19

To lighten up the human comedy:

Be skeptical of experts,

Forget about 3000 years of beautiful tradition,

Don’t do what your parents did.

Fuggedaboudit.

Without these unnecessary, unnecessary means,

Natural, zesty enterprises will be allowed to flourish.

Moreover, if we:

Disregard learned and disputatious men,

And make fun of shrines to fame,

We will not worry about employment,

Nor distress over what to do with our lives.

Furthermore, if we:

Root artists,

And tell smut businessmen we still jerk off manually,

We won’t have to purchase immodestly priced receptacles.

Since the Supreme Court has rejected prior restraint,

We must take it upon ourselves

To face the muck,

Enrobe the ordinary,

Weaken vanity,

And steer our drives away from dumpsters.

Tao Te Ching: 19

To help humanity:

Spurn holiness,

Discard cleverness,

Abandon the doctrine of kindness,

And relinquish moral duty.

After rejecting these external injunctions,

A natural piousness and compassion will be allowed to flourish.

Moreover, if we:

Disregard academic knowledge,

And spurn ceremony,

We will be freed from anxiety over status,

And distress over details.

Furthermore, when we:

Root out artifice,

And banish profiteers,

Hustlers and thieves will be obliged to find their targets elsewhere.

However, these are just outward policies.

Within ourselves we must also come to:

Value the unadorned,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce self-consciousness,

And curtail our craving.