The cruelty of the world

Politicians don't cure problems, they just move them around

Beautiful as it is, the world can seem quite cruel. Lao Tzu reminds us of this in his writings, referring to people and creatures as akin to straw dogs. In ancient China, straw was fashioned into the shape of a dog, and in a ceremony, said to be wrapped elegantly in embroidered cloths, earning the veneration of onlookers. But once the ceremony was over, the straw dogs were discarded, trampled on, and burned up.

There is a tendency among humans to wish into existence a world that is not so. We search for some hero to bring an end to suffering and disease, poverty and death.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Our heroes tend to be politicians, and their motivations for action or inaction vary. Maybe they hope to bring about their version of justice and prosperity. Maybe they just want to appease a group of voters or donors to their campaigns. Like straw dogs, people are highly prized by the politician to achieve a desired outcome — until election day, until the campaign check is passed, or the bill is passed — and then discarded. The cycle then repeats each election year, each legislative session.

The end result is a mishmash of competing ideas, principles, and desires reduced to pages and pages of legislation and hours of TV ads and stacks of campaign literature.

Legislation becomes laws that determine which houses get rebuilt and which are left to rubble when the tide washes them away, the earth shakes, or the tornado hits.

Laws dictate which diseases are researched, and which treatments are covered by government programs or private insurance. Laws settle questions as to which businesses and developments get the benefit of tax breaks or incentives, which occupations are licensed or banned, and which groups of people are more deserving of higher or lower taxes.

Life is unfair, to be sure. Politicians do not take away the injustice and cruelty of it. They just move cruelty from place to place, creating new injustices and new straw dogs along along the way.

It is best to let reality unfold, without judgment, interference, or manipulation. When we do, we find that the world is a place with endless possibilities, empty of purpose, cruel, yes, but beautiful too, always pouring out more when we allow the natural order of things to emerge instead of creating a reality manufactured of words and laws.

Heaven and earth are not humane
They treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs
The sage is not humane
He treats the hundred families as straw dogs

Between heaven and earth,
how like a bellows it is!
Empty and yet inexhaustible,
Moving and yet it pours out ever more.

By many words one’s reckoning is exhausted.
It is better to abide by the center.

Chapter 5, Tao Te Ching