Wise and Lawless

IN the words of the famous Massachusetts anarchist, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “the government is best which governs not at all.” Lao Tzu's advice to political leaders, meanwhile, is that it is necessary to “rule a big country as you would fry a small fish.”

What he meant by this, is that by creating a series of complex laws and moral frameworks, governments end up stirring the pot too much and therefore everything is turned into paste. He went on to point out that “the more laws you make, the more thieves there will be.”

This is rather similar to the American Indian saying that “in the old days there were no fights about hunting grounds and fishing territories. There were no laws then, so everyone did what was right.”