MEDITATIONS: ZHUANGZI, CHAPTER TWELVE PART TWO

Heaven and Earth, part II

Today, we will examine a single story, a parable of sorts which serves to show how the proper ordering of the world cannot be achieved top-down but instead must arrive organically, bottom-up, even when guided from the leaders above. Does this seem like a contradiction? Then let’s get on with it and revisit our old rationalist and logician, the aptly named Gnawgap:

The teacher of Yao was Xu You, whose teacher was Gnawgap, whose teacher was Baby Sovereign, whose teacher was Pajama. Yao asked Xu You, “Gnawgap can be taken as a counterpart of Heaven itself, can’t he? Through Baby Sovereign, I have invited him to come meet with me.”

Xu You said, “Danger! This will be a hazard to the whole world! Gnawgap is the kind of person who is clear-sighted and sharp-eared, astute and wise, and because he is so perceptive, he is always quick and nimble of mind. He was born with natural endowments that surpass others, but as a consequence he tries to take possession of the Heavenly through the human. He is very astute about prohibiting wrongdoing, but has no understanding of what produces the wrongdoing in the first place. Would you allow him to serve as a counterpart of Heaven? He would try first to depend on the human without the Heavenly, then would root everything in the personal self while disidentifying with the physical body, then would honor conscious knowledge and let it spread like wildfire, then would make himself a cause at the beginning of every thread, then would become the cord that binds all things together, then would elicit a response wherever he looks, then would respond as appropriate to everything, and then would transform along with things without any consistency. . . . For he is the kind of leader who produces disorder through his very governing—a calamity to those who serve him and a thief to those who rule him.” (Zhuangzi 100-01)

So, who is this “Gnawgap” character? We’ve seen him before, usually in discussion with is teacher, Baby Sovereign. In their discussions, despite his position as teacher, Baby Sovereign often answered Gnawgap’s questions with a simple “I don’t know.” Except, it wasn’t so simple, for the admittance of ignorance on Baby Sovereign’s part demonstrated an assumption of correctness on the part of Gnawgap.

That is the kind of sage Gnawgap is, the kind who value conscious understanding more than anything else. In Jungian terms, we might say he is the Ego Consciousness itself—hence his name. He is the gap in our knowledge which gnaws away at our sanity, producing self-conscious anxiety, frustrated resentment, or confusion and despair.

And that is precisely how Xu You characterizes him: Gnawgap, like our own human conscious, is highly perceptive and intelligent. He is quick-witted, able to pick out rhetorical and logical errors and to immediately give counter arguments. These are Gnawgap’s talents—those traits intrinsic to him. He was born with them, and therefore has never known what it was to be less-than in mental ability then the other men around him. And this is the problem.

Parallels to the modern west begin here, for Gnawgap in some sense represents the spirit of the European Enlightenment. He is what occurs when a genius takes up the Cult of Reason. Because he is rational, he begins to believe that the universe is rational too. He forgets the biological animal that constitutes most of what a human being is—and which must be addressed if one is to understand the real motivations behind right and wrong action—and forgetting this, thinks that he can dictate are proper set of laws like building a clock. To him, the world becomes a simple engineering problem.

What is the consequence of such a mistaken set of assumptions?

Totalitarianism: a man like Gnawgap will make his will the center of all his decisions. It is inevitable, because he sees only that which he understands, which he can command and control. It does not stay present in a mind like Gnawgap’s that there is a transcendent world that he must adapt to. There is no way of Heaven, only the way of Human—and not even Human, but of his own particular preferences. How could it be another way? Gnawgap is superior to other men in his reason, so surely his preferences are the right ones; surely what he values are the only correct values to hold. Is it not so?

No, for the people whom Gnawgap rules will not and to some degree cannot share in his values. They are different beings living different lives under different circumstances. It is only natural that their Ways are not the same as his. But then, what seems appropriate to Gnawgap will always be more and more expansion of his own power. If he believes his way to be correct, he will need to transform into the tyrant powerful and forceful enough to impose his will onto the people below him.

That is the danger of the worship of the Ego. Luciferian arrogance emerges from the assumption that human conscious knowledge—pure reason, logic, and empiricism—are sufficient variables to guide our decisions even in simple, everyday life. And when that arrogance turns out to be wrong, Luciferian pride just makes things worse. The very universe is presumed to be wrong in favor of the theoretical models produced by conscious understanding. Then any atrocity is justified. Elements of nature and the unconscious are pushed out of the light of Ego Consciousness. They are cast into the Shadow and left to manifest in their darkened forms—most often, the corruption of the rational self: the senility of the king: the birth of the authoritarian dictator.

So be wary of Gnawgap and our tendencies to become like him.

Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi; The Complete Writings, translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2020