The Dao of Gangstas

The story explores the concept of Tao in the world of gangsters. It suggests that even criminals have their own way of operating, which includes qualities such as sagacity, courage, righteousness, wisdom, and humaneness. Gangsters are expected to be loyal, fair, and truthful with each other, while also being capable of exercising justice when necessary. The story satirically critiques the moral language and exemplars of society, highlighting the hypocrisy and impurity of ethical myths. It concludes that there is no pure moral narrative or exemplar, as morality can be both good and bad. This reflects the idea that morality is a volatile tool that can bring out the best and worst in people. The Tao of Gangsters Gangster Gee was asked by one of his gang members, Do gangsters have their Tao too? Gee replied, How could they get anywhere without their Tao? Having a hunch where something is hidden? That's sagely. Going in first? That's courageous. Leaving last? That's righteous. Knowing what's doable and what's not? That's wise. Sharing the spoils fairly? That's humane. There has never been a great gangster in this world who lacked any of these five virtues. The Hong Kong edition of Martin Scorsese's mobster classic Goodfellas is shrewdly titled with a Chinese proverb directly taken from this story in the Chuang-tzu. Tao yi o Tao, gangsters have their Tao too. The notion of Tao, central not only to Taoism but to all traditional Chinese philosophies, literally means way and generally refers to the course of nature, the regular processes and patterns that shape everything. More specifically, Tao also means the right way, both in the pragmatic sense of an effective way of doing something and in the ethical sense of doing something in a morally correct way. The saying, gangsters have their Tao too, combines these pragmatic and ethical meanings. Criminals too must follow some right way to succeed and moreover, they typically develop a strong sense of morality among themselves. The mobster term Goodfella is an example of the ethics of crooks. In a criminal organisation, morality is highly valued. Gangfellas need to be good. They have to be loyal, brave, fair and truthful with one another. They need to show generosity, even forgiveness wherever appropriate but must also be capable of exercising stern justice in the interest of their community whenever necessary. An Italian mafia member is respectfully called uomo d'onore, a man of honour. As Bob Dylan says in one of his songs, to live outside the law you must be honest. The same paradox is effectively stressed in the Chinese proverb, gangsters have their Tao too. The Chinese word for gangster is pronounced Tao, just like the way. It is a perfect pun. The moral qualities listed by gangster qi are part of the mainstream Confucian ethical vocabulary in early China just as today. Sagacity, sheng, courage, yong, righteousness, yi, wisdom, ji and humaneness, ren. The chapter in the Zhuangzi in which this short story occurs, in Brook Zaporin's translation titled Breaking into Trunks, breaks metaphorically into the trunks of the moral language of its time to show how moral terminology has been misappropriated throughout society and in particular by devious and violent rulers. The chapter chastises murderous feudal elites who adorn themselves with moral virtues, assign themselves honourable titles and present their rule as benevolent. Those who steal belt buckles get executed, the chapter says, while those who steal kingdoms become lords. This too seems to be a timeless truth since there is a verse in another Bob Dylan song saying the same. Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king. Ironically, Dylan stole this line from Eugene O'Neill's play The Emperor Jones. The high-minded self-description of the lowlife gangster qi with its moral language is grotesquely incongruent and therefore funny. More precisely, it is carnivalesque because it satirically critiques the privileged social strata like the medieval carnival by revealing the less-than-holy characteristics of its members that normally remain hidden under graceful and dignified facades. The story not only expresses a social critique, however, it also conveys a philosophical critique of morality and specifically of moral language and moral exemplars. This becomes evident in the interpretation that immediately follows it in the Zhuangzi. This story shows that just as good people cannot establish themselves in society without the Tao of moral exemplars, gangsters too cannot operate without the very same Tao. But there are just a few good people in this world and a lot of bad ones. Therefore, while moral exemplars benefit the world a little, they harm it a lot. After this pessimistic conclusion that morality and moral role models have done much more damage than good, the chapter works itself up to an ever more radical rant against everything and everyone moral. Echoing some of the anti-moralist lines from the Daodejing but speaking more confrontationally and anarchically, it says, crush and smash the moral exemplars, set the gangsters and criminals free. Then it demands to slash the Confucian role models, Cheng Shen and Shi Qiu, and to make the philosophers Yang Chu and Mo Di shut up. Not stopping there, it wants to eliminate all elaborate craftwork, saying that the fingers of master carpenter Xue must be broken. All this needs to be done to restore an idyllic past when a simple, innocent and peaceful lifestyle supposedly existed and was subsequently destroyed by the cunning inventions of morality, artisanship, technology and governance. Such a lifestyle is described almost literally with lines from the Daodejing. Neighboring states are within sight of one another and the sounds of chickens and dogs are mutually heard. People reach old age and die without traveling back and forth. In those times, perfect order prevailed. Interpreters tend to read this all literally. The British translator A.C. Graham ascribed the whole chapter, along with those that surround it, to an individual author who strayed from the core message of the Zhuangzi and whom he identifies as the primitivist. According to Graham, the primitivist is an extremist who despises the whole of moral and aesthetic culture and wants to return to the simplest mode of life. For Graham, the texts written by the primitivist are political polemics, promoting a Daoist conception of society in competition with other ideologies of the time. Somewhat contradictorily, this extremist Daoist ideology, as Graham writes, is informed by undaoistic passions, scorn and anger. In Graham's primitivist reading, Gangster Ji's reflections are part of a political treatise written by a bad Daoist, a fanatic who cannot control his emotions and, as Graham says, only has vicious contempt. This vicious contempt makes the primitivist a mirror image of the villains he criticizes. He does not shy away from violence to realize his political vision of a perfect order and becomes something like a Daoist counterpart of the modern-day Cambodian dictator Pol Pot who wanted to brutally force his whole country into a primitive form of communism. A problem with the primitivist interpretation of the Breaking into Trunks chapter is that it suggests extremist messages hard to reconcile with the rest of the Zhuangzi. Moreover, as Graham admits, it reads quite undaoistic passions into the text. It does not register the satirical tone that comes to the fore in passages such as Gangster Ji's dialogue. It sees only anger and no humor. Such a non-humorous reading may be likened to a literal understanding of contemporary stand-up comedians. If you do not recognize their irony and intentional exaggeration, you may well regard them, in Graham's words, as extremists who despise the whole of moral and aesthetic culture. Rather than as an intro to an extremist political manifesto, the Dao of Gangsters dialogue may be read as an intro to a satirical social critique. Its main point, then, is to subvert the moral exemplars mentioned by Gangster Ji, the protagonists of the dominant ethical narratives in early China. In a satirical way, Gangster Ji debunks not only the abundant moral hypocrisies in early Chinese society, but also the ethical myths on which these were founded. Just as the carnival in pre-modern Europe revealed the ambiguities of the Christian master narratives and their supposedly immaculate protagonists, the whole breaking-into-trunks chapter, not only the Gangster Ji story, reveals the ambiguities and the impurity of the ethical legends of early China and their supposedly spotless moral heroes. The end of the chapter summarizes this succinctly. Everyone knows how to point out what's wrong with those who are taken to be evil. But no one knows how to point out what's wrong with those who are taken to be good. That is why we are in such a mess. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in The Twilight of the Idols, revealed the dark side of moral exemplars of the Western tradition, the Zhuangzi satirically reveals how, in social and historical reality, any moral story, any moral vocabulary, and any moral hero, without exception, can be put to both good and bad use. There is no moral narrative and no moral exemplar that is, in and of itself, pure. With ironic exaggeration and subtlety, the Tao of Gangsters story and the chapter Breaking into Trunks showed what Martin Scorsese showed much later in Goodfellas. Morality is a highly volatile social tool and up for anyone's grabs. It not only brings out and encourages the best in people, likewise it brings out the worst.