Yin & Yang

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

The interwoven Chinese ☯ Yin & Yang symbols stand for the duality of 陰 yīn “shadow” & 陽 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 陰 yīn “secrecy” & 佯 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. 陰 yīn for “shadow” is the very same word as for “secrecy”. And 陽 yáng for “light” is pronounced exactly as 佯 yáng for “pretense”.

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

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

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

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

🏷  Chinese pun · symbol