WORDS IN-ACTION

WORDS IN-ACTION

“Actions speak louder than words ..

but not nearly as often.’

― Mark Twain

“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.”

― Confucius

“There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.”

― E.L. Doctorow, Homer & Langley

“Watch your thoughts, they become words.

Watch your words, they become actions.

Watch your actions, they become habits.

Watch your habits, they become character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

― Lao-Tze

The modern world evinces a surfeit of words – social media, phones, TV and radio, 24-hour news, everywhere you look there are talking heads. That may sound like a heaven for those with an endless thirst for knowledge. ‘All men desire to know’, says Aristotle in the opening words to his Metaphysics. Except that only a proportion of the words we hear every day concern the kind of knowledge that Aristotle wrote of. That’s fine. A lot of words are not concerned with the scientific pursuit of knowledge. A lot of word are about communication, interaction or just plain social grooming, a way of connecting and reinforcing connections. There are a lot of reasons for words. But a lot of words are redundant noise. There’s way too much talking in the world, too many people saying things, not enough people doing things. Too many people who know little, but spend an awful lot of time, and using an awful lot of words telling about it. Everyone has an opinion on everything. Or so it seems. The world of words seems infinite, yet our cognitive resources – how much information our brains can hold and process, how much time we have – are finite. And the result is a stress that is impossible to bear. We can be overwhelmed with words which point to problems, solutions, things that need doing, but are beyond the scope of any of us to do. Not alone.

So when is enough enough?

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.

– Pema Chodron

Enough is enough for the good life. And whenever I write on the good life, I am asked for more words to definite it. At what point do you decide that the enough point has been reached? When you have touched bottom. When does the river stop flowing?

There are limits. We just can’t define them before the fact. Words, knowledge, technology, resources, energy, etc whatever our tools and materials, however much we need to do and finish the job, satisfy our needs, keep the traffic of life flowing, is enough.

To quote from the Tao Te Ching:

‘Can you keep the spirit and embrace the One without departing from them?

Can you concentrate your vital force and achieve the highest degree of weakness like an infant?

Can you clean and purify your profound insight so it will be spotless?

Can you love the people and govern the state without knowledge (cunning)?

Can you play the role of the female in the opening and closing of the gates of Heaven?

Can you understand all and penetrate all without taking any action?

To produce things and to rear them, To produce, but not to take possession of them, To act, but not to rely on one's own ability, To lead them, but not to master them - This is called profound and secret virtue.’

(Tao 10).

‘He who takes action fails. He who grasps things loses them. For this reason the sage takes no action and therefore does not fail. He grasps nothing and therefore does not lose anything;

A sane man is sane in knowing what things he can spare, In not wishing what most people wish, In not reaching for things that seem rare.

Therefore the sage desires to have no desire, He does not value rare treasures. He learns to be unlearned, and returns to what the multitude has missed (Tao). Thus he supports all things in their natural state but does not take any action.’ (Tao 64).

I’ve lost count of the times that someone has tried to sidestep the difficulties of argument and debate with the words: ‘actions speak louder than words.’ Over the years, I’ve had people unwilling or unable to deal with the arguments I raise close down debate with the call ‘it’s time for action.’ It’s a call issued in words, of course. Which begs the question, what are actions without words? And just what is this ‘action’ that is constantly being asserted? There are plenty of words that this world can do without. And the world would be far better off without plenty of actions that are being undertaken and asserted too.

‘Nature says few words.’ (Tao 23). But what is this Nature? ‘It is Heaven and Earth (Nature).’ You see. Those who can understand this without words are very special people indeed. Those who fail to see what action in this Nature is may well be engaging in actions bringing about deleterious consequences that have folk like me voicing protest, and using an awful lot of words in the process in order to flag up the harmful effects of certain kinds of actions. And I have no intention of being silenced by those who assert their blind activism as justification enough.

‘The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world. Non-being penetrates that in which there is no space. Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.

Few in the world can understand the teaching without words and the advantage of taking no action.’

(Tao 43).

As someone who has spent a lifetime involved in both words and actions, and counting as friends and colleagues people who are educators, communicators and actors in one way or another, I can say that words are actions, and that words in the form of ideas, values etc. take root in the world and grow. Without the actions, words are empty, of course, which is what I take the sentence ‘actions speak louder than words’ to mean. But without the words expressing ideas, actions are blind. I have had people shouting ‘it’s time for action!’ at me on a regular basis over the years, complaining at the seemingly endless pouring of words coming from my direction, impatient to see effects and not just texts. Fantastic, I say, there’s plenty of work to be doing on the planet, and I take no time in sending many urgent tasks in their direction. There’s no shortage of actions we should be taking. I find that many who call for action and indeed engaged in actions of their own, from tree planting schemes and reforestation to community building to energy solutions, and I commend them. I would just urge that they come to see writing, research, poetry, literature, science, educating, informing, and communicating as acting too. We map the world with words, we live and die by words. Words shape who we are and shape the world we live in. And I’m willing to bet I’ve done far more over the years than the keyboard activists who hurl their ‘idle intellectualising’ insults in my direction. Those people are my target here. There is a wilful ignorance and stupidity afoot in the world, a bland statement that ‘no one really knows’ what’s going on in the world that reassures those who don’t want to know that they don’t need to know. Such people reserve to themselves the right to act as they please, and they wish to insulate themselves from words of criticism when the consequences of their bad actions come to manifest themselves. That’s the point with respect to climate change, actions have consequences that are born by all of us, the actions of some are effecting the lives of all detrimentally. People have spent years now examining effects, isolating causes, calling for effective climate action. It takes an awful lot of words – and numbers – to get us to the position in which we can delineate ecologically appropriate patterns of behaviour which conform to, rather than contradict, planetary boundaries. Representatives of the worlds of government and business have increasingly come to respond to the climate alarm being sounded by scientists, researchers and ecologists and have committed themselves to treaties and targets designed to stabilize the planetary ecology. For critics, they are doing no more than pay lip service to the words they know are right, but their actions fall far short of their commitments. Put your money where your mouth is, practice what you preach, don’t just say it, do it … yes, yes, yes, I agree with all of that.

It’s just that it’s a lot easier to say ‘actions speak louder than words’ than to actually act on those words. Apart from anything else, what is meant by ‘action’ is not remotely as clear as our men and women of action seem to imply. I presume by action, the activists mean right actions, actions with beneficial effects, actions that get things that need doing done. Actions for right reasons. What are these? How are we to discern right actions from wrong actions without thought, words, information and communication?

To quote the Tao again:

‘Who can make the still gradually come to life through activity?

He who embraces this Tao does not want to fill himself to overflowing. It is precisely because there is no overflowing that he is beyond wearing out and renewal.’ (15).

Daoism sees life and its living as a 'knack' which we acquire by constant practice. Zhuangzi (c370-311 BCE) makes it clear that religious teachings concern this practice, this way of living, and cannot be analysed logically. He gives the words of the carpenter Bian as an example: 'When I work on a wheel, if I hit too softly, pleasant as this is, it doesn't make for a good wheel. If I hit it furiously, I get tired and the thing doesn't work! So not too soft, not too vigorous. I grasp it in my hand and hold it in my heart. I cannot express this by word of mouth, I just know it.' He just knows it, he does it. He also, I may add, expresses what he knows and what he does in words. There is a deep religious point to this emphasis upon deeds that should be emphasised. Those who acquire the knack through practice come to discover a transcendent dimension of life that was not simply an external reality 'out there' to be known analytically and objectively, but is something they come to experience as identical with the deepest level of their being. This reality has been understood to be a fact of human life, which has traditionally been called God, Dao, Brahman or Nirvana. Whatever it is, it is unnameable, ineffable and inexplicable in terms of logos. At this deepest of levels, actions do indeed speak louder than words.

It is for this reason that Plato was sceptical of the written form. His worry was that objectifying philosophy in the form of words could become the excuse not to live the norms, meanings and values of the philosophical life. It is in this sense that words can become the inflexible dictatorial antagonist of thinking, doing, knowing, living and being – of acting. In resolving philosophical issues and tidying them neatly away in a conceptual box, the written form could become a means of encasing and stifling a meaning that can only be experienced. Plato saw the danger of words as coming to possess a life and an authority of their own, a standard of appeal which citizens would dogmatically consult, quoting words as ready-made arguments instead of thinking for themselves.

Socrates took philosophy to the people on the streets and in the market place. He was concerned not with informing people, addressing the intellect alone, but with forming their characters, addressing the whole person. The key to wisdom lies not in the sophistication of words and concepts as abstractions from life but in self-understanding. The implication of the Socratic view is that all human beings are philosophers, or, rather, all are capable of becoming philosophers, in that all possess the capacity to reason. But Socrates’ point didn’t rest there. He was insistent that human beings come to develop and use that capacity, come to think and reflect. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ said Socrates. Philosophers in the Socratic tradition do not expect people to agree with them. Philosophising is not the issuing of words as instructions. The concern is that human beings come to determine their existence through the use of their own reason, to think for themselves, develop ideas of their own. For Socrates, philosophy is the love of wisdom, the most important human activity of all, the one that defines human beings as human. And this involves thinking, questioning, engaging in dialogue with others, presenting and examining arguments in a logical and systematic manner. Such an ‘examination’ of one’s life cannot but impact on the lives of others, since human beings are social animals in constant interaction with each other. The 'examination' of life is a mutual examination, with interaction as communication and dialogic exchange. Such action as corresponds to the examined life is never blind and never dumb, but always involves some form of meaning, communication, symbolic interaction, phenomenology of experience. Such words may well be ‘big words’ that put off the more practically minded. But that is what people who act do, whether they can express that in words or not.

My point is that ‘actions speak louder than words’ is either a truism, any actions that are worth anything are always words-plus-effects, a trite observation not worth the words spent in repetition, a deep truth which emphasising philosophising, knowing and being as an ethos, a way of life, an appreciation of an innate knowing and being at one with the eternal – my view – or clichéd assertion used by those who wish to silence words so as to remain in their inert slumber of an existence. Their non-actions and non-words are precisely the opposite of the Tao in that they are inert in face of being and knowing, their actions blind and disastrous.

16

‘Attain complete vacuity. Maintain steadfast quietude.

All things come into being, And I see thereby their return. All things flourish, But each one returns to its root.

This return to its root means tranquillity. It is called returning to its destiny. To return to destiny is called the eternal (Tao). To know the eternal is called enlightenment. Not to know the eternal is to act blindly to result in disaster.

He who knows the eternal is all-embracing. Being all-embracing, he is impartial. Being impartial, he is kingly (universal). Being kingly, he is one with Nature. Being one with Nature, he is in accord with Tao.

Being in accord with Tao, he is everlasting And is free from danger throughout his lifetime.’

The silence and the non-action of the Tao is a very different thing indeed to the activists of our overly-active world who shout-down people of words. They assert the primacy of destructive actions, actions they engage in that reproduce a destructive social order, fail to see that the actions they should be taking are ones that do not require assertion, and they do so to suppress words they do not wish to deal with or live up to. My objection in this piece is to those many cases when the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ is uttered not to demand the right actions but to rationalise the wrong actions, not to affirm the silence we do need, but to silence the words of those which bring about the right effects.

Non-action, non-words, think about it:

‘The best (rulers) are those whose existence is (merely) known by the people. The next best are those who are loved and praised. The next are those who are feared. And the next are those who are despised.

It is only when one does not have enough faith in others that others will have no faith in him.

(The great rulers) value their words highly. They accomplish their task; they complete their work. Nevertheless their people say that they simply follow Nature.’ (Tao 17).

‘silence is the language of God,

all else is poor translation.’

― Jalaluddin Rumi

This is the silence of a faith which is not empty but is enriched by deeds, of truth rather than tongue. That is not the silence I am talking of here. The silence I am criticising is anything but the language of God.

In numerous books, papers, articles, lectures and talks, I have used countless words. Are such words idle? Over the years I have worked as a writer, educator, political activist, and the response I have received from others, mostly positive but occasionally negative, have given me an awareness of how my words impact upon others and upon the world. Words are realities, they have a causal power, they shape perceptions of reality, are taken upon by people as change agents and through them change the world. Words, thoughts and actions are all of a piece. It is when they become separated, when people pay mere lip service to words and ideas, that the problems arise. But that is not a problem of words, it is a problem of the idolatry of words. It is not the words that are the problem, it is the lack of (right) actions.

Here I wholeheartedly concur with the playwright Ali Salem: ‘Words. Words are things.’ ‘Good things begin with wooords. Bad things begin with wooords. So when we speak, we need to choose our words carefully.’

And the good things and the bad things that are started by words are actions. Words matter. It is not an either/or, a choice between words and actions, it is the congruence between words and actions that counts.

In introducing Civilisation, Kenneth Clark quotes John Ruskin: ‘Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.’ Neither deeds nor words, then, are trustworthy, only art. Clark comments: ‘Writers and politicians may come out with all sorts of edifying sentiments, but they are what is known as declarations of intent. If I had to say which was telling the truth about society, a speech by a Minister of Housing or the actual buildings put up in his time, I should believe the buildings.’ That’s a clear statement of actions speaking louder than words. But note Ruskin’s quote – deeds, words and art go together and are not to be separated. That is the truth of the matter. It is their separation that generates the problems. Words are not to be denigrated as less important than actions. It is the failure to act on words that is the issue.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. That phrase is often misunderstood to be aimed at good intentions as such. It isn’t. It is aimed at the failure to act on good intentions. The intention to engage in good acts is not enough. The point of the saying is that good intentions have merit only if they are acted on.

I agree with the call to practice what you preach. But it’s worth emphasising that actions without good intentions are blind. Actions may well speak louder than words. Hitler’s actions spoke a whole lot louder than the words of those Jews who attempted to alert the world to his anti-Semitism. If words without actions are hollow, then actions lacking in ideas, meaning, values and intentions can be a positive menace. There is no virtue in action as such. Those who use the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ to devalue and denigrate words pave the way for all manner of destructive follies and stupidities in the name of action.

You may, by this stage, have gathered that I rather like words. Good words, of course. But how do we distinguish good words from bad? By acting of course! You know, what some blind activists dismiss as ‘idle intellectualising.’ And which the rest of us call thinking. And by putting theory into practice.

The que'stion whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.'

Marx, Thesis II on Feurbach

I agree with Marx, but with this qualification – Marx was no mere pragmatist who believed that truth was a function of what ‘worked’ in practice. Practice for Marx was infused with the truths, values and ideals of philosophy. His point was that the realisation of philosophy was its abolition as an abstract discipline. The world becomes philosophical as philosophy becomes worldly.

We all know that actually doing something good – or at least trying to – is better than endlessly talking about something, declaring one’s intention to do good one day, but never quite getting round to that day. If that is all that is being said, then fine. It’s true but trite that actions speak louder than words. Much more interesting for me is that our erstwhile activists feel the need to express that truth in words. They can lead by the power of their own example. Why can’t they just act and leave it at that? Why the need for words?

For me, there are three points to be made in response to those questions:

1. That words and actions go together, that words are a form of action, that human beings map and shape their world through words and their meaning and communication.

2. That the assertion that ‘actions speak louder than words’ is a demand that people do more than pay lip service to the words they express but actually act on them, deliver on the meaning, values and truths they contain.

3. That behind the assertion that ‘actions speak louder than words’ there is an implicit suggestion that actions trumping words is an attempt to silence the voices of those whose words are a call to action, implying an activism on the part of the asserter that does not exist.

I agree strongly with the first two points here. I am concerned to counter the latter point most vehemently, implying as it does that words are of little or no value and can be discounted. The people who are most vocal in this regard are concerned to close their ears to the words of the world highlighting problems to be resolved and the calls to action to respond to by the smug assertion that the actions they are already taken is action enough. In other words, they don’t want to know what critical voices are saying, don’t want the words of others upsetting their culture of contentment, and most of all don’t want to change their current behaviours in order to engage in alternate actions. The people I am targeting, then, are not the genuine activists ‘impatient with academics’, as one put it to me, but those who are entrenched in their own practices, practices which critics reveal through their words to be implicated in social dislocation and ecological degradation, and which demand new modes of action. In fine, their assertion of actions over words is an assertion of the sufficiency of their current patterns of behaviour and a denial of the destructive impact of their current actions. The devaluation and denigration of words that follows is really no more than a cult of stupidity, a wilful ignorance that saves our erstwhile activists the difficult task of meeting criticism through reasoned argument, respect the controls of fact, evidence and logic, and saves them the trouble of having to respond to the calls to action being expressed by such critical words.

So where does this phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’ come from? In the 1939 book Dead Men Sing No Songs, Miranda Stuart wrote: ‘Deeds speak louder than words.’ The most common source cited for the phrase, however, is Abraham Lincoln’s words from 1856:

‘Actions speak louder than words’ is the maxim; and, if true, the South now distinctly says to the North, ‘Give us the measures, and you take the men.’

I just find it significant that the man they considered most responsible for the popularity of this phrase in the modern world, Abraham Lincoln, is the man who more than most demonstrated the power of words to change the world. Gettysburg Address anyone? So I take words to be a call to action. Those who denigrate and devalue words do so out of a determination not to heed the call.

We should indeed weigh what people say by what they do. And that goes for those who are so quick to assert that actions speak louder than words. If they imply by that that their actions count for more than my words, I want to know what those actions are. Too often, I see just those five words from them and nothing more, nothing in terms of commitments to causes, campaigns, no principles, no actions. What people do carries more weight than what they say, it’s just that there are some people out there who say little and do even less. They say nothing and do nothing, and want the rest of the world to follow their example.

There are many instances of the actual phrase itself recorded throughout history, as may be expected from a simple demand that a person should practice what they preach.

‘Actions speak louder than Words, and are more to be regarded.’

“Melancholy State of Province” from 1736

‘Actions are more significant than words.’

Gersham Bulkeley, Will and Doom from 1692.

‘A word spoken in season is like an Apple of Gold set in Pictures of Silver,’ and actions are more precious than words.

J. Pym, Hansard Parliamentary History of England, 1628

But now we come to two of my favourite writers, two of the greatest writers that ever lived, men who filled the words with sharpest and most eloquent of words - Michel de Montaigne and Desiderius Erasmus.

First Montaigne:

‘Saying is one thing and doing is another.’

Now Erasmus:

‘If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.’

Erasmus and Montaigne are two of the greatest men of words who ever lived. Montaigne is famed for establishing the essay as a serious literary genre. His massive Essais blend casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious philosophical discussion and intellectual insight. And yet in his day, Montaigne was admired less as a writer than as a statesman. This man, who the activists of today would dismiss as an idle intellectualizer, was actually a man of affairs, a man of action, a man who took part in the public realm.

Erasmus was not a man of politics. His words, however, were a powerful force for changing the world, raising questions that could only be resolved in practice, taking the best part of a century or more to unfold. Erasmus was also sceptical of words, especially clever words detached from deeds.

'The methods that our scholastics follow only render more subtle the subtlest of subtleties; for you will more easily escape from a labyrinth than from the snares of the Realists, Nominalists, Thomists, Albertists, Occamists, and Scotists. I have not named them all, only a few of the major ones. But there is so much learning and difficulty in all of these sects that I should think the apostles themselves must have the need of some help from some other spirit if they were to try to argue these topics with our new generation of theologians.

Paul could present faith. But when he said, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," he did not define it doctorally. The same apostle, though he exemplified charity to its utmost, divided and defined it with very little logical skill in the first epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13. And there is no doubt that the apostles consecrated the Eucharist devoutly enough, but suppose you had questioned them about the "terminus a quo" and the "terminus ad quern," or about transubstantiation—how the body is in many places at once, and the difference between the body of Christ in heaven, on the cross, in the Eucharist at the point when transubstantiation occurs (taking note that the prayer effecting it is a discrete quantity having extension in time)—I say that they would not have answered with the same accuracy with which the pupils of Scotus distinguish and define these matters. The apostles knew the mother of Jesus, but who among them has demonstrated philosophically just how she was preserved from the stain of original sin, as our theologians have done? Peter received the keys from One who did not commit them to an unworthy person, and yet I doubt that he ever understood—for Peter never did have a profound knowledge for the subtle—that a person who did not have knowledge could have the key to knowledge. They went everywhere baptizing people, and yet they never taught what the formal, material, efficient, and final causes of baptism were, nor did they mention that it has both a delible and indelible character. They worshipped, this is certain, but in spirit, following no other teaching than that of the gospel, "God is a spirit, and those that worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth." They seem never to have known that a picture drawn in charcoal on a wall ought to be worshipped as though it were Christ Himself, at least if it is drawn with two outstretched fingers and the hair uncombed, and has three sets of rays in the nimbus fastened to the back of the head. For who would comprehend these things had they not spent all the thirty-six years on the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle and the Scotists?

In the same way the apostles teach grace, and yet they never determined the difference between a grace freely given and one that makes one deserving. They urge us to do good works, but they don't separate work in general, work being done, and work that is already finished. At all times they inculcate charity, but they don't distinguish infused charity from that which is acquired, or state whether charity is an accident or a substance, created or uncreated. They abhor sin, but may I be shot if they could define sin scientifically as we know it, unless they were fortunate enough to have been instructed by the Scotists.' (Erasmus, Praise of Folly).

The further back we go, the more we are brought back in touch with the religious roots of this phrase. St. Francis of Assisi put it this way: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’

As may be expected, the sentiment behind the phrase can be found in the Bible.

'If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,’ and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works is dead, being alone.'

James 2:15-17

'But whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.'

1 John 3:17-18

That sets up a separation between word and deed that requires explanation. The distinction between tongue and truth indicates the nature of the separation. There is a distinction between reality and what we say about reality via our words and concepts. Philosophically, it is a distinction between nominalism and realism. There is a reality beyond our symbolic reach, and we should not mistake the names of things – words – for the things themselves. With respect to this passage, we are enjoined to love the real thing, the truth, and not the limited means by which we come to know and name the truth. In philosophy, this is a warning against misplaced concreteness through mistaking concepts for realities.

You Will Know Them by Their Fruits

'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.'

Matthew 7:15-20

There are plenty of other quotes from the Bible to the same effect. But the basic meaning is plain enough. But it may be worth ploughing through some more quotes.

'But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.'

James 1:22

'In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.'

Matthew 5:16

I rather like the work of Erich Fromm when it comes to unmasking forms of deception and self-deception.

'But while we cannot say what God is, we can state what God is not. Is it not time to cease to argue about God, and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry? Today it is not Baal and Astarte but the deification of the state and of power in authoritarian countries and the deification of the machine and of success in our own culture; it is the all-pervading alienation which threatens the spiritual qualities of man.'

Fromm, The Sane Society, 1976 ch 8

Socialism is committed to the abolition of human self-alienation of man as expressed in ‘the idolatry of economy and of the state.’ (Fromm 1976 ch 7). Fromm’s work points to the existence of an idolatry of words. That point pertains to the empty ritual whereby people can go to Church and pay lip service to words, beliefs, and ideas which they do not practice in their everyday lives. God can be killed by being made an idol, not of stone but of words, phrases, dogma and doctrine which are empty of substance.

‘Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.’

James 3:13

The lesson is clear, beware those whose eloquence promises one thing but delivers another and judge people by their fruits. Again, though, that does not imply that words are of no account, only that words can deceive. Our task is to ensure a congruence between word and deed, discard the false words and embrace the true. Mark Twain, another man skilled with words, wrote that ‘Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.’ Things are indeed easier said than done. It can take an awful lot of words to get people to do the right thing for the right reasons. Of course you can meet people who will pay lip service to certain ideas and principles, they will say the right things in order to impress people, but not act on them. Well here’s another saying that is apposite here, ‘hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.’ (La Rochefoucauld). Let’s get all the platitudes out of the way, that doing something is better than just talking about something, that what people do has more weight than what they say, that actions are more important than merely paying lip service to things.

I’m interested in more than platitudes, though. I am interested in actions that do indeed measure up to our finest phrases, including ‘actions speak louder than words.’ Activists, I hear your words! I just hope that your actions really do live up to your claims.

But these actions that I want to see are of a very specific kind, not any old action for any old reason. To quote the Tao once more,

‘When one desires to take over the empire and act on it (interfere with it), I see that he will not succeed. The empire is a spiritual thing, and should not be acted on. He who acts on it harms it.’ (Tao 29).

Actions and words go together. But the kinds of actions that require few words are actions of a very special kind, the non-action of the Tao. That’s the kind of faith backed by deeds that gets whatever needs to be done, done.

‘Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone.

If kings and barons can keep it, all things will transform spontaneously. If, after transformation, they should desire to be active, I would restrain them with simplicity, which has no name.

Simplicity, which has no name, is free of desires, Being free of desires, it is tranquil. And the world will be at peace of its own accord.’ (Tao 37)

‘Therefore the sage knows without going about, Understands without seeing, And accomplishes without any action.’ (Tao 47).

So when I hear people say ‘actions speak louder than words’, I point out to them that if that were the case, then I wouldn’t need to ask what actions the speaker is speaking of. If I don’t know what actions they are taking, if any, and I need to be told, then in this instance words are speaking louder than said actions. And to those who demand that I should ‘walk the talk’, I say ‘I am walking’. I’ve been walking for years. I’m waiting for you to join me. I’ve been writing and acting both my entire life. Worldchanging is a team sport, and I can find a place on the team for all those keen on action. There’s plenty of work to do. As glaciologist Jason Box says, it is an all hands on deck moment on the planet.

My view is that the statement ‘actions speak louder than words’ is either a false antithesis, a trite observation or a hackneyed phrase implying action on the speakers part when there is none of any great significance.

I’ve been told many times that actions are of a much greater importance than the ‘idle philosophising’ that I supposedly engage in. I conclude from this that said activists sending me so many words to this effect are doing all the things I supposedly only write about. In which case, with so much being done, I am left wondering why the world is in such a state that it requires frequent calls for action to make it better. But I digress. It’s the occupational hazard of the idle intellectualiser.

Of course, those who use words to assert the primacy of actions may well be implying a good deal more activity on their part than any revelation of the facts may warrant, and assertion on their part really amounts to an attempt to silence the voices of those whose words demand actions that they are not prepared to engage in.

It is the self-validating nature of this claim ‘actions speak louder than words’ that needs to be exposed. I know what I do, I know how active I’ve been, I know the hard work for precious little monetary reward that I’ve done. So you can understand my anger when I’m confronted by some keyboard activist – or real activist for that matter – who doesn’t want to reveal how much, or how little, they know, by asserting the primacy of actions over words. To which I ask, ‘what actions?’ I write on climate change, I am a climate communicator trying to stimulate climate actions and build support and common agreement with respect to climate solutions. So are many others, and I commend them. But it takes an awful lot of words to identify the problem, explain the issue, describe the solution, identify the political and psychological barriers, establish common ground, initiate movement. So those who baldly state that ‘actions speak louder than words’, I want to know, what climate actions have you engaged in? what climate solutions are you proposing? If you dismiss words so casually, I want to know precisely what actions you are undertaking. At this point, I have been met with the responses ‘earning a living’, ‘keeping a roof over my head’, ‘raising a family’, ‘doing my job.’ In other words, actions that are confined within the socially structured patterns of behaviour complicit in the destruction of the planetary ecology. The very thing I spend a lot of my time writing on in order to get people to understand the nature of the problem and beging to change their behaviours and engage in the right actions …

Actions speak louder than words, only not nearly as often, wrote Twain. There’s a reason for that. Some problems are so great that it takes an awful lot of words to stimulate action.

And that indicates an aspect to the Mark Twain quote that is more than platitudinous, the fact that whilst actions speak louder than words, they do not do so nearly as often. The simple truth is that it is easier to speak, write and give expression to principles, ideas and values than it is to act upon them. Climate campaigners have spent years arguing for global governmental action designed to bring about social and economic organisation that respects rather than transgresses planetary boundaries. Governments have signed a number of treaties to this effect and have committed themselves to targets with respect to reductions in carbon emissions. The same call to action has been issues to the citizens of the world to reduce their ecological impact and their carbon footprint. People will agree with these demands in principle. The world is drowning in climate words. It’s just that at the level of practice, governments are subject to systemic economic imperatives and citizens are locked within patterns of behaviour that, in being ecologically destructive, contradict the very principles our would-be actors are asserting. And now, beyond the level of assertion that actions speak louder than words, things get really difficult. We, governments and governed alike, are constrained within social relations and patterns of behaviour that render our greatest words powerless. Within social identities that separate short-term individual self-interest from long-term common good, or render its connection abstract and indirect, we can give voice to principles of social justice and ecological health, but lacking the effective means and mechanisms of associating together to act for the long-range good of each, all and whole, our expression of those principles is mere lip service. It’s not hypocrisy that is the problem, it is the lack of effective means for taking action. That leaves us with the words – and in such conditions words are our lifeline, our only way of establishing a bridgehead into the future when current social practices are deficient. By raising visions and expressing values, words keep our horizons from continually narrowing until the future becomes no more than the present enlarged.

Again, though, when I demand ‘climate action’, I need to emphasise that a genuine climate activism, the kind of activism that is an attunement with planetary rhythms, is a non-action. I am trying to get governments and citizens engage in a political, civic and social action in order to address the consequences of uncoordinated incremental actions which, collectively, have generated climate change, global warming and myriad environmental crises as an external force constraining our actions on this planet. It will take a substantial political and institutional effort on our part to turn this around. Here, we face the backlash not of Nature, but of asserting our actions over Nature (Heaven and Earth). It is an alien nature that confronts us, not real nature, it is the consequences of the damage our actions have inflicted upon nature that confront us. Ultimately, the only appropriate climate action to take is a Taoist non-action in tune with Heaven and Earth.

‘The pursuit of learning is to increase day after day. The pursuit of Tao is to decrease day after day.

It is to decrease and further decrease until one reaches the point of taking no action. No action is undertaken, And yet nothing is left undone. An empire is often brought to order by having no activity.

If one (likes to) undertake activity, he is not qualified to govern the empire.’ (Tao 48).

‘This is called practicing the eternal.’ (Tao 52).

I have a piece of work in front of me which is entitled Words Speak Louder Than Actions: Understanding Deliberately False Remarks by Amy Demorest, Christine Meyer, Erin Phelps, Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner (Child Development, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Aug., 1984), pp. 1527-1534, Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development). ‘The study investigated the ability in 6-, 9-, and 13-year-olds and adults to understand sincere, deceptive, and sarcastic remarks. Remarks of each type were constructed by varying evidence for the speaker's belief and communicative purpose (what the speaker wants the listener to believe).’ The study documented 3 steps in understanding. To begin with, children tended to interpret all remarks as sincere. Then they come to appreciate deliberate falsehood but tend to see all false remarks as deceptive. We finish with adults who recognise sarcasm, the fact that speaker's belief and purpose may both be out of line with his statement.

Then there is this: ‘Talk is cheap: new study finds words speak louder than actions’ (June 29, 2015). The moral of this is that if you want to persuade people, talk about what you like, not what you actually do. This, of course, doesn’t contradict the moral of actions speaking louder than words and, indeed, confirms the warning to beware false prophets. But it introduces a point concerning the shaping of perceptions that points to the power of words I wish to establish.

A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that people are more likely to conform to others' preferences than conform to others’ actions. In other words, people want to like what others like, but they want to have or do what others don’t have or don't do.

Ayelet Fishbach and Yanping Tu, Words Speak Louder: Conforming to Preferences More Than Actions

‘The tendency to conform is pervasive and rooted in human psychology,’ said Fishbach. ‘When people conform, they conform to what others like and to others’ attitudes. But in terms of what they do, they want to be different. So if you want to persuade people, you should talk about liking, not about having.’ The study found that people conform to others' preferences at last partially because they adopt others' judgments as their own. They further found that when people behave as if they are not conforming, their motivation could be to coordinate or complement their actions with others' actions. ‘The research has implications for online shopping, social media marketing and political campaigns. Marketers, for example, could collect "likes" from Facebook users, rather than collecting information on what users buy, eat or own. Likewise, they could present products as "everyone likes it," rather than "everyone buys it.”’

(http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ayelet.fishbach/research/TuFishbach%20JPSP%2015.pdf)

Words Speak Louder Than Actions

Words are more powerful than actions. With words you can shape perceptions of reality, change the way that people see the world, motivate people by visions and values, influence their behaviour and encourage them to act through getting them to think certain thoughts. It is through words that we inform, communicate and learn. We certainly learned about Hitler through the evil fruits of his actions, but it was through word and speech that Hitler persuaded a nation down the wrong path. For good or ill, it is words that rule the world, the actions we take are shaped by the construction of the social and symbolic world around us by words and the meanings and values they contain. The everyday social world of each and all of us is shot through with the power of words. Words give us certain thoughts and ideas which, in turn, translate into action in one form or another, changing the way we see ourselves, others, the way we live our lives.

One of my favourite philosophers, Charles Taylor, has just been awarded the $1 million Berggruen Prize for philosophy. I’d like now to quote from an article on this award and Taylor’s work, because it makes the point succinctly with respect on how words, language and culture are integral to being human.

Language and the Human Sciences

‘Like almost every other path of engagement with Taylor’s work, the politics of recognition and the ethics of authenticity bring us back to what it means to be human. Language is core to that. Taylor isn’t interesting simply in distinguishing humans from other animals by the capacity for language (and of course we know, as 17th and 18th century thinkers didn’t, the extent to which other animals are capable of language). Taylor’s concerns, rather, are the extent to which language makes us who we are, the fact that we have language only by sharing it and that we use language expressively, not just instrumentally.

Language, for Taylor, is constitutive of human being; we are language animals. Taylor expands on the famous Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, showing how basic language and culture are to the ways in which we know other human beings and indeed the material world. This is one reason why cross-cultural understanding requires mutual learning, not just translation. It is also among the reasons why interpretation is basic to the human sciences.

Important currents in behavioral and social science have been driven by a desire to achieve “objectivity” by disengaging from interpretation. Of course, knowledge of humans includes many “objective” elements from physiology to demography. But it cannot be complete ― or wise ― on these bases alone. Humans are not altogether objective and transparent even to themselves. Take voting. One may objectively observe people raising hands or shouting “aye” and “nay” in a meeting, but one can’t make sense of this as voting without knowing more about a linguistically constituted practice and the background of a culture in which it is pervasive. Within that culture, researchers can take the background for granted, but the need for interpretation becomes evident as soon as they step outside that basis for consensus interpretations. Cultures vary and no analyst’s knowledge escapes culture. Like other human practices, moreover, voting often expresses meanings that go beyond manifest, instrumental decisions.

Language enables us to reflect and plan and engage in agency, not only reactive behavior. This was a key point in Taylor’s first major work, where he showed why deterministic explanations of behavior (like B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism) must be inadequate to human action. Speaking is an example. It draws on a background resource ― language ― available to us only because we are not completely discrete individuals. But speaking is an action or more precisely, a practice.

Taylor illustrates this point by building on Wittgenstein’s famous account of following a rule. To follow a rule depends not just on knowing the rule itself in some objective sense (as a matter of premises and propositions, to use the technical philosophical terms). It depends also on a tacit background of knowledge that is never rendered entirely explicit. To use Wittgenstein’s term, rules and the capacity to follow them are embedded in “forms of life” ― or, loosely, cultures. But here it is crucial to understand cultures as something more than themselves catalogs of rules or formal structures. Starting with language, they are webs of meaning that people do not merely decode but inhabit and enact. One does not speak French merely by mastering the rules of French grammar (and of course, few Frenchmen can state those rules in much detail). To speak French is a practice, and competency is achieved by habituation, internalization, making it part of oneself. Likewise, to follow a rule is a practice that both depends on culture and expresses it ― whether it is as seemingly simple as traffic rules or as complex as the injunction to treat other human beings as ends rather than means.’ (This Philosopher Has Reimagined Identity and Morality for a Secular Age, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/charles-taylor-philosopher_us_57fd00dde4b068ecb5e1c971).

Our world is constituted and changed by words. Words as language infuse and shape our actions. Human beings are not just actors they are knowledgeable, moral change agents, and words as language, as a form of self-expression, and as the expression and communication of ideas and values are integral to all action which merits the designation ‘human.’

We do not simply map our world with language, we create it. In the word of Ludwig Wittgenstein: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.’ It follows from this that language is more than a vehicle for communicating information and ideas but frames all our knowledge and experience.

Human beings are, as the title of Charles Taylor’s book says, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity. Language is crucial to human identity, self, and expression; it is crucial to politics and ethics, the spheres of human action that have been identified as the fields of practical reason since the times of ancient Greek philosophy.

Taylor argues that human beings are constituted not merely by their biology or their personal intentions, but by the way that they are embedded in webs of meaningful relationships. As he puts it: ‘We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.’

Expressivist Language:

‘Charles Taylor views language as being constitutive rather than solely expressive, that is, language does more than reflect reality, it, in part, creates reality. When one articulates one’s self, such as through an expression or defense of one’s beliefs, one is creating one’s self, and thus the language used is not just reflecting the self but also creating the self. For example, if I were to say that I believed that loyalty was a virtue, that declaration would mold who I was. I would have made my belief more apparent through the act of stating it, and therefore my statement would both reflect (representative) reality and create (constitutive) reality.’

The Holism of Language:

‘According to Charles Taylor there are three aspects which create the holism of language. Firstly language is intrinsically linked to life and culture insofar as that one could not have culture without a means of expressing oneself, a language. This being said one cannot consider a language outside of the culture which created it / is creating and changing it. Secondly language is constantly being modified by the users. When one encounters a new situation some linguistic changes may be necessary for a more accurate description, and through articulation of the subjective experiences one becomes more aware of one’s self. The act of articulating helps to revise the language as well as create the self. Thirdly, and finally, terms within a language derive meaning from differences, and thus Taylor asserts that meaning is “both relative and relational.” Language is relative to the agent using it, that is, one’s subjective experiences influence one’s interpretations, and it is relational insofar as that it reflects the relations between agents as well as the relations between terms within a given language.’

For the logical positivists, only analytical and factual statements possess meaning, the rest is nonsense. That’s the end of metaphysics and theology, and the dismissal of art, poetry and literature as mere emotion and rhetoric, the end of religion as superstition. This is to fall silent on all that makes life worth living. What kind of silence is that? Is it Wittgenstein’s silence? ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’ What the logical positivists failed to understand is that, for Wittgenstein, the stuff that we can speak rationally about is so trivial and obvious as to be of no great significance. The interesting and important stuff that makes life meaningful and worth living was the silent, ‘nonsensical’ stuff. Language is the creative force that allows our perceptions to take flight and enables us to enter into the unknown. Whereas logical positivism modelled language on natural science, the humanist conception sees language and life as a story, a poem. Naturalism as a positivism modelled on the natural sciences renders human beings mere biological mechanisms. Against this, language is part of a humanist, mythical and poetic narrative that we jointly weave. Human beings are homo symbolicus. Beyond the particularisms of time and place, culture and language, there is a universal human nature, and language, words, ideas, values are integral to it. Human beings are linguistic animals, in that the way individuals relate to themselves, to others and to the environment is mediated by language. This is also integral to human self-understanding and how this constitutes identity. Human beings are self-interpreting beings. This relates to the Aristotelian notion of human beings as rational and social beings, beings that need others and to be in communication with others in order to realise themselves. The development of communication is a collaborative endeavour. For Taylor, language is an embodied sharing, its ‘performative’ quality extending into gesture, dress, and ritual. Language is therefore a collaborative endeavour based on what Taylor calls ‘the primacy of conversation’. Human identity is thus constituted through dialogue. Action is interaction within an interpretative framework that confers meaning and gives direction. Words are not single discrete entities but exist and have meaning holistically as part of larger linguistic networks. The human sense of self and of identity is very much dependent on being a part of that greater interactive framework. The individual cannot achieve a sense of self alone but needs the recognition of and the communication and interaction with others in order to be realised. The converse also applies: a lack of recognition can diminish and even destroy a person’s sense of identity. Also important to an individual’s sense of identity is a sense of purpose, meaning and belonging. Human beings are embedded in an ideational and moral framework which serves to orient them toward the things they value and the ends they seek to achieve. Human beings are what Charles Taylor calls ‘strong evaluators’, constantly judging their actions from within this interpretive framework in terms of the extent to which they accord with values and goals. Action is therefore shot through with language, meaning, will and consciousness. Action is a symbolic and communicative interactionism. To divorce action from words in order to exalt the former and devalue the latter is to reduce human beings to automata responding to physical stimulus and biological imperative. Actions speaking louder than words points to a demands that words live up to their promise and be active, not rendered passive or relegated to secondary significance.

I challenge those who would assert action over words to dispense with words and see how much action they can accomplish by way of grunting and gesticulation. I dare say it would be possible to get basic tasks done, but anything beyond basics, anything a little more ambitious, involving ideas, more abstract and long-term planning and execution, would require words. Indeed, language is a condition of generating and expressing ideas, consciousness involving a development from auto-response to external stimuli to a new terrain on which language enables us to express a reality. Words are not mere labels for things that exist in the physical world, as though language is merely a natural science. Many things essential to a human life – moral codes, laws, promises, expressions of love and loyalty, all manner of commitments – require words for their existence.

The descriptive language of the natural sciences can give us only impersonal and abstract representations of objective reality, it cannot give us the reality that we live as a humanly objective reality, a reality personal, impassioned, playful practice and symbolic interaction, a phenomenology of interpersonal experience. ‘We couldn’t learn to write a treatise before we learned to converse,’ is the way that Charles Taylor puts it. Language ‘changes our world’, Taylor writes, it ‘introduces new meanings into our lives’ and ‘opens us to the domain it encodes.’ This language is not about single discrete words denoting entities but is an organic growth in time and place, something which alters the way we live our lives, integral to culture, morality and politics, the way that ideals of justice, equality, solidarity and democracy feed into identity at the social and political levels. No words, no language, no dialogue, no ideals, no cultural, social and political action – just grunts and gesticulations.

Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor make it clear that the moral and political judgement crucial to effective social action depend on the language of reasons and the interpretive framework within which agents are embedded and through which they view their world. It therefore makes no sense to talk about actions of any kind in abstraction from the interpretive dimensions of human beliefs, practices, and institutions (Taylor 1985, ch. 1; MacIntyre 1978, chs.18–22 and 1988, ch.1; Benhabib 1992, pp. 23–38, 89n4).

Michael Walzer proceeded to add to this that effective social criticism and action must derive from and resonate with the habits, customs, cultures and traditions of actual individuals living in specific times and places. Even if we could define a formal procedure of universalizability to yield a determinate set of human goods and values, ‘any such set would have to be considered in terms so abstract that they would be of little use in thinking about particular distributions’ (Walzer 1983, 8; Young 1990, 4). In fine, those who do as Rawls did and ask what is just by abstracting from particular social contexts in order to present a theory of justice as universally true are doomed to philosophical incoherence and those who adopt this method to persuade people to do the just thing are doomed to political irrelevance.

The point is this, words are better than grunts and gesticulations to convey ideas, communicate, express values, but need to be grounded in communities of character, practice and interaction and not be mere ‘money of fools’ (Hobbes), counters within an empty universalism not backed by relations and deeds.

Actions are shaped by paradigms, worldviews and standpoints. If our science sees us as atoms interacting blindly within a mechanistic, purposeless, meaningless order, then our social, political and economic life will take on those characteristics. If our intellectual systems see nature as blind matter to be exploited, then we will be led to exploit, despoil and destroy it. If our social theories regard human beings as discrete individuals in competition for scarce resources, then we will see hell as the other person, bringing about hell on earth. If we see the world as a unity, a participatory universe whose members are in continual relationship, then we will be led to a holism that integrates all aspects of life. In other words, the character of the actions we undertake depends a great deal upon our views of the world and how these are embedded in systems, institutions, cultures and practices. ‘Action’ is no mere natural or biological datum but is implicated in a social, cultural, moral and intellectual context. For four centuries, our notions of action have been dominated by the mechanistic paradigm. This is now giving way to a holistic or organic paradigm which sees humankind as active members participating in the whole, a whole which possesses the consciousness that humanity claims for itself. Theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman argues that human beings are co-creators within an endlessly creative universe. Agency, value, purpose and meaning are built into this universe. This has radical implications for the way we organise, structure and live our lives, creating new institutional, social and psychological contexts and conditions for action. It completely transforms the old mechanistic understanding which infused our political institutions, scientific understanding and economic systems. And it changes our relation to nature. Instead of seeing nature as something apart from us as a resource to be exploited, we now increasingly see ourselves as a part of nature and adjust our actions accordingly. Our interaction with nature and with each other changes. We see this in the influence of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Seeing ourselves as a part of a self-regulating organic whole involves living in accordance with a new interpretation of the natural world. The same with respect to David Bohm’s theory of the Implicate and Explicate Order, which holds that the manifest diverse three-dimensional world we see is enfolded in an unmanifest implicate order, which is its ground. Those still inclined to think that reality is as it is, regardless of how we see it, need to brush up on their Kant, for whom the world we experience is the creation of the cognitive apparatus of the human mind, shot through with human conscious, intellect, and will. Kant’s idea is that the cognitive apparatus of the mind imposes an order upon sense experience. The problem set before us here, then, is one of overcoming the alienness of the world. The alienness of our self-made social world constituted by our own power and creativity. And the alienness of nature. This, I take to be a challenge to overcome our estrangement from nature as a result of technological, organisational and institutional mastery. The ‘conquest of nature’ by man is a familiar enough motto expressing the modern project, and is something that expresses the assertion of scientific, technological and organisational power as well as an ecological reaction against what Boyle called ‘the empire of man’. For Kant, the question is most of all a metaphysical one: how are we to overcome the alienness of the universe by discerning the imprints of our moral reason and human ends within the world as an intelligible order? Hegel gives this answer:

'The ignorant man is unfree because he faces a world which is foreign to himself, a world within which he tosses to and fro aimlessly, to which he is related only externally, unable to unite the alien world to himself and to feel at home in it as much as in his home. The merest impulse of curiosity, the awakening of the love of knowledge, the lowest phase of animate unrest, and the highest grasp of philosophical insight are ultimately derived from the same source, namely, the desire to overcome every condition that is unfavourable to freedom, and to bring the world of everyday life, and that of the subject which reflects upon it, into one harmonious unity.'

Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, First Part, The Idea of Fine Art, or the Ideal: The Position of Art Relatively to Finite Reality, Religion and Philosophy 1920: 135/6

Einstein brings the discussion back to its central thread – ‘The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ ("Physics and Reality" (1936), reprinted in Out of My Later Years.)

The world is rational and intelligible. It is worth spending some time with Einstein on this ‘eternal mystery’ here, because his argument raises the issue of disclosure and imposure again (I say 'again' because I keep coming back to this question in my work).

Einstein argues that the human mind forms the concept of bodily objects out of repeatedly occurring events in the multitude of our sense impressions. Whilst the meaning of this concept derives from sense impressions, it is, logically, the creation of the mind independent of these sense impressions. We attribute a significance to this concept when we say it has a ‘real existence’, indicating something stronger and more permanent than the sense impressions. Einstein’s justification here is Kantian, arguing that the concept enables us to organize and navigate the collection of sense impressions. That ability to make sense of the world constitutes the ‘real existence’ of the concept. As Einstein writes:

The very fact that the totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking...it can be put in order, this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall never understand. One may say ‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ It is one of the great realizations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility.

However, we can never be certain that these concepts of real external objects are truly real rather than illusions or hallucinations. In this sense, the ‘real external world’ remains out there somewhere outside of our conceptual apparatus. We can know no more than the limits of that apparatus. The sensual world would be senseless without it.

In speaking here concerning "comprehensibility," the expression is used in its most modest sense. It implies: the production of some sort of order among sense impressions, this order being produced by the creation of general concepts, relations between these concepts, and by relations between concepts and sense experience, these relations being determined in any possible manner. It is in this sense that the world of our sense experiences is comprehensible. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.

So we return to the central questions: ‘what is the real world?’ and ‘how do we know it?’ With Kant, and Descartes before him, we are walled up inside the conceptual world of the disembodied mind. With Einstein, they take us so far with respect to comprehensibility, but ‘the real external world’ remains beyond us. Hence Einstein’s meaning when he refers to ‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ Einstein is raising the deep philosophical question, going back to Plato, as to why our sense impressions are not a mere congeries of phantasmagoria but evince coherent organisation. As Plato argued, mind is at work. But, as Kant made clear in the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, this will remain an eternal mystery since it is one of the metaphysical questions that the mind asks but cannot answer, since certain knowledge is only possible with respect to sense experience. Beyond this, our metaphysics and theology, the concepts the mind develops to make sense of the ‘real external world’, are in some way arbitrary, independent of sense experience, hypothetical and thus always open to doubt.

My resolution of this, which is the view I am currently developing in my Being and Place thesis, is that human beings are active co-creators discerning/unfolding value, meaning and purpose in a ceaselessly creative universe. In other words, knowing and being proceed together from the inside of the whole, as against chimerical notions of a complete knowledge of an external world via a conceptual apparatus from the outside. Bohm emphasises ‘the unity of unity and diversity’ and ‘the wholeness of the whole and the part.’ He describes the Implicate Order as an ‘ocean of energy’. Fritjof Capra describes the world as a cosmic web, ‘an interconnected web of relations. As a result of these new views, we come to accept the principle of life as an organic whole and come to adjust our institutions, practices, and social relations accordingly. In fine, when the mentalities and modalities shaping actions change, the actions change. From being antagonists with nature, we come to see ourselves as co-creators, and act accordingly.

Put simply, there is no antithesis between actions and words, being doing and thinking. The whole notion of human beings as a co-creative agency at work within the purposeful universe entails that the creations of culture – words, ideas, values, interpretations, ethical codes – are actions which shape all other actions. To argue otherwise – to assert action over culture - is a crude, simplistic, unthinking naivety that betrays human action and all its potentialities into the dumbest conservatism. I should add that it’s not a conservatism that the likes of Roger Scruton would accept. Scruton emphasises the importance of culture and the humanities, drawing on art, architecture, music, and literature, in the making of a meaningful human life. In pointing to the way that art, architecture, music and literature – culture and aesthetic experience – hints at the existence of a transcendental realm, human beings are inspired to act ‘as if’ there are such things as objective ends. Oh, you can’t leave God alone can you!? A mental construct for immature, insecure children as a ‘friend’ keeps informing believers. Not a view that would have impressed Bishop Berkeley: ‘Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.’

I’ll duck that particular controversy here and content myself with the neutral statement. Thinking about the summum bonum is integral to a truly human life. An unthinking ‘getting on with it’ falls somewhat short of that, and leaves practical men and women trudging blindly down existing paths of action. To put it in plain terms, words frame actions, actions are never independent of words. Be careful to know the meaning of your actions, how directions have been set by narratives and worldviews. In praising yourself for being men and women of action, people who walk the walk, just be sure you know what you are doing, why you are doing it and where you are going. Because if you do choose to examine your actions, you will find the words of someone behind them. In acting, you will be fulfilling visions, values and ideals of someone somewhere. Just make sure you are in agreement with them before you act.

John Maynard Keynes was right when he wrote that 'the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas... soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.' (J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money).

So beware all you men and women of action! In your impatience with words and haste to be doing something, you may well be doing no more than going round and round in the intellectual grooves put down many years ago by some defunct scribe, in acting so blindly you are really the prisoners of someone else’s ideas.

Pick up any history book and turn to the key events in history, the politics, the wars, the revolutions, all the key struggles and turning points, war and peace, and there you will see he values, ideals, slogans of the principal agents. Hegel said that the biggest struggles in history are not between right and wrong but between right and right, and the history books are full of these collisions between protagonists whose contentions are expressed verbally as well as physically. Words matter, words inspire actions. Anyone who thinks otherwise should examine the Declaration of Independence, Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and consider the events they inspired.

The origins of the word ‘parliament’ are French, ‘parler’, meaning to speak and ‘parlement’, meaning speaking. Of course, we have heard parliaments dismissed as ‘talk-shops’, by Mussolini’s blackshirts and other such men of action. What was it that Winston Churchill said, ‘To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.’ Actions are not always better than words, far from it. Some actions are better than others and in deciding between them words are indispensable. It is better to talk a problem over than to fight it out. Words can go a long way, depending upon how you use them. Words can influence our thoughts in ways that actions cannot. Words shape our actions.

Whenever I hear someone employ the phrase ‘actions speak louder than words’, I want them to tell me precisely why they say that. Are they really interested in actions? If so, which. What actions are they engaged in? Or are they just concerned to diminish the importance of words? Whose words and which words in particular and why? If it is more than a trite observation or hackneyed phrase, then I want the people who are inclined to repeat ‘actions speak louder than words’ to clarify precisely what actions they are taking or wish others to take and which words they want to see translated into actions, or not. Because I want to be clear that those who use this phrase really are interested in actions, in the visions, principles, values and ideals expressed and communicated through words coming to be acted upon. I want to be clear that those who employ this phrase so easily are not merely trying to silence the voices of those who raise those ideas in criticism of the prevailing social order, in favour of an alternate social order. That is, dismissing the words of critics is not an attempt to urge action, but to justify current practices, that is, current inaction with respect to principles and ideals raised.

‘Actions speak louder than words. And sometimes inaction speaks louder than both of them.’

• Matthew Good

It’s the Tao:

‘Act without action. Do without ado. Taste without tasting.

Whether it is big or small, many or few, repay hatred with virtue.

Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small.

Difficult undertakings have always started with what is easy. And great undertakings have always started with what is small.

Therefore the sage never strives for the great, And thereby the great is achieved.

He who makes rash promises surely lacks faith. He who takes things too easily will surely encounter much difficulty.

For this reason even the sage regards things as difficult. And therefore he encounters no difficulty.’

(Tao 63)

I am pointing to the difficulty of living in accordance with this phrase, and I am raising a critical voice against those who use it casually.

Anyone acquainted with the subject of history, anyone who has been involved in the worlds of politics and of education, anyone who has been involved in the issues, campaigns and struggles that are the stuff of the social world in which we live will know that our entire social fabric and psychological make-up is steeped in words. I have been involved in campaigns, demonstrations, elections from council to European level, and these have involved words, in pamphlets, leaflets, demands, slogans, arguments. The words ‘Justice for the 96’ shook the entire establishment. Backed by actions, of course. It is not an either/or, and I would question the motives of those who are so concerned to separate words and actions in that way. Why, I ask again, are they so concerned to dismiss words? My hunch is that behind this is an attempt to close down debate and delegitimise political platforms. Against such people, I affirm the magic spell of words. Not always for the better. Wittgenstein cautioned us against bewitchment by language. But words can be magical in a good sense, conjuring up visions of new horizons beyond present worlds; words can be inspiring, captivating and beautiful, touching our hearts and emotions as well as our minds. In addressing the motivations, words have the capacity to initiate actions. So the question with respect to those who assert ‘actions speak louder than words’ is this, by repeating this phrase do they mean to challenge those who are only prepared to pay lip service to the words they use to actually live up to the words they use – in which case their concerns are radical – or do they mean to dismiss and marginalise those who use words to raise demands for social transformation, thereby suppressing the calls for radical action implied by those words – in which case their concerns are plain reactionary.

Either way, words and their power to discomfort the comfortable, hold institutions to account, make people give good reasons for the actions they take, and subvert overmighty power and authority has been central to my life in politics and philosophy. The critique and overthrow of the fetish systems of power, politics and production which govern the world have been key to my written work in philosophy. And this work has influenced other educators, scholars and academics around the world. I can testify to the fact that ideas, values and visions expressed through words change the world in being taken up by others, shared, developed and applied. Those who say otherwise are either ignoramuses or apologists. Either way, they are concerned to deny words in order to justify inaction on the principles, ideals and values that shape history for the better. ‘Making history’ as E.P. Thompson described it involves more than actions, it involves creative human agents motivated by ideals.

Beyond the politics and the criticism, however, I can affirm that the beauty and the power of words give words a more than instrumental significance, as means to an end. Words have flesh, they are real, and they have the power to shape being from within. They are a form of self-expression integral to one’s essential being.

When I think about words, when I choose certain words rather than others in order to convey some meaning or truth, I think about the world we live in, social and environmental issues, how we value our lives, treat each other, relate to the natural environment around us. Words are an integral part of our world, words are reality, they shape every aspect of our lives. We need each other in order to be ourselves, and words are integral to the relations between I, You and the world around us. Existence and some form of communication would be possible without words, but the world we live in would not be the same. Words impact on each and every one of us. If you go to my Academia page - https://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley - you will see 64 books, 200 papers, 8 talks and 2 drafts. I seem to remember counting some four million words. There are more words on my Being and Place website - http://pcritchley2.wixsite.com/beingandplace - and I have more words to come when I finish my Being and Place book. I have other manuscripts ready to be rewritten, polished and published. Those who are inclined at this point to refer to this as a pointless intellectual scribbling I can tell you in simple words that you are plain wrong. I know for a fact, through the people I have worked with, students and researchers I have helped, from the people who message me on a regular basis, that the words I have written have had an educative and practical impact all over the world. Excuse the bout of entirely uncharacteristic boasting here on my part, but when words – and the ideals they contain and the actions they inspire – come under assault, I come out firing. I know from personal experience that the words I have written are not sterile, but have impacted upon the lives of students, researchers, political campaigners and activists. There is no idolatry of words here.

Words are integral to the social, psychological, moral and physical fabric of the human universe, setting in motion the will, the effort, the desire involved in the actual living of a life. Words shape our lives, our relations to others, the way we communicate and interact with others, adjust our behaviours accordingly. Growing up, you soon learn to ‘mind your language’. ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ ‘choose your words carefully,’ ‘weigh your words before you speak,’ ‘speak in haste, repent at leisure.’ All these sayings make the point – words matter.

‘Steer your boat with justice: forge

A tongue on truth's anvil.’

― Pindar, Selected Odes

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”

― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Weighing words is about evaluating words. And in evaluating words we value words. We value words like we value names, our names, the names of others, we value ideas, principles, things. Of course, words are not the thing denoted, anyone involved in science and philosophy soon learns that the name of a thing is not the same as the thing itself. Hence the danger of misplaced concreteness, bewitchment by language, the idolatry of words. We thus guard against the misuse of words, something that involves the proper use of words. And here we weigh words in terms of the way that they shape and impact upon our lives. Who doesn’t read books? Think of your favourite book. Think of the work you do, think of your ideals, visions and values, your social life, interaction with others, conversation, your favourite songs, your favourite football team. Every single aspect of your life involves words. Imagine a birthday without hearing the words ‘happy birthday’. It will still be your birthday, but a whole lot less happier than it could have been with the right words. If you think actions speak louder than words, then try living without words as you go about your daily basis. Try to imagine a world of just action without words. It will be an ex-communication, a solitary confinement, a closing in on oneself. Words motivate us, words inspire us, words cheer us up, words depress us, annoy us, irritate us, disappoint us. Whatever else words are, they are not indifferent – for good or ill, words make a difference to our lives. Our lives would be somewhat less than human without words, physically possible but hardly worth living. Think of the words of love, words of sorrow, words of remorse and regret, the satisfaction of words said, the sadness of words left unsaid at the end of a life. Words we wanted to hear, words that we did hear. So many words that make up a life.

We think, we communicate, we act in terms of words. Words initiate actions. ‘In the beginning was the Word …’ The centrality of words has been recognised in the form of its critique, the critique of logocentrism, the critique of the tradition of Western science and philosophy that regards words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality. This opens up a whole new philosophical controversy, one that I’d prefer not to be involved in at this moment in time. Please don’t make me comment on ‘phallocentrism’, an ugly word indeed, one that purports to explain that western rationality is all about a lot of masculine ‘p’s’ I’ve given my views on that elsewhere, and prefer to leave them there. (available on request, when I've finally satisfied myself that what I'm saying there isn't gibberish. I'm still not quite sure. I think philosophy is open to all, but there are interesting things to be said on love and knowledge ..). Suffice to say, this tradition regards the logos as the ideal representation of the Platonic Ideal Form. That such a notion has inspired an entire school of philosophical critique called deconstruction says something about the centrality of words. That this centrality stands in need of deconstruction also says something about the need to be wary of words. For now, I shall go with the idea that actions start with words, are sustained by words and end with words, words inspire actions, words command and control actions along the way, words dictate and direct actions, words justify actions. The Second World War is the most destructive war in the history of the human race, with towns and cities levelled, millions killed and two nuclear bombs exploded. That war began with words, bad words inciting people to hatred, good words inspiring people to stand firm together, and ended with words of peace and international concord. So I have no hesitation in saying that words speak louder than actions. Words cause actions and bring them to conclusion. Words also can be used to excuse bad actions and conceal inactions. I am, as I said above, very interested in this idea that people who charge others with being all words and no action are actually disguising their own guilt with respect to actions they feel that they ought to take, but which they do not. The people who want to silence the words of others lest it expose their inaction or wrong action.

Words tell us how things ought to be, and what ought not to be. What we can do, what we can’t do. So words are used to map the world around us. Not always for the good. We can box ourselves, and others, in, in terms of roles, norms, expectations, all of which affect us in our social lives.

So if you still think that words don’t matter, try thinking of it this way, in terms of a social literacy and illiteracy. Words enable us but words also constrain us, we can become prisoners of narratives of our own making. Think of economics, think of politicians telling of the need for the economics of austerity. People learn the language, and parrot it. They don’t really understand the scientific case for or against fracking, but they hear those who say it will bring jobs, lower energy prices, bring energy security, and they are reassured, give assent. These are all words by which we decide and determine our lives and futures. Take the threat of runaway climate change. It isn’t here yet. These are just words, with no present reality as far as people can tell. But they are words built on solid science with respect to what lies in the near future for human civilisation if we do not engage in effective climate action across the planet. Here, words most certainly are speaking louder than actions, but are going unheard precisely because we lack the means, mechanisms and motivations making for effective action. This is what I call a practical illiteracy, because, for all of the emphasis upon actions over words, our toolbox offers us no solutions to the problems we face, only the same old tools that got us into the mess in the first place. ‘I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.’ (Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966, p. 15). There’s precious little point in shouting ‘it’s time for action’ against people like me who deal in words, if the modes for taking action are in the form of a hammer. ‘We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.’ (Albert Einstein). We need new mentalities and new modalities, new ways of acting shaped by new ideas and values.

“Your words, your thoughts, your imagination: powerful tools. Remember that and use them wisely.”

― Donald L. Hicks

Look into the stillness. Listen to what people are saying, treat words with respect, take words seriously. Your life may depend on them.

So as I draw this essay to a conclusion, I return to this sneaking feeling I have that there are many who assert ‘actions speak louder than words’ in order not to urge more effects and less texts, but to silence the voices of critics who are demanding social transformation in the name of certain principles, ideals and values. Their assertion implies that they – where and how is not said – are men and women of practical affairs engaging in action whereas the wordy folk are naïve idealists, hypocrites or ineffectual, idle intellectualisers. As I said earlier, my target is not the activists who express impatience with ‘academics’ (a criticism directed at me). Those people are acting and are keen that the scribblers put their pen down and join them. To those, I simply say: ‘Don’t act! It’s time for thinking.’ In solving a problem, we need to diagnose it properly in the first place. Thinking is acting. My target is those who imply an action on their part that is nowhere in evidence, other than complicity in the very patterns of social reproduction that are undermining the basis of civilised life on earth. They don’t like being discomforted by the words of critics who demand big changes in the way we do business on this planet, and therefore denigrate words in order to silence critical voices. Such people are reactionaries whose inertia blocks the action we need. They will ensure the doom of civilisation if they are not countered. They don’t like critical words. They don’t like being troubled by critical voices. They don’t like long words. So I shall give them a short word: ‘tough’. In fact, I shall make it shorter for them, just to be helpful: ‘tuf’. Because, in a world of economic inequality and exploitation, people trafficking, war, terror, guns and violence, social injustice, community breakdown, ecological degradation and destruction, extinction of species, we need words more than we have ever needed words. And we need people with those words to make their voices heard. And the people who are so discomforted by what those voices tell them about the world need to join the rest of us in taking action, rather than going in the other direction. These problems will not go away simply by closing our ears to them. That is my challenge to those who dismiss words in order to silence critical voices. What do you think will occur when no one speaks up anymore, no one raises issues, no one protests injustices, no one raises demands, no one speaks out?

‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.’ That quote is attributed to Edmund Burke, although I have never been able to find a source for it. But regardless of who said it, the words ring true. The words involve a commitment to speak up and stand up to be counted in the presence of injustice. And the way that Burke does express this similar sentiment makes it clear that for any action that we take to be effective, it needs to be done as a joint endeavour. Any actions that speak louder than words have to be actions taken in association, at an appropriate level of power and competence to deal with the problem we face – individual actions won’t cut it. That’s precisely the point the many words I have used on climate change and effective climate action have been concerned to make.

'No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.'

Edmund Burke, 1770, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents by Edmund Burke, [Third edition], Page 106, Printed for J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, London.

John Stuart Mill also has some fine words for those who refuse to speak up and stand up for what is right and true:

'Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.'

Mill, 1867 March 16, Littell’s Living Age, [Inaugural Address at University of St. Andrews: 1867 February 1], Page 664, Number 1189, Fourth Series, Littell and Gay, Boston.

Come on! You know the people I’m talking about here; the ones who make a virtue of anti-intellectualism, those comfortable and contented with present arrangements and who want to believe that the problems in the world will go away if people stopped talking about them. At this point, having exposed the denigrators of words as the silencers of critical voices, whose implied activism is really a cover for their inaction, I can hear the bland assertion that the world is at is and there’s nothing we can do about it. To which I reply bluntly, those who say ‘can’t’ really mean ‘won’t’. Just admit the truth to yourselves, if not to others, ‘we can but we won’t.’ What difference does anything make anyway? Actually, words and actions together make a great deal of difference. It is the belief that the world is objectively valueless, that we make our own meaning (or not), that has brought us to this moral and motivational malaise. For if there is no good, then there is nothing of real value at stake in moral controversies other than the victory or otherwise of rival projects and perspectives; nothing matters and there is nothing that makes a difference. In light of the good and the recognition that there is something of value at stake in moral controversies, our moral voices and stands do make a difference. So to those who ask, what difference does it make, I ask: what difference are you making with your words and deeds? How are you making a difference by integrating words and deeds? How do you put words and actions together? Because whether people know it or not, the world of which we are active members is a world we shape by everything we do or fail to do. The things we say and do have an impact upon others and upon the world. So what is your impact? What difference are you making? Are the maker or the tool? If there is something wrong in the world, raise your voice and join with others to put it right. ‘If I am not for myself who is for me? And being for my own self, what am 'I'? And if not now, when?’ (Hillel the Elder, Pirke Avot I.14, translated Charles Taylor). You need to make things happen, to invoke justice. It’s time for action, don’t you know? It always is, always has been, always will be. And a time for words too. And that time, for now, is at an end. But there will be a time for words again, shortly. I live, breathe and drink words. Our lives are a web of words interwoven with ideals, visions, values, desires, memories, loves, longings.

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”

― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”

― C.S. Lewis

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Silence can answer the question words may fail to answer. If you want to know what silence can do, keep silence!”

― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

'Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.'

― Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes is trying to get us to avoid mistaking words for realities in themselves, taking words so literally as to distort reality and divert your gaze from reality to your own meaning. Instead of just relying on the words, you should check out the facts is the lesson. Except, as I have shown, facts, like words, are not single discrete entities but are embedded in a humanly objective interpretative framework that constitutes the living reality for human beings. We should indeed guard against words becoming what Thomas Hobbes called them, 'the money of fools.' And ensure that our words and actions are congruent with each other rather than at variance with each other. But that is not an argument against words, that is an argument that supports their power and meaning, either for good, with right action, or ill, with wrong action. There are no 'objective' facts without words and language, the world human beings live in is an interpretative world shot-through with meaning, values, ideas and consciousness, it is not an external, naturalistic datum yielding dumb facts. The world we live in speaks to us because it is infused with language.

I started with the Tao, so I shall finish with the Tao. And I shall end with the words with which the Tao opens, because I think by now they are words you will be able to understand:

2

When all the people of the world know beauty as beauty, There arises the recognition of ugliness.

When they all know the good as good, There arises the recognition of evil.

Therefore: Being and non-being produce each other; Difficult and easy complete each other; Long and short contrast each other;

High and low distinguish each other; Sound and voice harmonize each other; Front and behind accompany each other.

Therefore the sage manages affairs without action And spreads doctrines without words.

All things arise, and he does not turn away from them. He produces them but does not take possession of them.

He acts but does not rely on his own ability. He accomplishes his task but does not claim credit for it. It is precisely because he does not claim credit that his accomplishment remains with him.

3

Do not exalt the worthy, so that the people shall not compete.

Do not value rare treasures, so that the people shall not steal.

Do not display objects of desire, so that the people's hearts shall not be disturbed.

Therefore in the government of the sage, He keeps their hearts vacuous, Fills their bellies, Weakens their ambitions, And strengthens their bones,

He always causes his people to be without knowledge (cunning) or desire, And the crafty to be afraid to act.

By acting without action, all things will be in order.

4

Tao is empty (like a bowl). It may be used but its capacity is never exhausted

It is bottomless, perhaps the ancestor of all things.

It blunts its sharpness. It unties its tangles. It softens its light. It becomes one with the dusty world.

Deep and still, it appears to exist forever.

I do not know whose son it is. It seems to have existed before the Lord.

5

Heaven and Earth are not humane. They regard all things a straw dogs.

The sage is not humane. He regards all people as straw dogs.

How Heaven and Earth are like a bellows. While vacuous, it is never exhausted. When active, it produces even more.

Much talk will of course come to a dead end. It is better to keep to the centre.

6

The spirit of the valley never dies. It is called the subtle and profound female.

The gate of the subtle and profound female Is the root of Heaven and Earth.

It is continuous, and seems to be always existing. Use it and you will never wear it out.

7

Heaven is eternal and Earth everlasting.

They can be eternal and everlasting because they do not exist for themselves, And for this reason can exist forever.

Therefore the sage places himself in the background but finds himself in the foreground.

He puts himself away, and yet he always remains.

Is it not because he has no personal interests? This is the reason why his personal interests are fulfilled.