Dharma Master Gangxiao: The Profound Mystery of the I Ching — Psychology, Chapter 2: The Psychological Principle of "The Benevolent See Benevolence, the Wise See Wisdom": "Selecting the Information One Needs"

Chapter 2: The Psychological Principle of "The Benevolent See Benevolence, the Wise See Wisdom": "Selecting the Information One Needs"

There's a well-established principle in psychology: people select—and believe—the information that suits their needs. If we accept this principle, we can offer a rational explanation for I Ching divination.

1. Professor Aronson's Argument

Elliot Aronson is a renowned American social psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of California. His book The Social Animal first appeared in 1972 and went through three editions in just eight years. In it, he provides a rigorously scientific demonstration of the principle that "people select the information they need."

Let's start with a few concrete examples to illustrate the principle, then turn to Professor Aronson's formal argument.

Example 1. A certain fellow—we'll call him A—borrowed money to buy a car but, short on funds, could only afford a low-end model. His colleagues all noticed the car's poor performance. One day, B remarked to him, "That car really isn't very good." A exploded: "What do you know? How many cars have you even laid eyes on?" He then rattled off four or five supposed virtues of the car—several of which were hardly virtues at all—with an expression that suggested he wouldn't trade it for a luxury model even if offered. He latched onto every redeeming feature of his cheap car—the information he needed to justify the purchase—while completely ignoring the advantages of better vehicles.

Example 2. In the early days of program-controlled telephone exchanges in China, getting a phone line installed was both fashionable and hard to do. In Cantonese, the number 8 sounds nearly identical to fa (发, "prosper"), making it auspicious. Phone numbers containing 8 were once auctioned off by the state-owned telecom company—the very same company that had publicly "condemned superstition." The number 4, on the other hand, sounds close to si (死, "death") and was considered unlucky. Many people—officials, intellectuals, well-off businesspeople—were willing to pay steep prices for a number containing 8. One man planned to do the same, but by the time he inquired, no 8-containing numbers were left. Only numbers with 4 remained. If he turned those down, he wouldn't be able to get a phone line anytime soon. So he settled for a number with 4.

He'd long known all about 8's auspicious associations. But now that his own number contained 4, he could hardly say, "I chose death." Instead, he began building a case for 4, gathering evidence that "4 is actually fine." First: in numbered musical notation, 4 is pronounced fa, carrying the same sense of prospering and thriving. Second: the Arabic numeral 4 resembles the top portion of the character 发. Meanwhile, he started collecting reasons to distrust 8. First: yes, Cantonese speakers pronounce 8 as fa, homophonous with "prosper"—but in the local dialect here, nobody pronounces it that way, so it carries no such meaning. Second: in the local dialect, when something goes wrong or falls through, people say it went ba le (叭了)—like a balloon or bottle bursting with a ba sound. And isn't 8 pronounced ba? So 8 means things have burst, fallen apart, gone wrong. He was selecting exactly the information that served him.

Professor Aronson's argument is more formal and systematic:

In 1979, an accident occurred at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The reactor remained unstable for several days, threatening the lives and safety of millions of nearby residents. Imagine you live close to the plant. You could leave, find temporary housing—but doing so would be expensive and difficult, and you'd lose your job. Besides, even if you did leave, you might have already been exposed to radiation. Meanwhile, conflicting reports about the danger are everywhere. Some neighbors decide to evacuate; others shrug it off. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission assures the public that only a negligible amount of radioactive material has been released and the likelihood of a serious disaster is extremely small. A few days later, the authorities recommend evacuating children and pregnant women, adding that the advisory is purely precautionary and the danger remains minimal.

Aronson hypothesized that the message "the danger is extremely small" was tremendously useful to residents near the plant—it let them breathe easier and avoid the enormous disruption of relocating and finding new work. They'd be strongly inclined to embrace and believe it. For residents farther away, however, that same message was less personally relevant and less useful, so they were more skeptical—more likely to see it as a government ploy to pacify those living near the plant. Aronson tested this hypothesis through surveys, and the results bore it out. Meanwhile, in far-off California, rumors circulated that the accident had already claimed numerous lives and that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was incompetent.

Aronson's survey methods and analysis were scientifically rigorous, and his findings confirmed that people near the plant selected and believed the information they needed: the danger was small, and there was no need to move.

2. Dr. Freud's Argument

Sigmund Freud was born in Moravia in 1856, moved to Vienna at age four, entered the University of Vienna to study medicine in 1873, and earned his medical doctorate in 1881. By training he was a formidable scientist, and he went on to found psychoanalytic psychology. The Soviet scholar M. M. Bakhtin once remarked: "Anyone who wishes to understand the spiritual life of modern Western man more deeply cannot bypass psychoanalysis; it has become one of the most indelible marks of our age." He added: "For most people, Freud is the first and last psychologist they know" (A Survey of Freudianism, trans. Wang Hao, Liaoning People's Publishing House, 1987, p. 4). In the United States—a country on the other side of the Cold War ideological divide—the psychologist Duane Schultz wrote, in the 1981 revised edition of A History of Modern Psychology: "After his visit to Clark University, the impact of his system was immediately felt." According to Bakang, after 1910, American newspapers and magazines were saturated with Freud's ideas, and after 1920, more than two hundred books on Freudian psychoanalysis were published in the United States alone. In China, Wang Hao acknowledged: "In the West, Freud is revered as one of the greatest modern figures, on par with Einstein" (Translator's Preface, A Survey of Freudianism).

Given that Freud was a rigorously trained scientist and a psychologist of enormous reputation, let's look at how he addressed the principle of "selecting the information one needs."

Another way of stating "people select the information they need" is this: people disregard the information they don't need.

Freud argued in his writings that what we forget is precisely what we don't need. If you never really intended to do something—if you have no psychological need for it—you're the most likely to forget it. Conversely, the information that matters most to us is never forgotten; we automatically select, prioritize, and retain it. No one forgets a date with their beloved—unless they've already stopped caring. Freud went so far as to assert that if someone forgets something their lover asked them to do, you can practically bet the relationship will soon end. A person may claim to have a terrible memory, unable to retain a seven- or eight-digit phone number—yet the day a girl he admires tells him her eleven-digit mobile number, he memorizes it on the spot and remembers it for ages. A scientist might recall every detail of an experiment yet be utterly scatterbrained about everyday matters.

In Freud's view, a person doesn't merely select, notice, and believe the information they need—in extreme cases, they may exaggerate or outright fabricate it. The delusions, hallucinations, and paranoid fantasies of the mentally ill are prime examples. An adolescent patient with erotomanic delusion was absolutely convinced that the boy next door was in love with her. He had walked past her house once, nodding and smiling politely; she seized on this tiny gesture, inflated it, and interpreted it as a declaration of love. When he told her plainly that wasn't what he meant, she reframed his rejection as a test of her devotion. Even in the psychiatric hospital, she mistook other patients for him, believing he had come to visit. She didn't just select the information she needed—she embellished it and fabricated more to match.

Since Freudian theory is already widely known, we needn't elaborate further here.

3. The Argument from Medical Psychology

The Chinese Ministry of Health's official textbook Medical Psychology (Li Xintian, People's Medical Publishing House, 1991) discusses rationalization—also called "making excuses" or "finding a way to frame things"—in the context of psychological coping and mental equilibrium. This, of course, is a strategy for dealing with setbacks. When confronting a setback, a person will marshal a host of reasons and scraps of information to justify themselves. The point isn't to explain the situation to others—to make them believe the failure wasn't their fault—it's to restore inner balance. They're convincing themselves, explaining the setback to themselves, making themselves believe it wasn't their doing. In short, they're hunting down useful information and believing what serves their interests.

In Aesop's fable, a fox that can't reach the ripe grapes declares them sour—"Sour grapes aren't what I wanted anyway"—and trots off. The complementary mechanism, "sweet lemon" thinking, works the opposite way: you insist that whatever you already have is wonderful.

Blame-shifting is another form of excuse-making: you look for the cause of failure everywhere except in yourself. A factory director runs a thriving enterprise into the ground over several years. If someone calls him out, he'll fasten onto tiny, self-serving details that no one else would even notice, and trot them out as exonerating evidence. He'll claim to have a hundred reasons why the collapse wasn't his fault. Finding reasons outside himself rather than examining his own conduct is precisely what he needs in that moment.

4. The I Ching's Perspective

The Xici Zhuan (Commentary on the Appended Statements, Upper Section) of the I Ching says: "The benevolent see in it benevolence; the wise see in it wisdom. The common people use it daily without understanding it. Therefore, the Way of the superior person is seldom known." Here the classical character 知 (zhī) is equivalent to the modern 智 (zhì), "wisdom." In other words: the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom; all the people under heaven use it every day without grasping it, so the true Way that the superior person speaks of is known to very few.

This is the origin of the Chinese idiom "the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom"—a way of saying that different people see different things in the same situation. The benevolent notice benevolence. The wise notice wisdom. Each selects the information that fits what they need.

Consider a plant—a peony, say. A biologist notices its place in the taxonomic hierarchy: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. An herbalist notices its properties and functions: is it heating or cooling? Bitter or sweet? What does it treat? A painter notices its aesthetic qualities. This is "the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom."

Another example: the young scholar Ji Xiaolan was preparing to sit for the imperial examinations. He consulted the I Ching and drew the hexagram Kun (困, "Beset")—an ominous sign. The third line was a moving line, with the text: "Beset among stones, leaning on brambles. Entering his palace, he does not see his wife. Misfortune." You go out to make your way in the world—forward, and stones block your path; back, and thorns surround you. With no options left, you return home, only to find your wife has fled. A grim reading indeed.

His fiancée, seeing this hexagram, urged him to skip the exam. Beyond the obvious inauspiciousness of the reading, she reasoned that if he passed, he might break off their engagement—which would be the greatest misfortune of all. Ji Xiaolan, however, was set on taking the exam and brimming with confidence. "Beset among stones"? Fine—let the fellow named Shi take first place, and he'd take second. Or if Shi took second, he'd settle for third. "Does not see his wife, misfortune"? He wasn't married yet, so it couldn't apply to him. Besides, the hexagram statement also says "the great person finds good fortune"—an accomplished person of stature won't meet calamity but prosperity instead.

This same hexagram, read differently by different people, is "the benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom" in action. (I should note that I've adapted this story slightly, making Ji Xiaolan's fiancée the one who performed the divination.)

"The benevolent see benevolence, the wise see wisdom" is simply the Chinese way of expressing the psychological principle that people select and believe the information they need. The two formulations are identical in meaning—fully equivalent.

This principle also underlies certain modern psychological assessment methods. And it is, at its core, the essence of I Ching divination. For the benevolent, you help them see benevolence and point out where it lies. For the wise, you help them see wisdom and show them where to find it. Only then will they be genuinely convinced and acknowledge your insight. This is precisely where the power of the eight trigrams resides.

So far we've only laid out the central claim, which by itself may not be fully convincing. In the sections that follow, we'll test this thesis against several modern psychological assessment methods.