Well, that's not true. Heaven, or the skies, might not, but the earth coughs up the compounds to manufacture the plastics and the earth receives the toxic byproducts therefrom. The skies suffer the indignities of human and animal emissions. Maybe the things themselves are "dummies" as v5 indicates. The next line says that the wise think of the people as dummies, too. Like ventriloquist dummies? Are the wise the people who have power? Are they ruthless in considering us proletarians dummies? Are we dummies? I suspect the ruling class, the owning class, the dummy class, the powerful, the intellectuals, etc are all dummies in ways large and small. And Heaven and Earth, the Tao that cannot be named, doesn't care.
There's a line later about a goose not intending to cast its reflection on the surface of the lake below. That line is an old friend. In this verse, "more words count less," another old friend. "Methinks thou protesteth too much?" Zooming out to a perspective that includes both heaven and earth, sky atmosphere and ground, this verse prompts me to take a big-picture look. The shape shifts, but the sky does not fall, the ground usually does not rise. Each serves its purpose, lives out its life measured not in years but in eons (suffering our indifferent fouling in pursuit of transient pleasures)...
So into this bigness, this seeming endlessness, v5 ends with "Hold fast to the center." The center of what? The amorphous Tao? The Heaven and Earth or the wise who all ruthlessly consider me the people a big dummy? So I run my hour, feeling my strained hamstring from building a snowfort and enjoying the light flurries that escort me back up the hill home.
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