Beyond Morality II: Control or Cultivation? The Existential Question of Human Nature and Leadership
In the first part of Beyond Morality, we explored how systems often devolve from natural integrity into enforced morality, then into ritual, and finally into coercion. Chapter 38 of the Dao De Jing reveals a stark truth: when alignment with the Dao is lost, society builds layer upon layer of compensation — until even morality becomes performance, and ritual becomes a mask for control.
But beneath all of this sits a deeper, more existential question:
Do we believe that people are inherently good — or do we believe they must be controlled for the safety of society?
This single question shapes how we design our organisations, schools, governments, systems of justice, leadership cultures, and even our internal self-narratives. It defines whether we’re aiming to develop people or contain them, to cultivate strength or enforce obedience.
When Systems Forget the Dao
Most institutions operate from morality downwards. They start from the assumption that people can’t be trusted — so they need rules, incentives, and punishments to behave.
They rely on external compliance instead of cultivating internal coherence.
Where Are We as a Society?
Are we aligned with truth and wholeness? Or are we enforcing morality and ritual because something deeper has been lost?
History reminds us:
Mao Zedong once said dictatorship was necessary “to maintain public order and safeguard the interests of the people.”
Stalin warned, “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns; why should we let them have ideas?”
In the Taiping Rebellion, millions died under the moral and religious absolutism of a leader who claimed divine insight — a rebellion cloaked in righteousness that led to catastrophic violence.
Of course, not all appeals to virtue lead to tyranny — but history reminds us to watch carefully when power speaks the language of righteousness. Every time morality is weaponised “for the common good,” we should ask: what has been lost that we now feel the need to enforce goodness?
A Martial and Philosophical Alternative: The Cultivation Paradigm vs The Control Paradigm
In the current age, the systems we have effectively operate from the premise that people need to be controlled (whether by intention or as an unintended consequence). The trend is more rules, more regulation, more monitoring and control of what language is appropriate — all for the common good.
Wing Tsun, and the ancient Eastern systems, offer a radically different perspective. In short, they observed that people are generally good. But that goodness must be remembered, nurtured, trained — not enforced. In particular:
Mencius believed people are like water: they flow naturally toward goodness.
Laozi warned: the more laws and prohibitions, the more thieves and disorder.
Huineng taught: Buddha-nature isn’t earned — it’s remembered and revealed.
In all three, the message is the same: people aren’t inherently broken — they’re just disconnected. What they need is cultivation, not coercion. This worldview places tremendous responsibility on leaders, elders, and institutions: not to control, but to nurture the conditions for innate goodness to flourish. Its reflected again in the Dao De Jing, Chapter 57:
“The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become.
The more weapons there are, the more troubled the state becomes.
The more cunning and cleverness there is, the more strange things arise.
Therefore, the Sage says: I take no action and the people transform themselves.”
This is where Wing Tsun excels. It does not build obedience. It builds awareness, skill, and alignment. It cultivates the internal capacity to deal with threat without becoming a threat in the process.
The sages of old similarly came with warnings about our tendency to enforce obedience. Zhuangzi, who lived during the Warring States period in the 4th Century BCE, saw morality-as-public-display as deeply suspect. He warned against elders and rulers who use moral language as camouflage for control. He observed that those who over-speak of “what is right” often do so to justify power or conceal fear. He called them:
“The men of benevolence who chop through bones with kind intentions.”
He then cautioned against the temptation of humans in wanting to believe the moral preaching of others — and how seductive it is:
“When the men of the world are all asleep, only the sage is awake. And yet it is he who is called mad.”
The Suppression Triad: How Fear Becomes the Logic of Control
One of the clearest patterns throughout history is how systems justify their increasing control. Almost always, it’s through fear. And more specifically, fear in three forms. I call this the Suppression Triad:
Fear of the Outside (the “Boogeyman”) – There’s always an external enemy, real or imagined, used to justify emergency powers, surveillance, or aggression.
Fear of the Masses (the Mob) – The belief that the collective can’t be trusted: people are dangerous, irrational and easily manipulated.
Fear of the Individual – Personal autonomy is seen as a threat. Non-conformity, dissent, or sovereignty must be managed, monitored, or silenced.
It’s important to be clear: the question is not whether these fears are real or justified — that is always going to be case-by-case. The question is how they are used — because history shows again and again that fear becomes the engine that powers suppression.
This has always been the logic: “Give up your freedom — so we can protect your freedom.”
This is why fear is such a powerful political and social tool. When people are in survival mode, it becomes far easier to persuade them that: “We must temporarily give up liberty in order to save it.”
Even though there’s no mechanism to ensure that liberty ever returns. This is how the Suppression Triad operates — not through overt tyranny, but through subtle psychological narrowing. It doesn’t just remove freedom — it convinces people to vote for their own disempowerment, thinking they are being responsible. But once freedom is surrendered, it is rarely returned in full. This is what’s often called the totalitarian tiptoe: a crisis occurs, emergency powers are invoked, some freedoms are restored, but a greater share is quietly lost — permanently.
How Fear Hijacks the Mind and Justifies Suppression
The most dangerous part of this cycle is not just political — it’s psychological.
When people are placed in a constant state of fear — especially collective fear — their nervous systems shift into sympathetic dominance (fight, flight, or freeze). And in that state:
Rational thinking narrows
Long-term thinking collapses
Nuanced decision-making becomes almost impossible
Wing Tsun and ancient Eastern thinking offer a clear lesson on this: If your system relies on fear to function, you haven’t solved the problem. You’ve just buried it.
Why Laws Often Punish the Many for the Few
Another aspect of this is that laws and rules are frequently created for the extreme cases, but then applied to everyone, resulting in:
A culture of low-trust, compliance-driven engagement
Loss of personal responsibility (“the system will handle it”)
Reduced sense of agency, self-reflection, and virtue
This is what happens when systems are based on risk aversion rather than human development.
It’s the school rule fallacy: one child misbehaves, and everyone loses their break. In society, this logic:
Creates overregulation
Incentivises box-ticking over moral reasoning
Often ends up serving those in power — not the majority
Rather than building up the goodness and trying to tame the extremes, the tendency is to restrict more and more freedoms.
Wing Tsun: Preparing Without Falling Into Suppression
Wing Tsun knows this situation all too well. The Shaolin Temple, where the art originated, experienced centuries of shifting power — alternately in favour with warlords and governments, and then persecuted.
These lessons came at a high cost — with the Southern Shaolin Temple ultimately destroyed by a new power (the Manchus, the incoming Qing dynasty) when it harboured the refugees of the previous regime (including the legendary nun Ng Mui).
This lesson of power, control, and resilience is at the very heart of the art — making Wing Tsun what it is today. Wing Tsun, therefore, offers a martial and philosophical answer to this dilemma. It recognises that danger exists, people can be unpredictable, and systems must be resilient. But the answer is not to surrender freedom in the name of safety. The answer is: prepare for the worst — and create the best.
Wing Tsun doesn’t teach blind trust or idealism. It teaches preparation, presence, adaptability, and calmness under pressure. It’s about being so prepared that you don’t need to panic — and so aware that you don’t overreach.
As you will see in the 3 Stages of Trust model (and others mentioned in my previous blog) — you learn how to trust, and to what extent. You learn to be clear on your values, standards, and boundaries — and move decisively when they are violated or about to be.
So What Kind of World Are We Building?
That brings us back to the fundamental question:
Are our systems built to control people — or to cultivate them?
Because the two lead in radically different directions.
Control assumes people are dangerous and must be managed.
Cultivation assumes people have value and must be developed.
And while control may offer short-term compliance, only cultivation leads to long-term resilience, creativity, and freedom.
Control is reactive.
Cultivation is generative.
Control shrinks the world.
Cultivation expands it.
So whether you're a leader, teacher, parent, citizen, or practitioner, the question is the same:
Am I reinforcing fear — or fostering strength?
What we design reflects what we believe. And what we believe soon becomes the world we inhabit. So what are you choosing?
Sifu