The Useless Tree

Judge Mukasey: Tool for Torture

    The nominee for Attorney General of the United States, Judge Michael B. Mukasey, is unable to speak the name of torture:

But Mr. Mukasey told Senate Democrats he could not say whether waterboarding, which simulates drowning, was illegal torture because he had not been briefed on the details of the classified technique and did not want to suggest that Central Intelligence Agency officers who had used such techniques might be in “personal legal jeopardy.”

 Of course, his stated reason for his avoidance of publicly recognizing torture as torture is not the primary reason, which has much more to do with politics.  Bush, and those around Bush who are sponsoring Judge Mukasey's nomination, will not publicly admit to the human rights abuses they have created.  They are using Mukasey to continue their rule; and Mukasey it trying to use them, or at least not contradict them, in an effort to advance his career.  All of which, from a Confucian perspective, is grubby and immoral:

The Master said: "A noble- minded man is not an implement." (2.12)

(my favorite alternate translation comes from Simon Leys: "A gentleman is not a pot.")

    In other words, a moral man, a man (or woman) who is trying to do the right thing, does not allow himself to be used, like an implement or a tool, for someone else's purposes.   It is rather like the obverse of the Kantian imperative that we not use other people as means: we should also not allow ourselves to be used by others.

     There may be a certain impracticality in this.  We can think of all sorts of ways that allowing ourselves to be used by others might actually serve our interests.  But that is precisely the main point of Confucius.  It should not be about interest and personal profit.  What matters is the pursuit of Humanity and moral goodness.  But Mukasey and Bush and company cannot understand that.  They are tools.

Wrong Reasons

     I have had a couple of posts recently on the question of how to treat children who commit horrible crimes.  As I have suggested, both Confucians and Taoists would disagree with the movement within US law of late to treat child criminals as adults.  Confucians would hold fast to the moral distinction between children and adults while Taoists would reject the distinction altogether, neither of which positions fit with US legal practice.

      Today I found this story, which would simply appall both Confucians and Taoists on this issue:

It was conceived as a way to save money in the face of a $450 million deficit in Rhode Island’s current budget: making 17-year-olds adults in the eyes of the law, shifting their cases to criminal from juvenile court and putting offenders in the state prison rather than the youth correctional center.

The measure, which took effect July 1 and was expected to save $3.6 million a year, has ignited a firestorm, with children’s groups, the state public defender and others calling it bad policy that in any event is not a money-saver.

“It’s a gross failure of responsibility,” said the state’s attorney general, Patrick C. Lynch. “It’s not saving money. It’s creating enormous questions and problems in the system, never mind ruining lives” of young offenders who are left with criminal records.

 It seems the primary motivation for changing the universal age of adulthood from 18 to 17 was money.  Two problems here:

      1) Universality.  Adulthood, from a Confucian perspective, is a moral status, the time of life when a person comes to understand his or her personal and social responsibilities and, most importantly, assumes responsibility for fulfilling those duties.  Age limits are the grossest form of definition of adulthood: we all know persons who understand and assume responsibilities before they turn 18, and we all know persons who take much longer to become moral adults.  Relying exclusively on an age standard alone, for a legal definition of adulthood, is obviously inadequate; but lowering that standard arbitrarily (i.e. for purposes not at all related to the moral development of individuals) would clearly be rejected by Confucians and Taoists.

     2) The money motive.  This is all wrong.  Justice and juvenile justice pose complex and difficult issues.  Each case must be weighed and mitigating factors considered.  Changing the definition of adulthood in an effort to save money for the state budget makes no good normative sense at all.  It should not matter that implementing this new standard turns out not to save money.  What should matter is that we have legal systems that carefully weight the circumstances of young offenders so that punishment for criminal activity is combined with continuing moral education and the possibilities for human improvement are kept open.

Steve Nash, Taoist Sage

      The masterful, MVP point guard of the Phoenix Suns, Steve Nash, is down with the Taoist thing:

“With Steve it’s all about the flow.” Flow, of course, being shorthand for that state of mind that artists and athletes strive to enter into, and which in full flood entails an ecstatic expansion of consciousness that releases them from confines of the self and produces crowning moments of creation and performance — not to get too mystical about it. Maybe the truest picture of Nash depended on seeing him in motion, in the flow; whether he was threading a half-court bounce pass or exploiting his small window of fame to get potable water to third world villages or practicing surreptitious acts of generosity....

     Compare that notion of "flow" with Chuang Tzu's description of how the cook gets close to Way through his complete immersion in the task at hand:

The cook [player] put down his knife [ball] and replied: "Tao is what I care about, and Tao goes beyond mere skill. When I first began cutting up oxen [playing the game], I could see nothing but the ox [the game]. After three years, I could see more than the ox [game].  And now, I meet the ox [game] in spirit.  I've stopped looking with my eyes.  When perception and understanding cease, the spirit moves freely...

 Whenever you hear the term "in the zone," remember, it is a Chuang Tzu idea...

Ignoring Sun Tzu, Again

    My friend, Abu Aardvark, has an excellent post on the problems of the Iraq war.  The bottom line:

Tactics working against strategy - that's been the concern I've been expressing for many months now. I haven't been reassured.  Instead of getting sucked into debates over body counts, or clutching at whatever good or bad news crosses the headlines each morning, the national debate should be looking at the big picture.  It isn't about how we are doing day to day - what are we trying to achieve?

     All of the talk about the apparent decrease in violence in parts of the country, which Bush supporters tout as evidence that the "surge" is working, are largely meaningless in the larger scheme of things.  Tactical moves only make sense if they are coordinated and focused on strategic ends - and that is what is missing in the American war: it is not clear what the ultimate goal is or should be.  The tired recitation of a unified, democratic Iraq is simply impossible.  At some level everyone knows this.  But US tactics, as Marc shows, are actively pushing against this.  We are, in effect, producing a fragmentation of sovereignty (if such a weighty word can be used here) and authority.  But is that what the US really wants?  To get all realist about it: how does a collection of warlord satraps serve US interests?

      And that is where Sun Tzu comes in.  Remember what he has to say about war-fighting:

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy;

Next best is to disrupt his alliances;

The next best is to attack his army.

The worst policy is to attack cities.  Attack cities only when there is no alternative. (chapter 3)

      He is urging us not only to think strategically but to think in a strategically contextual manner, shaping our goals in relation to the enemy's goals.  This requires both a clear sense of what our goals should be (which is what is missing from US policy now) and an understanding of what our adversary's goals are.  In Iraq this is made much more complex by the multiplicity of adversaries: there are many and each has its own particular interests.  Of course, the real problem has been the lack of clear US strategy up until this point, a failure that has produced the current strategic complexity.  Now, it is likely too late.  Whatever we do, one or another adversary will benefit.  The game is too complicated for us to account for and attack the strategies of all of the "enemies".   All that Bush and company does is fulminate against the most likely strategic winner, whose victory his failed policy has produced: Iran.

     Bush's war is mired in worst and near-worst Sun Tzu conditions: attacking cities and armies.  The US has lost the chance to effectively attack the enemies' strategies or alliances.

      Bush lost the war.

"Confucian" Societies can Change

     Here's a follow-up to Tuesday's post on "Confucianism without Women,"  a story in Salon.com (hat tip China Law Blog) about a World Bank report that shows a change in social norms in South Korea away from male birth preferences (the full report, a PDF file, "Why is Son Preference Declining in South Korea?" is here).  The Salon summary notes that the sex imbalance (i.e. more boys than girls) is beginning to correct in Korea and states:

The trend is all the more noteworthy because until relatively recently, South Korea's authoritarian government did its best to legislate societal adherence to radically Confucian traditional values that emphasized the primacy of the male lineage and the extreme necessity of having sons to care for one's ancestors, both living and dead. In the view of the authors, Korea's example offers promise for other Asian countries, especially India and China, where "son preference" is also rampant and social demographics have become highly skewed.

       It's all about modernization - urbanization, social mobility and cultural change.  That old demographic transition is finally taking hold in Korea.

     I would just push back against one thing here: the idea that "Confucian values" can be strictly legislated and imposed by an authoritarian government.  That, of course, pushes against the very idea of "Confucian values," or at least those Confucian values that hold dear exemplary moral leadership and disdain coercive laws and punishments.  If you have to compel people to follow "Confucian values," you really aren't all that Confucian.

     But, hey, beyond that quibble, this is good news:

The significance for India and China is that one can make the case that Korea's centuries-long history of social engineering elevated the importance of the male lineage to the highest degree of any country in Asia. Then came the military governments of the '60s, '70s and '80s, which attempted to explicitly legislate conformity to that tradition. But modernization still threw off the shackles. In China and India, in contrast, government efforts, by and large, have long been focused on stressing the importance of gender equity, so there may be less of a current to swim against.

     Anything that helps overcome the oppression of male domination and allows for the flourishing of females is a good thing.  My daughter and her friends should be able to develop their talents and passions and joys as much as they can, without restriction on grounds of gender alone.  And so should their sisters in China and India.  As they all come into their own, all over the world, the cause of Confucian Humanity is certainly served.

Ancient Chinese Thought for the Modern American....Military?

     I noticed this NYT article a few days ago but did not read it beyond the headline and first paragraph:

When Troops Need More Than Knowledge of War

A dozen students sit at long white tables, some intently scribbling notes, some with that glazed-over expression that greets so many professors trying to impart obscure knowledge. In this way, the night class in Eastern philosophy here at McGuire Air Force Base is similar to many college courses being taught around the country.      

But the students here are officers and enlisted men and women of the United States Air Force who could be called into action at any time. And the class is part of the Air Force’s push to prepare its troops better for service in the Middle East and Asia by offering instruction in foreign languages, history, philosophy and sociology that focuses on the cultures and populations they will encounter.

 I assumed it was going to focus on the Middle East, where the US military is now so deeply ensnared, with perhaps a little Sun Tzu thrown in for the Chinese side of things.   The Art of War is a staple at virtually all US military schools these days, so I did not stick with the story, letting my assumptions get the better of me.

      So, imagine my surprise today when I randomly returned (in the manner Google allows) to the story to find this passage:

With classes in Arabic, Islam, comparative religions and East Asian history, among others, McGuire hopes to provide active-duty troops with tools to help them during battle but also beyond, said Linda Richardson, director of education and training at the base.

“It’s been eye-opening,” said Staff Sgt. Adam Crepeau, an aircraft maintenance instructor and a student in the Eastern philosophy course who is pursuing a degree in human resources. “The more knowledge I have about different cultures, the better.”

While learning the difference between Taoism and Confucianism, the subject of a recent evening’s lecture, may seem of little practical use in war, Sergeant Crepeau said he could have used some of what he was learning in the course, which is provided by Burlington, during his four-month tour in Iraq last year.

       What might be useful for a military man or woman in the distinction between Confucianism and Taoism?  Of course, I believe that studying these philosophies is useful for everybody everywhere, but I am not in the business of training the military.  Sun Tzu?  Sure, that is obviously useful for a military education, as are the other Chinese military classics.  And a thorough study of Chinese history has much to contribute to military knowledge.  But Confucianism and Taoism?

       This is not the same as learning about Islam for troops in the Middle East.  Islam is a major part of the actual day-to-day life in that part of the world.  You need to know its language and ideas and customs if you are going to move through many Middle Eastern societies, for whatever purpose.  The same cannot be said for Confucianism and Taoism.  Those are not major elements of actually existing contemporary Chinese culture, as far as I can see.   

      The traumas of twentieth century, and especially the early years of the PRC (the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution), did much to undermine the old Confucian basis of Chinese society.  Yes, there are still cultural expectations about children respecting elders, but, in major urban areas in particular, these are honored very much in the breach.  When we add in the effects of the one-child policy, the explosion of spoiled single children, Confucian sensibilities are turned on their head. 

     And Taoism?  While many Chinese read and appreciate the Taoist classics, how many of them would consider themselves Taoist?  What percentage of the population?  The hyper-competitive capitalism that currently dominates the economy and society and culture simply overwhelms Taoist ideals.

      Or am I too pessimistic?  Is China, in any significant social sense, now culturally "Confucian" or "Taoist"?

      In any event, what will a military man or woman learn if he or she seriously studies Confucianism and Taoism?  He or she will learn that military action is almost always morally wrong and politically disastrous.  He or she will learn that "auspicious weapons are tools or misfortune" (Tao Te Ching) or that war itself is not worthy of study (Confucius).  He or she will encounter some of the most powerfully pacifist philosophies around. 

      Maybe that would be useful for the American military to learn....

Why We Work

      

Barry Schwartz argues today in the NYT that work - and by that he means our career or employment or professional aspirations and accomplishments - is not simply a matter of money but also a matter of personal fulfillment:

It is true, of course, that people work for money, and if they weren’t getting paid, they wouldn’t work at all. But people aren’t working only for money. They are also working because they think their work serves a purpose, or they are devoted to excellence, or they love what they do. When you offer people bonuses for doing their jobs, you are telling them that money is not just one of many reasons to work, but the only reason.

    He has a nice summary statement at the end:

The more society embraces the idea that nobody will do anything right unless it pays, the more true it will become that nobody does anything right unless it pays. And this is no way to run a ballclub, a school system, or a country.

      And this, as you might have guessed, got me to thinking about how Confucianism and Taoism treat the question of work and money and personal fulfillment.

      Confucians would agree with Schwartz: we should not let money determine the worth of our work (and they would like the title of Schwartz's book: “The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life.”)   But they would differ with Schwartz on what the purpose of work ought to be.  What is most important in life is the cultivation of our closest loving relationships.  We should not let our work interfere with that.  Nor should we let the pursuit of material benefit and profit define our daily efforts to create and extend Humanity in the world.  Confucius himself was not rich.  He did, at one point, hold down a government post, but more often he was reminding us that penury was virtuous, and that we should not worry about whether we had the job of our dreams:

The Master said: “Don’t grieve when people fail to recognize your ability. Grieve when you fail to recognize theirs.”  (1.16)

     It is better to accept poverty than pursue wealth in a manner that undermines your Humanity (and by Humanity is meant your performance of family obligations):

The Master said: "Poor food and water for dinner, a bent arm for a pillow - that is where joy resides.  For me, wealth and renown without honor are nothing but drifting clouds. (7.16)

     Our lives should be guided by our efforts to realize "Way," which for Confucius is the harmonious concatenation of carefully enacted social obligations:

The Master said: “The noble-minded devote themselves to the Way, not to earning a living. A farmer may go hungry, and a scholar may stumble into a good salary. So it is that the noble-minded worry about the Way, not poverty and hunger.” (15.32)

      So, work is what we do to secure some minimal material existence but it should never be allowed to get in the way of our social obligations.   A Confucian does not find personal fulfillment in work; he or she finds fulfillment in social duties.  If we are talented and lucky enough to secure better paying work, that is all for the good, as long as it is kept "for the good;" that is, those work duties should not transgress our family duties. 

      If someone were to pose to a Confucian the counterargument that better paying work is necessary for the fulfillment of family obligations, he would only partially agree.  Yes, more money might make it easier to support your parents and  children and friends.  But a Confucian would warn against taking this idea too far.  What is more important, from this perspective, is time and attention.  Better to live more modestly and spend more time with parents and children, than to have more to eat and better clothes but hardly see your family at all.

     Taoists have a different view, somewhat closer to Schwartz.  They would agree that money is not what is important; indeed, they might go further and say that money is essentially meaningless.  But they would see work, our physical and mental activities, as being a means of personal fulfillment of sorts.   Family duties matter less to Taoists than they do to Confucians, so that would not be as big an issue.  Rather, the possibility of using work to follow Way would intrigue a Taoist.  I am thinking here especially about the story of the butcher who, through his mastery of his craft, is able to connect to Way. The full story is a bit long (it is here, down a paragraph or two, the story of the cook), but let me just cite the money graf:

The cook put down his knife and replied: "Tao is what I care about, and Tao goes beyond mere skill.  When I first began cutting up oxen, I could see nothing but the ox.  After three years, I could see more than the ox.  And now, I meet the ox in spirit.  I've stopped looking with my eyes.  When perception and understanding cease, the spirit moves freely...(39-40)

     And that is when we connect to Way.      

     Work, from this point of view, is a means of discovering and following Way.  But only when we forget about our immediate concerns, or anything as base as money or pay or material benefit.  In order to realize genuine fulfillment from work, we have to relinquish our self-interests and self-consciousness.   That is, for a Taoist, why we work.

Confucianism Without Women

     An op-ed in the LA Times by Joshua Kurlantzick takes up the gender imbalance problem in China:

Lanzhou exemplifies a more insidious, possibly more dangerous threat to China's development than financial imbalances, environmental disasters or unemployment: The People's Republic has too many men. Today, roughly 120 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, perhaps the worst gender imbalance in modern human history. Within 15 years, the country may have 30 million men who cannot find wives. That could mean serious trouble.

      He gets at some of the historical implications:

For centuries, patrilineal Chinese households have preferred male children because men are viewed as better able to support rural families, and boys inherited the land. Some Chinese gender experts, such as Liu Bohong of the All-China Women's Federation, also argue that there is deep-seated male chauvinism in Chinese culture that leads to a preference for boys.

      There is a certain sad irony here: the patriarchy historically used Confucianism to legitimize the social and political subordination of women and now their grandsons and great-grandsons must reap the whirlwind of a society with too few females.

       But there is more than irony here.  The gender imbalance raises a question for Confucians: what is to be done when there are too few females?

    This is problem because Confucianism cannot reach its highest goal of Humanity in the world without women.   As I have argued elsewhere, women, in doing so much of the work of cultivating and maintaining close social relationships, generally - and I emphasize "generally" - do more than men to cultivate the "root of Humanity" (which is, primarily, caring for elders but, I would add, also includes caring for children and other people).  It is also true that without women to marry and raise families with, some significant number of men are deprived of an important avenue for building Humanity in their lives.  So, for Confucians, something needs to be done about the gender imbalance in China.         

      Three possibilities come to mind, all of which would be acceptable to a modern Confucian.

         First, is for Chinese men to either leave China and marry foreign women, or encourage foreign women to come to China and marry them.  China's economic boom facilitates both possibilities, making it easier for men with money to move around the world and making the country more attractive for foreigners of all sorts.   Chinese nationalists might worry some - dilution of the "national blood" and all of that.  But Confucianism is not nationalism.  It does not matter what a person's race or ethnicity is. Confucianism is perfectly fine with inter-racial or inter-ethnic marriage. What matters is whether they are fulfilling their family duties and working toward Humanity in the world.  Chinese men will have to change their attitudes toward women in general and make themselves more attractive to women from Europe and the US and Africa and Latin America and wherever.  Whatever male chauvinism that exists will have to be extinguished, as it should be in any event.  And maybe that will mean something truly historic: the final and effective separation of patriarchy and Confucianism.  The latter does much better as an ethical framework without the former.

      Second, get rid of the one-child policy.  It never has been acceptable from a Confucian perspective.  True, the population problem in China is real and difficult.  But the effects of the one-child policy on family structure and, most depressingly, female infanticide, can only be abhorrent to a Confucian.  Indeed, the time might be especially ripe to let it go.  China, after thirty years of high speed economic growth, and the attendant rise of an urban middle class, might be ripe for a demographic transition, when city  dwelling young parents, freed from agricultural work, choose voluntarily to have fewer children.  Perhaps with the pressure off, they would also come to value girls as much as boys.  The coercion of the one-child policy, in any event, clearly runs against Confucian ideals.

      Third, in a country with too many males, if the goal is to achieve as much Humanity as possible, then the society and government need to be tolerant of gay marriage and adoption.   Confucianism would be uncomfortable with gay identity, not wanting to fix so much of a person's self-understanding on their sexuality.  But Confucianism would accept, or could accept, the notion of gay marriage, which creates new family environments where Humanity can be created and nurtured.  Of course, this will only apply to a small percentage of the population (do they say that less than ten percent of the population in the US is gay?), but, given the problems associated with having too many men, every little bit helps to move society toward Humanity.

       In an ideal world, all three would be pursued because having too few women is a serious problem, from a Confucian point of view. 

Names and Realities

     The big Chinese Communist Party Congress, the Seventeenth since its inception, has just come to an end in Beijing.  Good times!  A new Central Committee has been "elected" (apparently there were only about 8% more candidates than seats on the CC).  And that Central Committee has now duly met and "elected" a Politburo and a Standing Committee of the Politburo, the nine guys who effectively run the country.  Here they are, standing no less:

    

     Roland is right, (though perhaps not quite in the way he intended) - there is a resonance here with the current crop of Republican Party presidential candidates in the US.  Stiff conformist men.

      In any event, what I want to mention here is all the democracy talk that has been going on throughout the Congress (check out this Xinhua  commentary for an example).  General Secretary Hu Jintao talked about increasing "intra-Party" democracy, which I guess means that future nominations for high-level positions will be open to more members of elite party ranks.  Either that, or it is just happy talk.  Whatever the case, it is hardly correct to refer to such arrangements as "democracy".  Although we can argue about the standards by which we judge a political system democratic or not, a fairly basic aspect is the realization of rule "by the people."   You know, the "demos" are supposed to have some sort of role in the process of deciding who has power and how it should be exercised.  Here is the OED definition:

Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In mod. use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.

      "Intra-party" democracy, as is currently discussed by the CCP, does not  move China in a democratic direction.  The public at large is still closed out of the process of deciding who will exercise power.  There are no open and free elections for top political leadership.  If you are not a Party member, you have no meaningful political participation; and if you are a Party member, you might have some meaningful political participation if you have worked your way up in the vast organization (over 70 million members - and that is still an "elite" group!) to a higher position.   But this is really not democratic in any genuine sense of that term.

     The interesting question, then, is why does the CCP make so much of its supposed "democratic" nature?  Why not just reject the idea of "democracy" and say "this is a dictatorship, perhaps no longer of the proletariat but, rather, of a new socio-economic elite"?  Or why not just make a straightforward case for oligarchy:  we are an educated and wealthy elite that knows where the country ought to be going and to open the process to real democratic contention would bring chaos and instability.  That is, essentially, the reality, but the Party continues to invoke the name "democracy."

       They have to invoke "democracy" because it is a mark of modernity; it is the only basis of political legitimacy, or the only language of such legitimacy, acceptable now by advanced industrial societies.  This has been true for much of 20th century Chinese history: remember how Mao himself went through all sorts of semantic contortions to justify his brand of dictatorship as more democratic than mere "Western" or "bourgeois" democracy?  He gave us the eminently forgettable term: The People's Democratic Dictatorship.  The Maoist Socialist brand, we might say, has declined in the past few decades (except when it comes to revolutionary poster art).  Hu Jintao, as Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin before him, thus muffles the references to "dictatorship" (even though you can still find it in the Party constitution) and plays up the "democracy" thing.

      Let's push this a step further: by invoking a name ("democracy") that obviously does not fit the reality of Chinese politics (more accurately defined as "authoritarian") is the Party trying to make the name fit the reality, or make the reality fit the name?  That is, are they twisting the name to make it cover a situation that really does not live up to that name; or, are they using the name to gradually shape reality in the direction of that name?

      They cynical political scientist, and long-time CCP watcher, in me gravitates toward the former: the Party is distorting the language to defend its non-democratic political prerogatives.  Everything about the 17th Party Congress was non-democratic.  I do not expect much at all in in the way of political change in the future.

      But the optimistic Confucian in me (he's in there somewhere, right next to the detached Taoist and not too far away from the repressed Irish) presses back with this point: by using the name, and thus creating new expectations for genuine movement toward authentic democracy, the Party is creating a dynamic for change, even if it does not intend to do so.  That is what Confucius would suggest, as in this excerpt from the famous "rectification of names" passage (13.3) in the Analects:

Therefore, when the gentleman names a thing, that naming can be conveyed in speech, and if it is conveyed in speech, then it can surely be put into action.  When the gentleman speaks, there is nothing arbitrary in the way he does so.*

      Hu Jintao is not arbitrary in his use of language.  He knows what he is doing, or at least what he thinks he is doing, when he invokes democracy.  But by naming it, he may be making it possible for others to demand that it be "surely" put into action.  Perhaps that is an overly optimistic way of thinking about the 17th Party Congress.  But a little positive hope on a sunny and warm and blue-sky autumn day might just be warranted.      

* This is from the new Burton Watson translation from Columbia University Press, which I am working through now. 

Blindsight

     When I see things like this, a paragraph from a New Yorker story on how the brain works, I can't help but think of Taoism:

We assimilate information unconsciously all the time; at any given moment, we process thousands of stimuli, of which we pay attention to only a few. As you read this sentence, you may not be aware of the birds singing in the back yard, but your brain has analyzed the sound and concluded that it poses no threat to you. In the past several decades, scientists have uncovered particularly dramatic examples of unconscious processing. In the early seventies, researchers at M.I.T. studied four patients who had experienced trauma to an area of the brain involved in vision and had been found to have a condition that was later called “blindsight.” These patients’ eyes functioned normally, but they did not perceive much of what was in their field of vision. When the researchers flashed a light at the patients and asked them to describe what they saw, the patients reported that they had seen nothing. Yet the researchers noticed that their eyes often located the source of the light. In a second experiment, a blindsight patient was shown pictures of faces displaying happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The patient said that he could not see the faces, yet he was frequently able to correctly identify the emotions...

 Our brains can take in and process information unconsciously.  This could lead to the conclusion that our conscious knowledge or understanding is not all that we "know".  Indeed, in order to open ourselves fully to our perception and interaction with the world around us, we must accept our unconscious, find a way of attuning ourselves to it without recourse to our consciousness.  Maybe this is what the Tao Te Ching means when it says: "give up learning and troubles end."  Or, give up exclusive reliance on conscious rationality and you will expand your knowledge.  We can see without seeing.  (OK, that is not all that that line can mean, but the new neurology gives that line a new dimension...

     And you just have to love the name the neurologists gave to this unconscious capacity: Blindsight.  Sounds like a character out of Chuang Tzu!