Saturday, October 15, 2011

Huainanzi - Entry 6

Many intellectuals in society have departed from the root of the Way and its power; they say manners and duties are sufficient to govern the world. It is not possible to talk to them about the arts of leadership.
~ a passage from The Book of Leadership and Strategy by Thomas Cleary ~
For starters, it's rather obvious that this snippet is a rebuke of Confucianism.

If we move beyond that, it also speaks to the world we live in today. While I certainly support the idea of more government -- at least, more government that represents the interests of ALL the people -- I think there is no question that we are overburdened with laws and regulations. It often astounds me that, when national and state legislation is passed, the bills themselves can run into hundreds of pages. Simple and straightforward policies become complicated and convoluted masses of unintelligible verbiage!

Both my brother and I have performed research for some of my dad's legal cases (note: he's a criminal defense lawyer). It's not uncommon for him to contact one of us to try to find a citation or two for a legal point he hopes to utilize at trial. So, we hop on the internet to try to run down the information.

I can't begin to tell you how difficult it can be to locate simple information. When reading laws, every paragraph seems to refer to other paragraphs which refer to even more paragraphs. Words that mean one thing in one context can mean the precise opposite in a different context. Every declarative statement is qualified by countless other declarative statements.

Reading judicial court decisions can be just as onerous. A person can get a severe headache trying to wade your way through legalese heaped upon more legalese.

I'm not suggesting that I am anti-law and anti-regulation. Laws and regulations are needed to protect the many from the few and to protect the earth from humanity. The problem is that our legal system and tax codes have been labyrinths of unintelligible muck. They are so intricately tangled and twisted around that even the so-called experts sometimes can't figure out which end is up and which end is down.

To read the introduction to this ongoing series, go here.

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