Many people have heard the phrase "the heavens and the earth are not kind, and all things are dogs; the saints are not kind, and the people are dogs." This is the content of the fifth chapter of the Tao Te Ching. I don't know if everyone was confused when they read this sentence, why did Lao Tzu say that the heavens and the earth are not kind, the saints are not kind; why the heavens and the earth are not kind; why the saints are not kind?
Before proceeding to this topic, let's first look at what the phrase "dog" and "benevolence" mean.
Many people will mistakenly think that the sword dog means a dog, so they think that this sentence means "the saint is not benevolent, does not treat people as people, but treats people as dogs."
But the meaning of the sword dog is actually a sacrificial grass dog. The treatment of grass dogs is as follows: it is highly valued before and during the sacrifice, and it is discarded and burned after the sacrifice.
Therefore, to say that the grass dog refers to mean lowliness, or has a contemptuous meaning, is obviously taken out of context. In fact, there are times when the dog is valued and when it is useless, and people do not have any love or contempt in the process of using the dog, but use it according to its role. In the same way, heaven and earth for all things, and saints for the people, are also let them develop as they are, and there will be no special emotions mixed in.
So, what does "benevolence" mean? Love people, have a loving heart.
But in Lao Tzu's view, benevolence is inferior to the state of Tao and virtue. Therefore, he wrote down the loss of morality and then morality, and the loss of morality and then benevolence.
Because "benevolence" is a state of preference and affection, with preference and love, "virtue" and "Tao" have been lost, and it is possible to interfere with the development law of things themselves out of "benevolence".
There is a famous case where it is because of "benevolence" that interferes with nature, which eventually leads to huge problems:
In the early 20th century, in order to protect more than 4,000 wild deer in the Kaibaber Forest, the president of the United States at the time ordered the shooting of wolves there, because he believed that the presence of wolves would reduce the number of deer, and eventually all the wolves there became extinct. With no natural predators, the deer soon grew to more than 100,000. The deer grazed on all edible plants, ate all the weeds, destroyed the trees, and led to a sharp decline in other animals that fed on plants. But in the end, the deer population did not increase as desired, but due to the excessive number, resulting in food shortage, the deer fell into the predicament of hunger and disease. By 1942, the number of deer in the Kaibaber Forest had dropped to 8,000, with the sick and weak predominantly in the sick.
The root cause of this tragedy is that the wolf was wiped out. In fact, the presence of wolves can control the stability of the total number of deer herds, so that the deer herd will not breed too much, while wolves prey on the main old, sick, disabled, and fast deer, which also helps the survival of the fittest in the deer herd.
Destroying wolves out of "benevolence" to deer, we all know that heaven and earth have their own laws of operation, and they will not be transferred by personal will and preference.
Nature has no preference for people, and will not let you wind and rain be smooth because you are good, nor will it send thunder and thunder to you because you are bad. The same is true of the saints, who follow the laws of the development of the people and do not interfere with their personal preferences, which is the greatest favor to the people.
It's like a cup of turbid water, trying to fish out the sediment in it, but the more it is stirred up, the more mixed, it doesn't move, but it is naturally cleared...