The pro-gun lobby in the US has long circulated a slogan: "Guns don't kill people, people do." This came to mind as I was reading one of my student's papers recently, a paper on the Daodejing.
In that text there are various references to weapons, generally adding up to a pacifistic stance. But there are some tantalizing phrases. Like these:
a nation's honed instruments of power
should be kept well-hidden from the people. (36)
...
Let nations grow smaller and smaller
and people fewer and fewer,
let weapons become rare
and superfluous...
(80)
These excerpts suggest that, ideally, a Daoist ruler (whatever that might be) would not banish all weapons, but, rather, keep some (even if they are "rare and superfluous") "well-hidden" just in case... This suggests that the people themselves cannot be trusted with weapons because those who "adore twisty paths" might use them in un-Way-like actions.
That is where my student's paper comes in. She was discussing the notion of desire, and how the DDJ counsels us to let go of our desires in order to connect with Way. The control of access to firearms could, in this regard, be understood as a means of dampening or reorienting our desires. If we can do something, if we have the capability to do something, we might then build that capability into a desire. Conversely, if something is simply and obviously beyond our capacities, we might detach ourselves from it. I can't fly to the moon; so, I don't really think about wanting to fly to the moon.
I mention this because the "hide the weapons" passages of the DDJ are sometimes taken as a kind of crypto-Legalism: empowering tyrannical rulers against the people. I think that interpretation is wrong. Rather, the spirit of the text is more in keeping with this reading: weapons should be hidden as a part of the general project of reorienting people's desires away from un-Way-like activities. Guns, themselves, may not kill people, but their presence increases the human desire to kill people.
Weapons cannot be completely abolished because, in a rather pragmatic manner (pragmatism is not often associated with the DDJ), there must be some guard against outside attack, especially in a Warring States context:
If you use Way to help a ruler of people, you never use weapons to coerce all beneath heaven. Such things always turn against you:
fields where soldiers camp turn to thorn and bramble, and vast armies on the march leave years of misery behind.
The noble prevail if they must, and then stop: they never press on to coerce the world.
Prevail, but never presume. Prevail, but never boast. Prevail, but never exult. Prevail, but never when there's another way. This is to prevail without coercing.
Things grown strong soon grow old. This is called losing Way: Lose the Way and you die young.
That last line is a good epitaph for the Qin Dynasty.
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