58

If a country is governed with tolerance,
the people are comfortable and honest.
If a country is governed with repression,
the people are depressed and crafty.

When the will to power is in charge,
the higher the ideals, the lower the results.
Try to make people happy,
and you lay the groundwork for misery.
Try to make people moral,
and you lay the groundwork for vice.

Thus the Master is content
to serve as an example
and not to impose her will.
She is pointed, but doesn’t pierce.
Straightforward, but supple.
Radiant, but easy on the eyes.

Tao Te Ching by Lao-tsu, Trans. by Stephen Mitchell

This verse is a reflection upon what happens when an organization is administered by a direct attempt to suppress one side of the natural relationship between opposites. Conservative-liberal, chocolate-vanilla, male-female, margarita with salt-without salt, etc., etc.. Every dimension of life, as far as we can tell involves a dance, a tensile correlation of opposites. Not unlike the tension/stress entailed between molecules of iron and carbon in the cables necessary to suspend a bridge over a waterway. Think the Golden Gate Bridge! 

A meditation upon the antimonies, the contradictions entailed within human experience, and the temptation to suppress, to deny, to repress the side which discomforts us – resulting in disorder could not be more relevant to our present social and political situation here and now. Where does it all end? 

There is no question, who would disagree that the ultimate stressor is the shadow cast by death which is always close at hand, the unbidden guest at every party. The violent, surprising death by assassination of Charlie Kirk reminds all that death and life, life and death are inseparable. Following is the verse no. 58 commentary by scholars Ames and Hall:

Death is real and,
and wherever there is life,
it is not far away.

However to separate death out
from the life experience and inveigh against it
as something to be avoided at all costs
prevents us from approaching
the fragility and preciousness of life
that is made possible by
this same delicious
temporality.

Life is made meaningful
by death.
Death as natural closure
punctuates a most particular event
in the ongoing transformation of things.

Properly understood,
a healthy death can be lived well
and can enhance the lives of all involved;
misunderstood, a resentful death
can sour life
and become a focus
of dread and loathing
that robs everyone,
especially those left
to carry on,
of their
life energy.

Dao De Jing, A Philosophical Translation by Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall

Shall we have a song to carry us through the day? This one, Run Like Hell by Pink Floyd is spot on. You need only to know this tune is about escape from Fascism.