Feng Dao
The old man of everlasting joy
A thousand years of argument
An Account of the Old Man of Everlasting Joy; the New History of the Five Dynasties; The Comprehensive Mirror
He served four dynasties and ten emperors and named himself after contentment. The question is where his accusers and his defenders each stand.
What actually happened?
In his seventies he wrote An Account of the Old Man of Everlasting Joy, listing every office he had held, in a calm tone, saying that thinking over beginnings and ends he understood the way of heaven better. Ouyang Xiu called him a man without shame. Sima Guang called him the worst of treacherous ministers. Wang Anshi thought him a man at the level of a buddha, and Su Shi said he could bend himself to keep people safe. A thousand years, and both sides cite the same facts.
The quarrel is about the object of loyalty
Ouyang Xiu's standard is loyalty to one house. Feng Dao's is loyalty to the people under the administration. The identical conduct is shameless serial betrayal under the first and steady adaptation under the second. The argument runs a thousand years because it was never about the facts.
Whether a colleague joining a competitor is betrayal or ordinary movement depends on whether you think people owe the company or the craft. Both views are internally consistent.
In a broken order, continuity is the scarce thing
Fifty-three years produced five dynasties and fourteen emperors, an average reign shorter than a decade. At that frequency, a man who preserved the administration, the tax registers and the un-sacked cities through every handover was supplying something rare. His critics wrote from inside a restored order.
Three chief executives in four years, and the person who stayed through all of them and kept payroll running gets called both unprincipled and indispensable.
And he prevented nothing
The defence has a limit. He saved many people and altered not one succession, and left no institution behind. His method was minimising loss inside a settled frame, and the ceiling of that method is that it produces nothing new. On this point Ouyang Xiu was right.
Someone who always optimises within the existing constraints can make every single year come out tolerably, and look back after ten to find no constraint has moved.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: somebody's choices leave you unable to say whether that was slipperiness or good sense.
Ask first: what is the thing he is loyal to, and judged against that thing, has his behaviour been consistent?
Where it goes wrong: judging choices made inside a collapse by the standards of the order that came afterwards; and equally, concluding that optimising inside the given frame costs nothing.
Lines to keep
Thinking over beginnings and ends, I understand the way of heaven better.
Ouyang Xiu called him shameless. Sima Guang called him the worst of traitors.
Five dynasties, eight surnames, watched the way an innkeeper watches guests.
Same situation, other people are asking
I don't know if I can stay here much longer.I don't agree with where this is going. Do I stay and soften it?Should I leave this job · all 2 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.