Sun Liping on Why Sheep Don't Like to be Tied Up

Sun Liping, “If sheep don’t like to be tied up, it is not necessarily because they want to do something bad”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Sun Liping (b. 1953) is a well known sociologist who retired from Tsinghua University in 2020, and who frequently publishes blog posts on his WeChat feed on a variety of contemporary subjects (the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, China’s declining fertility rate).  Sun writes as a common-sense liberal who dares to ask hard questions, and he has a considerable following.  As a result, some of his more contentious posts are taken down (and often reposted elsewhere on the web).  Sun seemed to take this in stride and kept on posting, sometimes mentioning in passing that something he had written had been taken down. 
 
I have no idea how this kind of pressure plays out on the ground in China, and a lot of censorship in China seems to be fairly sloppy, and to involve editors rather than the Public Security Bureau, but over the course of the spring and summer, I noticed that Sun was no longer publishing on his WeChat feed, and wondered if he was in trouble.  Sure enough, on July 23, Sun posted a message to his WeChat feed that began:  “I would like to thank my online friends for their concern and patience over the past three months and more, and I am particularly touched by those who continued to send in regular messages checking up on me.  I can publish again now, which is what is important, even if I don’t know what I want to write about.  Maybe we’ll start with confusing trends in the world economy brought about by the war in Ukraine.”  Of course, Sun might have taken three months off because he was traveling, or because he broke his arm, but in the context, the message surely seems to say “they told me not to write for awhile, but now I’m back.”
 
In light of this, Sun’s otherwise whimsical musings about why sheep don’t like to be tied up take on a particular meaning, and the entire post is clearly an exercise in indirect criticism(指桑骂槐, “pointing at the mulberry tree and cursing the locust).
 
Translation
 
On November 31, 2020, I sent out a tweet whose general meaning was:  I'm retired now, and preoccupied basically with little things. Recently, I said, I’ve been thinking about three little things:  First, why don’t sheep like to be tied up?  Second, how do you feel if somebody keeps staring at you?  And third, if a relative or friend came to stay at your house and wanted to check out the refrigerator to see what’s in there and how much, would you be okay with that?  Why?  
 
To my surprise, after I sent out the tweet, a lot of netizens joined in the discussion, and had a lot of interesting insights into the questions themselves.  Some of my online friends even said, these are not small questions at all, but instead are really big questions, if you think about them.  Some people went so far as to say that these are fundamental questions that we should be always thinking about. 
 
Why don't sheep want to be tied up? 
 
Recently, I've been thinking about why sheep don't want to be tied up. We often see sheep who are tied up. We should note that the sheep that are raised by humans are animals that have been domesticated to a relatively high degree. Generally speaking, sheep like this do not resist even when they are tied up. This gives people the wrong idea that sheep in general don’t mind it. 
 
But in fact, this isn’t true.  All it takes is to see how happy a sheep when it is untied, how it runs away, and you will understand just how much sheep do not like being tied up.  
 
That sheep do not want to be tied up is not fact not because they necessarily want to do something bad, or we might go so far as to say that they have no purpose in mind at all. Some people may say that sheep want to be free in order to have a larger area in which to find grass to eat. This may seem correct, but in fact it is not the whole truth, because even when they have eaten their full, sheep still like to roam around freely. 
 
In the final analysis, it is the nature of animals to want to roam freely, without restraint. Nature is nature, and there is no purpose attached, necessarily. 
 
Of course, the degree to which this nature is felt differs with different animals. Domesticated sheep, or birds that have lived in cages for a long time, may be more or less used to such constraints.  Other animals are not. For example, if you try to hold insects and spiders in your hands, they will desperately try to break free. 
 
Some studies have shown that some animals will even commit suicide when they are trapped. For example, dolphins and whales can become suicidal after being captured and trapped in one place for too long a time. The same is true for certain bird species. If you've ever seen a dog chained up for the first time, you'll understand what I’m talking about. It is excruciating to watch how they struggle and suffer. 
 
Some studies have also found that the higher the IQ of a particular animal, the stronger this instinct becomes. 
 
The violation of being stared at, and the problem of agency 
 
Being stared at is, frankly, a serious matter. If you don't believe me, check out how a lot of fights start in the streets of China’s Northeast. “Why are you always staring at me?”  “So what if I’m staring at you?”  This exchange could be the start of a brawl. 
 
Why is this? In Sartre's explanation, when someone looks at you, he subconsciously turns you into the object of his observation.  His gaze makes him the dominant player and you the mere object of his observation, a process that denies your agency and turns you into an object.  At the same time, the person being stared at can feel an uncomfortable sense of oppression. 
 
This sense of oppression can disturb people's minds. 
 
We all know the famous story about the endless debate over who built the pyramids in Egypt. In his Histories, Herodotus says they were built by 300,000 slaves. But in 1560, while visiting the pyramids, the Swiss clockmaker Hans Bucher argued that the builders of the pyramids were absolutely not slaves, but were instead happy and free men.[2] 
 
What made Bucher think this? It turns out that he was originally a French Catholic who was put in chains and imprisoned in 1536 for opposing the rigid dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. Since he was a master clockmaker, he was assigned to make clocks during his imprisonment. Under conditions of oppression and loss of freedom, Bucher found himself unable to produce clocks with a daily error of less than 1/10th of a second, whereas before his imprisonment, working in his own workshop, he could easily produce clocks with a daily error of less than 1/100th of a second. 
 
What explained this? Bucher struggled to figure out. 
 
At first, Bucher thought it was attributable to the poor environment in which the clocks were made. Later, he escaped from prison and regained his freedom, but his living environment was worse than when he had been in prison. Despite this, his ability to make clocks and watches surprisingly returned, at which point, Bucher finally realized that the deciding element in the manufacture of an accurate timepiece is not the environment, but the mood of the clockmaker when manufacturing it. 
 
Bucher believed that it was impossible for a clockmaker to successfully complete the 1,200 steps of making a timepiece if he was dissatisfied and angry;  while feeling resentment and hatred, it was all the more difficult to accurately grind and file the 254 parts needed for the timepiece. 
 
It was this experience that led Bucher to daringly deduce that the builders of such a huge project as the pyramids, which was constructed so meticulously and with such a seamless integration of the myriad steps involved, must have been a group of free men with sincere hearts. Had it been a group of slaves with sloppy behavior and the urge to resist, it would never have possible to assemble the pyramids so expertly that not even a knife blade and be inserted between the stones. 
 
Don't expect miracles when people are subjected to excessive guidance and strict supervision, because the only way for humans to perform at their highest level is when there is harmony between mind and body. 
 
Privacy as a shield for dignity 
 
There is of course no real harm in other people knowing what’s in your refrigerator. But how would you feel if the old ladies from the neighborhood committee came to check out how many fish and how many pork chops you had? 
 
Once, I was eating out in a restaurant, and when I was finished and settling the bill, the waiter suggested that we become members, which would give us rebates, so that, for example, we would get 10 RMB off on a dish that cost 129 RMB.  I said okay, but when I started to sign up, he asked for my name, my phone number, my I.D. number, my home address…I felt like this was too much.  When the authorities ask for such things, you can’t really object, but here we have a stupid restaurant asking for all this private information.  So I let it drop, deciding I would rather spend a little more money.  And I’ll never eat in that restaurant again. 
 
Some people might say that becoming a member is voluntary, and you can refuse to join and just pay the regular price.  Nonsense.  This is how you see it, but in my view, the discounted price is the regular price, and the undiscounted price is in fact a penalty imposed on non-members.  
 
I am a person who loves to travel, and I especially love to visit the prairies and other such desolate places. Obviously, I have done less traveling in the past few years. There are many reasons for this, of course, but one of them is that the hotels do facial scans.  These days, no matter where you go, even to some remote wilderness, facial scans are part of the inescapable process of checking into a hotel. 
 
Of course, when you think about it, what harm is there for me personally in a facial scan? I admit that I don’t know. But it always makes people uncomfortable. I’m just a tourist staying in a hotel.  Should you treat me like a thief? 
 
In fact, privacy is a part of dignity. Privacy marks the boundary of freedom and is the embodiment of trust. People's need for dignity is not just the fear of actual violation. Between couples, it is often a high level of distrust that drives them to check the other person’s WeChat all the time. Some people would say if you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.[3] This statement seems reasonable at first glance, but in fact is completely ridiculous. If you have done nothing wrong, can people pester you all day with no reason? 
 
Even more important, by what right do you pester people for no reason all day? In fact, not being disturbed is one of the meanings of freedom. 
 
Of course, in order to maintain the order of community life, people have to accept certain necessary constraints, which includes sacrificing a certain amount of privacy. But let me make four points:  first, such constraints or limitations to privacy must be necessary; second, the benefits of such constraints or limitations to privacy must outweigh the disadvantages; third, those who infringe on others’ privacy must be able to protect and take responsibility for the privacies thus infringed upon; fourth, and most importantly, both the infringement on privacy and the imposition of certain constraints need to be officially authorized by law.

Notes

[1]孙立平, “羊不愿意被拴着，不见得是为了干坏事,” published on Sun’s WeChat feed on August 16, 2022. 

[2]Translator’s note:  This story can be found in any number of Chinese sources, none of which seem to give the person’s full name or birth and death dates, but I have been unable to find the same story in Western languages in a relatively brief Internet search.  Hans Bucher—identified simply as 布克/”Booker” in Chinese—was indeed a well known 16th century Swiss clockmaker, but I found no reference to his having “toured” the Egyptian pyramids, although this would not have been impossible.  Similarly, there are stories in Chinese—but not in English—about Leonardo Davinci having begun his studies as an artist by drawing nothing more complicated than an egg for several years.

[3]Translator’s note:  Literally, “they are not afraid of ghosts’ calling at the door,” which refers to a Chinese folk belief that immoral actions, particularly those leading to someone’s death, will be avenged by the “ghosts” of the departed.