The Tao of the Kansas City Library
by David Arthur Walters
Many of the book titles selected by the Kansas City library trustees for display as enormous book spines on the front wall of the new central library's jumbo-parking garage have now appeared. My favorite thus far is Truman, by David McCullough.
I personally recommended The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus, the great cosmopolitan humanist and Renaissance man of letters. The title has not appeared on the garage wall as of yet, and I doubt that it will appear even though it is perfectly suitable to the true nature of the library project. Furthermore, the receipt of my several brilliant essays supporting my suggestion have not been acknowledged by the person to whom they were sent, the very man who made the new library building happen, library trustee and Commerce Bank president, Jonathan Kemper. Since I am an Absurdist who knows very well that the world is surd or deaf to me, and that life in Kansas City is futile if not meaningless, I take the silence in response to my suggestion as lightly as I can. How can a Sisyphus blame the Stone for its dumbness?
An ancient title, Plato's Republic, is already displayed on the garage wall. Plato's work of course has been attacked by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Popper. Plato's republic does smack of intolerant christianity and totalitarianism here and there. In any case, it is not a republic in the evolving modern sense of the word: it is not a democracy or a democratic republic; but it is definitely a state which an ascetically inclined, intellectual elite might like a lot - not to mention women who do not appreciate being saddled down with kids.
Frustrated intellectuals born accidentally into the banking caste might not mind being philosopher kings in Plato's republic, providing they are allotted stately quarters in the grand old classical style. I for one would not mind having a cot or futon in the renovated neo-classical bank building on Baltimore Street - downtown Kansas City's new library building. But I'm thinking here of Jonathan Kemper and Rufus Crosby-Kemper III of the Kemper banking dynasty. Jonathan in my opinion should give up banking and become a library director, or, better yet, a museum director. Rufus has suddenly stepped down from the top of United Missouri Bank; in my opinion he should become a professor and author, and write a six-volume history of imperialism. Stefan Zweig, a modern cosmopolitan and humanist who idolized Erasmus and whose father was one of the richest Jews in Austria before the Nazi disaster, observed that a number of Jewish children from fortunate families turned away from money-grubbing and became leading lights of intellectual and aesthetic pursuits.
Another old favorite fastened to the garage wall is Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Its contents are anti-intellectual, to say the least, if not downright mystical. Methinks fundamentalist preachers of ignorance and pseudo-conservatives (neoconservatives) with imperial aspirations will find their prejudices somewhat confirmed somewhere therein. I happen to love the tao, providing that it is reasonably interpreted by the master teacher and traditional humanist, Confucius. I recall that China's First Sovereign Emperor (Shih Huang Ti - Zhuangdi) burned the classical books and buried the scholars - fortunately his inquisitors did not find them all. The emperor retained those taoist works which he thought were scientific, particularly the alchemical texts - we do find rudiments of modern science in alchemy. He was not the first nor was he the last Chinese potentate whose megalomaniacal native superstition was augmented by the weird whisperings of taoist wizards.
A taoist political science was developed on the philosophical side of Imperial China. It is not as absurd in practice as it seems to be in theory. For instance, where government is involved, that it should get everything done by doing nothing is still urged by prominent businessmen, at least until they want more corporate welfare: that sort of handout, by the way, is better done by sleight-of-hand.
Furthermore, the government of any organization, including the Kansas City Public Library and the City of Kansas City, Missouri, should be a mediocracy, better kept rather confused and moronic - Kansas City's civic leaders, following President Bush's lead, observe the adage: "Ignore Naysayers." Here is something more on point from the Tao Te Ching:
When the government's dull and confused,Keeping people fat, dumb, and happy usually renders the masses obedient. To that end the library system should have a proper collection policy, a policy that best represents the dumbed-down, multi-tasking, bulging-belly bourgeoisie whom big corporations prefer to employ. Said policy should be shaped like a truncated pyramid or a pear or an obese, headless person. Today's average high-school reading level should be the mode; anything academic or intellectual, any sort of intellectual apex gazing downwards, inducing and deducing from bottom up and to top down, should be lopped off. However, above all, the top administrators, to stay lean and to get a lot for nothing, should not do much studying themselves:
the people are placid.
When the government's sharp and keen.
the people are discontented....
And so the wise
shape without cutting,
square without sawing,
true without forcing.
They are the light that does not shine.
Studying and learning daily you grow larger. |It does appear that the library trustees selected rightly when they chose the Tao Te Ching. There are several copies available downtown. I have quoted from the version by Ursula K. Le Guin (Boston: Shambala 1997). For those readers who are most interested in tracing things back to the most obscure origin, I conclude with this:
Following the Way daily you shrink.
You get smaller and smaller.
You arrive at not doing.
You do nothing and nothing's not done.
To run things,
don't fuss with them.
Nobody who fusses
is fit to run things.
Once upon a time
those who ruled according to the Way
didn't use it to make people knowing
but to keep them unknowing.
People get hard to manage
when they know too much.
Whoever rules by intellect
Is a curse upon the land.
Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it.
To understand these things
is to have a pattern and a model,
is mysterious power.
Mysterious power
goes deep.
It reaches far.
It follows things back,
clear back to the great oneness.