Carl Helsing

The aim of this chapter is to examine Zhuangzi’s use of humor as a therapeutic linguistic strategy for treating the limitations of language and the “fixed-mind” or “complete-mind” (cheng-xin 成心). This involves examining the role of absurdity and understanding in humor, and how Zhuangzi’s insights provide a possibility for integrating absurdity and understanding into humor. On the one hand, Zhuangzi’s humor exposes the absurdity of relying on fixed distinctions, fixed models, and fixed judgments. On the other hand, Zhuangzi’s humor nurtures the capacity for ambiguity, uncertainty, and exploration—in short, for playful creativity within the world. This playful creativity simultaneously nurtures and transcends individual psychological transformation. Zhuangzi’s sages demonstrate how to use humor to challenge fixed views of the world, particularly views of the world that endanger life or reduce life to crude utility. Against these views, Zhuangzi’s sages demonstrate how to move through life with a unique sense of amusement, using language to open creative possibilities, in a way that regards all elements of life—including ourselves—as intimate parts of life’s open-ended and interdependent transformation.

This chapter argues that when we look at Zhuangzi, we not only find discussions of great relevance to contemporary discussions of technology but also begin to realize that our idea of what it means to be contemporary may be an illusion. Much like the fledgling bird or the winter cicada we have difficulty imagining beyond our immediate present. We inhabit, quite by accident, a particular place in our perceived narrative arc, and we forget that what is present will soon be past, and what we thought was past may be new again. Beyond—or perhaps within—the Zhuangzi’s ability to render rigid distinctions groundless, we find a hauntingly relevant story of technology and human consciousness. In this story, which occurs in Book 12, “Heaven and Earth,” the Confucian disciple Zigong encounters an elderly farmer exerting undue effort to irrigate a field of vegetables. Zigong, believing in the ideal of “great results with little effort,” recommends the use of an ingenious device to increase the farmer’s efficiency. To Zigong’s great surprise, the nameless gardener soundly rebukes the well-intentioned idea. Zigong discusses the encounter with Confucius (or rather, Zhuangzi’s fictional version of Confucius) and informs Zigong that the gardener follows the arts of Primal Chaos (hundunshi zhi shu渾沌氏之術). The story leaves the reader wondering exactly what a display of these arts would entail, but Confucius (or Zhuangzi) insists that it would be a truly astounding phenomenon. At the center of the story is the controversial water-lever. The idea seems simple but serves as a sophisticated fulcrum for discussing Zhuangzi’s concern with mechanical-consciousness (ji xin 機心) and mechanical-affairs (ji shi 機事). On an individual level, mechanical-consciousness limits human agency, driving us away from living in creative response to our environments and closer to merely serving the devices we use. On the systemic level, the water-lever shows how machine-consciousness leverages entire systems of relationships. In this manner predetermined, formulaic responses not only degrade individual human agency but also usurp the organic relationships that constitute complex systems as a whole.

A sustainable future for human existence can only be secured when sustainability becomes the central value that organizes human activity. Despite this truth, the idea of sustainability is strikingly absent from the Enlightenment philosophies that gave rise to contemporary models of political and economic organization. The absence of sustainability as a central value in political and economic thinking means political and economic models struggle to accommodate the conceptual relationships necessary for ensuring a sustainable future. This struggle is reflected in the theoretical and practical failures of contemporary models and the failure of these models to address the immanent crisis of ecological collapse. In this address, I examine the role of acquisition and growth in Enlightenment thought, particularly as they guide the writings of John Locke and Adam Smith. These assumptions in their respective philosophies sever individuals and society from ecological thinking. In response to this schism between humanity and nature, I consider writings from Indigenous American authors Corbin Harney and Joseph Bruchac. Indigenous writings not only acknowledge the interdependence of humanity and nature but contain clear warnings against separating the human from the natural. Looking next to Chinese thought, I argue that social-economic stability and ecological stability are not exclusive. In contrast to Enlightenment thought, classical Chinese thought explicitly recognizes the dependence of social-political stability on ecological stability. Finally, in response to Locke’s appeal to theological claims to justify acquisition, I examine the relationship between humanity and nature in the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Despite Abrahamic religions predicating a hierarchical relationship between God, humanity, and nature, Abrahamic scriptures also recognize nature as a divine creation and as a source of spiritual inspiration. This recognition entails rejecting selfish, destructive desires and recognizing acquisition and growth as the ends of human activity. In place of these destructive values and goals, I argue that global religious traditions share a widespread recognition for the ascetic virtues of self-control and self-restraint in the pursuit of a greater spiritual existence.

This essay examines the concept of the wandering heart-mind in the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi 莊子. This essay examines the problems caused by a collection of behaviors in the heart-mind: the ability to make distinctions, the tendency to fix distinctions and language, and the need to act for the sake of fixed ends. Zhuangzi treats these problems with emptying, wandering, and mirroring. These techniques release the heart-mind from fixation and conflict, enabling the heart-mind to respond to conditions without acting for fixed ends. Letting the heart-mind wander provides the receptivity and creativity necessary for responding to a complex world of constant change. Letting the heart-mind wander also opens the possibility of an intrinsically beneficial moral psychology, one where the heart-mind not only adapts to but enjoys a world of transformation and uncertainty. This interpretation of the heart-mind has important consequences for psychology, language, and ethics. In terms of psychology this interpretation diagnoses the limitations of knowledge and proposes therapeutic techniques to treat uncertainty and fixation. In terms of language this interpretation reveals different linguistic attitudes in the text, such as usefulness and play. In terms of ethics this interpretation provides a basis for Zhuangzi’s ethical vision of nourishing living and free-and-easy wandering.

Zhuangzi and Henry David Thoreau share a critical interest in the relations between wandering, nature, and experience. Their attitudes toward nature provide a basis for their views of human well-being, which in turn inform their attitudes toward language, society, and politics. Both celebrate nature as a source of constant novelty, change, and nourishing life. These values clash against social conformity and political homogeneity. For both Zhuangzi and Thoreau, how we experience life is already constitutive of human well-being. Wandering thus provides a unique vision of freedom, one that binds experience, nature, and social-political criticism.