Pointing at a Deer and Calling It a Horse

answered by Records of the Grand Historian, Annals of Qin Shi Huang

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🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

A City of Sadness (1989)

dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien · Taiwan

When power overturns the truth to hide its own violence, the powerless cannot speak aloud what they lived and saw. Where silence is forced on everyone, even holding the lived truth in one's heart exacts a great price. Where does the strength to keep what I saw come from?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

When the powerful say 'the deer is a horse,' do I hold to what my own eyes saw, or fold it into silence?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

指鹿爲馬

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Pointing at a deer and calling it a horse — power forcing an obvious lie to pass as truth.

💡 TL;DR

In this tale from Sima Qian, a powerful minister called a deer a horse to test whether the courtiers would choose truth or flattery.

📝The Classic Answers

In this tale from Sima Qian, a powerful minister called a deer a horse to test whether the courtiers would choose truth or flattery. When power forces an obvious lie to pass as truth to hide its violence, silence is safe, but in that instant the truth falls one person at a time. To say, 'That is a deer,' can cost the powerless a price close to their life. Yet if I let go of the lived truth even in my own heart, every deer in the world becomes a horse. Before a coerced lie, even when I cannot speak aloud, I choose not to let go of what I saw.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If you faced a demand today to call a deer a horse, even if you cannot say it aloud, write down one fact you saw in plain words.

📖 Classic Source: Records of the Grand Historian, Annals of Qin Shi Huang. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.