Chapter 3: Action Without Deeds

The Tao Te Ching: Warnings and Invitations

Exalt not the wise,
So that the people shall not scheme and contend;
Prize not rare objects,
So that the people shall not steal;
Shut out from sight the things of desire,
So that the people’s hearts shall not be disturbed.

Therefore in the government of the Sage:
He keeps empty their hearts
Makes full their bellies,
Discourages their ambitions,
Strengthens their frames;
So that the people may be innocent of knowledge and desires.
And the cunning ones shall not presume to interfere.
By action without deeds
May all live in peace.

Nothing changed except what was placed in front of your eyes. You wanted what you had until you saw what they had, and from that moment the wanting became a kind of weather, present and invisible and seemingly natural, as though it had always been there.

It had not. Someone built it. Someone placed the object where you could not miss it. Someone held up the exceptional, the wealthy, the powerful, and in doing so quietly informed everyone watching that their own position was insufficient. Laotse called this exalting the wise, and he identified it as the origin of scheming and contention, of theft, of hearts that cannot find rest. He wrote about it twenty-five centuries ago. The mechanism has not changed. Only the scale has.