Business and Money are the Prime Evils
"Merchants do not till the soil; business in its profit-seeking is the root of all evil.
"Merchants are gangsters who buy and sell… They come up with schemes for increasing their profits, they curry favor with rulers, deceive the scholars, farmers, and artisans, and compete with each other in their profit-seeking… They are the men of monstrous profits and harmful greed. They wish to make their way through the world without tiring themselves with labor; they curry favor with those both above and below themselves with artifice, a servile countenance, flattery, and lies; they deceive their own fathers, sons, and brothers… Immoral in the extreme, even in their dreams they do not know of the natural way of human beings.
"Money is the great originator of all desire and all evil. Since the appearance of money we have lived in a world of darkness, confused desires, and rampant evils."
Is it not exactly the same in the present day? Money and
Business — they have always been the symbols of the city.
"And the master artisans, the makers of vessels, the weavers — the sage uses them to build towers, fancy houses, and beautiful chambers, or for military purposes. And the artisans curry favor with those of all classes by means of artful language; seduced by the lust for more commissions, they hope for the occurrence of disasters."
In the present age we see parallels in the manufacture of such needless, and often harmful, things like trinkets and gewgaws, cars, cameras, televisions, jets, and computers, which only waste resources and spew forth pollution, and in the fact that the manufacturers of weapons and explosives hope that there will be a war, that pharmaceutical companies hope there will be lots of sick people, that manufacturers of agricultural chemicals hope there will be more rice weevils, and that construction companies hope there will be more natural disasters.
"Songs, dancing, chanting, teas ceremonies, go, backgammon, gambling, drinking and carousing, the koto, the biwa, the samisen, all arts, drama, plays… are the evil accomplices of confusion and disorder; they are all worthless amusements of the idle and gluttonous, and the businesses of pleasure; they are the frivolity which destroys oneself and one's family."
Shoeki is saying that games and the arts are merely means for achieving idleness and gluttony. Festivals! Amusement! Leisure! say our modern tertiary industries (the city), investing great amounts of resources, time, and money in their wild abandon to idiotic entertainment and events. Shoeki's statement was a severe criticism of just such things.
The Idle and Gluttonous Dominators "Should Simply be Put to
Death"