Be Unafraid
v. 69
The expert in warfare says:
Rather than dare make the attack
I’d take the attack;
rather than dare advance an inch
I’d retreat a foot.
It’s called marching without marching,
rolling up your sleeves without flexing your muscles,
being armed without weapons,
giving the attacker no opponent.
Nothing’s worse than attacking what yields.
To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.
So, when matched armies meet,
the one who comes to grief
is the victor.
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Usula K. Le Guin
Can you imagine a more contrarian prose-poem? The Tao Te Ching can be read as a manual for statecraft in parallel to interpretation as a guide to mystical experience. This meditation upon statecraft admits that conflict is a given, that friction is unavoidable in the course of relations between peoples.
The suggestion: casting oneself in the role of aggressive mother-fucker is ill advised.
Better to take a blow, absorb the assault, (so to take the measure of the opponent).
After all, the aggressor concedes the moral ‘high ground’ to the opponent.
The eminence of victory is thrown away from the very beginning.
That matters. It matters a great deal.
We can always use a song. This one by Berlin, still stands. Take My Breath Away. The solo is by the incomparable Terri Nunn.
3 thoughts on “Be Unafraid”
I am deeply immersed in an unpleasant situation at the moment. The verse from the Tao is quite relevant to what I’m experiencing. As I run for a leadership position on the board of a small nonprofit organization, I have been denigrated, castigated as evil, and generally lied about with regard to my intentions for the organization. My immediate reaction is to want to punch back, to tell the ugly truth about my opponent, but I’m not going to do that. From the beginning of this campaign I have stuck with my vision for the future of this group relative to what my opponent has accomplished over the past 8 years. Even if I lose this election I will have kept my moral compass and my ethical standards. It’s the only way I can keep my sanity in this incredibly dysfunctional world in which we live.
I assume the exchange between you and your opponent has not been face to face, in the presence of interested parties. Social media has made it convenient, without consequence to practice character assassination. This has become normalized for many Americans. To feel no shame in denigrating an opponent is to self-inflict damage all the while one is speaking or writing.
I have offered to speak with this individual several times with no response. I’ve also offered to have a civil “debate” in front of members where we could be asked questions and offer our respective visions for the organization. That was also turned down. It is much easier to throw dirt from afar. The ballots go out to the 440 members on Monday and they have 45 days to mark them and return them. We’ll see what happens. Dirty tricks and smears work, as we have seen with the current administration, so I’m not holding out much hope.