The Confused Confucius

2025-07-15

When I started writing this post, I expected falling on a much more esoteric note. Still an extremely abstract text with no actionable insight, but I think it can be understood.

What ties together economic cycles, the Vitruvian Man, and Chinese cosmology?

The yin and the yang.

Yin and Yang. The dichotomy of everything. Yin: construction, nuturing, caring, healing, creating. Yang: destruction, transforming, ordering, enslaving.

Yin and yang are complementary and at the same time opposing forces that together form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are essential for the cohesion of the whole.¹

The Vitruvian man: A man within both a circle and a square. The circle is centered on the navel, symbol of the connection to the mother, the birth and creation. The square is centered on the dick, symbol of power and dominance. Weapons are dick-shaped. Circles don’t have sharp hedges, they are welcoming, they protect enclose a safe environment. They are also how things naturally arrange themselves, as the optimal ratio of area to circumference. The square has sharp edges, it isn’t found in nature. But also, it’s made to be imbricated with other squares, it’s order and control. Our mother grows us, society bumps us into a shape, so that we fit into it. We are all subject to this machine. The drawing is that of a man, but all genders are subject to it.

Vitruvius, who inspired the Da Vinci drawing, was an architect.

Urbanism: Lewis Mumford described the transition from social order to civilisation, very much in the same terms: circles vs squares.

The circle of pre-civilisation cities: villages of equal wealth, and periodic jubelees. Matriarcal arrangement where everyone was responsible to everyone else. The village was a safe haven delimited off of the dangers of nature roamed by now extinct ferocious creatures.

The squares of civilisation: citadels delimited by tall walls, to protect from other humans. Long streets with perfect visibility from beginning to end, an earlier version of the panopticon. Totalitarian societies ordered according to the wishes of an ultimate emperor of divine right.

Wishes of a single person, imposed on all through domination and hegemony: the constant violence and war of Mesopotamian civilisations, the relative peacability of ancient Egypt, cooperation to build giant pyramids, incarnation of civilisation: square bases and square blocks to fit together. The patriarchy in action.

If you’ve heard my opinion on The City in History, you might be surprised: I do think the first half is complete bollocks. But still, a compeling narrative, a genesis of our time, beautiful, despite being confabulated.

The middle ages: the abandon of civilisation, the soaring back into an organic life, based on local constraints, individual choice and neighbourly coordination. Meandering city streets, no endless perspectives. Each viewpoint an expression of how human life fits local conditions, the city talks to you about its own birth it’s an expression of life and itself.

But civilisation comes back with vengeance. Balistics, double entry bookkeeping, Adam Smith. New tools of domination and hegemony. We regressed back to the period of centralized control, the Baroque era. The cities aren’t the expression of their own existance anymore, they are the ode to the glory of the armies, states and emperors.

The long straight lines are back again. Large avenues designed for fast horses and large troops. Leaving the mere human local as trampling fodder. Windy narrow roads, designed for human community, are destroyed and replaced by the square layout, wide avenues to external invasions, the living space itself designed to wash off any personality out of the city.

The individual subsumed, grinded and fit into the greater machine of progress. Power, industry, profits, those are more importants than the mere human creature. The machines rebelled and enslaved us. We now work for them, instead of them for us.

Circle and square, circle again and square again. Opposing forces of generation and submission.

The yin and the yang.

But within itself, the yang provide the seeds of its own destruction. Or rather, transformation into the yin. And within yin, the yang is here to bloom again.

I don’t know. This is weird. The yin and the yang are expressed in the Vitruvian Man, there is no doubt. The circle and the square, the generation and subsumation. But how comes? Neither Da Vinci or Vitruvius have oriental ties.

Taijitu as the supreme idea: the ultimate abstraction. You eventually fall into it if you abstract your thinking enough. It’s the bridge between the scientific and the spiritual.

Maybe that’s it? There is a fundamental truth to complex systems? A truth known since the dawn of time, to everyone everywhere. The Taijitu.