Chapter 58

Chapter 58

If a government is unobtrusive,
the people become whole.
If a government is repressive,
the people become treacherous.

Good fortune has its roots in disaster,
and disaster lurks with good fortune.
Who knows why these things happen,
or when this cycle will end?
Good things seem to change into bad,
and bad things often turn out for good.
These things have always been hard to comprehend.

Thus the Master makes things change
without interfering.
She is probing yet causes no harm.
Straightforward, yet does not impose her will.
Radiant, and easy on the eye.

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Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit notes in his song “Take a look around,” that “when the good comes to bad, the bad comes to good.” Maybe he was inspired by this chapter when he wrote the lyrics or simply adopted this view from some common knowledge shared in American culture. Good fortune has a seed or element of a disaster as can be understood in the lottery example I illustrated in one of the above chapters; when you suddenly have too much money, it may devour you if you are not cautious.

However, when Lao Tzu says that “disaster lurks with good fortune,” I kind of agree. This quote also reminds me of Robert Greene’s concept of amor fati; you simply turn shit into sugar through a fearless attitude of accepting reality and making use of it. Although this is easier said than done, it is an elemental lesson that is we easily dismiss, because we want good things to happen to us instead of fighting through adversity to get them.

I also like the verse right below the quote, which says “Good things seem to change into bad.” The Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible tells of a story of Amnon who raped his half-sister. He fell in love with her so dearly that he suffered an illness in bed. After he took her by force, however, he came to hate her even more than he had loved her. I am not sure whether this was a real historical event, but I think you will agree that this story is not surprising. Human passion is whimsical and volatile. Love very frequently turns into hate, and hate into love. It is strange that it is mostly erotic love between man and woman that shows this whimsical pattern. That is, for example, in racial strife, one’s hatred of a particular race never develops into one’s love of the race. If somebody happens to hate a particular race, he continues to do so and never stops. What he can only do is to hope to ameliorate his view.

On the other hand, regarding the quote “bad things often turn out for good,” his sister being raped by his half-brother was a very good event for Absalom who wanted to remove him and become the king himself. He justified killing his eldest brother by making it look like it was revenge for his sister. However, after he quickly rose to power, he was eventually killed by one of David’s soldiers for his treason. You never know what is good or bad in the long run. History, and even our lives, is indeed chaotic.