Trying Not to Try

This guy's thing is wu-wei¸ a concept I know of only from this book, so am hugely unqualified to discuss BUT APPARENTLY AM NOT GOING TO LET THAT STOP ME. From what I understand, it is about a sort of doing/not-doing, perhaps doing unconsciously or instinctively, rather than consciously and calculatedly. It is, he feels, incredibly important. People who can use (achieve?) we-wei can act efficiently and correctly without having to use their conscious brains, the value of which is I think to some extent self-evident. Furthermore, he alleges that wu-wei cannot be faked, and people who can do this exhibit a property of de that is perceptible and incredibly attractive to others. Wu-wei is also, somehow, intriniscally virtuous; it exhists under the umbrella of social order and virtue. Slingerland backs it up by reference to ego depletion (whoops), fMRI scans, David Brooks, Star Wars, priming research... he basically throws the kitchen sink of social and pop pscyhology at it.

Slingerland glances over what Confucius, Mencius (Okay, I see why you would use the latinized Confucius, since that is the name most people have heard of, but is Mencius really that well known?), Xunzi, Zhuangzi, Laozi, and others. He's mostly interested in their take on wu-wei, and whether it is achieved by "practicing" or by "letting go." Do you need to empty your mind, or study the great classics? Can you balance the two?

Slingerland kinda concludes, eh, find your balance.

I really struggled with this book, not because of the writing, but because I just found the author so obnoxious, and I am pretty sure I was not being fair.

One: a philosophy book written for general audiences probably has to take a kind of know it all tone, doen't it?
Two: I mean, engaging and dismissing an entire school of thought in a chapter is kind of a thing you have to do if you're going to get through this in the length of a book.
Three: Is this white guy really qualified to poke holes in Confucius? Well, he's definitely more qualified to critique Confucius than I am, given he's studied the subject for twenty years.

So anyway, having tried to disclaim my bias, I'm gonna go on a tear.

Slingerland annoyed me so much by his conclusion that five millenia of Chinese thought is 1) basically on his side, 2) flawed in obvious ways he can easily sum up, 3) capable of being summed up in a book for general audiences. OTOH, what do I know? Maybe his summary is correct. He'd probably know better than me, having actually studied it. I just found his personality so abrasive I have troubles accepting anything he says, in ways which probably do disservice to him, me, and the book. ALTHOUGH, if there is one thing I got from this book, it's that people can perceive de, and I definitely did not find this guy wildly attractive, so maybe he is not following the Way of Heaven.

UGH.