Care and mutual benefit

Introduction

兼爱中, Impartial Care II, takes the first chapter's diagnosis one step further. The first chapter said disorder comes from not caring for one another. This one answers the inevitable objection: fine, but can it be done?

Mozi restates the goal first. What a humane person does is "promote the benefit of the world and remove its harms." What are the world's greatest harms? Large states attacking small ones, large families attacking small ones, the strong seizing from the weak, the many robbing the few, the cunning cheating the simple, the high scorning the low. All of these grow from 别, partiality, the habit of dividing "mine" from "yours."

The prescription is still 兼: "Regard others' states as your own, others' households as your own, others' persons as your own." Do that, and "the strong will not seize from the weak, the many will not rob the few, the rich will not insult the poor, the high will not scorn the low, the cunning will not cheat the simple." Look at that list: every item is a relationship of unequal power. In Mozi, impartial care is addressed to the strong first.

Then the key passage: is it feasible? Mozi answers on two levels. The first is rational reciprocity: "whoever cares for others will surely be cared for in return; whoever benefits others will surely be benefited in return." The second is history: he cites Yu taming the floods, King Wen governing the western lands, King Wu, and says the sage kings did this long ago. Finally he says the hard part is not impartial care itself but that "rulers do not make it policy and scholars do not make it their conduct." He tells of King Ling of Chu, who liked slender waists, and King Goujian of Yue, who liked bravery: when the ruler truly wanted it, subjects starved themselves or walked into fire. How much easier something that benefits the one doing it.

This chapter is where the six characters 兼相爱，交相利 appear most densely. They are a pair: 兼 counts the other person in; 交 means both sides gain.

The three tests

All three tests appear here, but the weight falls on the first and third. Precedent: Yu, Wen and Wu. Application: care produces reciprocity, so it benefits. Evidence shows up only in the slender-waist and bravery stories, where everyone has seen subjects imitate their ruler.

Be careful with the first test. Are the sage-king stories really examples of impartial care, or is Mozi projecting his own doctrine onto the ancients? That question deserves an honest answer.

For families

• Explain "the strong do not seize from the weak" to a child: on the playground or in class, who is strong and who is weak? What should the strong ones do?
• Do one small useful thing for a neighbor together (carry a package, clean a shared hallway), then talk: will they return the favor? Does it matter?
• Children find the slender-waist story funny. After telling it, ask: when the grown-ups at home like something, do the kids copy it?

For chapters

• Reading: the passage "regard others' states as your own," and the passage "whoever cares for others will be cared for."
• Debate: the question is whether reciprocity actually holds. Ask everyone for one case where it did and one where it did not, then ask: when reciprocity fails, is there still a reason for impartial care?
• Three-tests review: check the first test separately. How credible are the sage-king precedents? If they are not credible, how much of the argument is left?