Does completeness signify a lack of life?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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Below is a monologue by the protagonist from the film Stalker (1978, directed by Tarkovsky):

“Let what was conceived come to pass. Let them believe. And let them laugh at their passions; for what they call passion is not truly spiritual energy, but merely friction between the soul and the outside world. And above all, let them believe in themselves and become helpless like children, for weakness is great, and strength is insignificant… When a person is born, he is weak and supple; when he dies, he is rigid and hard. When a tree grows, it is tender and flexible; when it is dry and hard, it dies. Rigidity and strength are companions of death; flexibility and weakness express the freshness of being. Therefore, that which has hardened shall not triumph.”

This particular thought intrigued me greatly, even though the film is rich in many other meanings.

It seems the filmmakers took this idea from the Tao Te Ching.

“…Let them believe in themselves and become helpless like children…” This is a rather profound, counter-intuitive inversion of what we are accustomed to.

Life as becoming—its very possibility—lies in incompleteness, in a lack of rigidity, in plasticity; qualities made possible, in turn, by weakness and pliability.

The completeness of a form implies its finished state, yet with that completeness, life itself—as a process of becoming—comes to an end. To structure, to systematize, to bring to completion—these are the aims of the intellect as it grows strong. Yet it is precisely this completion that threatens death.

What is your take on such ideas? Is this not the true quintessence of any philosophy?

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As you say the sentiment in the quote is very Taoist.

“The highest form of goodness is like water. Water nourishes the ten thousand things and does not try to. It contentedly settles in places that people disdain. Thus, it is very close to the Tao.”

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Yes, of course, what has been said is highly poetic—and, in a sense, imprecise. Questions immediately arise: is becoming truly infinite? After all, any process of becoming in the present moment is possible only within a given form. Moreover, why should weakness—rather than strength—be the necessary space for the becoming of the human being?

From an analytical standpoint, there are more questions than answers, and the assertion itself is easily refuted. Yet, it is precisely such texts that create a sense of participating in the truth within the moment of one’s own existence—much like poetry, music, or art.

I hope that the philosophical mind, despite its rigor and exacting nature, proves highly receptive to the very premises that spark all subsequent intellectual inquiry.

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I think ‘weakness’ is the wrong word. Yielding or suppleness might be a better word. Taoism is full of allegories like how water will wear down a moutain range. It’s not weak, but it’s also not proud or haughty. But then, Jesus was also like that. Born in a manger, you know. Not a potentate or emperor but a servant.

I don’t really understand what bearing this has on ‘becoming’, though. For some reason, I am reminded of Krishnamurti, ‘the old must cease for the new to be’. For Krishnamurti, becoming was always an endless quest which never found fulfilment, it was always pursuit, trying to get or to be. Likewise in Plato, there was always a contrast drawn between being and becoming, being was the only real object of knowledge, becoming was the sensory realm of the transient and the ephemeral.

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I perceive a connection here: the passage contrasts completeness with life. “A tree is dry and rigid when it dies.” Life ebbs away when the entity bearing it becomes too rigid, too hard—too “complete.” In other words, my view is this: life itself is the gap between the current state and a state that allows for no further change. “Becoming” is not yet life in the fullest sense, yet it is impossible without room for internal restructuring or external change.

Thus, strength—as a symbol of rigidity—diminishes vitality itself.

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But rigidity is not strength and suppleness is not weakness.

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Interestingly, the original source puts it exactly this way:

76 Tao Te Ching:

At birth, a human being is tender and weak; at death, he is rigid and stiff. All creatures and plants are tender and weak at birth; at death, they are dry and withered. The rigid and stiff are what perish, while the tender and weak are what begin to live. Therefore, a mighty army does not triumph, and a strong tree meets its end.

The strong and mighty do not possess the advantage that the tender and weak do.

Here, strength, rigidity, and stiffness are treated as equivalents. There is a distinct concept here—albeit one that is perhaps open to debate.

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It could also be considered that Tao was a renunciate philosophy. Confucius was gently parodied for being conventional and legalistic.

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This passage aligns with the very old idea of flexibility, such as that of a bamboo. We lose flexibility as we learn, acquire experience, and become rigid in our ways. The tao suggests a life of adaptability and flexibility: yield, give way, accept and be open.

Force and dominance cannot sway to the direction of the wind.

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Yes, the future is open, unknown and uncertain. Among the many other lessons in what you say, this is one of them.

Interesting topic…

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I prefer Taoism to, say, Buddhism, as I find that it has a sense of humour, as Buddhism seems not to. When/if asked, I call myself a Gaian Taoist, as regards spiritual matters. But this is a bit of a derail, so I’ll shut up now. :wink:

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@Astorre

Ultimately the quote seems to point to the vitality and wisdom of being humble and cooperative.

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Does completeness signify a lack of life?

If completeness conveys a kind of heavenly satisfaction with the way things are, then I envy those who have arrived there. Even in such a state one is animated, pursuing the cycles that has become the structure of that satisfaction.

The problem of being alive is that we will be always be incomplete, until the question has no further relevance to us. This is the burden of kinds of hunger (desire), whether rudimentary or sophisticated.

This question evokes potent and poetic analogues of the Taijitu. Earth sits between the Sun and the colder outer darkness. In that sweet spot life exploded, but it never rests whether in its biological or psychological (r)evolutions.

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These brief lines seem to hold so much meaning that, as you try to pin down even a shred of it in concrete terms, you experience an unverifiable sense of clarity—yet you are left without any specific judgment to show for it. It is like a game. A game of philosophy?

Knowledge is power. Surprisingly, by imposing structure on events, refining details, and extracting specifics from a unified whole, we seem to gain control over them. Yet, paradoxically, in gaining that control and power—and the rigidity that comes with it—we lose that very sense of vitality and wonder at the simple things. It follows, then, that the knowledge which grants power simultaneously renders the knower less alive; the “magic” vanishes.

Often, when I see someone working diligently on something, I ask myself: you might create this and solve a specific problem, but what comes next? Will the problem vanish, or will its resolution give rise to new ones?

“Theories of everything” frequently appear on this forum. On the surface, they look like solutions to every problem—concepts that unravel the mystery of existence. Of course, upon closer inspection, things turn out to be far less simple. The very idea of ​​finding that elusive description—one that captures reality with absolute precision and offers a definitive resolution—seems both intuitive and logical. For some reason, our brains are wired to simplify, to reduce everything to a single, all-encompassing truth. Yet, it is precisely in that state of resolution that a sense of finality lies; consequently, life—at least as we understand it—ceases to exist. All that remains is an algorithm.

Yes, I see that too. Moreover, to my mind, the concept of the “thing-in-itself” (or “thing in and of itself”) is an elegant mental construct that allows us to treat an object as a concept for the sake of understanding. The catch, however, is that nothing I have ever encountered can exist apart from something else: coins lying on a table remain coins precisely because the external environment allows them to retain that form (to use Pinter’s example).

The point here is that “becoming” is made possible through changes in interaction—through being embedded in something else. In this sense, the rigidity of wood effectively drops out of the process of becoming, because its very stiffness prevents it from changing (in conjunction with something else).