Red Moon

TA SHU 8 feng shui Wind Water

Pull your opponent’s push, and they will fall forward. Balance the forces. Flows knot together, then change direction and move apart. Look to the south.

There was once a time when all lived together in peace: maybe. But not recently.

We lean against other people, and thus we all stay somewhat upright. You have to be able to trust your friends. If an old person dies, that’s natural, and a good long life is all you can ask. But if you are betrayed by a friend, that’s not natural. Then you have to wonder what’s really real. It hurts.

There are some actors in this tangle who are not human, but every intermediary is always a mediator, changing what it passes along. Intentionality is distributed among all the agents of an action. That makes this a dangerous time, no doubt about it. When I saw all those people flooding the streets and parks of Beijing, it was exhilarating, yes. You could not help but feel exhilarated, it was beautiful. But it was also dangerous. I’ve lived through the bitter aftermath of violence, I know that pain all too well. It makes you angry. You want revenge. Then it’s very common to want to sweep aside all obstructions to one’s virtuous path. But if you do that, the force of your sweeping will hurt you too. We need to find a better way. We must fight not to fight, even in this fraught moment. The consequences have to select the causes that will bring them into being.

We live by some bad ideas. The Seven Bad Ideas, the Four Cheaps, they all have to go. For a long time they’ve been squeezing the world. Now it’s been squeezed dry. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, which is why the moon won’t serve as a new place to squeeze, being a stone already. So the dynasty of the cheaps is over, it’s done. Now we have to stop squeezing, and change.

The path into the light seems dark. The path forward seems to go back. The way is never obvious.

When confronted by a knot in history, the people closest to the knot can do the most to untie it. If I get the chance, I will say this to Peng Ling: the Party has to trust the people. If the Party trusts the people, the people will trust the Party. This is the only way. Repression will never work in China for long. When repression exists the people move against it, and nothing can stop us once we start to move. We are the billion, we turn the wheel. When the wheel turns, a new dynasty comes into being.

There is no reason to fear change. Wait, why do I say this? I fear change myself. These things we are doing now, the people we are working with—the moon itself—the AI we are inviting here, which may make the moon goddess real at last—all these actors, some without agency as we used to know it, some with agency but without consciousness—we’re all working together in a way that’s never happened before. Who knows what will happen?

“Decay is inherent in all compounded things, persevere diligently.” These were the Buddha’s final words, or so they tell us. “Continued perseverance furthers,” says the Yijing. Of course anything alive has to persevere, that’s the definition of life. So these encouragements are possibly a bit stupid; I often feel that way, I should give up on them. Stating the obvious can sometimes be helpful, but usually it’s only irritating. One frowns and says of course to such simpleminded exhortations. Do the necessary things! Yes. We must carry on, even through the darkness at the heart of things. Now again the time has come when we have to act. So: act.