See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 5 (Unpublished):
Heaven and earth
are impartial,
Straw dogs, making no distinction
at all.
Those who follow It
make no distinction
among all.
Between heaven and earth
is a bellows—
empty,
yet inexhaustible.
Appearing idle,
yet always able.
Used,
it is never spent.
More knowledge
more confusion
More knowing
more illusion
—
This chapter has a way of getting under the skin, especially once you stop trying to soften it.
Straw dogs.
In ancient China, straw dogs were used in ceremonial rituals. Before the ceremony, they were treated with care—crafted, placed, honored, as if they mattered more than anything else in the moment. Then the ceremony ended, and they were discarded without hesitation. No apology. No ceremony about the ceremony. Just…done.
That’s the image. Heaven and earth treat all things like straw dogs—not cruelly, not kindly, not personally. Impartially.
Which is not exactly the message we tend to carry around day to day.
I’ve always edged toward obsessive-compulsive, so I can speak from experience. A project or a new sport or hobby becomes everything—every detail matters, every outcome feels defining. And then it’s done. Filed away. On to the next. A few months later, the thing that mattered so much barely registers. The intensity was real. The importance felt absolute. And then the system moved on.
Who struggles with that transition? Humans. Not the Tao.
We tend to believe things should work out based on effort, intention, or at least being a decent human being. The Tao doesn’t appear to be tracking any of that. It doesn’t elevate. It doesn’t protect. It doesn’t intervene to ensure the “right” outcome.
It moves.
It uses what’s there.
And then it moves on.
If that feels unsettling, it probably should. It strips away the idea that the system is organizing itself around our preferences, which brings us to something we’re all swimming in right now whether we like it or not: information.
Truth, fiction, something in between—and a whole lot that sounds convincing if you don’t look too closely.
We like to think truth has an advantage. That if we gather enough facts and apply enough logic, truth will rise to the top. In practice, that’s not how it usually works. Truth is often complex, slow, and occasionally inconvenient. It takes effort to establish and even more to maintain. It’s more like a well-prepared, nutritious meal.
Fiction is faster. Simpler. More cooperative. It arrives packaged for what we already want to believe and doesn’t require much verification. Not surprisingly, it travels well. More like quick comfort food—or just junk. Slop.
This isn’t new. Humans have always relied on shared stories to coordinate at scale. Religions, nations, markets—pick your system. They all depend on narratives that allow large groups of people to act as if they’re aligned, even when they’ve never met.
And to be fair, those stories are useful. Without them, cooperation at the level we take for granted doesn’t happen. But there’s a catch. When the story drifts too far from reality, something starts to erode.
Trust.
And once trust erodes, the system gets shaky.
Trust isn’t built on perfection. It’s built on pattern recognition over time. Can I predict how this system behaves? Does it do what it says? When it fails, does it acknowledge it—or pretend it didn’t happen?
Those aren’t emotional questions. They’re structural.
Right now, the structure is fraying. Not because any single institution failed, but because the volume of information makes pattern recognition nearly impossible. We can’t verify everything. We have to trust something. And we’re discovering we’re not sure what still holds.
We’re asking a lot of trust to carry a lot of weight. The volume of information alone overwhelms any attempt to verify everything we encounter, so we lean on institutions—science, journalism, law—to do that work. Imperfectly, but well enough to keep things functioning.
Until we don’t trust them…
And what happens then? Everything’s up for grabs. Not because truth disappeared—it lost its footing. Fiction doesn’t need to replace it completely. It just needs to be more compelling, more shareable, more aligned with what people are already inclined to believe.
Now add AI.
For the first time, we have a tool that can generate stories at scale, mimic human voice, create images, synthesize information, and connect people without needing to know—or care—whether any of it is true. Its job isn’t truth. Its job is pattern completion, engagement, prediction. If engagement is the goal, accuracy is optional.
Which, depending on your mood, is either fascinating or mildly terrifying.
Which brings us back to the bellows.
Between heaven and earth is a bellows—empty, yet inexhaustible.
I’ve been doing my own interpretation of the Tao Te Ching and making updates to it since 1987—and that line lands VERY differently for me now than it ever has. It describes our information environment almost perfectly. The bellows doesn’t generate on its own. It requires something to work it. Once worked, it amplifies whatever passes through—truth, fiction, meaning, noise.
Empty, yet inexhaustible.
Appearing idle, yet always able.
Used, it is never spent.
We humans have built a global AI bellows, and it doesn’t care one bit about what we amplify. It doesn’t distinguish between truth and fiction any more than heaven and earth distinguish between the worthy and unworthy. It processes what’s there. To increase engagement, it learns what gets attention—fear, outrage, certainty—and serves more of it. It’s our mirror.
Impartially.
The big question isn’t whether AI will help us find truth—like I said before, it cares not. The real question is whether we can use its power while remembering to make distinctions for ourselves. That responsibility sits exactly where we’d prefer it didn’t: with us.
If the system isn’t making the distinction, we have to learn how.
Not perfectly. Not with certainty.
There’s a systems-thinking phrase often attributed to W. Edwards Deming: every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. If we don’t like the results, we don’t get to blame the output. We have to look at the system.
We’ll never do that perfectly. That’s the Letting Go.
But we still have to do it with enough Care to notice when we’re believing something because it’s compelling instead of because it holds up.
That’s the polarity this chapter points to: Care AND Letting Go. And underneath that sits another: Verify Truth AND Make Meaning. Facts AND Story. Lean too far into story to the neglect of truth and we drift into whatever feels right. Lean too far into truth to the neglect of story and we end up with something accurate that no one pays attention to.
Same with trust. Give it away too easily and you’ll get burned. Withhold it completely and nothing moves.
So we’re back where we started—living in the tension.
Not something to solve. Something to live.
The image of the straw dogs lands differently from here. Not dismissive, but clarifying. Things don’t last just because we want them to. Roles, ideas, positions, even strongly held beliefs—they all have a lifespan whether we acknowledge it or not.
The system keeps moving. And the more tightly we grip what’s already shifting, the more disoriented we become.
More knowledge,
more confusion.
More knowing,
more illusion–
Not exactly the marketing message for the Information Age, but here we are.
Maybe becoming wiser isn’t about collecting more information. Maybe it’s about seeing the pattern sooner. Recognizing when we’re mistaking confidence for clarity. Noticing when repetition starts to feel like truth. And learning to stay engaged without getting pulled into every current that passes by.
Heaven and earth make no distinction.
We still have to.
Not because we’re better than the system, but because we’re in it.
Are we learning to work it—or just getting worked by it?
Care deeply.
Let go completely.
The bellows is inexhaustible.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Care And Let-go:
INVITATIONS:
To use an “AI-trained Chat w/Cliff for Step 1, Seeing” CLICK HERE.
Ready for the Polarity Advantage? Go deeper into Polarity Thinking, see our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice or in-person training with Barry Johnson and me at Kayser Ridge by CLICKING HERE.
