On Equality and Freedom, from the Death of Old Mr. Li

Recently, a certain Mr. Li surnamed elder passed his hundredth year. The elites, rendered incoherent by grief, went so far as to invoke the concept of daotong -- the transmission of the orthodox Way, which surfaced starting with Han Yu -- from the mouths of 21st-century elites who pride themselves on Westernization. Quite a spectacle. What virtue and ability did old Mr. Li possess to warrant such a fuss from the elites? Not being one for celebrity worship, I couldn't be bothered to verify. But by coincidence, I happened upon an article by one of his great disciples, containing old Mr. Li's discourse on equality and freedom. This disciple had an epiphany because of it and served him faithfully for life. Such a remarkable argument deserves to be shared for all to examine.

Old Mr. Li's thesis was roughly this: capitalism values freedom, socialism values equality, and without freedom, one does not even have the possibility of freely pursuing equality -- so where would equality come from? Therefore freedom precedes equality. According to this disciple, this thesis was old Mr. Li's enlightenment after much tribulation, and constituted the very foundation of his thought.

However, freedom has never been free. Freedom -- one must first have a "self" from which to "proceed." Without self, what proceeds? With self, proceeds to what? Furthermore, so-called freedom in reality has never been free. So-called free will is in substance the product of all manner of unfree processes. Presumably what the elites resent most is that their so-called free will failed, at the moment of their conception, to stamp itself with a MADE IN USA mark -- truly unfortunate. On the other hand, if one truly understands "Who binds you?" or "The vast sky does not obstruct the white clouds' flight," then all talk of "freely" or "unfreely" becomes superfluous. What would there be to say about freely pursuing anything? In other words, regardless of the premise, "freely pursuing something" is always nonsense, because freedom has never existed or has never needed to exist.

That freedom has never needed to exist is the realm of Chan enlightenment, which we shall set aside for the mundane world. That freedom has never existed -- beyond what was discussed above -- can also be illuminated by "man is the totality of all social relations." No matter how sacred the elites' fantasized freedom may be, in reality it dissolves into a pile of not-so-beautiful relations and outcomes. Freedom has never existed, yet this also means that a certain kind of real freedom manifested in social relations has always existed -- it's just that for certain types of people there is too much, and for others too little.

Regardless, that conceptualized, verbalized freedom will continue to be the elites' tool for making a living. I won't smash this cracked pot any further -- swindlers are a dime a dozen anyway, a few more won't make a difference. Consider it maintaining biodiversity. But peering through the fog of concepts and slogans, within real social relations, making the various real freedoms that have always existed -- though too plentiful for some and too scarce for others -- more equal and just: this is the crux of the matter.