46、If All People Know Why Beautiful Things Become Beautiful, Ugliness Will Be Stopped

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 2

Comment:

The people around the world, i.e., common people, have very narrow dimension of consciousness, and they often consider things with one-sided view that they consider is right.

1. For instance, a teacup can be round when observed from above but square when seen from the front. Moreover, it might present another shape when observed from the side face. However, a teacup will always be a teacup.

This can also be illustrated in the literary quotation of blind men and an elephant. Common people often consider things with extremely one-sided view. Therefore, they might be cheated easily.

However, wise men will consider problems from multiple and different angles in a comprehensive way.

2. Some net friends do not understand my articles and viewpoints and have objections against my perspectives. In fact, they just consider things with one-sided view rather than look at the problems from other angles.

3. For another example, many democrats criticise Marx on the internet.

However, they never censure that Marx never acted as capitalist and worker, Marx would never be a capitalist, or Marx did not write Das Kapital.

Das Kapital is just a tale of a tub and fairy tale without practice.

Their thoughts are restricted to a certain range, quite stubborn, just like other people. Actually there is no right or wrong. It is just either comprehensive or one-sided.

All thoughts, belief in capitalism, belief in socialism, or even belief in feudalism, are comprehensive or one-sided, rather than right or wrong.

The envoys of devils just utilise such narrow-mindedness of people’s thoughts to trigger narrow-mindedness and to realise their own purposes.

All thoughts, belief in capitalism, belief in socialism, or even belief in feudalism, consider that they are beautiful and virtuous. In fact, they just do not know what true beauty is and what true virtuousness is.

In order to judge whether a concrete object is beautiful and virtuous or ugly and evil, we must know this object in a comprehensive way and understand it from multiple angles and aspects.

Beauty and virtuousness mentioned by Lao-Tzu:

If a thing can benefit both parties, then it can be called beauty.

If a thing can benefit the opposite side but does not benefit you or even damages your interest slightly, it can be called virtuousness.

Lao-Tzu considered that the world lacked beautiful and virtuous things, because people in the world just looked at problems by starting from their own perspectives and interests. They do not know how to do good and beautiful works.

The beauty and virtuousness mentioned by Lao-Tzu do not mean minor beauty and minor virtuousness. When you give a beggar 10 yuan or 100 yuan, this is just minor virtuousness rather than virtuousness mentioned by Lao-Tzu or true virtuousness.

What is minor beauty? When you sell a watermelon to passers-by who are thirsty, this is called beauty. You can earn money and passers-by can quench their thirst. But this is just minor beauty rather than virtuousness and beauty mentioned by Lao-Tzu.

Common people around the world just don’t know how to achieve and realise true beauty and virtuousness. True beauty and virtuousness are national policies, laws, regulations, and moral principles gained under comprehensive consideration and great wisdom in an authoritarian regime system.

Maybe common people around the world consider that this has nothing to do with them, and it is just the matter of the country. Therefore, they will not consider or care about it, unless their interests are affected.

This is the reason why common people around the world don’t know how to achieve and realise true beauty and virtuousness.

Democratic system aims to make the ignorant people that don’t know how to achieve and realise true beauty and virtuousness control the national destiny. This is the fatal weakness of countries adopting democratic system.

Therefore, I consider that Lao-Tzu’s authoritarian regime system is a system more advanced than democratic system.

Experts guide common people and elites lead ignorant people. This is advanced productivity.

What does it mean to achieve and realise true beauty and virtuousness in the current situations of our country?

When the state-owned capital of China can profit substantially and the money gained can be invested in places with underdeveloped economy requiring a large amount of input from the government, such as rural areas, education, social security, national defence, science and technology, etc., this means to achieve and realise true beauty and virtuousness.

How can state-owned capital profit? Isn’t this the system of capitalism to create surplus value to the largest extent? Frankly speaking, it is state capitalism, law of the jungle, and economic rule.

To know true beauty and virtuousness means to know ‘Tao’.

As for the fundamental reason why ugly things happen in the world, most people don’t know true beauty and virtuousness or ‘Tao’.

The fundamental reason for all ugly problems in China, such as corruption, gap between the rich and the poor, urban-rural gap, etc., is that state-owned capital management goes out of control. Strictly speaking, ownership management of state-owned capital is out of control. Anyone that has power can occupy state-owned capital. Why? The ownership of state-owned capital is transferred to lower levels in China, and Chinese people are confused in this issue.

True beauty and virtuousness can be achieved when Chinese people realise this point and are able to flexibly use state-owned capital. Thus state-owned capital will become a treasure bowl benefiting the people.

If common people can absolutely master the methods and skills of applying state-owned capital, problems like corruption, gap between the rich and the poor, and urban-rural gap will be solved effectively.

This is the true connotation of the sentence that ‘if all common people around the world know why beautiful things become beautiful, ugly things will be stopped; if all common people around the world know why virtuous things become virtuous, evil things will be stopped’.