The Tao Te Ching is a political document

And this changes what it means

The Book:

Tao Te Ching
By Lao-tzu
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Harper Perennial Modern Classics
5th Century BCE

The Talk:

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”

In his introduction to the Tao Te Ching, translator Stephen Mitchell calls it “among other things, a treatise on the art of government.” It is a book for leaders about how to wield authentic authority and power, power which is always flowing and changing.

It may not, in fact, primarily be a book for spiritual seekers, much less a self-help guide. A significant number of its chapters explicitly or implicitly assume that the reader is a leader. It could be that the intended reader is a not a would-be hermit or monk, but an emperor. And read with this mindset, it’s a book that ought to unsettle us more than it does.

The clothes have no emperor

Napoleon Bonaparte writes to Josephine in 1796:

What is the future? What is the past? What are we? What is this magic fluid that envelops us and hides from us what most we need to know? We are born, we live, we die surrounded by wonder.

A leader plays a game with an invisible, unspeakable, unknowable darkness, which is the whole of one’s circumstances in a single moment. The Tao is perhaps the name for what a leader swims in.

For this reason, a leader who thinks they know what is going on is in the riskiest position of all. A leader must unload their own desires, principles, philosophies, and lead the world as it is and people as they are, even as this reality remains a fundamental mystery.

Know the personal,
yet keep to the impersonal:
accept the world as it is.
If you accept the world,
the Tao will be luminous inside you
and you will return to your primal self.

Leaders who have been leaders for a long time often seem hollow to outsiders and idealists. They seem empty because their identity has fully merged with their institution. Observers may speculate on very deep machinations for why this or that policy was adopted, but the truth is that most often there is no deeper thinking there, no thinking at all. Powerful leaders, perhaps shockingly, have no moral compass because they are floating free, identity-less, formless. That is (darkly) their genius.

Napoleon said, “I always went along with the opinion of the masses and with events. I always paid little attention to individual opinions and a great deal to public opinion.”

Lao-tzu writes:

The Master, by residing in the Tao,
sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn’t display himself,
people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove,
people can trust his words.
Because he doesn’t know who he is,
people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind,
everything he does succeeds.

The kindness of power is indifference

In this way, leading as the Tao is beyond good and evil. What is “best for the country” or “right for the business” in a given moment is a question without laws, principles, or certainty. Theory doesn’t matter. There are no rules at the top. Philosopher John Gray defines ethics has “the knack of knowing what to do.” It is this kind of mindset that defines the spirit of leadership.

When you are powerful, compassion expresses itself as indifference. To be loving, when you have power, is to let things go. And this is a common admonition for leaders in the book:

When taxes are too high,
people go hungry.
When the government is too intrusive,
people lose their spirit.

Act for the people’s benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.

Taken as a whole, the Tao Te Ching does have a kind of libertarian edge to it: The most compassionate thing you can do for people is to leave them alone. When government pulls back, nations flourish.

But perhaps it’s more likely that the book sits among other “guides for kings” in history, arguing for moderation and mercy as a means of retaining order, rather than advocating for anarchism.

Read as a political guide, the book is, like most pre-industrial texts, mostly conservative: The world cannot be improved. Attempting to improve it is folly. Be content with what you have. Any resistance to the way things are—the way things have always been—is error. Humility is happiness.

Conspiracy would be a fine thing

To let go of one’s desires (especially in an economy that runs off unlimited human desire) provides almost instant relief. And the Tao Te Ching can certainly raise one’s awareness of the futility of trying to control what you can’t.

But it’s also possible that the book means almost the opposite of this, and that it points to a truth about social reality that is more dark than comforting. (The text itself constantly warns that most people don’t want this wisdom—which might make us wonder if its bestseller status comes from our misreading of it.)

To live without judgement and without aims as an individual is romantic. Who wouldn’t want to step outside their daily mental burden and exist as a flower or a tree once in a while?

But to consider that the best rulers have no moral judgement or even any plans at all, that at the center of power is ideally an unthinking person, is troubling. It doesn’t square easily with many modern values, even as it makes perfect sense in the ancient world.

To put it another way: The real horror isn’t finding out that The Powers That Be are malicious, it’s finding out they are formless.

Napoleon once more:

“I had few really definite ideas, and the reason for this was that, instead of obstinately seeking to control circumstances, I obeyed them, and they forced me to change my mind all the time. Thus it happened that most of the time, to tell the truth, I had no definite plans but only projects.”

Related:

Is stoicism bad for democracy?

The Jack Aubrey guide to management

How to survive in ancient Egypt

5 Ways to Strategize Like Napoleon (Medium article I wrote in 2020)