Food for Thought

Absence is useful.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching. Verse 11. trans David Hinton.

I have a satirical view of society that lends a beautiful interpretation to the lines:

Presence gives things their value
but absence makes them work

The logical structure of the couplet can be simplified as a parallelism or a dichotomy:

Presence -> value
absence -> work

But I think of the concept more like this:

Presence -> absence -> Work -> value

Really, the value lies all within the work. Therefore creating absence is the real value. The valuable thing itself does no work, and as such, has no real value. Gold rings, fashionable clothing, luxury accommodation... produces no worth.

But to maintain an absence, a perceived value must be present and withheld. Their purpose serves to attract people to a life of useless wealth, and ironically the people must work and be useful in their attempt to attain this presence.

I would say instead:

Work gives life value
but presence creates absence

I thought about the question, what purpose do humans serve in relation to the world? I couldn't come up with a substantial meaning. So I observed what do people do? What are the consequences of their actions? I looked at the effects human civilization has had on the planet, to find a purpose. Seems like people consume natural resources, use everything up and move on to the next area.

Suppose I am a creator-alien who fashions man out of my wish-bone to serve some purpose. Assuming I am a competent inventor, what do the actions of mankind reveal about its usefulness? People are useful for extracting 'resources' out of a planet. We're useful for 'ridding' the planet of valuable junk. We're like sea slugs that suck an aquarium tank clean of algae.

OK, so if the point of human existence is mere consumption of natural resources to terra-form the planet... that explains people who trade their labor for natural resources and food. But what about rich people who hold on to more resources than they can use up alone, who hoard and seek more riches to hoard, without excavating the land? How do they help mankind's ultimate purpose, to cleanse the Earth of gold, coal, and oil?

My explanation is that the purpose of the wealthy 1%  is simply to do nothing. By holding on to more resources than they can consume, they create absence of wealth for the laborers. Laborers lack the resources to survive, and this absence drives them to work.

The wealthy, by holding on to their wealth, create a potential difference of resource-labor that keeps the greater majority of the population at work. If they would distribute their wealth, only using as much for themselves as they needed, then their beneficiaries would be less compelled to break their backs on labor.

So the rich do-nothing's are absent of usefulness, except insomuch as they induce usefulness in a larger population to labor with the aim of becoming useless themselves.