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From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 68 (Unpublished):
The best fighters
are not hungry for violence.
The best soldiers
understand their adversaries.
The best competitors
do not worship conquest.
The best leaders
lead with humility.
The ancients knew:
what pushes hardest
breaks first.
what grasps tightly
loses hold.
The best in us
does not dominate.
It lives as virtue
from the deepest source.
—
I have a confession – I love science fiction movies, and this chapter spurred scenes from The Matrix. Not the leather trench coat, slow-motion bullets, or even the flying – although all that was cool. What jumps out is that moment everything changes for Neo — when he stops trying to overpower the system surrounding him. Something in him lets go.
Up until then, he spends most of the movie trying to become “The One.” Trying to prove himself. Trying to force himself into mastery over a system he barely understands. And like most terrified humans trapped inside systems larger than themselves, the harder he forces it, the more trapped he becomes.
Then comes the turning point. Fear exhausts itself. Something loosens. He stops grasping. And suddenly the world reorganizes itself in front of him. The bullets freeze. The illusion becomes visible. The code underneath the performance reveals itself for what it is.
The older I get, the more that scene feels less like science fiction and more like a documentary about consciousness.
And especially now, I sometimes feel like I’m still stuck in the early part of that movie.
We’re living through this bizarre moment in human history where almost anyone with access to artificial intelligence can generate the appearance of brilliance. Essays. Arguments. Strategies. Images. Confidence. Certainty. Entire industries are forming around synthetic intelligence layered on top of very human insecurity.
Everyone can now sound like the smartest person in the room.
That’s different from being wise.
Richard Barrett’s work on human consciousness keeps coming to mind here. What I’ve always appreciated about Barrett is that beneath all the models and frameworks sits a fairly ordinary human observation: when fear dominates people and systems for too long, distortion follows.
Fear-based consciousness pulls both poles out of relationship.
It creates false clarity — the rigid certainty that comes from needing to be right rather than actually seeing clearly. And it weakens genuine openness because when survival feels threatened, curiosity starts feeling dangerous.
Barrett’s later stages of development point toward something different: the capacity to hold conviction and remain teachable. To see clearly and stay curious. To have boundaries and remain in relationship.
When fear dominates for too long, human beings become consumed by survival, control, status, validation, and protection. Organizations drift into blame, bureaucracy, manipulation, and internal competition. Leaders start performing certainty instead of cultivating wisdom.
Spend five minutes online and it’s hard not to see it everywhere. Political tribes performing outrage. Corporations performing virtue. Influencers performing authenticity. AI systems learning to amplify whatever keeps human attention emotionally activated longest.
And underneath all of it sits a deeper anxiety that no amount of information seems capable of resolving:
What if nobody actually knows what they’re doing anymore?
Maybe that’s why this chapter feels so relevant to me.
The best fighters are not driven by violence. The best leaders lead with humility. That sounds almost absurd inside a culture increasingly organized around performance, dominance, certainty, and algorithmic attention warfare. But maybe that’s exactly the point.
Lao Tzu keeps returning to the same pattern: the strongest force is often the least obsessed with appearing strong. The wisest person may be the one least trapped by the need to win every argument. The most grounded leader may be the one capable of remaining open long enough to keep learning.
That feels connected to the polarity of Clarity AND Openness.
Clarity matters. Some things are true. Some actions have consequences. Some systems become destructive. Discernment matters. Boundaries matter. Judgment matters.
But Clarity to the neglect of Openness hardens into ideology, certainty, and domination. People stop listening. Curiosity dies. Opponents become enemies. Complexity gets flattened into emotional slogans instead of understood.
At the same time, Openness to the neglect of Clarity dissolves into drift, manipulation, and endless relativism. A mind can become so open it loses the ability to stand anywhere at all.
Neither pole is the problem. The danger comes from over-identifying with one while abandoning the other.
And in a world where AI can generate infinite certainty, the ability to hold Clarity without hardening into rigidity becomes a survival skill. The ability to remain Open without dissolving into confusion becomes equally essential.
This is not developmental theory for its own sake. This is about what human maturity looks like when systems around us are optimizing for fear.
What strikes me most about Barrett’s later stages of development is how closely they mirror what many wisdom traditions have pointed toward for centuries. As human beings mature, life gradually stops revolving entirely around protection, status, and ego performance. Attention begins shifting toward meaning, integrity, contribution, relationship, and service beyond the isolated self.
Oddly enough, most people already know this.
I doubt many people reach the end of life wishing they had spent more time winning arguments on the internet.
I think that’s why I love being out at Kayser Ridge doing what I we do and when hosting retreats — what we do out there. When people look back on their lives, they rarely remember performance. They remember being loved. Friendship. Purpose. Beauty. Trust. Shared meals. Laughter. Meaningful work. Moments where they felt fully alive without needing to perform being alive for someone else.
Maybe that’s part of what Neo finally sees. The system loses its grip the moment he stops confusing performance with reality.
Maybe that’s part of what the Tao keeps trying to teach too.
Learning how to move through reality without becoming completely possessed by fear, ego, domination, or the endless need to prove ourselves through conquest.
Because what pushes hardest eventually breaks.
What grasps too tightly eventually loses hold.
And perhaps in this new AI-shaped world, where artificial certainty is becoming infinitely scalable, human flourishing may increasingly depend on recovering something much older and much simpler:
common sense
and common practice
The ability to stay human while surrounded by systems constantly pulling us away from ourselves. To remain open without losing clarity. To see through performance without losing compassion for the people trapped inside it.
Try this. The next time you feel absolute certainty rising inside a charged political, cultural, or ideological conversation, pause for a moment and ask yourself:
Am I seeing clearly, or am I performing certainty because uncertainty feels threatening?
What would I need to learn to test whether my clarity is real or defensive?
Can I hold conviction and still remain curious about what I might not yet be seeing?
This is not about doubting everything. It is about learning the difference between wisdom and the performance of wisdom.
And in a world where AI can generate the appearance of brilliance instantly, that distinction may become one of the most important human capacities we have left.
Maybe that is the deeper work now.
And maybe the best in us still does not dominate.
Maybe it lives as virtue from the deepest source.
Maybe that’s what Neo finally discovered:
the system could not be transcended by becoming more aggressive than the system.
It could only be transcended by becoming more awake within it.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Clarity AND Openness:
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.
