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Timothy Johnson
Professor Nathan Lindsay
ENGL 1C
08 November 2019
Lao Tzu, The Tao-Te Ching, and How a Ruler Achieves Community
Over the course of history there have been many different styles of leadership. Some
bring out the best in a society and others are corrosive and destroy societies from within. A well
renowned Chinese Philosopher, Lao Tzu had a very interesting interpretation of what a leader,
and ruler of a civilization, should be. He felt so strongly on the subject that he wrote a detailed
manuscript regarding the matter and he named it Tao-Te Ching; which roughly translates to the
way of virtue. A virtuous leader has high moral standards and is someone worth emulating by the
people.
Lao Tzu understood that a group of people who didn’t know they were being ruled would
thrive because constraints only provoke rebellion. Lao-tzu states this in Tao-Te Ching: “If you
want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Tao. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed
plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.” (35) Looking further into this message, you
can infer that the less constrictive the government the better the society will perform. He
suggests that if you take away the distractions that drive us (i.e. religion, ambition, profits, and
morality) people will step up and thrive creating a better social environment. He even says this
almost verbatim in his text, “Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred
times happier. Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing. Throw away
industry and profit, and there won’t be any thieves.” (8) People are competitive in nature and
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once our ambitions get in the way of personal morality, a person is faced with a defining decision
and not all make the right judgement. If people let their ambitions control who they are, then
they are but a fragment of the person they could be. They sacrifice the best part of themselves in
the pursuit of status. When these are our primary motivators, we tend to walk over others, judge
and prosecute them without knowing them, and become thieves because of our personal greed.
He speaks of the Tao almost as if it were a deity itself and was a driving factor for Daoism,
which he founded later. He had a better approach at promoting his ideals in a religious format by
offering information and making the reader think deeply on the matters at hand, instead of
“preaching” to the masses and telling you what opinions to have on the text. (Schlafer n.p.)
These principles, as he believed, are the guiding factors of becoming the best society we can be
because it promotes synergy and helping our fellow man to sustain a peaceful way of life. Lao
Tzu continues to provide examples to substantiate his claim by stating that, “When rich
speculators prosper while farmers lose their land; when government officials spend money on
weapons instead of cures; when the upper class is extravagant and irresponsible while the poor
have nowhere to turn—all this is robbery and chaos. It is not in keeping with the Tao.” (34)
As you can tell from this excerpt Lao Tzu could see that when people become selfish in
their pursuits, society suffers from their ambition and it takes an internal evaluation to improve
and become that selfless leader that the civilization needs to emulate. This statement is further
supported by Lao Tzu when he stated, “Therefore the Master says: I let go of the law, and people
become honest. I let go of economics, and people become serene. I let go of all desire for the
common good, and the good becomes common as grass.” He believes our Human Nature breeds
the best version of ourselves as we are naturally inclined to do good deeds for our fellow man to
better benefit the society. David Richards, a writer for Forbes, wrote an article and used an
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African Proverb to support a similar idea of leadership and it states, “If you want to go fast, go
alone. If you want to go far, go together." (Richards n.p.)
A society is only as strong as its bond with one another. If divided it becomes a group of
individuals that will eventually fall apart. If the group works together then it becomes prosperous
and furthers its progress as a community. He further expresses this idea by this statement, “The
best leaders know that their role is not to dictate, but to inspire and motivate others to act. When
you surrender control, you invite people to discover their potential. You create a culture where
your team looks to go above and beyond, not just do the minimum to meet your demand. You
will draw out a culture of communication that fosters and encourages innovation.” (Richards)
The very definition of Community in the Merriam-Webster dictionary fosters this idea as it
reveals that a community is: “a unified body of individuals.”
Lao Tzu understood that if you remove the motivators that would distract us and taint our
soul, you would find this community. He closes with a paragraph explaining what a proper
government should look like and it is as follows: “If a country is governed wisely, its inhabitants
will be content. They enjoy the labor of their hands and don’t waste time inventing labor-saving
machines. Since they dearly love their homes, they aren’t interested in travel. There may be a
few wagons and boats, but these don’t go anywhere. There may be an arsenal of weapons, but
nobody ever uses them. People enjoy their food, take pleasure in being with their families, spend
weekends working in their gardens, delight in the doings of the neighborhood. And even thong
the next country is so close that people can hear its roosters crowing and dogs barking, they are
content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it.” (para. 60) This statement appears to
be an example of what community looks like.
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There was a personal account of a person who had taken a trip to Nicaragua that saw
firsthand the principles that Lao Tzu had taught. These villagers have likely never heard of the
man or his Tao, yet they are a living testament to his ideals, and provide a practical application of
his lessons in everyday life. This person was helping a village build bathrooms and constructing
water lines to their small piece nowhere. They literally had next to nothing and yet they seemed
to be more content than most people living in the luxurious United States. These people worked
hard tending to their crops and never even gave a second thought to their circumstance. They
would trade livestock for vegetables and would help each other with almost every task in the
day. To him, it was strange to see how happy their way of life was without the outside
distractions society faces every day in a First World civilization. They put their focus on each
other and improving their situation for the necessities and nothing more. They didn’t really have
anyone governing the things they did. They had a chief, but he never imposed his power on
them. He just provided wisdom where it was needed and would visit each member in the village
daily. He did this to see how they were doing and what they needed. It was a spectacle, to say the
least, because these people were prospering in their own environment and didn’t care about the
outside world. They just cared about each other and the success of everyone in the community.
After this experience this person was discouraged upon his return to the society of a dog
eat dog world that is the United States. In the United States, a person in power would seek to set
more limitations and attempt to control the people more and more because they have a misguided
notion that it’s for the nation’s advantage. The Modern ruler attempts to lead through control
because they are too high above the people that their only perception of the public is what they
see on the news. Society here must operate within these limitations to improve their station at the
cost of their fellow man. This conflicts with Lao Tzu’s teachings because when you start limiting
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freedoms you have planted a seed of controversy, because now the people have to adjust and
take that example and begin to limit the others around them to ensure they benefit in the
situations. It’s a shame to see this form of leadership when there is a better way out there. When
you look at these two contrasting experiences you might say that society while making leaps
forward in innovation, have taken strides backward in morals. At the cost of ethics, society has
advanced, but a person might ask if the end justified the means. This person was humbled in an
almost enlightened way, he wanted to go back to Nicaragua because he was not happy with the
world he was living in now. Having experienced Lao Tzu’s Teachings firsthand, he would agree
and validate that Lao Tzu was right and that the perfect environment and community is as he
described. If the rest of the world could live the teachings in the Tao-Te Ching, the quality of life
would improve substantially. Community would prosper on a global scale, instead of, in just a
small piece of land in the middle of nowhere. It takes a leader of the people to truly improve on
the people’s situation.
A true leader and Ruler of a society doesn’t impose their will because he can, but instead
lives among the people in a harmonious community learning from their subjects. He only
imposes his authority in a time of need and only to improve the situation of his subjects.
Community is the goal of Lao Tzu’s teachings and should be the aspiration of any would-be
leader.
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Works Cited
“Community.” Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th Ed., 2008. Print.
Richards, David. You Can Control, and You Can Lead, but You Can't Do Both. Forbes Media
LLC., 2019. Print.
Tzu, Lao. "Thoughts from the Tao-Te Ching.” A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College
Writers, edited by Lee A. Jacobus, Bedford/St. Martin, 2017, pp. 55-68.
Schlafer, David J., Exempla XIV: The book of Job and the Tao Te Ching as antidotes to
`preachy' preaching, Anglican Theological Review, 00033286, Summer92, Vol. 74, Issue 3