Parking Reserved for Employee of the Year (10.12)
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Parking Reserved for Employee of the Year (10.12)
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About this listen
Would you take the "Employee of the Year" parking spot if no one was looking? In this third episode, host Elliott Bernstein explores passage 10.12—just five characters about where Confucius would and wouldn't sit. But why does a book of profound philosophy bother recording someone's seating preferences? What do layered mats and compass directions have to do with social hierarchy in Zhou-dynasty China? And how does a chapter full of apparent minutiae—clothing choices, food preferences, walking styles—reveal something deeper about ritual and harmony? Along the way: why Book 10 reads so differently from the rest of the Analects, the connection between 席 and Chairman Mao's title, and why the character 正 carries meanings of both "straight" and "correct" that matter for interpretation. Plus: an honest admission that with five ancient ideograms and no punctuation, nobody alive today knows for certain what this passage means—and why that's actually the point.