A great masterpiece of ancient Chinese philosophy says,
The ruler is the boat and the people are the water. It is the water that bears the boat up, and the water that capsizes it." (Xunzi, 37)
Follow me below for a quick lesson in ancient Chinese philosophy and how it still works as a call for action and change...
The philosopher Xunzi flourished around 298-238 B.C.E. and was one of the three great creators of the Confucian tradition: Confucius (Kongfuzi), Xunzi, and Mengzi (Mencius). Xunzi was the one of the earliest and most elequent voices for what became known as Naturalistic Confucianism, a sort of blending of elements of Daoism and Confucianism.
The quote above comes from the Confucian idea of mutual responsibility, and reciprocal hierarchy. In other words, it is the peoples' responsibility to obey and follow the ruler, but only so long as the ruler acts like a responsible leader and takes care of the people. This idea is an old one and appears in the earliest histories, pre-dating Xunzi by centuries, as the Mandate of Heaven. It is later adopted as a central tenant in Confucianism, but with some twists depending on the school within that tradition.
The Mandate of Heaven says that a ruler rules only by grace of Heaven. If he or she is beneficent, compassionate to widows and orphans, righteous in behavior, etc... then Heaven will allow his dynasty to reign. Once the ruler neglects his duties to the ruled, then he or she is at risk of losing this Mandate. Once the Mandate of Heaven is lost, then Heaven exerts its will through the mechanism of an uprising of the people. If they are successful, then Heaven allowed them to overthrow the old ruler and install a new one who does have the Mandate.
This was a convenient way to explain how a new dynasty was founded and why they are better than the old, corrupt regime. It was a pattern in the histories over and over again. The old regime began as virtuous, but became corrupt and lost its Mandate. The new regime (whose historians wrote the history of the last regime) was just fulfilling the will of Heaven by fomenting rebellion and overturning the old order. (This idea of the peoples' responsibility to overturn and corrupt government finds another fertile outlet in some of the writers of the Enlightenment who encounter it in the early translations coming out of China in the 18th century, and then eventually lands in our Declaration of Independence.)
Xunzi took much of the mumbo jumbo out of the equation and instead taught that the people are the source of the power, not Heaven, and it is their will that supports, or destroys a ruler. The implications of this are that not only is it the responsibility of the people to replace a regime that does not serve the people, but that if they don't, then they deserve what they get, because no supernatural power is going to come along and change it for them.
I'm firmly in this camp. No supernatural power is going to come along and change our system for us. We must do it for ourselves because we are the water. We can support the boat, or we can sink it. And what's the best way for water to sink a boat? It's by making waves. Just sitting there passive in your home, whether you be in Iowa tonight, or someplace else in the US when the primary comes to your state, or in another country at any time, is not enough to be calm and placid.
We will receive no change in the world unless we make it for ourselves. It takes ever single bit of water to help make the great wave that is necessary to overturn and sink this massive, rusting hulk that claims to rule us today.
We don't need a new captain of the same old boat. We need a new boat. If we don't, then we have no one else to blame, and no one else to turn to. So, get out there, stir up the waters, and make some waves.
Plane Crazy