Yin & Yang

🏷  Chinese pun · symbol   —   by Gerry · May 2022 · 270 words

The interwoven Chinese ☯ Yin & Yang symbols stand for the duality of yīn “shadow” & yáng “light”. Since these words also mean “hidden” & “open”, you could imagine those are also a duality for the rulers. Instead, the Chinese elites probably promoted these symbols for their punny duality of yīn “secrecy” & yáng “pretense”. Because rulers are never truly “open”!

I cannot say it often enough, because even most truth-seekers don’t understand it: Openness or honesty has never been an option for any aristocracy! As soon as power is inherited, it can only & ever be sustained through secrecy & deception. There is simply no way how randomly born aristocratic offspring — with an average skillset, zero real-world experience, and lazy through privilege — could provide any truthful argument why they would be the fittest to rule. So to sustain aristocratic rule, there’s no “shadow & light”, but only different kinds of “shadow”: keeping the truth completely secret, and putting on a public show of false things. The second one evolved into spookery!

Note: Chinese puns are not always perfect in the pronunciation, but this one is. yīn for “shadow” is the very same word as for “secrecy”. And yáng for “light” is pronounced exactly as yáng for “pretense”.

Chinese yīn = negative, hidden, secret, deceit; yáng = positive; yáng = feign, pretend

; yīn : cloudy, overcast; hidden, secret; negative; moon; shade, shadow; female, Yin; treacherous, deceitful, cheating — Chinese (Wikt)

; yáng : open, overt; positive; sun; male, Yang — Chinese (Wikt)

yáng : to pretend; to feign — Chinese (Wikt)

🏷  Chinese pun · symbol