The rigid and stiff will be broken.
The soft and yielding will overcome.
Lao Tzu
Generally, people admire ‘strength’ and look down on ‘weakness.’
We associate strength with being firm and energetic.
Strength allows us to accomplish things, fight back against adversity, not be swayed by the
world around us, and be assertive.
It gets us places; we find it attractive and praiseworthy, and thus many aspire to be unbreakable
pillars of strength.
We see the praise of strength all around us: we praise muscular bodies, wealthy entrepreneurs
showing off their mansions and car collections, and political leaders that use strong language
and aren’t shy from using military action.
Weakness, on the other hand, we tend to associate with impotence, incompetence, fragility, being
pushed around easily, and being powerless.
Weakness gets us nowhere; we find it unappealing and try to avoid it.
We often hide our weaknesses; we’re ashamed of them.
But there’s more to weakness than it generally gets credit for.
Despite all negative connotations, weakness, at its core, means a lack of strength, which
is not necessarily a lack of power.
Strength implies being hard and firm; weakness implies being soft and malleable.
But being soft and malleable is far from impotent.
Furthermore, softness (and therefore weakness) has the power to overcome strength, if used
in the right ways.
“Weakness is how the Tao works,” wrote Taoist sage Lao Tzu.
Strength isn’t always the answer.
In many situations, softness, not strength, weakness, not firmness, is the way to go,
and we’re better off yielding than fighting, adapting than opposing and submitting than
dominating.
This video explores the underestimated power of softness through the lens of Taoist philosophy.
Once upon a time, there was a king who only hired strong and brave men, believing that
these men were the most capable of protecting him.
Then, a philosopher paid a visit.
He told the king that a better strategy would be one that leads to people not even daring
to strike him in the first place.
The king agreed.
But then, the philosopher argued that despite fear, people could still wish to harm the
king, which isn’t ideal.
So, he said, a better strategy would be one that would make people not want to harm him
at all.
The king nodded.
And then the philosopher said:
“But just because people do not want to harm you doesn’t mean they will respect
you or love you.
Suppose you had a strategy that could get them to love you and respect you, so that
your concerns are their concerns.
Would this strategy be several times better than just strength and courage?”
End quote.
The king became very enthusiastic when the philosopher suggested to
him to rule with virtue and integrity.
He had his military force anyway.
So, by being good to the people, he’d become loved and respected rather than feared, and
his popularity would surpass that of many sages.
In such a position, the king most likely wouldn’t need to hire strong men to defend him with
force because very few people would desire to strike him.
Compare this to the leader who rules using intimidation and fear.
Even though he might succeed in protecting himself and his position as a leader, he’d
attract constant opposition.
People would hate him and try to strike him, so he needs to increase his strength to protect
himself.
And so, he’s stuck in a vicious cycle.
Such leaders quickly get isolated and far removed from their people because they oppose
and oppress the people instead of aligning with them.
It’s a very exhausting and unsustainable position.
Governments ruled by tyrants are rarely durable; they eventually get destroyed from the inside
out.
Not without reason, Lao Tzu wrote that the worst leader is the one who’s despised.
A good leader, on the other hand, puts the people’s interests first and is
loved by the people.
The best leader is hardly visible.
So, it seems that the power of softness wins here.
Brute strength may get one so far, but the soft approach may result in not even needing
such strength.
The power of softness focuses on prevention, carefully creating circumstances that reduce
the likelihood of problems happening instead of focusing on fighting problems that could
have been prevented.
Lao Tzu stated, and I quote:
Take care of difficult problems while they are still easy; Do easy things before they
become too hard.
An animal caretaker named Liang had a way with wild animals like tigers and wolves:
he knew how to tame them.
In fact, he made them so tame that he could let them roam around in his courtyard.
Liang took an apprentice to pass on his expertise and explained that the secret to taming these
animals was understanding their nature.
One should not force their will on them nor try to rouse their ferocity.
The key to success lies in caution and adaptation.
For example, the caretaker would not feed live animals to tigers, as this would arouse
their ferocity.
He would not feed them when they were hungry or full, so they’d be contented when fed.
“If they get too happy or excited, they may become angry.
You need to keep them in a balanced state, not too happy, and not discontented.”
…said the caretaker.
By doing so, the tigers felt comfortable roaming around in the caretaker’s gardens.
Liang didn’t use force.
He adapted his approach to the animal’s nature, carefully deciding his actions, and
it worked.
Would he had forced his way, the tigers would probably have retaliated or left.
The soft approach is the intelligent approach.
It doesn’t come from a place of anger, impatience, or fear but wisdom.
Take, for example, the enormous prison population in the United States.
A significant body of research suggests that locking people up does more harm than good.
It does not help people to improve their outlook; it does not facilitate successful integration
into society.
It’s a harsh and blunt method of dealing with criminals based on anger and fear rather
than wisdom.
Finland, on the other hand, has open prisons.
These facilities have no locks and gates, and the prisoners wear no uniforms and go
into the city to shop for groceries.
The inmates are allowed to work, study, and care for themselves.
They learn self-control as opposed to regular prisons where everything is controlled.
Instead of spending their sentences in detrimental conditions that only worsen their outlook,
the prisoners are stimulated to improve themselves, which prepares them for successful reintegration
into society.
Despite criticism of this soft approach, the system works, as the reoffending rate of these
prisoners is one of the lowest in the world.
Here, again, we see the power of softness.
In the case of crime, the gentle approach deals with the root of the problem, not just
the consequences.
The root of the problem is often complex and could be linked to a difficult childhood,
poverty, demographics, lack of opportunity, lack of education, or just sheer misfortune
in life.
It thus asks for a delicate approach, one that fits the individual.
Instead of locking these people up, the soft method is trying to help them in such ways
that they don’t desire to engage in criminal activity in the first place.
In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu described the power of what he called the softest and
most yielding substance: water.
As soon as you touch it, it moves.
Even if you blow over it, water will bend with the air.
It’s also easily mixed with other substances and, therefore, easily polluted.
It never retains form by itself, as it always needs its surroundings to shape it.
When you obstruct it, it changes course.
It simply adapts and settles when you capture it and put it in a pool.
When it’s hot, it evaporates.
When it’s cold, it freezes.
It doesn’t want to accomplish anything; often, it’s just doing nothing.
It doesn’t reside in higher places but naturally seeks the lowest.
In many ways, water is weak.
But, as stated at the beginning of the video, people generally like strength and look down
upon weakness.
We don’t want to yield but push back.
We don’t want to be flexible but stand our ground.
We don’t want to give in and submit but defend our positions and dominate.
We don’t want to be soft and bending but hard and firm.
However, the ancient Taoists believed that softness isn’t inferior to strength.
Moreover, softness could overpower the hard and strong, as is the case with water.
I quote:
Water is the softest and most yielding substance.
Yet nothing is better than water, for overcoming the hard and rigid,
because nothing can compete with it.
Everyone knows that the soft and yielding overcomes the rigid and hard,
but few can put this knowledge into practice.
End quote.
Imagine a room with a group of men discussing a specific subject.
Some of these men have little knowledge about the issue yet dominate the conversation.
Others have some knowledge about the subject and use that to fight back against the nonsense
uttered by those with little knowledge.
Then there’s one man with the most knowledge about the subject who only listens and asks
questions.
Who’s the smartest guy in the room?
It’s the one with the most knowledge, not just because he’s the most knowledgeable,
but also because by positioning himself in the lowest position, he gains more knowledge
and new insights on top of what he already has.
Instead of using strength to dominate the conversation and impose his knowledge and
ideas on others, he uses the ‘soft’ approach of humility and receptivity by listening and
asking questions.
He’s willing to update his expertise if possible.
Through his gentle approach, he overcame the “rigid and hard.”
By seeking the lowest position, he resides in the most unpopular yet most fertile place:
the place where the water flows to.
The living are soft and yielding; the dead are rigid and stiff.
Living plants are flexible and tender; the dead are brittle and dry.
Those who are stiff and rigid are the disciples of death.
Those who are soft and yielding are the disciples of life.
End quote.
Being firm in one’s principles we often consider a positive characteristic.
Firmness helps us survive.
By being firm, we protect ourselves against deception, create order out of chaos, and
create clarity out of ambiguity.
We don’t fall for anything by standing for something.
But if we’re too firm, we become rigid, stiff, inflexible, and thus unable to adapt
to circumstances that might ask us to update our fundamental ideas.
Soon, the world will become inhabitable for us as we’ve become incompatible with it.
We’re cut off from life as dead pieces of wood amid a blooming forest.
Change is life, and life is change.
When we’re flexible, we easily go along with an ever-changing reality and thus are
more in tune with life.
Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean survival of the strongest but of those that best manage
to ‘fit;’ to ‘adapt’ to their circumstances.
So even though survival requires strength, it also needs the softness of adaptability.
You either adapt or perish.
Or as Lao Tzu stated: “The rigid and stiff will be broken.
The soft and yielding will overcome.”
Thank you for watching.