13) “Heaven has deserted us and will not let us enjoy peace and nourishment.” (N51t)

Why does Sima Qian discuss economics so much, expending so much ink on farming and trade?  

The man eventually revered as Huang-di “planted the five grains,” revitalizing the agrarian economy of the time, after the ruling Shen-neng (Divine Farmer) Clan had “been declining for generations,”(N2t) in the phrase Sima Qian often uses to signal a dynasty about to be overthrown. (Did the Divine Farmers fail to farm? And thus lose their mandate at the dawn of recorded history?) Once in power, among his other many deeds, (N3,4t), Huang-Di tended to the economy, planting this time “the hundred grains and the grasses and trees” and helping the “birds, beasts, insects and reptiles to multiply.” (N4t)

Sima Qian, in praising successor emperors, notes their attention to economics: “nurturing resources” (Kao-yang N5t), using the wealth of the land (Kao-xin N5b), ordering trusted brother-ministers to oversee spring plantings, fall harvests, and the stores (Yao N7m), unifying weights and measurements (Yao N9b), growing hamlets to towns to cities (Shun N12m), selecting capable ministers to oversee artisans and craftsmen and agriculture (Shun N14m), building the road and waterway infrastructure to support trade (Yu N22m). Yu famously appraised the productivity of the whole nation, noting for each region the quality of farmland, the output of its artisans, and the waterways the goods and agricultural products followed for trade and tribute. (Yu N22b-32) Sustainability is an early economic principle, as when T’ang scolded a man for netting so many birds they would be exhausted (T’ang N43m).

In condemning wicked emperors and signaling their decline and fall, Sima Qian also references economics in relation to failures to provide for the common people, quoting them crying out that poor leaders make them “neglect our farmwork” (N44t) and “heaven has deserted us and will not let us enjoy peace and nourishment.” (N51t) Poor emperors fail to manage the economy and care for the people.

By noting economics as an engine both for prosperity, and, when poorly managed, for decline and disorder, Sima Qian implicitly argues that the Son of Heaven’s main task is to help the people thrive.

14) The High and the Low: On Pickles, the Borg, Concubines, and Space Operas

The Struggle, the Low. By this time next year, the fresh cucumber that I am will have spent a year pickled in the brine of the St. Johnnie Way. I will be a fully converted pickle unable to notice or argue against what I experienced as I decoded the Johnnie Way and assimilated. (“Resistance is futile.”—the Borg, Star Trek) I have suspended well-honed personal methods for absorbing material and floundered with unfamiliar approaches. In the decades I spent in business as a leader and a consultant, step 1 in making any decision was to assemble a formal or informal “fact pack,” making sure we (the decision-makers) possessed a shared understanding of reality before framing core questions, identifying implications, and determining an optimal strategy or decision. Step 2 was looking for analogous situations and approaches for inspiration. I felt very frustrated at being penned inside the text alone, without recourse to scholarship, histories, cultural studies, and biographies to build my historical and philosophical “fact pack,” wandering lost and confused through that text with others equally befuddled. I comforted myself by reciting the mantra “I am learning the Johnnie Way,” which pairs close textual analysis with discussion and learning to think for myself rather than relying upon outside experts. I see the value of the Johnnie Way, but we could still be close-textualists and marry into our discussions more interplay with our Seminar readings, language studies, and a wisp of scholarship and history. I suppose others have protested the same, before becoming fully pickled. I fear the brine seeping into my flesh and bones…

As for the High, I could write for ten pages of the pleasure I took in learning China’s early history from its magnificent Grand Historian, appreciating Sima Qian’s vivid literary style, and discovering Empress Lu and all the evil concubines. (I write historical novels about exceptional women. Empress Lu & Co merit many novels.) I plan to devote more personal time to fully absorbing Sima Qian, alongside historical, philosophical, and literary analysis—still holding to the text, and my own thoughts on the text. But the Supreme High? Re-reading Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem space opera trilogy this semester and getting so many historical, moral, and philosophical references that sailed by me the first time I read it!

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