Additional material: https://cchu9014.weebly.com/additional-material4.html
Objectives for week 3
- To reflect on the implications and consequences of materialism and instrumental rationality;
- To reflect on how our perception of the world is mediated by our objects of consciousness;
- To reflect on a world without meaning or objects of consciousness, by comparing the ideas of the Daoists (Laozi and Zhuangzi) and the existentialists (Sartre and Camus);
Baraka and the modern spiritual imagination
In last week’s class, we watched the film Baraka, which can take you on an imaginative journey, as a way to think about the outer expression of different mindscapes. Baraka is a non-narrative film directed by Ron Fricke in 1992. The title Baraka is a word that means “a blessing, the breath, or the essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds” in Arabic and in the Sufi tradition of Islam.[1] The film has no plot, no storyline, no actors, no dialogue nor voice-over. The film uses footage of landscapes, religious ceremonies, teeming urban life and the desolation of war to evoke a reflection on the meaning of life, beauty, nature, humanity and spirituality.
Materialism
So, what does the film tell us about our mindscape? What is the modern mindscape; and what kind of world are we building based on that mindscape? We can never forget the images of baby chicks being processed on an industrial conveyor belt, juxtaposed with images of crowds of harried commuters, opening our eyes to the way our own lives have become industrialized. In past years, one student noted that life appears to be “filled with conflicts between humans and nature, wars against different races, as well as coldness and strangeness between individuals. Therefore, human beings are compared to chickens on a conveyor belt, both of whom carry a confused look upon the future and life itself.” Like the chickens, we are “squashed together but separated.” “Even more heartless,” students noted, “was the killing of millions of people in Cambodia in the concentration camps.”
These scenes and images are powerful illustrations of the consequences of materialism. Materialism is a pervasive ideology in modern societies – a belief system which underpins both capitalism and socialism, and, consciously or unconsciously, often orients the choices we make in our lives, both individually and collectively. There are many refined philosophies of materialism, but, in practice, they boil down to a simple set of beliefs. The core belief of materialism is that the only true existence is material existence – the only thing that matters is the reality “out there” – not what is in your mind. What is in your mind is a mere reflection – whether accurate or distorted – of the material reality out there. In fact, since our mind, our body and our life are completely dependent on that material reality out there, that’s what our minds should be focused on. Anything else is mere fantasy. Many people have not thought much about this ideology and don’t consciously “believe” in it – but much of modern life, and the rules according to which our society and economy operate, are based on materialist assumptions – we operate as if the only existence is material existence, whether or not we believe that. The rules of the social and economic game, and the roles we act out in it, are based on the following propositions derived from the core materialist assumptions:
Associated with materialism is the concept of instrumental rationality. This is a type of rationality that focuses on the most efficient or cost-effective material means to achieve a specific end, but without reflecting on the value of that end. Industrial efficiency is a product of instrumental rationality.[2] Even living beings such as chicks and humans are turned into instruments for efficient processes of material productivity, in order to win in the economic game. Instrumental rationality focuses human reason on the “how”, which can be materially observed and measured, without asking the question of the ultimate purpose or value of this the game: what is the purpose of this game? Why have we set this as the objective to win? -- which are immaterial, moral or spiritual questions.
One student wrote: “Especially comparing with the new-born chicks moved by the machine, it stimulated me to think of our purpose in living in the world. Are we just growing, eating, sleeping, earning money, playing until we die? Maybe most people haven’t thought of why they are alive, living in the world. But I think all of us have a dream. Although we don’t know what are we living for, I suppose all of us have a dream and a purpose that we are fighting for, that will be the reason that I live.” This dream is an expression of our imagination, a what if that can fill our mindscape, become the object of our desire, and motivate us to create a different self and a different world. To the extent that this dream is about something beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, it is an expression of our soul or of our spirituality.
Baraka is a window into the complexities and contradictions of human nature. We all know that our bodies are the product of millions of years of evolution, and that our nature is thus in many ways the same as other animals: the drive for material survival and security is deeply engrained into our genetic code, and, with the technological fruits of our intelligence at our disposal, we are able to compete, struggle, extract and exploit to reach the maximum of our selfish advantage, in the most bloody and destructive fashion if necessary. But humans have a unique capacity: we can empathise with others, we can feel for others – not only for other humans, but even for baby chicks! We can put ourselves in their shoes, imagine ourselves being them, and feel for them, as if we were them. We can try to live with greater sensitivity and love for others, because the pain and suffering of others becomes our own pain, and the joy of others becomes our own joy.
Because even though they are physically separate from us, we can imagine them; they become objects of consciousness in our mindscape – in a sense, they become part of us. So, we can feel their feelings, imagine a relationship between ourselves and them, and imagine ourselves seeing the world from their perspective. When we do that, we begin to break out of the boundaries of our own body and ego. We can even imagine beings and dimensions without a material existence, and try to see the world from those perspectives, and live as if those beings and dimensions exist. And we can imagine ourselves projected in the future, in an ideal state, and strive to become that ideal projection. Humans are capable, in their mindscape, of projecting themselves into the perspective of other persons and beings, be they real or imaginary. It is partly out of this capacity that human spiritual life grows. We do not always use this capacity, and we are perfectly capable of living only from the perspective of our own bodily comfort, security and material reproduction. But an unexpected experience, an insight, the sight of the cry of suffering or injustice, or of moving self-sacrifice, may jolt us into spiritual questions and reflections.
In Baraka, the images of modern society were contrasted with scenes of natural and spiritual serenity. As students wrote, people engaged in meditative acts, rituals, and worship, evinced a sense of “love, inner silence, peace, social union and self-respect,” with unity between people, and even harmony between humans and nature. Some of the practices appear to “symbolize purification and a pathway to paradise”. These images portray a spiritual ideal of oneness and transcendence. They reflect a beautiful spiritual mindscape.
Another student, Victor Leung, however, offered a different perspective. Perhaps there is no difference after all, between the scenes of modern mass folly and those of religious ritual?
The art of the film presents the opposite argument: that modern society is in fact a kind of religion. By doing away with narration, and using a technique which speeds up certain frames of the movie (in the city segment), the film actually takes the view of a detached spectator, one that observes the regularity of an indigenous religious ritual the same way it does with the bustling and constant vibe of the modern city with its coming and going of traffic. Similarly, the assembly line of little chicks and the depersonalized factory worker that repetitively does his/her job resembles a kind of performative reality or ritual in the context of modern society. Would the filmmakers be suggesting that that mass culture, consumerism, and production are the new rituals and religions of our postmodern society?”
That said, does not the role of the monk who walks the streets of Tokyo complicate our understanding of ritual? While the monk's actions would be construed as a social norm within a society with religion at its core, and is considered ritual as such, his behaviour in the city actually is contrary to the social norm. In this scenario, one sees that what is normally analysed and understood as ritual becomes unritualistic; suddenly, the Tokyo citizen who walks casually or speeds through the crowds look more ritualistic than the monk. By juxtaposing the monk with the other passers-by, the film effectively relativises the social norms of different cultures and reveals to us that religion is in fact relative. In other words, just like the indigenous religious groups, we as modern city dwellers have our own rituals, our own norms and practices that would appear as strange to the indigenous as they appear to us.
In this sense, even though there is a great contrast between our modern society and the one of indigenous cultures, there is also a great similarity in that anthropologically, we both exist as societies of some type with a kind of basic social practice. In a way, what we often perceive as "backward" and/or "religious" in other societies also exists in ours, but only in a different form that we do not recognize.
These contrasting images and feelings lead to another set of questions: what is, or should be, the relationship between spirituality and modern life? Are they incompatible? Is spirituality simply an imaginary escape from the busy pressures of life, that helps us to relax, to become more efficient chickens? “Can religion really save us from the modern spiritual disease?” “How can religion exist in such an immoral society where life is not celebrated and the dear things around us are killed. Ironically, doesn't religion tell us how to live righteously?” Can a beautiful spiritual imagination be converted into creating a more beautiful, loving and just world? Does it exist only in our mindscape, or can we translate it into reality?
These scenes and images are powerful illustrations of the consequences of materialism. Materialism is a pervasive ideology in modern societies – a belief system which underpins both capitalism and socialism, and, consciously or unconsciously, often orients the choices we make in our lives, both individually and collectively. There are many refined philosophies of materialism, but, in practice, they boil down to a simple set of beliefs. The core belief of materialism is that the only true existence is material existence – the only thing that matters is the reality “out there” – not what is in your mind. What is in your mind is a mere reflection – whether accurate or distorted – of the material reality out there. In fact, since our mind, our body and our life are completely dependent on that material reality out there, that’s what our minds should be focused on. Anything else is mere fantasy. Many people have not thought much about this ideology and don’t consciously “believe” in it – but much of modern life, and the rules according to which our society and economy operate, are based on materialist assumptions – we operate as if the only existence is material existence, whether or not we believe that. The rules of the social and economic game, and the roles we act out in it, are based on the following propositions derived from the core materialist assumptions:
- In this game, the purpose of life is material survival. Since material reality is what is most important in the world, then what we value the most in order to win in this game is the accumulation of material wealth and power;
- In this game, the measure of social progress or development is rising levels of consumption, production, efficiency, productivity and profitability. Everything else is secondary in order to progress in this game and, if necessary, it needs to be sacrificed to the goals of material development;
- In this game, the essence of human beings is material, and the basic human drive is to compete for survival and power. All human relations boil down to competition and struggle.
Associated with materialism is the concept of instrumental rationality. This is a type of rationality that focuses on the most efficient or cost-effective material means to achieve a specific end, but without reflecting on the value of that end. Industrial efficiency is a product of instrumental rationality.[2] Even living beings such as chicks and humans are turned into instruments for efficient processes of material productivity, in order to win in the economic game. Instrumental rationality focuses human reason on the “how”, which can be materially observed and measured, without asking the question of the ultimate purpose or value of this the game: what is the purpose of this game? Why have we set this as the objective to win? -- which are immaterial, moral or spiritual questions.
One student wrote: “Especially comparing with the new-born chicks moved by the machine, it stimulated me to think of our purpose in living in the world. Are we just growing, eating, sleeping, earning money, playing until we die? Maybe most people haven’t thought of why they are alive, living in the world. But I think all of us have a dream. Although we don’t know what are we living for, I suppose all of us have a dream and a purpose that we are fighting for, that will be the reason that I live.” This dream is an expression of our imagination, a what if that can fill our mindscape, become the object of our desire, and motivate us to create a different self and a different world. To the extent that this dream is about something beautiful, inspiring, uplifting, it is an expression of our soul or of our spirituality.
Baraka is a window into the complexities and contradictions of human nature. We all know that our bodies are the product of millions of years of evolution, and that our nature is thus in many ways the same as other animals: the drive for material survival and security is deeply engrained into our genetic code, and, with the technological fruits of our intelligence at our disposal, we are able to compete, struggle, extract and exploit to reach the maximum of our selfish advantage, in the most bloody and destructive fashion if necessary. But humans have a unique capacity: we can empathise with others, we can feel for others – not only for other humans, but even for baby chicks! We can put ourselves in their shoes, imagine ourselves being them, and feel for them, as if we were them. We can try to live with greater sensitivity and love for others, because the pain and suffering of others becomes our own pain, and the joy of others becomes our own joy.
Because even though they are physically separate from us, we can imagine them; they become objects of consciousness in our mindscape – in a sense, they become part of us. So, we can feel their feelings, imagine a relationship between ourselves and them, and imagine ourselves seeing the world from their perspective. When we do that, we begin to break out of the boundaries of our own body and ego. We can even imagine beings and dimensions without a material existence, and try to see the world from those perspectives, and live as if those beings and dimensions exist. And we can imagine ourselves projected in the future, in an ideal state, and strive to become that ideal projection. Humans are capable, in their mindscape, of projecting themselves into the perspective of other persons and beings, be they real or imaginary. It is partly out of this capacity that human spiritual life grows. We do not always use this capacity, and we are perfectly capable of living only from the perspective of our own bodily comfort, security and material reproduction. But an unexpected experience, an insight, the sight of the cry of suffering or injustice, or of moving self-sacrifice, may jolt us into spiritual questions and reflections.
In Baraka, the images of modern society were contrasted with scenes of natural and spiritual serenity. As students wrote, people engaged in meditative acts, rituals, and worship, evinced a sense of “love, inner silence, peace, social union and self-respect,” with unity between people, and even harmony between humans and nature. Some of the practices appear to “symbolize purification and a pathway to paradise”. These images portray a spiritual ideal of oneness and transcendence. They reflect a beautiful spiritual mindscape.
Another student, Victor Leung, however, offered a different perspective. Perhaps there is no difference after all, between the scenes of modern mass folly and those of religious ritual?
The art of the film presents the opposite argument: that modern society is in fact a kind of religion. By doing away with narration, and using a technique which speeds up certain frames of the movie (in the city segment), the film actually takes the view of a detached spectator, one that observes the regularity of an indigenous religious ritual the same way it does with the bustling and constant vibe of the modern city with its coming and going of traffic. Similarly, the assembly line of little chicks and the depersonalized factory worker that repetitively does his/her job resembles a kind of performative reality or ritual in the context of modern society. Would the filmmakers be suggesting that that mass culture, consumerism, and production are the new rituals and religions of our postmodern society?”
That said, does not the role of the monk who walks the streets of Tokyo complicate our understanding of ritual? While the monk's actions would be construed as a social norm within a society with religion at its core, and is considered ritual as such, his behaviour in the city actually is contrary to the social norm. In this scenario, one sees that what is normally analysed and understood as ritual becomes unritualistic; suddenly, the Tokyo citizen who walks casually or speeds through the crowds look more ritualistic than the monk. By juxtaposing the monk with the other passers-by, the film effectively relativises the social norms of different cultures and reveals to us that religion is in fact relative. In other words, just like the indigenous religious groups, we as modern city dwellers have our own rituals, our own norms and practices that would appear as strange to the indigenous as they appear to us.
In this sense, even though there is a great contrast between our modern society and the one of indigenous cultures, there is also a great similarity in that anthropologically, we both exist as societies of some type with a kind of basic social practice. In a way, what we often perceive as "backward" and/or "religious" in other societies also exists in ours, but only in a different form that we do not recognize.
These contrasting images and feelings lead to another set of questions: what is, or should be, the relationship between spirituality and modern life? Are they incompatible? Is spirituality simply an imaginary escape from the busy pressures of life, that helps us to relax, to become more efficient chickens? “Can religion really save us from the modern spiritual disease?” “How can religion exist in such an immoral society where life is not celebrated and the dear things around us are killed. Ironically, doesn't religion tell us how to live righteously?” Can a beautiful spiritual imagination be converted into creating a more beautiful, loving and just world? Does it exist only in our mindscape, or can we translate it into reality?
Things and meanings
In the materialist worldview and instrumental rationality described above, beings in the world have no intrinsic value or meaning. The chicks have no value or meaning in and of themselves; they are simply a material resource, whose value and meaning is ascribed to them by us humans who see them as food; and more specifically, by the agricultural corporation, which sees them as profit and tries to maximise the efficiency of chicken production. Other than this instrumental goal, chickens have no value or meaning. If we think they have value as living beings, as being cute, or beautiful, we are free to think so, but those are only our own emotional sentiments – we can enjoy the chicks in our mindscape, but they themselves have no such intrinsic value or meaning. And the same could be said of humans too – they have instrumental value, which should be maximised through more efficient production and more abundant consumption. Anything else is mere subjective feeling.
Materialism and instrumental rationality are based on making a division between material existence, which is considered to be “real”, and our mindscape of thoughts, imagination, and feelings, which is considered to be less “real”.
Since the mindscape is a "subjective" world, is it less "real" than the objective world "out there"? Can something "unreal" be more powerful than "objective reality"? Perhaps the world of meanings and significances -- the world of intangible objects of consciousness, which fills our mindscape -- is just as "real" as the world "out there". In our perception, experience and action in the world, the two are united into one. Our perception of material objects is always immediately connected in our minds to intangible concepts, words, ideas and meanings. At the same time, for intangible mental objects to have meaning, they always need to be linked to a memory or association with some tangible reality.
A good illustration is my first visit to China. I was an English teacher in an oil school. In 1993, there were hardly any foreigners in Sichuan. Because foreign faces were rare, wherever I went, there would be crowds of people looking at me, pulling at the hair on my arms, and calling “laowai, laowai (老外,老外! foreigner, foreigner!)” I attracted a lot of attention. One day, the newspaper China Oil News decided to write an article about this foreign teacher at the oil college. A journalist came to interview me. We spent the entire evening having delicious Sichuan hotpot together. We had a great time chatting together. I saw his face for three hours. He also saw my face for three hours.
The next day, I read his article about me in the newspaper. This journalist described me as having blonde (“yellow”) hair, a “tall nose” and blue eyes. I couldn't believe it. This person had spent the whole evening with me, but, in his mind, all foreigners have blonde hair and blue eyes. So even though he had looked at my brown eyes for three hours, the next day, in his mind, my eyes were blue. In those days, I was shocked that somebody would call my hair blonde. I consider my hair to be reddish-brown, or auburn. It’s certainly not called blonde or “yellow” in Western countries. Now, I have been living in China for so long so that it doesn’t shock me anymore when somebody says I have blonde hair. My Chinese wife says that actually, if someone's hair is not dark brown or black, it can be called “yellow”. And 20 years ago, in Sichuan, if your eyes were not black or deep dark brown, they were “blue”. And never mind the standard for a “tall” nose…
The point is that we perceive what we see through categories in our minds. Ideas and concepts – objects of consciousness, as James said – in our mindscape “colour” the way we look at the world. More than 25 years ago, in that place, there were basically two eye colours in peoples’ minds. The world was divided into two types of people: those with black eyes and those with blue eyes. That was all they saw. To give another example: when I grew up in Canada -- before global warming -- we had a lot of snow in winter. But I only know four words related to snow in English: “snow”, “ice”, “slush”, “sleet”. The Inuit (Eskimo) people who live in the Arctic, it has been claimed, have dozens of different words for different kinds of snow. Similarly, the Sami people in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia have been speculated to know over 180 different words to designate types and conditions of snow. As soon as they see it, they can instantly name very detailed qualities and subtle differences in types of snow. But for me, all I see is white snowflakes.
An example closer to home might be our sensory perception, such as our sense of smell. Most people can distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells, and further between fresh, stale, organic, metallic, fruity, earthy scents, etc. But with training, we can learn to distinguish finer and finer notes, and with time enter a whole new world of scent. Experts working in the perfume industry in France traditionally learned to refine their sense of smell – to become a “nose” – by using a set of small bottles containing contrasting scents: so-called “odour kits”, or “malettes à odeurs” in French. With practice, the aspiring perfumist learned to distinguish between ever finer contrasts in the kit– a process that could take years to master. Through such “attunement” to the external world we come to see things as literally an expression of the categories by which scents are divided in the malettes à odeurs.[3] We do not objectively see the world that is outside of ourselves, but always what we have been attuned or “socialised” to perceive.
Even something that seems as obvious as “black” is also a concept in our minds. It is a word. You cannot define “blackness”, because when you see this “black” phone and you say it is black, you are actually connecting this thing to a concept of black in your mind. You have a concept of black, which is not exactly the same as this phone – that concept is in your mind. Your mind can connect different things together – this phone, your hair, the frame of your glasses, using the same concept of “black”. By making those connections, your mind sees something in common between these different things. Even things that appear to be so obvious, such as “black”, are actually concepts – objects of consciousness. They are ideas, something we can imagine.
The meaning we give to things, whether we perceive them as good or bad, is not inherent in the thing itself, but comes from our own consciousness. You may say something is useful – obviously, “useful” is a judgment. But even blackness is a judgement – you have judged this thing to be black. Even if we look very closely, the blackness of your phone and of your hair may be not the same. So even the most obvious things are actually ideas in our minds, objects of consciousness that we attach and connect to the things that we perceive.
Thus, we perceive objects, but we attach qualities to them – such as names and colours – based on our pre-existing objects of consciousness. These qualities are not only tangible ones, such as colour; but also include moral and abstract qualities. When he speaks of the power of abstract objects of consciousness, William James notes that
The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims … in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance. As time, space, and the ether soak through all things so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice, soak through all things good, strong, significant, and just. Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its “nature,” as we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know is “what” it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception.[4]
Thus, James suggests that whenever we are moved by something, it is the intangible qualities of the thing that move us, and not the thing itself. Our intangible ideas, the abstract objects in our mindscape, are more powerful than physical objects -- and they do guide and affect our action in the outside, "objective" world.
Materialism and instrumental rationality are based on making a division between material existence, which is considered to be “real”, and our mindscape of thoughts, imagination, and feelings, which is considered to be less “real”.
Since the mindscape is a "subjective" world, is it less "real" than the objective world "out there"? Can something "unreal" be more powerful than "objective reality"? Perhaps the world of meanings and significances -- the world of intangible objects of consciousness, which fills our mindscape -- is just as "real" as the world "out there". In our perception, experience and action in the world, the two are united into one. Our perception of material objects is always immediately connected in our minds to intangible concepts, words, ideas and meanings. At the same time, for intangible mental objects to have meaning, they always need to be linked to a memory or association with some tangible reality.
A good illustration is my first visit to China. I was an English teacher in an oil school. In 1993, there were hardly any foreigners in Sichuan. Because foreign faces were rare, wherever I went, there would be crowds of people looking at me, pulling at the hair on my arms, and calling “laowai, laowai (老外,老外! foreigner, foreigner!)” I attracted a lot of attention. One day, the newspaper China Oil News decided to write an article about this foreign teacher at the oil college. A journalist came to interview me. We spent the entire evening having delicious Sichuan hotpot together. We had a great time chatting together. I saw his face for three hours. He also saw my face for three hours.
The next day, I read his article about me in the newspaper. This journalist described me as having blonde (“yellow”) hair, a “tall nose” and blue eyes. I couldn't believe it. This person had spent the whole evening with me, but, in his mind, all foreigners have blonde hair and blue eyes. So even though he had looked at my brown eyes for three hours, the next day, in his mind, my eyes were blue. In those days, I was shocked that somebody would call my hair blonde. I consider my hair to be reddish-brown, or auburn. It’s certainly not called blonde or “yellow” in Western countries. Now, I have been living in China for so long so that it doesn’t shock me anymore when somebody says I have blonde hair. My Chinese wife says that actually, if someone's hair is not dark brown or black, it can be called “yellow”. And 20 years ago, in Sichuan, if your eyes were not black or deep dark brown, they were “blue”. And never mind the standard for a “tall” nose…
The point is that we perceive what we see through categories in our minds. Ideas and concepts – objects of consciousness, as James said – in our mindscape “colour” the way we look at the world. More than 25 years ago, in that place, there were basically two eye colours in peoples’ minds. The world was divided into two types of people: those with black eyes and those with blue eyes. That was all they saw. To give another example: when I grew up in Canada -- before global warming -- we had a lot of snow in winter. But I only know four words related to snow in English: “snow”, “ice”, “slush”, “sleet”. The Inuit (Eskimo) people who live in the Arctic, it has been claimed, have dozens of different words for different kinds of snow. Similarly, the Sami people in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia have been speculated to know over 180 different words to designate types and conditions of snow. As soon as they see it, they can instantly name very detailed qualities and subtle differences in types of snow. But for me, all I see is white snowflakes.
An example closer to home might be our sensory perception, such as our sense of smell. Most people can distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant smells, and further between fresh, stale, organic, metallic, fruity, earthy scents, etc. But with training, we can learn to distinguish finer and finer notes, and with time enter a whole new world of scent. Experts working in the perfume industry in France traditionally learned to refine their sense of smell – to become a “nose” – by using a set of small bottles containing contrasting scents: so-called “odour kits”, or “malettes à odeurs” in French. With practice, the aspiring perfumist learned to distinguish between ever finer contrasts in the kit– a process that could take years to master. Through such “attunement” to the external world we come to see things as literally an expression of the categories by which scents are divided in the malettes à odeurs.[3] We do not objectively see the world that is outside of ourselves, but always what we have been attuned or “socialised” to perceive.
Even something that seems as obvious as “black” is also a concept in our minds. It is a word. You cannot define “blackness”, because when you see this “black” phone and you say it is black, you are actually connecting this thing to a concept of black in your mind. You have a concept of black, which is not exactly the same as this phone – that concept is in your mind. Your mind can connect different things together – this phone, your hair, the frame of your glasses, using the same concept of “black”. By making those connections, your mind sees something in common between these different things. Even things that appear to be so obvious, such as “black”, are actually concepts – objects of consciousness. They are ideas, something we can imagine.
The meaning we give to things, whether we perceive them as good or bad, is not inherent in the thing itself, but comes from our own consciousness. You may say something is useful – obviously, “useful” is a judgment. But even blackness is a judgement – you have judged this thing to be black. Even if we look very closely, the blackness of your phone and of your hair may be not the same. So even the most obvious things are actually ideas in our minds, objects of consciousness that we attach and connect to the things that we perceive.
Thus, we perceive objects, but we attach qualities to them – such as names and colours – based on our pre-existing objects of consciousness. These qualities are not only tangible ones, such as colour; but also include moral and abstract qualities. When he speaks of the power of abstract objects of consciousness, William James notes that
The whole universe of concrete objects, as we know them, swims … in a wider and higher universe of abstract ideas, that lend it its significance. As time, space, and the ether soak through all things so (we feel) do abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice, soak through all things good, strong, significant, and just. Such ideas, and others equally abstract, form the background for all our facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its “nature,” as we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know is “what” it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, but we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception.[4]
Thus, James suggests that whenever we are moved by something, it is the intangible qualities of the thing that move us, and not the thing itself. Our intangible ideas, the abstract objects in our mindscape, are more powerful than physical objects -- and they do guide and affect our action in the outside, "objective" world.
Sartre's gnarly tree root
Now let's imagine – what if we remove all of those concepts from the things we perceive? What if we were to completely clear out our mindscape? Let's imagine that our minds are painting this phone black. Our minds put the word “black” onto that phone, as well as the concept of blackness and all those qualities such as “useful”, “high-tech”, “phone”; as if we were painting this object with different ideas. What if we strip those ideas away – let’s take away all of those concepts, qualities and characteristics until you see that thing in itself, without any qualities, in its absolute and unmediated “thingness”. What would it be? What if we were to avoid escaping into an “unreal” world of the imagination, and strip away all abstract objects of consciousness, remove all “subjective” meaning and significance, in order to attain direct consciousness of objects in their pure materiality?
The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) attempted this in his first novel, Nausea, written in 1938. In the selected passage in the novel, the protagonist, sitting on a bench in a park, gazing at the "knotty, inert, nameless" root of a tree under his foot, experiences the pure, naked material existence of things, stripped of all names, descriptions, relationships, concepts, meanings and significances: “This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.” He is overwhelmed with a sense of nausea, at the absurdity, the futility and pointlessness of all things, which all come into existence and then vanish, ultimately leaving “not even a memory”. Looking at the trees, he saw not life gushing upwards, but “Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die... Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”[5] Here is the full passage:
So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The words had vanished and with them the significance of things, their methods of use, and the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface. I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. Then I had this vision. It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of “existence”…
And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness… We were a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn't the slightest reason to be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to the others. In the way: it was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these gates, these stones.
In vain I tried to count the chestnut trees, to locate them by their relationship to the Velleda, to compare their height with the height of the plane trees: each of them escaped the relationship in which I tried to enclose it, isolated itself, and overflowed. Of these relations (which I insisted on maintaining in order to delay the crumbling of the human world, measures, quantities, and directions) – I felt myself to be the arbitrator; they no longer had their teeth into things. In the way, the chestnut tree there, opposite me, a little to the left. In the way, the Velleda. And I – soft, weak, obscene, digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts – I, too, was in the way. Fortunately, I didn't feel it, although I realized it, but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it (even now I am afraid—afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up like a wave). I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been in the way.
In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity… Absurdity – the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain to repeat: “This is a root” – it didn't work anymore. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a breathing pump, to that, to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous, headstrong look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand generally that it was a root, but not that one at all. This root, with its colour, shape, its congealed movement, was… below all explanation. …
And all these existents which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing – not even a memory… The trees floated. Gushing towards the sky? Or rather a collapse; at any instant I expected to see the tree-trunks shrivel like weary wands, crumple up, fall on the ground in a soft, folded, black heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help themselves… Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could only come to them from the outside: strains of music alone can proudly carry their own death within themselves like an internal necessity: only they don't exist.
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance… It was there on the trunk of the chestnut tree ... it was the chestnut tree. Things – you might have called them thoughts – which stopped halfway, which were forgotten, which forgot what they wanted to think and which stayed like that, hanging about with an odd little sense which was beyond them. That little sense annoyed me: I could not understand it, even if I could have stayed leaning against the gate for a century; I had learned all I could know about existence. I left, I went back to the hotel and I wrote.[6]
Sartre described this experience as nausea. That was how he experienced the world – pure existence without any concepts, ideas, characteristics, qualities, and relationships. When he stripped away all these things that our minds have imagined, he felt nausea – the utter senselessness, purposelessness, the absence of significance and the absurdity of the world.
This connects to another French existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus (1913-1960). Camus started from a different perspective, but reached a similar conclusion about the absurdity of it all. He wrote about a Greek myth called the Myth of Sisyphus.[7] Sisyphus is a Greek hero who is punished by the gods. He has to take a huge boulder and push it up to the top of the mountain. He has to push and push with great effort all the way up to the top. But just when he is about to reach the top, the boulder will roll and tumble down to the bottom of the mountain. Then, he has to start the same process again, pushing the boulder so strenuously, so tiringly, so painfully, again and again for eternity. That's all Sisyphus does: to push this boulder to the top, but he never quite makes it, and the boulder will tumble down, again and again, for eternity.
Camus stressed the “absurdity” of it all – the lack of intrinsic significance. As we get up in the morning, get out of bed, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, go to class, rush around to do this and that, come back home, have dinner, watch TV, brush our teeth, go to bed, get up, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, again and again and again, just like the Myth of Sisyphus. Intrinsically, in themselves, do these things have any significance at all? What if we remove all significance from them? When Sartre and Camus did that, they described the feeling of nausea and of the absurd.
Sartre and Camus have argued that there is no inherent meaning in the material world itself. The tree does not contain meaning; meaning does not spring out of the tree. Nor does this paper, this ink, or this screen contain any meaning. Where does the meaning come from, then? For Sartre and Camus, it comes from our own minds. And when we experience angst in the face of absurdity, we should fully accept it; knowing this, we become fully free. Camus wrote, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.[8] For Sartre, with that freedom, we build our own existence, without caring how others would define us: "... man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards."[9]
The French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) attempted this in his first novel, Nausea, written in 1938. In the selected passage in the novel, the protagonist, sitting on a bench in a park, gazing at the "knotty, inert, nameless" root of a tree under his foot, experiences the pure, naked material existence of things, stripped of all names, descriptions, relationships, concepts, meanings and significances: “This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness.” He is overwhelmed with a sense of nausea, at the absurdity, the futility and pointlessness of all things, which all come into existence and then vanish, ultimately leaving “not even a memory”. Looking at the trees, he saw not life gushing upwards, but “Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die... Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”[5] Here is the full passage:
So I was in the park just now. The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench. I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The words had vanished and with them the significance of things, their methods of use, and the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface. I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed, alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, which frightened me. Then I had this vision. It left me breathless. Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of “existence”…
And then all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the very paste of things, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, all in disorder – naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness… We were a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn't the slightest reason to be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to the others. In the way: it was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these gates, these stones.
In vain I tried to count the chestnut trees, to locate them by their relationship to the Velleda, to compare their height with the height of the plane trees: each of them escaped the relationship in which I tried to enclose it, isolated itself, and overflowed. Of these relations (which I insisted on maintaining in order to delay the crumbling of the human world, measures, quantities, and directions) – I felt myself to be the arbitrator; they no longer had their teeth into things. In the way, the chestnut tree there, opposite me, a little to the left. In the way, the Velleda. And I – soft, weak, obscene, digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts – I, too, was in the way. Fortunately, I didn't feel it, although I realized it, but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it (even now I am afraid—afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up like a wave). I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been in the way.
In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity… Absurdity – the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain to repeat: “This is a root” – it didn't work anymore. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a breathing pump, to that, to this hard and compact skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous, headstrong look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand generally that it was a root, but not that one at all. This root, with its colour, shape, its congealed movement, was… below all explanation. …
And all these existents which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing – not even a memory… The trees floated. Gushing towards the sky? Or rather a collapse; at any instant I expected to see the tree-trunks shrivel like weary wands, crumple up, fall on the ground in a soft, folded, black heap. They did not want to exist, only they could not help themselves… Tired and old, they kept on existing, against the grain, simply because they were too weak to die, because death could only come to them from the outside: strains of music alone can proudly carry their own death within themselves like an internal necessity: only they don't exist.
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance… It was there on the trunk of the chestnut tree ... it was the chestnut tree. Things – you might have called them thoughts – which stopped halfway, which were forgotten, which forgot what they wanted to think and which stayed like that, hanging about with an odd little sense which was beyond them. That little sense annoyed me: I could not understand it, even if I could have stayed leaning against the gate for a century; I had learned all I could know about existence. I left, I went back to the hotel and I wrote.[6]
Sartre described this experience as nausea. That was how he experienced the world – pure existence without any concepts, ideas, characteristics, qualities, and relationships. When he stripped away all these things that our minds have imagined, he felt nausea – the utter senselessness, purposelessness, the absence of significance and the absurdity of the world.
This connects to another French existentialist philosopher, Albert Camus (1913-1960). Camus started from a different perspective, but reached a similar conclusion about the absurdity of it all. He wrote about a Greek myth called the Myth of Sisyphus.[7] Sisyphus is a Greek hero who is punished by the gods. He has to take a huge boulder and push it up to the top of the mountain. He has to push and push with great effort all the way up to the top. But just when he is about to reach the top, the boulder will roll and tumble down to the bottom of the mountain. Then, he has to start the same process again, pushing the boulder so strenuously, so tiringly, so painfully, again and again for eternity. That's all Sisyphus does: to push this boulder to the top, but he never quite makes it, and the boulder will tumble down, again and again, for eternity.
Camus stressed the “absurdity” of it all – the lack of intrinsic significance. As we get up in the morning, get out of bed, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, go to class, rush around to do this and that, come back home, have dinner, watch TV, brush our teeth, go to bed, get up, brush our teeth, get dressed, go to work, again and again and again, just like the Myth of Sisyphus. Intrinsically, in themselves, do these things have any significance at all? What if we remove all significance from them? When Sartre and Camus did that, they described the feeling of nausea and of the absurd.
Sartre and Camus have argued that there is no inherent meaning in the material world itself. The tree does not contain meaning; meaning does not spring out of the tree. Nor does this paper, this ink, or this screen contain any meaning. Where does the meaning come from, then? For Sartre and Camus, it comes from our own minds. And when we experience angst in the face of absurdity, we should fully accept it; knowing this, we become fully free. Camus wrote, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.[8] For Sartre, with that freedom, we build our own existence, without caring how others would define us: "... man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards."[9]
Zhuangzi's useless tree and Laozi's uncarved block
Sartre's descriptions of a gnarly root and of an old, useless tree remind me of Daoist images -- of Zhuangzi's “useless tree” and of Laozi's “uncarved block”. Both of these images are part of a Daoist attitude of breaking through human ideas, concepts and meanings, which to some extent seems to be similar to what Sartre described. Coincidentally, they came to the same conclusion, but they somehow drew very different implications from it. In the story of the useless tree, Huizi was talking about this tree to Zhuangzi, the early Daoist philosopher. Huizi described the tree as gnarled, similar to Sartre’s description. To him, it is a useless tree, no good for anything.
The Useless Tree[10]
Hui Shi said to Zhuangzi, “I have a tree, of the sort people call a shu tree. Its trunk is too gnarled for measuring lines to be applied to it, its branches are too twisted for use with compasses or T-squares. If you stood it on the road, no carpenter would pay any attention to it. Now your talk is similarly vast but useless, people are unanimous in rejecting it.” Zhuangzi replied, “Haven't you ever seen a wildcat or a weasel? It crouches down to wait for something to pass, ready to pounce east or west, high or low, only to end by falling into a trap and dying in a net. But then there is the yak. It is as big as a cloud hanging in the sky. It has an ability to be big, but hardly to catch mice. Now you have a large tree but fret over its uselessness. Why not plant it in Nothing At All town or Vast Nothing wilds? Then you could roam about doing nothing by its side or sleep beneath it. Axes will never shorten its life and nothing will ever harm it. If you are of no use at all, who will make trouble for you?”[11]
In the story of the useless tree, it is precisely the uselessness of the tree that is the cause of the life of the tree, saving it from being felled down by people for their own instrumental purposes. In another story in Zhuangzi, the useless tree is located at the altar to the earth god (tudigong 土地公), which, traditionally, is the sacred centre of Chinese villages or neighbourhoods. Not only does the ‘useless tree” live longer than “useful” ones, it offers shade and protection to the sacred centre of social life.
One way to understand this story is that so-called "usefulness" refers to the ideas, concepts and functions that we attribute to things, in relation to our own instrumental needs and desires, and which ultimately destroy the things that we use for our own purposes. In its “uselessness”, the tree has its own, intrinsic value which is independent of human concepts and needs. And yet, left to live according to its own nature, it provides shelter and shade to the villagers who don't pay much attention to it.
Zhuangzi's position is clear – just let the useless tree be. Naturally, people will go under it for shelter, only because this tree is of no use. Now, is useless meaningless? At some level, it is. This tree is meaningless to Huizi, because he couldn't see what he could use this tree for. When we give meaning to something, we often give it meaning in relation to ourselves, to our own personal needs and preferences. This course is meaningful to me, because it will help me to get a grade, because it will help me understand this, or because it will help me to make friends. Something meaningful is something that has some use to me; likewise, something useless is usually something that is meaningless to me. But it seems that Zhuangzi was also inferring that the tree has its own intrinsic value and significance, which goes beyond the self-centred meanings and usefulness that we want to ascribe to it.
In the story, Huizi uses his useless tree to criticize Zhuangzi himself: “Now your talk is similarly vast but useless.” Indeed, Zhuangzi’s wisdom also has no instrumental purpose. But is that not what he is awakening in us? To a knowledge that cannot be used to turn us into chicks on a conveyor belt?
Now let’s consider the idea of “returning to the uncarved block” (fugui yu pu 復歸於樸) in Laozi’s Daodejing (道德經). Here is a passage from chapter 28 of the Daodejing (for the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this reading):
Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.
Know the white,
But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
Being an example to the world,
Ever true and unwavering,
Return to the infinite.
Know honour,
Yet keep humility!
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.
When the block is carved, it becomes useful.
When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler.
Thus, "A great tailor cuts little."[12]
The “uncarved block” can be understood as referring to the original nature of a thing, prior to being “carved up” by peoples' ideas, concepts, desires and purposes, which change the form of the thing and distort its original nature. For Laozi, we should revert to the state of the uncarved block, a state of pure simplicity, like a baby in its pure authenticity.
For Laozi, our concepts and ideas are constantly carving into the block. For example, we “carve” a certain object into this or that quality, black or white, big or small, useful or useless, new or old. By giving qualities, characteristics and attributes to things, we always carve them up. And we carve ourselves up. I'm a professor here, and a husband and father at home. I am always carving myself up into all these roles. But Laozi says, this is not all that we really are. So, he says we should return to the state of the uncarved block – a pure piece of wood without any of these meanings, qualities and attributes. He also talked about being like a baby, which carries the same message as being this uncarved block. As a baby grows up, the baby's brain is literally carved up into different ideas and concepts, the body is moulded and trained. For this reason, Laozi suggests people to go back to the state of the uncarved block, of the infant. The uncarved block is the natural spontaneity of who we truly are before adding any concepts, ideas, characters, attributes and so on.
Both Zhuangzi and Laozi, in these and many other stories and metaphors, advocate breaking “out of the box” of our webs of meanings and significances, and to apprehend things in their original state, prior to the human-imagined “usefulness” and “carving up.” Are they not, then, doing the same thing as Sartre in Nausea? But the result was to give Sartre a horrible sense of sickness, and Camus said that we should confront our existential angst in the face of the absurd. Sartre and Camus argued that we should actively build our existence in the world, while the Daoists advocated natural spontaneity, wuwei (无为). We know that Zhuangzi was always happy and joking, and Laozi conveys a sense of wisdom and serenity. Why such different outcomes for Sartre and the Daoists?
Sartre's hopeless "Nausea" and Laozi’s mysticism are both logical outcomes of experiencing "matter" in its pure state, devoid of any mental ideas or meanings. Why do these two groups of philosophers have such different responses and attitudes? They have starkly different responses to the same thing – the fact that the thing in itself seems to have no intrinsic use, meaning, qualities and attributes. But why did Laozi and Zhuangzi feel joy and serenity? And why did Sartre and Camus experience so much angst?
One explanation is that while Laozi and Zhuangzi cause us to break out of the mundane meanings, categories and concepts that clutter and carve up our mindscape, they point to an even greater, deeper meaning and significance. Both the useless tree and the uncarved block reveal something about “Dao”. Behind our short-sighted ideas, words and uses, there lies another, far greater significance. As we awaken to this greater reality, a sense of wonder arises, and we laugh at our own foolishness. But in Sartre, there is no deeper significance to discover in the world. All he could do was to “stifle at the depths of this immense weariness”, considering that “we are left alone, without excuse.”
For Sartre and Camus, underlying everything, there is nothing. If you take away the meaning, the significance and the concept, nothing remains, except that brute, naked and absurd thing in itself. Even you have no intrinsic meaning – the only meaning of your life is the meaning you give it through what you make of yourself. But for Laozi and Zhuangzi, there is something else. When you strip away all the meanings, significance, qualities, concepts and attributes, another source of meaning emerges. If you strip away one level of superficial concepts and appearances, there is another, spiritual reality – something that you cannot describe, what Laozi called dao (道). The infant or the uncarved block is closest to that something else, to dao, to that invisible spirit or power. That is your true self. That is who you truly are. And who you truly are is deeply connected to everything else, because everything is connected to something deeper – dao. If you connect to your true self, you will be in harmony with everything else in the universe. But for Sartre and Camus, there is no “something”. There is just that thing right in front of your eyes, without any meaning or purpose whatsoever -- except the meaning you give to it.
In the Alcibiades, Socrates reminds Alcibiades that his true self is not the things he owns, whether it’s his body or his possessions. Sartre, in addition, insisted that none of the roles we play in life are who we truly are, and condemned the “bad faith” of blindly following the role-plays of society. For Sartre, our true self is free. We need to move beyond the “bad faith” of blind conformity, discover our freedom, make our life, and take full responsibility for all of the choices we make in life. We need to freely choose which games to play, and take responsibility for it. From Laozi and Zhuangzi, as from Sartre, we learn that our true self is not the objects of consciousness in our mindscape, the ideas and concepts by which we carve ourselves up and make ourselves useful to others. Our true self is not the roles we play in the games of our life. Socrates talked about the “divine” nature of our true self, while the Daoists talked about how our true self is at one with “Dao”. And so, we need to know and to take care of our soul, of our “uncarved block”.
The Useless Tree[10]
Hui Shi said to Zhuangzi, “I have a tree, of the sort people call a shu tree. Its trunk is too gnarled for measuring lines to be applied to it, its branches are too twisted for use with compasses or T-squares. If you stood it on the road, no carpenter would pay any attention to it. Now your talk is similarly vast but useless, people are unanimous in rejecting it.” Zhuangzi replied, “Haven't you ever seen a wildcat or a weasel? It crouches down to wait for something to pass, ready to pounce east or west, high or low, only to end by falling into a trap and dying in a net. But then there is the yak. It is as big as a cloud hanging in the sky. It has an ability to be big, but hardly to catch mice. Now you have a large tree but fret over its uselessness. Why not plant it in Nothing At All town or Vast Nothing wilds? Then you could roam about doing nothing by its side or sleep beneath it. Axes will never shorten its life and nothing will ever harm it. If you are of no use at all, who will make trouble for you?”[11]
In the story of the useless tree, it is precisely the uselessness of the tree that is the cause of the life of the tree, saving it from being felled down by people for their own instrumental purposes. In another story in Zhuangzi, the useless tree is located at the altar to the earth god (tudigong 土地公), which, traditionally, is the sacred centre of Chinese villages or neighbourhoods. Not only does the ‘useless tree” live longer than “useful” ones, it offers shade and protection to the sacred centre of social life.
One way to understand this story is that so-called "usefulness" refers to the ideas, concepts and functions that we attribute to things, in relation to our own instrumental needs and desires, and which ultimately destroy the things that we use for our own purposes. In its “uselessness”, the tree has its own, intrinsic value which is independent of human concepts and needs. And yet, left to live according to its own nature, it provides shelter and shade to the villagers who don't pay much attention to it.
Zhuangzi's position is clear – just let the useless tree be. Naturally, people will go under it for shelter, only because this tree is of no use. Now, is useless meaningless? At some level, it is. This tree is meaningless to Huizi, because he couldn't see what he could use this tree for. When we give meaning to something, we often give it meaning in relation to ourselves, to our own personal needs and preferences. This course is meaningful to me, because it will help me to get a grade, because it will help me understand this, or because it will help me to make friends. Something meaningful is something that has some use to me; likewise, something useless is usually something that is meaningless to me. But it seems that Zhuangzi was also inferring that the tree has its own intrinsic value and significance, which goes beyond the self-centred meanings and usefulness that we want to ascribe to it.
In the story, Huizi uses his useless tree to criticize Zhuangzi himself: “Now your talk is similarly vast but useless.” Indeed, Zhuangzi’s wisdom also has no instrumental purpose. But is that not what he is awakening in us? To a knowledge that cannot be used to turn us into chicks on a conveyor belt?
Now let’s consider the idea of “returning to the uncarved block” (fugui yu pu 復歸於樸) in Laozi’s Daodejing (道德經). Here is a passage from chapter 28 of the Daodejing (for the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this reading):
Know the strength of man,
But keep a woman's care!
Be the stream of the universe!
Being the stream of the universe,
Ever true and unswerving,
Become as a little child once more.
Know the white,
But keep the black!
Be an example to the world!
Being an example to the world,
Ever true and unwavering,
Return to the infinite.
Know honour,
Yet keep humility!
Be the valley of the universe!
Being the valley of the universe,
Ever true and resourceful,
Return to the state of the uncarved block.
When the block is carved, it becomes useful.
When the sage uses it, he becomes the ruler.
Thus, "A great tailor cuts little."[12]
The “uncarved block” can be understood as referring to the original nature of a thing, prior to being “carved up” by peoples' ideas, concepts, desires and purposes, which change the form of the thing and distort its original nature. For Laozi, we should revert to the state of the uncarved block, a state of pure simplicity, like a baby in its pure authenticity.
For Laozi, our concepts and ideas are constantly carving into the block. For example, we “carve” a certain object into this or that quality, black or white, big or small, useful or useless, new or old. By giving qualities, characteristics and attributes to things, we always carve them up. And we carve ourselves up. I'm a professor here, and a husband and father at home. I am always carving myself up into all these roles. But Laozi says, this is not all that we really are. So, he says we should return to the state of the uncarved block – a pure piece of wood without any of these meanings, qualities and attributes. He also talked about being like a baby, which carries the same message as being this uncarved block. As a baby grows up, the baby's brain is literally carved up into different ideas and concepts, the body is moulded and trained. For this reason, Laozi suggests people to go back to the state of the uncarved block, of the infant. The uncarved block is the natural spontaneity of who we truly are before adding any concepts, ideas, characters, attributes and so on.
Both Zhuangzi and Laozi, in these and many other stories and metaphors, advocate breaking “out of the box” of our webs of meanings and significances, and to apprehend things in their original state, prior to the human-imagined “usefulness” and “carving up.” Are they not, then, doing the same thing as Sartre in Nausea? But the result was to give Sartre a horrible sense of sickness, and Camus said that we should confront our existential angst in the face of the absurd. Sartre and Camus argued that we should actively build our existence in the world, while the Daoists advocated natural spontaneity, wuwei (无为). We know that Zhuangzi was always happy and joking, and Laozi conveys a sense of wisdom and serenity. Why such different outcomes for Sartre and the Daoists?
Sartre's hopeless "Nausea" and Laozi’s mysticism are both logical outcomes of experiencing "matter" in its pure state, devoid of any mental ideas or meanings. Why do these two groups of philosophers have such different responses and attitudes? They have starkly different responses to the same thing – the fact that the thing in itself seems to have no intrinsic use, meaning, qualities and attributes. But why did Laozi and Zhuangzi feel joy and serenity? And why did Sartre and Camus experience so much angst?
One explanation is that while Laozi and Zhuangzi cause us to break out of the mundane meanings, categories and concepts that clutter and carve up our mindscape, they point to an even greater, deeper meaning and significance. Both the useless tree and the uncarved block reveal something about “Dao”. Behind our short-sighted ideas, words and uses, there lies another, far greater significance. As we awaken to this greater reality, a sense of wonder arises, and we laugh at our own foolishness. But in Sartre, there is no deeper significance to discover in the world. All he could do was to “stifle at the depths of this immense weariness”, considering that “we are left alone, without excuse.”
For Sartre and Camus, underlying everything, there is nothing. If you take away the meaning, the significance and the concept, nothing remains, except that brute, naked and absurd thing in itself. Even you have no intrinsic meaning – the only meaning of your life is the meaning you give it through what you make of yourself. But for Laozi and Zhuangzi, there is something else. When you strip away all the meanings, significance, qualities, concepts and attributes, another source of meaning emerges. If you strip away one level of superficial concepts and appearances, there is another, spiritual reality – something that you cannot describe, what Laozi called dao (道). The infant or the uncarved block is closest to that something else, to dao, to that invisible spirit or power. That is your true self. That is who you truly are. And who you truly are is deeply connected to everything else, because everything is connected to something deeper – dao. If you connect to your true self, you will be in harmony with everything else in the universe. But for Sartre and Camus, there is no “something”. There is just that thing right in front of your eyes, without any meaning or purpose whatsoever -- except the meaning you give to it.
In the Alcibiades, Socrates reminds Alcibiades that his true self is not the things he owns, whether it’s his body or his possessions. Sartre, in addition, insisted that none of the roles we play in life are who we truly are, and condemned the “bad faith” of blindly following the role-plays of society. For Sartre, our true self is free. We need to move beyond the “bad faith” of blind conformity, discover our freedom, make our life, and take full responsibility for all of the choices we make in life. We need to freely choose which games to play, and take responsibility for it. From Laozi and Zhuangzi, as from Sartre, we learn that our true self is not the objects of consciousness in our mindscape, the ideas and concepts by which we carve ourselves up and make ourselves useful to others. Our true self is not the roles we play in the games of our life. Socrates talked about the “divine” nature of our true self, while the Daoists talked about how our true self is at one with “Dao”. And so, we need to know and to take care of our soul, of our “uncarved block”.
[1] “Spirit of Baraka.”
[2] Weber, Economy and Society, 24, 25.
[3] Latour, “How to Talk About the Body?,” 206.
[4] James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, pt. 3.
[5] Sartre, Nausea, 179–80.
[6] Ibid., 170–82.
[7] Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
[8] Ibid., 123.
[9] Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 349.
[10] For the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this document.
[11] Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 28.
[12] Feng and English, Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching.
[2] Weber, Economy and Society, 24, 25.
[3] Latour, “How to Talk About the Body?,” 206.
[4] James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, pt. 3.
[5] Sartre, Nausea, 179–80.
[6] Ibid., 170–82.
[7] Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
[8] Ibid., 123.
[9] Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, 349.
[10] For the Chinese original, see the appendix at the end of this document.
[11] Ebrey, Chinese Civilization, 28.
[12] Feng and English, Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching.
References
“Baraka - a Nonverbal Film by Ron Fricke.” Accessed September 14, 2017. http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/baraka.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. 1942. Reprint, Vintage Books, 1955.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed. Simon and Schuster, 2009.
Feng, Gia-Fu, and Jane English. Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1972.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Centenary edition. Routledge, 2002.
Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: New American Library, 1975.
Latour, B. “How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies.” Body & Society 10, no. 2–3 (June 1, 2004): 205–29. doi:10.1177/1357034X04042943.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated by Alexander Lloyd. 1938. Reprint, New Directions Publishing, 1949.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 1922. Reprint, University of California Press, 1978.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. 1942. Reprint, Vintage Books, 1955.
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed. Simon and Schuster, 2009.
Feng, Gia-Fu, and Jane English. Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1972.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Centenary edition. Routledge, 2002.
Kaufmann, Walter, ed. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: New American Library, 1975.
Latour, B. “How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies.” Body & Society 10, no. 2–3 (June 1, 2004): 205–29. doi:10.1177/1357034X04042943.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Translated by Alexander Lloyd. 1938. Reprint, New Directions Publishing, 1949.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 1922. Reprint, University of California Press, 1978.
Appendix: Chinese texts from Zhuangzi and Laozi
莊子原文
惠子謂莊子曰:「吾有大樹,人謂之樗。其大本 擁腫而不中繩墨,其小枝卷曲而不中規矩,立之塗,匠者不顧。今子之言,大而無用,眾所同去也。」
莊子曰:「子獨不見狸 狌乎?卑身而伏,以候敖者,東西跳梁,不辟高下,中於機辟,死於罔罟。今夫斄牛,其大若垂天之雲,此能為大矣,而不能執鼠。今子有大樹,患其無用,何不樹之於無何有之鄉,廣莫之野,彷徨乎無為其側,逍遙乎寢臥其下?不夭斤斧,物無害者,無所可用,安所困苦哉!」
譯文
惠子對莊子說:「我有一棵大樹,人家都叫它臭椿樹。它的樹幹臃腫而不合墨線,它的小枝彎曲而不合規矩,長在路邊,木匠也不會留意。(這樹就像)現在你的言論,大而無用,大家都會離棄啊。」
莊子說:「你難道沒見過野貓和黃鼠狼嗎?牠們卑伏身子,等待出遊的小動物;東跳西躍,不避高低,往往踏中機關,死於網中。再看看那耗牛,身體大得像天邊的雲,牠本領很大,但卻連捕鼠也不能。現在你有這麼一棵大樹,還愁它沒有用處,為何不把它種在寬曠無人的鄉間、廣闊無邊的原野,寫意無憂地在樹旁閒逛,優游自得地在樹下躺臥?它不會受斧頭砍伐,又沒有東西來毀害它,沒有用處,又有甚麼困苦呢?」
Source: 王先謙:《莊子集解》卷一《逍遙遊第一》,收入《諸子集成》第三冊,北京:中華書局,1954年,第5-6頁。
惠子謂莊子曰:「吾有大樹,人謂之樗。其大本 擁腫而不中繩墨,其小枝卷曲而不中規矩,立之塗,匠者不顧。今子之言,大而無用,眾所同去也。」
莊子曰:「子獨不見狸 狌乎?卑身而伏,以候敖者,東西跳梁,不辟高下,中於機辟,死於罔罟。今夫斄牛,其大若垂天之雲,此能為大矣,而不能執鼠。今子有大樹,患其無用,何不樹之於無何有之鄉,廣莫之野,彷徨乎無為其側,逍遙乎寢臥其下?不夭斤斧,物無害者,無所可用,安所困苦哉!」
譯文
惠子對莊子說:「我有一棵大樹,人家都叫它臭椿樹。它的樹幹臃腫而不合墨線,它的小枝彎曲而不合規矩,長在路邊,木匠也不會留意。(這樹就像)現在你的言論,大而無用,大家都會離棄啊。」
莊子說:「你難道沒見過野貓和黃鼠狼嗎?牠們卑伏身子,等待出遊的小動物;東跳西躍,不避高低,往往踏中機關,死於網中。再看看那耗牛,身體大得像天邊的雲,牠本領很大,但卻連捕鼠也不能。現在你有這麼一棵大樹,還愁它沒有用處,為何不把它種在寬曠無人的鄉間、廣闊無邊的原野,寫意無憂地在樹旁閒逛,優游自得地在樹下躺臥?它不會受斧頭砍伐,又沒有東西來毀害它,沒有用處,又有甚麼困苦呢?」
Source: 王先謙:《莊子集解》卷一《逍遙遊第一》,收入《諸子集成》第三冊,北京:中華書局,1954年,第5-6頁。
老子原文(《道德經》第二十八章)
知其雄,守其雌,為天下谿。為天下谿,常德不離,復歸於嬰兒。
知其白,守其黑,為天下式。為天下式,常德不忒,復歸於無極。
知其榮,守其辱,為天下谷。為天下谷,常德乃足,復歸於樸。
樸散則為器,聖人用之,則為官長,故大制不割。
譯文
深知什麼是雄强,卻安守雌柔的地位,甘愿做天下的溪涧。甘願作天下的溪澗,永恒的德性就不會離失,回復到嬰兒般單純的狀態。深知什麼是明亮,卻安於暗昧的地位,甘願做天下的模式。甘願做天下的模式,永恒的德行不相差失,恢復到不可窮極的真理。深知什麼是榮耀,卻安守卑辱的地位,甘願做天下的川谷。甘願做天下的川谷,永恒的德性才得以充足,回復到自然本初的素樸純真狀態。樸素本初的東西經制作而成器物,有道的人沿用真樸,則為百官之長,所以完善的政治是不可分割的。
Source: 王弼:《老子注》,收入《諸子集成》第三冊,北京:中華書局,1954年,第16頁。
知其雄,守其雌,為天下谿。為天下谿,常德不離,復歸於嬰兒。
知其白,守其黑,為天下式。為天下式,常德不忒,復歸於無極。
知其榮,守其辱,為天下谷。為天下谷,常德乃足,復歸於樸。
樸散則為器,聖人用之,則為官長,故大制不割。
譯文
深知什麼是雄强,卻安守雌柔的地位,甘愿做天下的溪涧。甘願作天下的溪澗,永恒的德性就不會離失,回復到嬰兒般單純的狀態。深知什麼是明亮,卻安於暗昧的地位,甘願做天下的模式。甘願做天下的模式,永恒的德行不相差失,恢復到不可窮極的真理。深知什麼是榮耀,卻安守卑辱的地位,甘願做天下的川谷。甘願做天下的川谷,永恒的德性才得以充足,回復到自然本初的素樸純真狀態。樸素本初的東西經制作而成器物,有道的人沿用真樸,則為百官之長,所以完善的政治是不可分割的。
Source: 王弼:《老子注》,收入《諸子集成》第三冊,北京:中華書局,1954年,第16頁。