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How the world works

Tao Te Ching

Subtract

Tao Te Ching (Spring and Autumn · c. 500 BC) — Subtract.

How the world worksPre-Qin and classicalSubtract

What actually happened?

Laozi rode west out of the pass on an ox, leaving a country he had given up on. The keeper of the pass stopped him and asked him to write something down before he went. He wrote five thousand characters and disappeared from the record. That is the whole biography, and the book is consistent with it: everything in it argues that the position of least insistence is the strong one.

Reversal is how the way moves

Whatever reaches its extreme turns into its opposite. It is not consolation for bad times; it is a reading instrument. At the top, look for what is already turning. At the bottom, the same rule is working for you.

The quarter everything was going right is the quarter nobody asked what would happen if the one channel bringing all the customers stopped.

Water beats stone by not arguing

The softest thing in the world runs through the hardest. Not passivity — water keeps going and takes the shape of whatever it meets. Persistence in a form that nothing can push back on outlasts a harder push that has to be sustained.

Two years of quietly fixing the thing nobody owned moved more than the reorg that was announced twice and cancelled twice.

The empty part is the useful part

The wheel is useful because of the hole at the centre, the pot because of the space inside, the room because of the gaps where the doors and windows are. What you build gets the credit; what you left out is doing the work.

The calendar with two empty afternoons is where the thinking happened. The full one produced attendance.

How do I use it today?

Take the thing you are trying to fix by adding — another tool, another rule, another meeting — and ask what you would remove instead. Try the subtraction first; it is cheaper and it is reversible.

Deep read

Whatever peaks, turnsThe top is where to start worryingAt the top, look for what is already turningThe part you don't doA list of moves to leave outEvery prohibition creates a reason to route around itGo to the low groundNot competing is a choice of locationThings flow to you because you are lower, not because you askedThe empty part is the useful partWhat you left out is doing the workThe hole in the hub belongs to no spoke, which is why it turns

Read alongside

ZhuangziSame tradition, different address: Laozi writes for whoever has to govern, Zhuangzi for whoever wants out. Naval RavikantBoth end at enough; one arrives through leverage, the other by never picking the load up. The I ChingSame observation, different resolution. Reversal is the movement of the Way states the law in one sentence; the I Ching cuts the same law into six positions and tells you what to do in each of them. The AnalectsThe two main lines of Chinese thought: Confucius adds — cultivate, practise, take part — where Laozi subtracts. Neither is complete without the other. The Sovereign IndividualTwo thousand years apart and the same instinct: retire when the work is done, and know what is enough. The oldest sovereign individual is Laozi.

Further

Zhuangzi Huineng Su Shi Naval Ravikant Zhang Liang Li Bi Miyamoto Musashi The Analects Tending the Roots of Wisdom Nassim Taleb Socrates Sapiens The Sovereign Individual Bruce Lee

Lines to keep

In learning you gain daily. In the way you lose daily.

Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is clarity.