morals – Xenofact.com

I was reading the Tao Te Ching lately, and Chapter 18 struck me. Let me paraphrase (from Red Pine and a few other translations):

When the Great Way is left, kindness and justice arise

When reason arises, we encounter deceit.

When the six relations fail, we encounter obedience and love.

When the country is in chaos, we acknowledge honest officials.

I take this chapter to be one of failure. If people hold to the Tao, the Great Way, that connectedness-of-reality, you can have an orderly life. When you loose it things fall apart – even if we think we’re being virtuous.

The arising of kindness and justice sounds like a good thing. Reason is a good thing, correct? Yet the entire chapter is one of decline, ending with one of my favorite lines, the acknowledgement of honest officials – when shouldn’t they all be honest?

It’s a curious chapter indeed. Some things we’d think of are good are sneered at. When contemplating it, I had a useful insight relevant to political and social conversations of the day.

The way I read the chapter is the sense of the Tao, that unity, leads to harmony. There are kindness and justice, reason, good relations, and so on, but they are part of a “unified” worldview that is both mystical bust also practical. There may be kindness, honesty, and so on, but they are the result of holding to the Tao – not separate and distinct from it. “True” virtuous things, as it were, things that have a foundation.

But when you loose that sense of unity, everything is broken, out, separate, a substitute. That’s when I thought of the term bandied about these days (in 2026) – “Cargo Cults.”

The term “Cargo Cult Fascism” arose to describe certain would-be strongmen of our age who seemed to think that if they acted like fascist leaders, they’d have automatic compliance. The term spread to other areas of political and social discussion, noting just how much of our society was people acting out things but not actually doing them or caring about them or understanding them. Such people and their actions often failed and fell apart – bad but also dysfunctional.

But if you have “bad” Cargo Cults, that also means you can have ones of people trying to be “good.”

Suddenly, I understood this chapter of the Tao Te Ching better (especially considering the times of Taoist-versus-Confucian). It was about fragmented things, divided from a larger reality, imitative but with no foundation. Past a point you’re just going through the motions and not being anything, and not connected to the Way, the foundation of things, the depth of it all. Your kindness, your morality, no matter how hard you try, is going to be a bit hollow, a bit of an act, without that foundation.

I think that’s also why the last line hits me hard. Imagine a society in so much chaos that saying someone is an “honest minister” is a compliment as opposed to indicating that if that’s exceptional your government sucks. Also maybe that person is just a poser anyway.

Regularly reading great spiritual and philosophical works is good not just for your own spiritual “ecosystem” but for reviewing and thinking over modern and past times. This was a useful insight, helping me understand both past writings and our current situations.

(I mean the situations are both terrible but I understand them better)

–Xenofact

The Flaws of Virtue

“Great Virtue Seems Flawed” is a quote from the Tao Te Ching Chapter 41. Lately I’ve been thinking about that between a mix of readings and watching today’s supposedly virtuous people. The former makes me think, the later makes me outraged THEN I think. I suppose it all goes to the same place – people with deep morals and principles, grounded ones, are NOT going to look perfect to people.

Because looking perfect is a great way to not actually focus on important issues and your own personal integrity.

Think of how much of “morality” we’re taught is just posturing. Say the right thing. Smile at the right time. Invoke some religious platitudes. I mean how many times do you see someone held up as a moral paragon who violates everything their religion and principles supposedly stand for?

In a media age it’s even worse. I’m often stunned – me, who’s had plenty of time to become cynical – how often supposed moralists are clearly not following what they say. They are lying to people’s faces, posing, posturing.

A person who has deep values, who has connected values, doesn’t place performative actions on a pedestal. They’re not here to sell you themselves, they’re not here to grift you. They have certain principles and act on them. Often that will conflict with the performative morality of others.

This also means that people who are interested in what is right and what values run deep is going to clash with the times. By definition someone who is contemplating what’s important is going to be at odds with flaws in society at the time. They will make waves, they will not be what we expect – and a smart society has “space” for wave makers (which lets you find out who has good ideas and who is just a jackass).

Finally, some ideas of what proper, moral behavior is really fall away when people take a look at deep issues and principles. Deep morality will seem flawed as people realize some things they were taught are, at best, useless, and worse harmful. Look at the history of people protesting injustice against people for skin color, sexual preference – at their time, they looked very flawed, but in retrospect we see their virtue (even if some want to deny it).

So yes, great virtue does seem flawed. It comes from a deeper source, from contemplation, from trying to get the big picture. We should always expect some moral friction in the world because we’re always re-evaluating things.

I would note, as a warning, that there is “being flawed” and “being performatively transgressive.” A person who’s deep morals come first and just happen to appear as flawed is one thing. Someone going around breaking things and putting on a show is clearly not coming from a deeper place.

And ironically, the performative faux moralist is probably performing “acceptable rebellion” so they’re conforming anyway . . .

-Xenofact