![\"\"](\"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/ritual-1675x2000.jpeg\")
A primary line of inquiry running through this process:<\/p>\nA primary line of inquiry running through this process:<\/p>\n
What use, possibly, are the\u00a0Changes<\/em> to us today, derived as they are from Neolithic oral mnemonic tech (poetics) that crystallized into a number of forms in writing (oracle bones, bamboo books, silk scrolls) as the Neolithic shaded into the Bronze and then Iron Ages, and that come to us in fragmentary and radically incomplete form via a welter of proliferating interpretations and commentaries and rewritings and translations?<\/p>\n In other words, what use is a text with obscured roots in the early Holocene in this, the Earth\u2019s post-Holocene ( One provisional response: No Harm = No Data.<\/p>\n Even passing engagement with the\u00a0Changes\u00a0<\/em>quickly acquaints one with “no harm” or “no blame” (\u65e0\u548e, w\u00fa ji\u00f9<\/em>). How one might interpret that today in response to a divination will vary wildly, and how, precisely, it was interpreted during the time of the Zhou, before the Confucian addition of the Ten Wings and other commentaries that transformed the often brutal content Zhouyi<\/em> into allegory and symbolism suitable for ostensibly more civilized times, is a question of bottomless scholarly speculation (there’s more on how the post-Confucian Yijing<\/em> has been interpreted, precisely because so many scholars have written so much about how to interpret it).<\/p>\n But again, in a contemporary context, what does w\u00fa ji\u00f9\u00a0<\/em>mean?<\/p>\n For now, in this poem, it means\u00a0no data<\/em> \u2014 there’s nothing to be captured by surveillance or by commercial data merchants and then used or sold for whatever purposes those who gather such data have in mind.<\/p>\n Consider this example from the Wilhelm-Baynes translation:<\/p>\n Hexagram 2: The Receptive (\u5764<\/em>\u00a0K\u016bn<\/em>)<\/strong><\/p>\n Line 4:<\/span><\/strong> “A tied-up sack. No blame, no praise.” […]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Interpretation:<\/span><\/strong> In times of political turmoil or danger, the best course of action is to maintain strict reticence and hide one’s abilities. In this way, you receive neither blame nor praise, and therefore come to no harm….<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, “no data” might well give rise to harm, too \u2014 if the doctor doesn’t know of your condition because it’s not in the database, perhaps you’ll suffer unnecessarily (and perhaps lose your life).<\/p>\n But in a more\u00a0spiritual<\/em> sense, if you will, the poem holds the conviction that the risk of being known to present-day data systems outweigh the benefits. After all, one can generally choose\u00a0<\/em>to share relevant information at a time and place of one’s choosing, when it serves one’s own purposes or those of others about whom one cares \u2014 in such moments it is auspicious<\/em> to make some aspect of one’s life known to power in one form or another.<\/p>\n And otherwise? Lay low.<\/p>\n No data = no harm<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What use, possibly, are the\u00a0Changes to us today, derived as they are from Neolithic oral mnemonic tech (poetics) that crystallized into a number of forms in writing (oracle bones, bamboo books, silk scrolls) as the Neolithic shaded into the Bronze and then Iron Ages, and that come to us in fragmentary and radically incomplete form via a welter of proliferating interpretations and commentaries and rewritings and translations?<\/p>\n Well, it’s always useful to be reminded that you never want to give yourself away…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":847,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498,367],"tags":[478,479,475,490],"line":[],"class_list":["post-767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-deep-time","category-project-notes","tag-anthropocene","tag-deep-time","tag-zhouyi-","tag--the-changes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767\/revisions\/854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767"},{"taxonomy":"line","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidfperry.com\/changinglines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/line?post=767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Anthropo<\/del>cene) turn, and in a time when the hyperobject of the technosphere is materializing at an accelerating rate in a mix of accidental, incidental, and pseudo-intentional anthropogenic disruptions of Earth systems \u2014 an endlessly messy terraforming \u2014 with dire implications across multiple dimensions for life as we know it?<\/p>\n\n
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