43

The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master’s way.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Labor Day weekend. “Labor” is what life requires while life continues. Labor is energy exchange, a rough equivalence, a give and take flow of input energy directed with sufficient precision to the end a desirable product or service results, which is then exchanged for currency, liquid value. That is my down and dirty meditation on economics.

I also suppose that economics is a manifestation of the inter-relationship of all things, living with the non-living matter or with materials… The living are especially mutually involved even if divided, stratified by wealth and class. The factory owner, or shareholders have a stake in the well-being of every single worker, and of their families for that matter. And vice versa. 

I, the end user have a stake in the welfare of those who assemble this Lenovo Thinkpad computer, though I’ll never travel to Mexico, India, and China, to be in their presence on the factory floor. My fingers touch a keyboard and the LCD screen manifests text which someone constructed- what would I do without their expertise?

We are all in this together. Our fate, what-is-to-happen will be experienced by all of us.

Therefore, it follows that caring, and “taking care” ought to be cultivated as a long term prudent strategy.

Resolved: care is the gentlest thing in the world. Care enters the interstices, places that appear as seamless. Non-coercive action is win-win, beneficial to every stakeholder.

Consider a tune which shows the flow of our common life as well as the paradox of desire for perfect and complete beauty and meaning, – never to be realized in this world.

The Killing Moon by Echo And The Bunnymen 1984.