Lao Tsu in his Tao Te Ching shares an invaluable piece of wisdom: “The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.

Nineteen centuries ago, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.” Unfortunately, not many people listened to him.

Writing, for example, was crucial, enabling complex ideas to be transmitted many generations into the future without inevitable distortion by the failures of human memory. The persistence of religious values, or moral worldviews like Confucianism, would not have been possible without writing as a technology.

One robust account of the concept of “sageliness” in Chinese philosophy can be found in Feng (1997,6-9).” (notes to footnote 4, Chapter 4, p.75)

Schein et al. 2020; Green and McClellan 2020.” (notes to footnote 24, Chapter 10, p.234)