溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Is There a Use in Being Useless?
If a tree, useless for timber, escapes the axe and lives out its years — what use hides in what looks useless?
Everyone knows the use of the useful, but no one knows the use of the useless.
The "use of the useless" became a long rebuttal to thought that makes utility the absolute standard. Zhuangzi saw the wholeness of life lying outside usefulness. From the opposite side, Mozi made beneficial use (li) the worth of all things, and modern utilitarianism set utility as the measure of morality and institutions. Yet Kant, from another quarter, resonated with Zhuangzi — a person must be treated as an end in itself, not a means (a use). Must all be measured by use, or is there worth beyond it? The question only sharpens in an age of productivity.
The more an age prices all things by efficiency and productivity, the more this question — what I am outside my use — restores a person from means back to end.
Zhuangzi drew a great tree, gnarled and knotted.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Zhuangzi drew a great tree, gnarled and knotted. Useless for timber, no carpenter gave it a glance, and by that very uselessness it escaped the axe and grew immense. He asks — this "usefulness" the world prices, for whose sake is it? Is not the useful tree the one felled early? I read this question as aimed at a life crushed by efficiency. Do I measure my worth by usefulness alone? What am I, outside my use? I stand before this question too.
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