Zhuangzi: As Long as Sages Live, the Great Thief Cannot Be Stopped
“He who steals a belt buckle is executed; he who steals a state becomes a duke—and at the duke’s gate, ‘benevolence and righteousness’ are inscribed.”
Last March, I was scrolling on the subway when I saw a news headline: an internet company had just wrapped up a company-wide “mission and vision reformulation” training. Two weeks later, they laid off 18% of their staff.
And this wasn’t an isolated case.
This year another major company published an Employee Values Handbook at its annual gala. In the same month, that company was hit with regulatory penalties because its algorithm defaulted to enabling microphone permissions. After that, an even more famous company declared “customer first, employee second, shareholder third”—and then had an employee work himself to death from overtime.
Every time I see this kind of news, my reaction used to be anger. Then it became numbness.
It reminded me of what Zhuangzi said: as long as sages live, the great thief cannot be stopped.
In modern terms: this is not a failure of morality. This is the success of moral labeling.
Once you label something “sagely,” the thief knows where to aim
In Quqie, Zhuangzi tells this story. Tian Chengzi killed the ruler of Qi and usurped the state. But Qi already had a full set of “sagely laws.” Tian Chengzi didn’t just steal the state—he stole the sagely laws along with it. As a result, he secured the state he had stolen. As Zhuangzi puts it: “Tian Chengzi had the name of a thief, yet he sat as peacefully as the legendary sage-kings Yao and Shun.”
Zhuangzi’s logic: once you define “sage,” the thief knows where to disguise himself. Once you define “virtue,” the thief knows where to gild himself. The sharper the standard of the sage, the more refined the disguise of the thief.
Drop this logic into the present and it reads like a footnote to corporate management theory.
When a company hasn’t written its Values Handbook yet, the relationship between worker and boss is naked: you give labor, I give money. The moment a values handbook exists, the relationship becomes symbolic. “Mission-driven,” “user-first,” “embrace change”—none of these phrases are constraints on the company. They are constraints on the employees.
When you’re being squeezed, you can’t complain, because the company will say “this is to better serve our users.” When you’re laid off, you can’t complain, because the contract says “let’s embrace change together.”
The irony is that the effectiveness of this rhetoric depends entirely on it “sounding good.” If the same phrase became “centered on maximizing shareholder value,” nobody would buy it.
Sage is the great thief’s most effective armor.
Steal a belt buckle, get executed. Steal a country, become a duke.
In the same chapter, Zhuangzi has an even more famous line: “He who steals a belt buckle is executed; he who steals a state becomes a duke—and at the duke’s gate, ‘benevolence and righteousness’ are inscribed.”
Kill someone for stealing a buckle. Crown someone for stealing a country. And the new ruler’s gate is proudly inscribed with the words “benevolence and righteousness.”
The line reads like today’s headlines.
The fruit shop owner downstairs from my apartment was reported last month for short-weighting customers. The scale was confiscated, the shop was shut for two weeks. The same week, the news ran a story about a listed company fined for accounting fraud—the fine was a fraction of a percent of last year’s net profit. The next day the CEO was on his own podcast talking about “long-termism.”
Zhuangzi isn’t denouncing the unfairness of institutions. He is exposing a deeper paradox: the intensity with which moral standards are enforced is always applied in reverse scale. The smaller the violation, the harsher. The bigger the violation, the gentler. Because the big violators are the ones who set the standards, and they don’t aim the blade at themselves.
The paradox holds on internet platforms too. An ordinary user violates a privacy clause, and their account is suspended instantly. A platform violates a thousand privacy clauses, pays a fine, and keeps operating. The fine, relative to platform revenue, is a rounding error.
Unfortunately, Zhuangzi did not offer a solution. He didn’t believe there was one.
The perfect person has no self, the divine person has no merit, the sage has no name
So what does Zhuangzi propose instead?
In Free and Easy Wandering he gives an answer: “The perfect person has no self; the divine person has no merit; the sage has no name.”
The highest person doesn’t need the label “self.” The mightiest person doesn’t need the label “achievement.” The most moral person doesn’t need the label “fame.”
This isn’t modesty. It’s a refusal.
Zhuangzi’s logic: the moment you are named “a sage,” you are trapped by that name. You have to do what “a sage” should do, say what “a sage” should say, carry what “a sage” should carry. The script the name writes for you eventually replaces who you actually are.
I have a college friend, W. He runs a content account in a niche area, with nearly a hundred thousand followers across platforms. Two years ago we went hiking together. Halfway up the mountain, he sat down on the steps and told me he hadn’t posted anything he actually wanted to post for four years.
Every time he felt like posting something slightly “unprofessional”—venting about life, posting cat pictures, complaining about housing prices—he’d hesitate for a long time and end up deleting it. Because he was afraid of damaging his “persona.”
The persona was stealing the person.
This is the modern version of “the name of the sage.” Followers give you a label, the platform rewards the label, and to keep traffic flowing you have to look more and more like the label. Eventually the label becomes your cage.
Zhuangzi’s cure is radical: don’t accept the label.
But this path is brutally hard to walk today. The cost of not accepting a label is invisibility. The algorithm doesn’t reward people without labels. Society doesn’t know how to handle people without labels. So “the perfect person has no self” reads today more like an ideal than an actionable plan.
So what’s the use of reading Zhuangzi
A little more vigilance.
Every time I see a new “sage-tier” narrative—a company preaching mission, a platform preaching empowerment, some influencer preaching self-discipline—I ask myself: who is this ‘sage’ serving? Who profits from this ‘sage’?
That reflexive suspicion might be the first gift Zhuangzi left for modern readers.
He didn’t turn us into sages. He let us see through the sage’s armor.