Do not make people clever at the expense of life

Chapter 65 speaks provocatively of ancient practitioners who did not use brightness to govern the people but kept them “simple.” It says people are difficult to govern because they have too much cleverness; to rule by cleverness is the calamity of the state, while not ruling by cleverness is its blessing. The chapter ends by naming a deep, mysterious virtue that eventually returns things to great harmony.

The historical language can sound like an argument for ignorance or political manipulation. It must not be used to defend censorship, anti-intellectualism, or a ruling class that keeps knowledge for itself. The target is not learning. It is intelligence turned into a technique for managing people whose own judgment has been treated as a problem.

Every institution teaches a hidden lesson through its procedures. A health system can make care accessible, or it can make patients learn the tricks required to get past its barriers. A platform can explain its choices, or it can use behavioural science to guide people toward outcomes they would not knowingly choose. A workplace can state the purpose of a policy, or it can surround workers with opaque tests and then call their evasions evidence of bad character.

The chapter’s “simplicity” is therefore relational. It means keeping the way between people and the conditions of life direct enough that trust can form. It does not require a simple world. Complex problems may need specialised knowledge, law, data, and careful coordination. But complexity should serve reality rather than become a status display or a maze that transfers power to whoever knows the hidden route.

There is a difference between teaching people how something works and teaching them how to game the mechanism. If a system is designed so that honest participation is punished, cleverness will migrate toward evasion. Then leaders may congratulate themselves on having discovered human corruption, when they have partly engineered the incentives that produce it. Chapter 65 asks the governor to examine that mirror.

The final phrase, “with things returning to great conformity,” suggests that deep virtue does not impose uniformity from above. It creates conditions in which life can coordinate without constant instruction. A teacher who helps students form judgment may become less necessary over time. A public service that makes its rules legible reduces the need for personal connections and unofficial brokers. The most sophisticated design may be the one that allows ordinary competence to remain ordinary.

Use the chapter as an audit of your own expertise. Is the knowledge you hold making another person more capable, or merely making you harder to challenge? Can you state the purpose of a rule without hiding behind jargon? Where a process depends on tricks, name the condition it was meant to protect and redesign from there.

The chapter is not suspicious of intelligence because life is simple. It is suspicious because intelligence can become detached from consequences. A brilliant system that leaves ordinary people confused, dependent, or afraid has not escaped ethics; it has hidden its ethics in the interface.

The practical question is not whether to simplify every tool. It is whether a person affected by the tool can understand enough to consent, contest, or leave. If none of those actions is possible, sophistication has become a form of enclosure.

A line to remember: Intelligence becomes a public danger when it makes people easier to manage but harder to understand.