lives. It’s as if the sense of inferiority felt privately is cured by the mystical feeling of unity with the state.

Yet, in reality, individuals can come to terms with the understanding that the political efforts of the state have nothing to do with personal well-being. The public demonstration works and propaganda reveals something ulterior, something base — the survival of the regime and its sustainability. And that is the primary concern of those in governing positions.

In this context, political and popular movements initiated and supported by the ruling elites, such as the nationalistic movement, constitute a dose of powerful medicine, acting as a carefully manufactured illusion imposed on the unthinking and unconscious minds.

It is extremely challenging for ordinary people to escape this situation. The obstacles are real and many. The threats are everywhere, all the time.

Through the implementation of tailored fiscal policy and subsidies, the political establishment and their associates monopolize all the profitable areas of the economy, leaving the average individual to jump into the rat race to make a living.

The beneficiaries of these policies spread across the institutions that manage legalized violence, public security organizations and the apparatus in charge of enforcing regulation and surveillance, military and industrial corporations in coalition with the government, and the numerous bureaucrats with their lives sustained by and bonded with the system.

Those who occupy governing positions and their elite supporters in authoritarian systems, autocratic regimes of all kinds, be it one-party dictatorship or theocratic tyranny, are nothing but parasites.

Their ways of doing things are why people are cornered to take death lightly.

For the awakened individual, the question is simple: if one cannot even preserve oneself and family, what good will it be to join a government-sponsored movement or initiative and bathe in the glory of the state?

Lao Tzu’s answer will be about having an exit option because for the spiritually awakened and liberated individual, to become self-established is the only way to make it in this life.

It follows that when one controls one’s fate, one will have the claw to make a stand and obtain negotiation power with outside forces.

This is exactly the essential message Lao Tzu sends in his little book: self-transformation, spiritual awakening, and pragmatic strategies for self-realization against all odds.

Spiritual Taoism

I had mistaken Lao Tzu’s last statement in the past, partially because of my lack of experience and my insufficient understanding of materials. But in any case, I was wrong.

“It is those who interfere not with with living

That are wise in exalting life.”

I took his saying as expressing a defeatist attitude toward life, especially in the face of dark realities in which we feel powerless and hopeless.

But when I include the following three chapters (more discussions in the coming 3 weeks) into the investigation, I’ve discovered that Lao Tzu offers three pieces of powerful advice for us who are willing to listen.

In conventional wisdom, Lao Tzu advises choosing simplicity over extravagance and stillness over the constant chasing of worldly things.

But it does not mean the author is advocating a passive gesture toward life in general.

Live in clarity

Throughout history, everywhere in the world, within all kinds of societies, chasing power, wealth, status, honor, and domination has been a recurring episode for humanity.

But when do these allures become disruptive forces in our lives?

When we become obsessive with chasing them. When we cling too tight to let go.

So, I think Lao Tzu is sending a message through the last statement — in the face of external allures, we see through them. This is the only way to rise above entanglements with them.

There’s no need to cling to what is essentially fleeting. That’s the difference. It means you can pursue them all while when it is time to stop, just let go.

You simply detach and resign. You realize these worldly pursuits are nothing but appearances of reality, a fleeting moment in the endless motion of life, a tiny part of living in the limitless galloping of time.

Essentially, it’s about not living in a mirage, an illusion, a state in which we think we are making conscious choices.

He Shanggong’s (approximately 200 BC- ?) comment adds an additional layer of explanation, as he says,

“When one is not primarily concerned with chasing, political offers and benefits do not interfere with one’s will, wealth and profits do not disturb one’s mind, the ruler cannot make one a subject, lords and dukes cannot order one about. This is why one who does not interfere with one’s life is better than one who values life.”3

If you pursue excessive nourishment in life, you become attached to material comfort, external validation, or vanity. In a nutshell, you reveal your weaknesses to the outside. And you may very likely get lost in the journey of life.

True power lies in one who sees through it and does not become attached to it.

Thanks for reading!

All the best,

Yuxuan