A blank sheet of paper, indeed. In the Tao Te Ching (“Way of Life”), Lao Tze wrote of the ways in which the void and vacuum which is always an absent presence represents the anchor of life, of experience and freedom. The hole in the wheel is that which makes it useful; the absence in the cup is what allows it to hold water.
This lockdown and totalitarian imprisonment of vast swathes of a population represents another kind of absence. It is the absence of compassionate, intelligent leadership. It is the stark and overwhelming absence of freedom of speech. It is the haunted, hollow and futile absence of an adaptive, progressive social and political system that serves the people it currently tries to imprison and exploit.
The more the government asserts blame elsewhere, the more inept and guilty they look. The blank sheet of paper represents an absence of freedom but much more than the COVID oppression and broader social lockdowns that the CCP have been engaging in for years now, it represents the complete and utter absence of governmental competence and responsibility.
The power of the blank sheet of paper is that even if it is removed from media it does not cease to exist. Only nothing lasts forever and, like freedom, it is as mysterious and truly binding as it is irrepressible. It is the absence of freedom that highlights the absence of good government.
Daedelus Kite 