Chapter Seventeen is another one of those chapters that really required reading several translations for it to make sense to me. Feng’s translation is especially vague, I think. Here’s what I think Lao Tsu is saying in this chapter: The greatest leader, the Sage-Ruler we could call him or her, is one who the people do not realize is leading them. In today’s terms, the best leader is not a micromanager. The sage-ruler achieves his goals by placing his trust in his people and their ability to cooperate together and accomplish ends that they recognize as their own (and not just the ruler’s). Thus, when they reach their goal they say, “We did it ourselves!” or “It just happened naturally.”
At first blush this chapter seemed totally opaque to me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it and think of it in terms familiar to me. But the one-sentence stanza in the middle helped me to tie it to some ideas I am very familiar with. Lao Tsu writes:
“He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.” (Feng) or,
“Truly, ‘It is by not believing people that you turn them into liars.’” (Waley) or,
“When there is not enough faith, there is lack of good faith.” (Lau)
George Herbert Mead, an American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist during the early 20th Century, had an interesting theory that a human being develops his or her Self only through social interaction with other selves. The first stage occurs through play, especially the role playing we see so often in children, and the second stage occurs through the game. In fact, there could be no self at all without other selves. Here I always think of the game of baseball (a truly perfect game). Each player on the field understands the role they play on the team in a game by understanding the role of each of his or her teammates. Think of the double-play ball to the shortstop: when the shortstop comes up with the ball, the second baseman covers the base and receives the ball, pivots and fires immediately to first base. There can be no thought of the other team members doing anything other than their role or the double-play will never happen.
What does this have to do with Chapter Seventeen of the Tao Te Ching? I think Lao Tsu is pointing out a significant characteristic of human social life. Namely, that when we work together and trust each other implicitly to do each his or her own part in a participatory process, we are able to achieve goals far greater than any individual could ever achieve. Mead called these goals social objects because they cannot be achieved except through social interactions; in fact, they are inconceivable without these social interactions. The sage-ruler understands this and uses the trust we have in our compatriots to achieve these social goals. Mead called this social control and it is the hallmark of fully realized societies. Thus, the good ruler entrusts those he or she leads with their own part in the social act and, in so doing, the social act itself becomes part of the selves of the human beings who accomplish it.
