Not the First Time

The day in the first essay, when his manager asked him to recalculate a metric on a different basis and he did not — that was not the first time someone had asked him to change a basis.

In his first year at the company it happened too. The month-end numbers looked bad, and the team lead said: change the calculation, everyone does it. He changed it without a second thought. In those years he also believed a sentence: only the people ranked first are good employees. That ranking was the ruler he measured himself by.

Later he had a set of his own. Reports must be accurate; a basis must stay consistent; he had owned that, and if anyone asked him to swap a basis casually he would push back. But in those years he also used his set to measure the new people in the group. Anyone whose basis did not line up, he told the manager they were no good; when a deadline pressed, he scheduled other people’s weekends as though they were the hands of his rules.

And later still came the day in the first essay: he would not change the basis, he went to tell the team, and he shielded the young colleague. This essay walks back over that road. Not everyone walks it — many people stay in one place their whole lives — and it is not used here to rank anyone. Having been pushed around by others’ rules, and having pushed others around with your own, are not things to hide. Say what you did.

Why did the rules of those first years meet so little resistance? The framework says it precisely. When a person’s own law has not yet grown, rules from outside fall in without meeting anything inside, and look like a perfect fit. That is not him choosing them. It is him not yet having anything to choose with. About what a good employee was, in those years, the only thing that could surface in him was that table.

First, a Not-Doing

On the day of the first essay, the first thing he did was a not-doing: he did not change it. That is where anti-colonization starts in action.

The framework defines colonization in one line: putting one’s own ends in place of another person’s own law. Landing on a person, it brings two things. A deed: others want him to do something, and doing it lets their ends stand in for his law. A view: others want him to accept something, and accepting it lets their ruler legislate for him. So the anti-colonizing not-doing has two halves: not doing what others use to colonize you, and not taking the views they use to colonize you as your own.

And this not-doing does not need him to know first what his own law is. That day, when he did not change the basis, he could not yet necessarily say what he wanted. He had only recognised that changing it, this time, would let a year-end table decide what kind of person he was to become. Strike it out first; look further afterwards.

The view gets struck out the same way. That year he got the third rank because of that report. He still looked at the table; he still knew it fixed his bonus. Only, the first-ranked are the good employees he no longer used to measure himself. The table was still there, and the sentence was still in other people’s mouths. What he struck out was the place it had held in him, legislating for him.

Recognising colonization is sometimes easy and sometimes hard, because it comes in two branches. In one, something is pressed on him from outside: a claim weighs on him, he denies it, and the denial does not get through; this happens between him and others, and bystanders can see it. In the other, he himself believes it: something counts for him, and what holds it up is in fact an outside guarantee he has not noticed; only he can find this one. Changing the basis that first year was the first branch, visible. First rank equals good employee, sitting in him for years with nobody pressing, was the second.

And anti-colonization is not refusing everything from outside. Outside assessments can still be listened to, used, allowed to change him; what gets refused is only their position of legislating for him. Nor is changing one’s mind, or coming to care about different things, evidence of having been colonised. A change shows the position is open.

After the Not-Doing, Seeing Clearly

Having not changed the basis, he did something else: he went to tell that team. That one, he said afterwards, he could not not do.

This is an order, not a derivation. The first essay said not-doing and cannot-not-doing are two acts and neither yields the other. On this road, the not-doing came first and the clear sight of his own cannot-not came after — not because one produced the other, but because once what was pressing on him was struck out, the ground was clear, and what he himself could not not do slowly became visible. Other people’s roads can run differently.

Seeing it clearly is not retrieving it. It is not a self buried long ago and waiting to be dug up; it can be arriving in place for the first time. Nor did anyone teach it to him. The framework says I cannot not is not something that can be passed along like information; it can only happen from inside. What he saw was his own law: he cared that the people reading a report are not led astray by its numbers. That one is his.

And having a law of his own is not the end of the road. The first section already showed the years when he had his own set and used it to measure others. Not being colonised oneself and not colonising others are two different things.

She Said: Everyone Does It

That day he also thought of the young colleague: she had made the first draft the manager’s way, and if this came out, she was the likeliest to be pushed forward. He shielded her.

A few days later she said to him: The manager said change it, so I changed it. Everyone does it. He had said that sentence himself, in his first year.

He did not say to her, you’ve been colonised. He went to the manager and said the draft had been made on the manager’s instructions and she could not be made to carry it alone. And he told her about his own first year and changing the basis — and when he had finished, he did not draw the conclusion for her.

Having seen his own cannot-not clearly, he also recognises, at the same moment, that another person’s cannot-not is not his to give; it can only be set by that person. This rests on a premise — that he still treats others as ends too — and the premise is not derived from seeing his own law. Others can have value of their own, not supplied by anyone else; a person who acknowledges that has taken it into his own name. What he recognises is where her law comes from — from her — not what is in it.

So anti-colonization does not stop at not being colonised oneself. The framework’s foundations establish a single moral law: cannot not oppose the suppression of any subject’s remainder — and say in the same place that it is a law for oneself, not for others: its direction is universal, its binding falls only on the one who holds it. Putting your ends in place of another’s law presses down exactly that other’s own share of legislating. So a person who lives by his own law also opposes the colonizing act that presses down someone else’s law.

Opposing it has three edges. First, what is opposed is the act, not a verdict on what the other person has inwardly accepted. The pressed-from-outside branch can be read and opposed; the believed-by-herself branch only she can find — others can only offer a view. Going to the manager opposed the act; telling his story offered a view. Second, opposing her colonisation is not legislating for her: having moved the weight off her, where she goes is her business. Third, it is not an occasion to measure people by your own rules. That was where he stood in his middle years. Turn anti-colonization into using your law to decide right and wrong for others, and you are back there — having made yourself into the very thing you opposed.

Two Lines

Hold to anti-colonization inwardly; strive for cultivation outwardly. That is the line the whole series runs on.

The first half says hold to. Inward anti-colonization has no finishing day. The rules out there are always there and can come back under a new name, by a new route; what has got inside is not thereby yet one’s own law; habit makes some not-doings cheap and others dear. Hence hold to.

The second half says strive for. Toward others, not colonising cannot be cancelled. Cultivation is a direction: it depends on the other person being willing, being suited, and the time being ripe — and those three cannot be answered in his place. So the word is strive for, not guarantee. Opposing someone’s colonisation is part of the striving: first move what is pressing on him, so that his own law has somewhere to grow.

The line also shows the shape of the series. Essays three to five carry it mainly toward a person himself: telling what is his, can and cannot, how his own value unfolds. Essays six to nine carry it mainly toward others and a shared life: not legislating for others, living in mixed places, finding one another, guarding. These are emphases, not halves. There is anti-colonization in the outward essays — protection, resistance, guarding — and cultivating others sends a person back to ask whether his own law is really his.

The two halves are not two laws. Holding to anti-colonization inwardly and striving for cultivation outwardly come from a single acknowledgment: oneself is an end, and others are ends too.