The Daodejing is usually read today as a devotional text, but it was in fact a manual of statecraft, written for the ruler of one of the small principalities that was about to be destroyed by the large state of Qin. The text offers the vulnerable prince, who is haunted by the terror of imminent annihilation, a survival strategy. In political life, Laozi argues, people always prefer to engage in furious activity and a massive show of strength, but force and coercion are self-destructive. Everything that goes up must come down: that is a law of life, so to strengthen your enemy by yielding to
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