In the
Tao te Ching, Tao's prime directive is to eliminate any kind of desire for one's self. This stands in complete contrast to the mindless materialism promoted by the media and reinforced by the Bush administration. One of the biggest ideas of the Bush administration was that the American people go right back to shopping as though nothing had happened after the 9/11 attacks. This encouragement of escapism by the Bush administration shows more about him than it does about the value of any real meaningful advice about the 9/11 tragedy.
We are constantly bombarded with all kinds of advertising suggesting we will never be happy until we buy somebody else's product. We will not be happy unless we buy the next great car, or the next new clothes, or the next new book, or we call our Congressman to stop the next new insidious bill coming down the pipes. That is the message sent by these ads. And yet, these products will not make us happy.
Instead, they are like an addictive drug. You may get high on the newest car from Ford or the newest fashion line from 5th Avenue, or whatever. But once the high wears off, you are always wanting more and more of it. It is a vicious cycle of boom and bust. You flood yourself with more and more possessions, then collapse in a pile of debt as your job is outsourced to India and you can't settle accounts with your creditors because of the regressive Bankruptcy Bill.
But happiness is not dependent on material goods or possessions. Instead, it is dependent on the annihilation of desire and the development of compassion for others. True change will not come about until we quit focusing on what I want and focus exclusively on what YOU want. Let us take a couple of passages from the Tao te Ching and a news story about asbestos and see how this works out. First of all, from the Tao:
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and
unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and
unchanging name.
(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven
and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all
things.
Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development
takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them
the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that
is subtle and wonderful.
This seems pretty straightforward - as long as we have desires and wants instead of needs, there will be a certain point beyond which we cannot develop as people and as community and as a party. This is important to combat the selfish materialism that Bush is trying to imbibe us with in an effort to dull our outrage.
What Bush is doing is nothing new. Back in the times of the Romans, they had a policy of Bread and Circuses - any time the people were restless about the way things were being run, there was always some religious festival coming up. Therefore, the outrage of the people would dim or else be channeled towards some gladiator who fought like a coward in the latest games. Cicero candidly admitted in his Republic that Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, had crafted complex religious laws in an effort to remind the Roman people that they were Romans and thus keep them in line.
This explains why the media dutifully runs stories about Scott Petersen, Michael Jackson, OJ, Natalie Holloway, the Runaway Bride, or any other white blonde in distress. Is Bush dropping in the polls? Issue another terror alert. Did Howard Dean just go on the offensive against Plan D? Announce the capture of the 50th Al-Qaeda Number Two.
And yet, there is a troubling aspect of this concept that can easily be misread. Does this mean that we should no longer work for social justice? What about cases like the town of Libby, Montana, where the people there have successfully fought to force W.R. Grace to pay their medical bills for exposing them to asbestos? Are the people of Libby, Montana selfish?
And are they wrong to want justice, given that Grace's execs are under indictment?
Grace and seven of its executives were indicted last year by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and violations of the Federal Clean Air Act in connection with the company's mining operations in Libby. All the defendants, who face huge fines and lengthy prison terms if convicted of the most serious charges, have pleaded not guilty.
Grace is also trying to emerge from bankruptcy, for which it filed in 2001 as it was pummeled by tens of thousands of personal injury claims from all over the country by people exposed to asbestos in the company's products.
Actually, this is not the case at all. In fact, the Tao addresses this subject later in Chapter 7:
Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is found in
the foremost place; he treats his person as if it were foreign to him,
and yet that person is preserved. Is it not because he has no
personal and private ends, that therefore such ends are realised?
Most people who endure the horrific suffering of cancer become compassionate and empathetic towards others. They are no longer interested in their own well-being; they want to fight to make sure that someone else does not have to go through the same thing they did. They do not want their lives to mean nothing through no fault of their own.
And incidentally, this story totally debunks the right-wing notion that if you are poor or sick, it is somehow your fault. Too many times in our society, people become sick through no fault of their own, and the asbestos mine in Libby, Montana is a prime example. These people are a perfect example of the Conservative ideal of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps with no help from anybody. And this is a classic failure of that model.
And just as the people of Libby, Montana fight to see that their children never have to worry about dying prematurely of cancer to some greedy mining company, we as Democrats must do our level best to make sure that the right-wingers never come to power again after we win the next two elections. Nobody should ever have to go through the fear, the hopelessness, the polarization, and the feelings of inadequacy that come when wages age stagnant. And nobody should ever have to feel like it is somehow their fault that some other person has lost their job or is struggling in a mountain of debt.