Member-only story
What if humans are cleverly-disguised holes?
It is common in the West to focus on presence and existence; we do not seem to pay much attention to absence as a necessary correlate of any existence. For example, here is Chapter 11 of the Tao Te Ching, an ancient Chinese text that is the basis of Taoism:
Thirty spokes are joined in the wheel’s hub.
The hole in the middle makes it useful.
Mold clay into a bowl.
The empty space makes it useful.
Cut out doors and windows for the house.
The holes make it useful.
Therefore, the value comes from what is there,
But the use comes from what is not there.
In other words, usefulness depends on emptiness. This kind of message probably falls upon deafened Western ears, however, because we are too busy toiling away at work and being exploited by capitalism.
I prefer to frame this concept in terms of negation instead of emptiness, because negation is a process whereas emptiness is an attribute. If, for example, I claim to be a man, then this means that I am not a woman or any other gender, and that by affirming my gender as a man I am negating all other genders I could have been. This goes for physical objects as well: if this fruit is an apple, then this means that it is not any other kind of fruit, and I am negating all these other options in order to identify this…
