both Public and State Security units. I didn’t tell Z or the other members of the SS Study Group about this either, so that they would not be on their guard with me. When I report to the authorities that I am now an official insider in the SS Study Group, they will certainly have an even higher regard for me.
My second initiative makes an interesting story. Six months ago, some time after I had become a Group member-in-waiting, I went to listen to Z give a public lecture. The topic was “The Role of Love in China’s Present Age of Prosperity.” In it he said, “Today our society is suffused with ‘love’ and the media are repeatedly promoting great love, universal love, and love of all mankind. For a while everybody feels good, their hearts are full of ‘love,’ they experience a feeling of satisfaction and happiness. The entire nation is harmonious, crimes of violence decrease, even domestic violence decreases. Thus, we can see the power of ‘love.’ ”
Every time he used the word “love,” Z made hand gestures indicating quotation marks around it.
When I was just about bored to death and thinking that Z didn’t have anything new to say, near the end of his lecture he softly came out with the following sentence: “Everybody is busy ‘loving,’ so the martial spirit is not on display, there are no enemies, and hatred cannot emerge.” His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. Z is so profound and he has pondered this topic very deeply, I thought.
I remembered that Y once had said, “The vast majority of the people in the world have not received any rigorous philosophical training and they do not possess the intelligence to understand things clearly. We philosophers cannot tell them the truth, otherwise they would attack us just like they executed Socrates. In a public forum, a philosopher can say only what the masses love to hear and cater to them. Nevertheless, a philosopher may utter a few code words, heeding the difference between insiders and outsiders and permitting the insiders, members of his own party, to grasp his true meaning, as in the traditional phrase ‘subtle words carry profound meanings.’ ”
Z and Y are kindred spirits, and so Z was also employing “subtle words to carry his profound meanings.”
He talked about “love” for the sake of the masses, and they thought he was promoting “love,” or that he believed China’s present Golden Age of Ascendancy needed such “love.” But in his entire lecture, Z only
described
“love,” he didn’t
advocate
“love.” He discussed only how “love” was influencing the Chinese people during this age of prosperity, but he never said that the Chinese people should “love” more. That one phrase, “the martial spirit is not on display,” was the key; it was a repudiation of all the so-called love that came before it. This phrase was the code meant for people like me to hear, because I know from the SS Study Group that the martial spirit is the virtue that we admire and advocate above all. Z promotes the martial spirit, and if this martial spirit is positive then anything that prevents the martial spirit from being displayed cannot be positive. And just what, according to Z’s lecture, prevented the martial spirit from being displayed? It was “love.”
Someone like me who has received philosophical training and knows how to read between the lines to find the “profound meaning” understood that Z’s “love,” in quotation marks, referred to the previously mentioned great love, universal love, and love for all mankind. In theory, the martial spirit does not necessarily require hatred or enemies, but enemies and hatred can strengthen people’s martial spirit—enemies and hatred are an aphrodisiac for the martial spirit. The real goal of Z’s lecture, his “subtle words carrying profound meanings,” was to negate the idea that people should “love” even their enemies—to refute the kind of so-called universal
My second initiative makes an interesting story. Six months ago, some time after I had become a Group member-in-waiting, I went to listen to Z give a public lecture. The topic was “The Role of Love in China’s Present Age of Prosperity.” In it he said, “Today our society is suffused with ‘love’ and the media are repeatedly promoting great love, universal love, and love of all mankind. For a while everybody feels good, their hearts are full of ‘love,’ they experience a feeling of satisfaction and happiness. The entire nation is harmonious, crimes of violence decrease, even domestic violence decreases. Thus, we can see the power of ‘love.’ ”
Every time he used the word “love,” Z made hand gestures indicating quotation marks around it.
When I was just about bored to death and thinking that Z didn’t have anything new to say, near the end of his lecture he softly came out with the following sentence: “Everybody is busy ‘loving,’ so the martial spirit is not on display, there are no enemies, and hatred cannot emerge.” His words hit me like a bolt of lightning. Z is so profound and he has pondered this topic very deeply, I thought.
I remembered that Y once had said, “The vast majority of the people in the world have not received any rigorous philosophical training and they do not possess the intelligence to understand things clearly. We philosophers cannot tell them the truth, otherwise they would attack us just like they executed Socrates. In a public forum, a philosopher can say only what the masses love to hear and cater to them. Nevertheless, a philosopher may utter a few code words, heeding the difference between insiders and outsiders and permitting the insiders, members of his own party, to grasp his true meaning, as in the traditional phrase ‘subtle words carry profound meanings.’ ”
Z and Y are kindred spirits, and so Z was also employing “subtle words to carry his profound meanings.”
He talked about “love” for the sake of the masses, and they thought he was promoting “love,” or that he believed China’s present Golden Age of Ascendancy needed such “love.” But in his entire lecture, Z only
described
“love,” he didn’t
advocate
“love.” He discussed only how “love” was influencing the Chinese people during this age of prosperity, but he never said that the Chinese people should “love” more. That one phrase, “the martial spirit is not on display,” was the key; it was a repudiation of all the so-called love that came before it. This phrase was the code meant for people like me to hear, because I know from the SS Study Group that the martial spirit is the virtue that we admire and advocate above all. Z promotes the martial spirit, and if this martial spirit is positive then anything that prevents the martial spirit from being displayed cannot be positive. And just what, according to Z’s lecture, prevented the martial spirit from being displayed? It was “love.”
Someone like me who has received philosophical training and knows how to read between the lines to find the “profound meaning” understood that Z’s “love,” in quotation marks, referred to the previously mentioned great love, universal love, and love for all mankind. In theory, the martial spirit does not necessarily require hatred or enemies, but enemies and hatred can strengthen people’s martial spirit—enemies and hatred are an aphrodisiac for the martial spirit. The real goal of Z’s lecture, his “subtle words carrying profound meanings,” was to negate the idea that people should “love” even their enemies—to refute the kind of so-called universal
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