Go! More Than a Game by Peter Shotwell

Author:Peter Shotwell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0006-0
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

The Dark School of Daoism Versus the Confucians

Go is a sacred game in several other senses, too. Almost always in traditional societies, gambling is considered a sanctified activity. In India, for example, a strip-dice game between Shiva and Parvati is what keeps the universe going. Looked at in this way, Dan Zhu becomes the world’s first gambler and his myth resembles those of the North American Indians, where god-gamblers come down to earth to teach the people new games, who end up losing everything by having to sell their children, wives, and finally themselves into slavery. Other gods must then come down and, with the aid of humans, restore order. Usually, this dark side of Go stays hidden, but gambling at Go has always been an integral part of the cultures of the East, and still is, as the semi-autobiographical novel First Kyu by Sunghwa Hong so vividly relates.

But the Confucians were not objecting to Go only because of its addictive gambling qualities. A deeper philosophical reason for the Han historians’ objections to Go playing lay in their moral- and rule-based philosophical opposition to the relativism of Daoism, particularly the Dark School of this philosophy, which flourished c. 500–300 B.C. This is when warrior-philosophers such as Sun Zi composed a general “philosophy of action” that is still not only valid but also became the basis of Chinese rebellions ever since (including the present-day Falon Gong). In general, this philosophy stressed that “all is change, nothing is permanent,” and that the path to victory (and general success in life) was being able to manipulate the forces of yin and yang to one’s advantage with the least amount of effort, an activity Go represents to the fullest. For them, these lessons held in life, love and war.

Ironically, it was the Confucians who had supported the local feudal lords during the Warring States period, but it was the Daoists who generally supported the idea of an empire that would bring peace. The first empire of China, created in 225 B.C. by Qin Huan Shi (who later built the Great Wall), was won by following the Daoist strategies of his ministers. (See page 173 and the Update Chapter for why the early Daoist didn't write about Go.) However, once the Han had united China in 206 B.C., after the quick collapse of the first empire, it was in the rulers’ interests to promote the unchanging, fealty-inducing principles of Confucianism. The Daoist approaches were muzzled by the historians, and most of their texts, 70 percent of which have been found to be secret military treatises, (including the Dao De Jing ), remained buried and were largely thought of as forgeries until their discovery by archaeologists in the last thirty years. However, before the Han period, when the early Confucians were writing about non-addictive Go playing in non-pejorative terms (see the Update Chapter), the game was likely a primitive one like our checkers and its Daoist underpinnings were probably quite unnoticed. This changed after the Han

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