Down with the Cities Part 9

All these great and grand things will be worth nothing after we are gone. It is the same for the prosperity of the nation-state, the elevation of national prestige, the flourishing of a people, and for convenience, extravagance, and ease, as well as traditions and customs. Even while humanity is still around they are not worth a pig's tail (this is because they come about by oppressing and exploiting the country, and by destroying and contaminating the environment, or they are the means whereby such things are accomplished). How can there be a reason for preserving such things when it means our own ruin?

ANDO SHOEKI: A Great Sage Who Taught Us to Eradicate the Cities

"Scholarship and learning steal the way of tilling and gain the respect of the people by means of idleness and gluttony; since they are created by means of private law they are plots to steal the Way. Therefore the more one engages in learning, the more one glorifies the stealing of the Way. Learning is that which therefore conceals this theft... Learning is scheming words meant to deceive the people and eat gluttonously, and is a great fault.

Therefore the idleness and gluttony of the sages and Buddhas is a stinking and filthy evil. Learning is a means of hiding this stench and filth." (This quote and the following are taken from The Struggle of Ando Shoeki by Terao Goro.) Ando Shoeki lived during the Genroku Period (1703-1762), and was a doctor in northern Honshu. A great pioneer sage who took a path taken by no one before him, he is the only revolutionary thinker which j.a.pan can boast of to the world. [30]

Learning is not the Way of Heaven, but a means of achieving idleness and gluttony which human beings created with private law -- this is the truth which Shoeki expounded. We must not, I should think, preserve the cities for the sake of that which "conceals theft," thereby driving humanity to catastrophe.

"The sages of all the ages, the Buddhas, the bodhisattvas, the arhat, Zhuangzi, Laozi, physicians, those who created the laws of the G.o.ds, all scholars, ascetic pract.i.tioners, priests and monks -- they are all the idle and gluttonous, the dregs of society who steal the Way. Therefore all laws, the preaching of the Dharma, and storytelling are all ways of justifying theft, and nothing more. Their books, which number in the millions, all record justifications for theft; the more wise their aphorisms, and the more clever their turn of phrase, the more they justify theft, and the more we must deplore them... They steal the Way, establish their private laws, and live lives of idleness and gluttony while lecturing on their various theories... They deceive the people with their many theories in order to eat gluttonously... Note well what they are doing...! We should behead them."

And this is the reason why it has always been the object of education to teach the techniques of idleness and gluttony. At present, moreover, education is aiming for more than that. It is no overstatement to say that, either directly or indirectly, all education exists to bring upon us the catastrophic ruin in which progress ends. If we intend to keep this from happening, we must not preserve the cities.

"The way of agriculture... is the way found naturally in all people; so we naturally till the soil, and naturally weave clothes, that is, we produce our own food, and we weave our own clothes; this comes before all other teachings."

You in the cities! We do not need all your extra baggage. The way of direct cultivation [31] depends only upon the blessings of Nature; it is the Way of Heaven in which we live by flowing with Nature.

"When we carry on tilling and weaving by being in accordance with the four seasons, with Nature, and with the advance and retreat in the motions of the essences, we are living with the Way of Heaven, and there will be, therefore, no irregularities in the agricultural activities of human beings."

Nature is a cycle, and this cycle is eternity; in this repet.i.tion there is no progress. Shoeki is saying that there must be no progress or change in the agriculture which is carried on in accordance with the flow of Nature (the cycle). Shoeki saw from the beginning that progress in agriculture spurs on the development of the secondary and tertiary industries, that is, the city, thereby abetting the city's evils, which would in the end wipe out humanity. It is idiocy to stubbornly defend that which invites ruin, and that which invites ruin is the progress of the city.

Business and Money are the Prime Evils

"Merchants do not till the soil; business in its profit-seeking is the root of all evil.

"Merchants are gangsters who buy and sell... They come up with schemes for increasing their profits, they curry favor with rulers, deceive the scholars, farmers, and artisans, and compete with each other in their profit-seeking... They are the men of monstrous profits and harmful greed. They wish to make their way through the world without tiring themselves with labor; they curry favor with those both above and below themselves with artifice, a servile countenance, flattery, and lies; they deceive their own fathers, sons, and brothers... Immoral in the extreme, even in their dreams they do not know of the natural way of human beings.

"Money is the great originator of all desire and all evil. Since the appearance of money we have lived in a world of darkness, confused desires, and rampant evils."

Is it not exactly the same in the present day? Money and Business -- they have always been the symbols of the city.

"And the master artisans, the makers of vessels, the weavers -- the sage uses them to build towers, fancy houses, and beautiful chambers, or for military purposes. And the artisans curry favor with those of all cla.s.ses by means of artful language; seduced by the l.u.s.t for more commissions, they hope for the occurrence of disasters."

In the present age we see parallels in the manufacture of such needless, and often harmful, things like trinkets and gewgaws, cars, cameras, televisions, jets, and computers, which only waste resources and spew forth pollution, and in the fact that the manufacturers of weapons and explosives hope that there will be a war, that pharmaceutical companies hope there will be lots of sick people, that manufacturers of agricultural chemicals hope there will be more rice weevils, and that construction companies hope there will be more natural disasters.

"Songs, dancing, chanting, teas ceremonies, go, backgammon, gambling, drinking and carousing, the koto, the biwa, the samisen, all arts, drama, plays... are the evil accomplices of confusion and disorder; they are all worthless amus.e.m.e.nts of the idle and gluttonous, and the businesses of pleasure; they are the frivolity which destroys oneself and one's family."

Shoeki is saying that games and the arts are merely means for achieving idleness and gluttony. Festivals! Amus.e.m.e.nt! Leisure!

say our modern tertiary industries (the city), investing great amounts of resources, time, and money in their wild abandon to idiotic entertainment and events. Shoeki's statement was a severe criticism of just such things.

The Idle and Gluttonous Dominators "Should Simply be Put to Death"

It is with this that Shoeki then concentrates his stinging attack upon those in command of the secondary and tertiary industries (the city, i.e., an a.s.sembly of the idle), their thieves' bosses, the sages and clergymen (dominators), who are the very incarnation of plunder.

"Those who eat gluttonously without tilling the soil are the great criminals who steal the True Way of Heaven and Earth...

Though they be sages and men of the cloth, scholars, or great wise men, they are still robbers.

"Sage is another name for criminal.

"The Confucian Gentlemen are the leaders of the highway robbers.

"Sage Emperor is another name for robber.

"Know ye that those of later ages will call them horse manure, but they will not call them the scholars and the clergy. This is because horse manure has more value." ("Scholars and the clergy"

here refers to the dominators and their ilk -- all harm and no good.)

It would not do to get rid of these worthless and harmful robbers and criminals (the leaders of the idle and gluttonous) with such half-baked methods as trying to educate them. It is impossible to change these inveterate robbers by talking with them, by persuading them, or by educating them. Shoeki here makes a timeless statement:

"They should simply be put to death" -- there is nothing to do but to overthrow them. This is nothing other than a call to an heroic, unparalleled revolution.

Of Ando Shoeki Terao Goro says, "Shoeki is worthy of being called the Marx of the Genroku Period," but I think that Shoeki's theory is backed by thorough revolutionary thought and a penetrating view of society that far exceeds that of Marx, and is more highly developed. Shoeki was a more radical revolutionary thinker.

Whereas Marx sought the source of cla.s.s confrontation in the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, Ando Shoeki found it in those who practice direct cultivation on the one hand, and the idle and gluttonous on the other.

The factory workers, distributors, and buyers and sellers who were, to Marx, "our camp," were not so to Shoeki, who thought that they too belonged to the idle and gluttonous cla.s.ses, and that if we do not dismantle such a system, we will not be able to realize a true "communistic society" (Natural World).

The Overthrow of the Urbanizing Mechanism Is Essential to a True Revolution

Verily it was the dominators (feudal lords) and farm operators who were the medium of plunder by which were fed the huge secondary and tertiary industrial population -- the city -- which loomed behind them. (The scholars, clergy, and officials were subjectively the chief instigators of plunder, but objectively they were merely the medium of plunder.) Shoeki insisted that, before anything else, we must close the portal, we must block the doorway of plunder.

These ideas are quite different from the theories of Marx, who considered the medium of plunder (the bourgeoisie) to be the ultimate enemy while believing that the great hordes of the idle and gluttonous slithering in the shadow of the bourgeoisie were the allies of the revolution. Shoeki was truly the first to insist upon the eradication of the cities.